FICTION
1. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
by Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead
A friendship between two women in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of war.
2. THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Warner
A Tibetan abbot asks the FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast to help recover a stolen relic with evil powers.
3. DARK POSSESSION
by Christine Feehan
Berkley
A Seattle counselor for battered women is wooed by a shape-shifter in Brazil; a Carpathian novel.
4. BONES TO ASHES
by Kathy Reichs
Scribner
The forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is asked to examine the skeleton of a young girl in Canada, where, many years ago, her best friend disappeared.
5. THE ELVES OF CINTRA
by Terry Brooks
Del Rey/Ballantine
The second volume of the Genesis of Shannara series is set in post-apocalyptic Seattle.
6. PLAY DIRTY
by Sandra Brown
Simon & Schuster
A disgraced NFL quarterback struggles to remake his life in the face of a strange assignment from an eccentric millionaire and the machinations of a crooked detective.
7. THE QUICKIE
by James Patterson and
Michael Ledwidge
Little, Brown
A police officer's attempt to get back at her husband, whom she suspects of cheating on her, goes dangerously awry.
8. LORD JOHN AND THE
BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE
by Diana Gabaldon
Delacorte
During the Seven Years' War, Lord John Grey is haunted by his father's murder 17 years earlier.
9. AWAY
by Amy Bloom
Random House
An immigrant who escaped a Russian pogrom crosses America, toward home, after learning her daughter may still be alive.
10. SWEET REVENGE
by Diane Mott Davidson
Morrow
A former district attorney is found dead in a library, and the caterer Goldy Schulz thinks she knows the killer.
11. POWER PLAY
by Joseph Finder
St Martin's
In this corporate thriller, armed men crash a wilderness retreat and take a company's entire executive leadership hostage.
NONFICTION
1. WONDERFUL TONIGHT
by Patti Boyd with Penny Junor
Harmony
A rock muse recalls falling in love with Eric Clapton while married to George Harrison.
2. QUIET STRENGTH
by Tony Dungy with Nathan Whitaker
Tyndale
A memoir by the first black coach to win a Super Bowl.
3. YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE
by Duane Chapman with Laura Morton
Hyperion
The star of A&E's Dog the Bounty Hunter recalls his past of abuse and addiction.
4. LONE SURVIVOR
by Marcus Luttrell
with Patrick Robinson
Little, Brown
The only survivor of a Navy SEAL operation in northern Afghanistan describes the battle, his comrades and his courageous escape.
5. IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM
by Denise Jackson with Ellen Vaughn
Thomas Nelson
The wife of the country music star Alan Jackson describes how religious faith restored her marriage.
6. GOD IS NOT GREAT
by Christopher Hitchens
Twelve
Religion as a malignant force in the world.
7. THE WORLD WITHOUT US
by Alan Weisman
Thomas Dunne/St Martin's
What Earth would be like if humans disappeared.
8. A LONG WAY GONE
by Ishmael Beah
Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
A former child soldier from Sierra Leone describes his drug-crazed killing spree and his return to humanity.
9. IKE
by Michael Korda
Harper
A narrative history of the life and times of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
10. FREAKONOMICS
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Morrow
A maverick scholar and a journalist apply economic theory to nearly everything.
11. ANIMAL, VEGETABLE,
MIRACLE
by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
HarperCollins
The novelist and her family spend a year eating homegrown or local food.
12. THE DIANA CHRONICLES
by Tina Brown
Doubleday
The Princess of Wales' relationship with the royal family and her romance with the media.
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
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
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