FICTION
1. THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA
by Lauren Weisberger
Broadway
A young woman gets a job at a fashion magazine, and a difficult boss.
2. THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER
by Kim Edwards
Penguin
A doctor’s decision to secretly send his newborn daughter who has Down syndrome, to an institution haunts everyone involved.
3. THE LINCOLN LAWYER
by Michael Connelly
Warner
A criminal defense attorney takes a case that proves more dangerous than he expected.
4. THE DA VINCI CODE
by Dan Brown
Anchor
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.
5. ON THE WAY TO THE WEDDING
by Julia Quinn
Avon
Gregory Bridgerton is waiting for “the one,” but when he finds her, complications follow.
6. 4TH OF JULY
by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Warner Vision
Detective Lindsay Boxer, a member of the Women’s Murder Club, looks into a series of killings while she herself is on trial.
7. BLUE SMOKE
by Nora Roberts
Jove
An arson investigator whose family suffered a fire when she was a child is menaced by a sociopath.
8. CHILL OF FEAR
by Kay Hooper
Bantam
Haunted by a murder that took place 20 years earlier, an FBI agent heads to Tennessee to try to solve it.
9. MEMORY IN DEATH
by J.D. Robb
Berkley
Lieutenant Eve Dallas tracks the killer of a woman who blackmailed her; by Nora Roberts, writing pseudonymously.
10. ELEVEN ON TOP
by Janet Evanovich
St. Martin’s
As she tries to quit bounty hunting, Stephanie Plum realizes a lunatic is stalking her.
11. THE KITE RUNNER
by Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead
An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to learn how a friend has fared under the Taliban.
12. DANGEROUS TIDES
by Christine Feehan
Jove
Romance brings danger after Libby, one of the gifted Drake sisters, saves the life of a rescue worker.
NONFICTION
1. 1776
by David McCullough
Simon & Schuster
An account of America’s founding year focusing on the inexperienced George Washington and the heroic citizen soldiers.
2. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
by Al Gore
Rodale
The former US vice president sounds an alarm about global warming.
3. NIGHT
by Elie Wiesel
Hill & Wang
A new translation of an account of the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, first published in English in 1960.
4. THE GLASS CASTLE
by Jeannette Walls
Scribner
The author recalls a childhood during which she and her siblings were constantly moved.
5. IN COLD BLOOD
by Truman Capote
Vintage
A savage murder in Kansas in 1959 and its consequences.
6. THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
by Erik Larson
Vintage
The tale of an architect and a killer, linked by the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.
7. THE TIPPING POINT
by Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay/Little, Brown
A journalist’s study of social epidemics, otherwise known as fads.
8. RUNNING WITH SCISSORS
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador
In the 1970s, a young boy lives with a crazy psychiatrist in a squalid household.
9. THE PLACES IN BETWEEN
by Rory Stewart
Harvest/Harcourt
The author recounts his walk across Afghanistan in the dead of winter, some of it through territory still under Taliban sway.
10. TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE
by Mitch Albom
Broadway
The author tells of his visits to his old college mentor.
11. GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
by Jared Diamond
Norton
An argument that Western dominance is due to geographical advantages.
12. EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES
by Lynne Truss
Gotham
An Englishwoman expounds on the use and misuse of punctuation marks.
13. A MILLION LITTLE PIECES
by James Frey
Anchor
Both author and publisher acknowledge that this memoir contains numerous fabrications.
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
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
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