FICTION
1. TWO LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE
by Mary Higgins Clark
Simon & Schuster
A small girl communicates telepathically with her kidnapped twin.
2. DARK HARBOR
by Stuart Woods
Putnam
Stone Barrington, the New York cop turned lawyer, investigates the death of his cousin, a CIA agent.
3. OAKDALE CONFIDENTIAL
by Anonymous
Pocket
When a wealthy hospital donor is found dead on arrival at a gala in his honor, three women
suspect murder; a tie-in to As the World Turns.
4. DARK TORT
by Diane Mott Davidson
Morrow
The caterer Goldy Schulz is back in the amateur gumshoe business after a paralegal is killed.
5. GONE
by Jonathan Kellerman
Ballantine
Two acting students stage their own disappearance -- but then one of them is murdered. The psychologist-detective Alex Delaware investigates.
6. 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 Da Vinci and to the discovery of a secret society.
7. 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.
8. CHASING DESTINY
by Eric Jerome Dickey
Dutton
When a Los Angeles biker beauty discovers she is pregnant, her married boyfriend is not happy.
9. THE TEMPLAR LEGACY
by Steve Berry
Ballantine
A former US Justice Department operative becomes involved in a desperate search for the long-lost treasure and secrets of the medieval Knights Templar.
10. THE SECRET SUPPER
by Javier Sierra
Atria
Clues in The Last Supper
reveal Leonardo Da Vinci's
heretical beliefs.
11. SUITE FRANCAISE
by Irene Nemirovsky
Knopf
Two novellas, which came to light more than 50 years after the author's death at Auschwitz, about life in France under the Nazis.
NONFICTION
1. DON'T MAKE A BLACK WOMAN TAKE OFF HER
EARRINGS
by Tyler Perry
Riverhead
Musings on life from the man behind Diary of a Mad Black Woman.
2. MARLEY & ME
by John Grogan
Morrow
A newspaper columnist and his wife learn some life lessons from their neurotic dog.
3. THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS
edited by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst.
National Geographic
An early Christian manuscript lost for 1,700 years portrays Judas Iscariot not as Jesus' betrayer but as his willing collaborator.
4. AMERICAN THEOCRACY
by Kevin Phillips
Viking
A former Republican strategist warns against the dangers of
religious zealotry, oil depen-dence and ballooning public and private debt.
5. 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.
6. THE WORLD IS FLAT
by Thomas Friedman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
A columnist for the New York Times analyzes 21st-century economics and foreign policy and presents an overview of globalization trends.
7. THE JESUS PAPERS
by Michael Baigent
HarperSan-Francisco
The author argues that Jesus survived his crucifixion and had a child with Mary Magdalene.
8. GAME OF SHADOWS
by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams
Gotham
How a San Francisco laboratory supplied steroids to many elite baseball players.
9. COBRA II
by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor
Pantheon
A definitive account of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq.
10. MY LIFE IN FRANCE
by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
Knopf
How Julia Child mastered the art of French cooking.
11. MANHUNT
by James Swanson
Morrow
The 12-day pursuit Abraham Lincoln's assassin.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and