FICTION
1. BEACH ROAD
by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge
Little, Brown
An East Hampton lawyer
becomes involved in a highly publicized trial that pits locals against the super-rich.
2. TWO LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE
by Mary Higgins Clark
Simon & Schuster
A girl communicates telepath-ically with her kidnapped twin.
3. I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER
by E. Lynn Harris
Doubleday
As a gay singer struggles with homophobia in the church, he must come to terms with his past.
4. DIGGING TO AMERICA
by Anne Tyler
Knopf
Two families, one of them Iranian-American, become involved with each other when both adopt baby girls from Korea.
5. PROMISE ME
by Harlan Coben
Dutton
Myron Bolitar becomes a
suspect when a high school girl disappears after he drives her to a friend's house.
6. BLUE SHOES & HAPPINESS
by Alexander McCall Smith
Pantheon
The seventh novel in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, featuring Mma Ramotswe and her assistant, Grace Makutski.
7. DARK HARBOR
by Stuart Woods
Putnam
Stone Barrington, the New York cop turned lawyer, investigates the death of his cousin, a CIA agent.
8. DEFINITELY DEAD
by Charlaine Harris
Ace
A New Orleans vampire queen tries to stop a cocktail waitress, Sookie Stackhouse, from looking into the past of her consort, who is Sookie's cousin.
9. FULL OF GRACE
by Dorothea Benton Frank
Morrow
A woman who has moved from New Jersey to South Carolina with her Italian-American parents encounters romantic and cultural complications.
10. SUSANNAH'S GARDEN
by Debbie Macomber
Mira
A woman returns to her hometown and re-examines troubling events of her past.
11. 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.
12. 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.
NONFICTION
1. MARLEY & ME
by John Grogan
Morrow
A newspaper columnist and his wife learn some life lessons from their neurotic dog.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. BURNT TOAST
by Teri Hatcher
Hyperion
The actress urges women to
pursue their own satisfaction rather than continually sacrificing for others.
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. POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS
by Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's
Autobiographical essays from the author of Running With Scissors.
7. THE MIGHTY AND THE ALMIGHTY
by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward
HarperCollins
The former secretary of state reflects on America, God and world affairs.
8. 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 favored disciple.
9. CLEMENTE
by David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster
A biography of baseball's first Latino superstar.
10. MY LIFE IN FRANCE
by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
Knopf
How Julia Child mastered the art of French cooking.
11. AMERICAN THEOCRACY
by Kevin Phillips
Viking
A former Republican strategist warns against the dangers of religious zealotry, oil dependence and ballooning public and private debt.
12. A DEATH IN BELMONT
by Sebastian Junger
Norton
A man who worked in the author's childhood home -- who later confessed to being the Boston Strangler -- may have murdered a neighbor.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located