FICTION
1. THE ROAD
by Cormac McCarthy
Vintage
A father and son journey through post-apocalypse America.
2. SUSANNAH'S GARDEN
by Debbie Macomber
Mira
A woman returns to her hometown and re-examines the troubling events of her past.
3. THE FIFTH HORSEMAN
by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Warner
Detective Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club investigate unexplained deaths at a San Francisco hospital.
4. RAINTREE: INFERNO
by Linda Howard
Silhouette
A battle tests the loyalties and relationships of the Raintree clan, led by Dante, the king.
5. TWO LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE
by Mary Higgins Clark
Pocket
A girl communicates telepathically with her kidnapped twin.
6. DEAD WATCH
by John Sandford
Berkley
A political operative investigates the murder of a former senator.
7. BORN IN DEATH
by J.D. Robb
Berkley
A lieutenant investigates the disappearance of a pregnant woman; by Nora Roberts, writing pseudonymously.
8. HOT STUFF
by Janet Evanovich and Leanne Banks
St. Martin's
When a bartender's apartment is ransacked, she turns to a former police officer for help — then falls in love with him.
9. 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.
10. AT RISK
by Patricia Cornwell
Berkley
A Massachusetts state investigator applies DNA and other forensic techniques to a cold murder case.
11. SUITE FRANCAISE
by Irene Nemirovsky
Vintage
Two novellas, discovered more than 50 years after the author's death at Auschwitz, about life in France under the Nazis
12. GONE
by Jonathan Kellerman
Ballantine
Two acting students stage their own disappearance — but one of them is murdered; the psychologist-detective Alex Delaware investigates.
NONFICTION
1. EAT, PRAY, LOVE
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Penguin Books
A writer's yearlong journey in search of self takes her to Italy, India and Indonesia.
2. THE MEASURE OF A MAN
by Sidney Poitier
HarperSanFrancisco
The movie actor's spiritual autobiography.
3. THE GLASS CASTLE
by Jeannette Walls
Scribner
The author recalls a bizarre childhood during which she and her siblings constantly moved.
4. BLINK
by Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay
The author of The Tipping Point explores the importance of hunch and instinct to the workings of the mind.
5. THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
by Joan Didion
Vintage
The author's attempt to come to terms with the death of her husband and the grave illness of their only daughter.
6. 90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN
by Don Piper with
Cecil Murphey
Revell
A minister describes the otherworldly experience he had after a car accident.
7. STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS
by Daniel Gilbert
Vintage
A Harvard professor explores why people can't predict what will make them happy.
8. 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.
9. THREE CUPS OF TEA
by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Penguin Books
A former mountain climber builds schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
10. THE FREEDOM WRITERS DIARY
by the Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell
Broadway
Students considered "unteachable" write about their lives: the basis for the movie Freedom Writers.
11. THE TIPPING POINT
by Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay/Little, Brown
A journalist's study of social epidemics, otherwise known as fads.
12. MAYFLOWER
by Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin Books
How America began, from the author of In the Heart of the Sea.
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