A sex scandal breaks out at a New England boarding school.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

When a boxer and his mother take in a homeless person, they set off a chain of events implicating intelligence agencies from three countries.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

Ghosh evokes the smells, rituals, and squalor of India in the 1830s.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

"There dwells, somewhere in Russia, a man so powerful that no one even knows his name. His existence is only speculated upon, only whispered about, in American corridors of power and CIA strategy meetings. Though he is all but invisible, he is pulling strings - and pulling them hard. For suddenly, Russia is a far, far more ominous threat than even the most hardened cold warriors ever thought possible." "The Russians have their finger on the fuel switch to the European economy and an eye on the American jugular. And, most important, they want to be made whole again. Should America interfere with Russia's plans to "reintegrate" her rogue states, well then, America will pay in blood." "In Ted Bell's latest novel, Alex Hawke must face an insidious global nightmare of epic proportions. As this political crisis plays out, Russia gains a new leader. Not just a president, but a new Tsar, a signal to the world that the old, imperial Russia is back and is hell-bent on global dominance. And in America, a mysterious killer, known only as Happy the Baker, brutally murders Americans on instructions from the Kremlin. Just a taste, according to the new Tsar, of what will happen if America does not back down. Onto this treacherous stage must step Alex Hawke, the only counter-terror agent, both the Americans and the Brits agree, who can stop the absolute madness born and bred inside the modern police state of Vladimir Putin's New Russia."--BOOK JACKET.

Commercial Airlines have long gotten over the idea that pampering would be the proper treatment for their customers.  Every day provides opportunities for the kind of communication that this book purports to be:  an irate letter to American Airlines, from a passenger arbitrarily stranded at Chicago's O'Hare Field.  The letter begins with a request for a refund; the traveler is not going to be in California in time for his daughter's wedding.  No flights are available, so there is plenty of time for the angry note to turn into a short book.  The failures of the airline match up with the remembered failures of the writer's own life, and nothing is provided with a neat resolution.  Even the memories are flawed:  "Memory and meaning, I've found, often book separate rooms in the brain."  Love, marriage, drinking, poetry, translation--all is grist for a mill that grinds just as fine as you could possible ask.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

"One night at Elaine's, Stone Barrington - back in Manhattan after chasing down the bad guys in the Caribbean - meets Barton Cabot, older brother of his sometime ally, CIA boss Lance Cabot. Barton's career in army intelligence is even more top secret than his brother's, but he's suffering from amnesia following a random act of violence. Amnesia is a dangerous thing in a man whose memory is chockfull of state secrets, so Lance hires Stone to watch Barton's back. As Stone discovers, Barton is a spy with a rather unusual hobby: building and restoring antique furniture. The genteel world of antiques and coin dealers at first seems a far cry from Stone's usual underworld of mobsters, murderers, and spies. But Barton also is a man with a past, and one event in particular - in the jungles of Vietnam more than thirty years earlier - is coming back to haunt his present in ways he'd never expected. Stone soon finds out that Barton, and some shady characters of his acquaintance, may be hiding a lot more than just a few forged antiques."--BOOK JACKET.

This time, Glass explores the complicated world of two sisters--how they can be alike and so extremely different.  The story begins in 1980 when the sisters are adults and their great-great aunt Lucy dies.  Clem, the younger sister, had been living with Lucy as a quasi-caretaker.  Louisa flies i from Los Angeles, not so much to attend the funeral, but to see if Lucy left her the cameo she coveted since she was a girl.

The narrative weaves between Clem and Louisa, each telling a part of the story from her point of view over 25 years, interweaving the sisters' different lifestyles and views.  Louisa craves stability. Clem is a scientist who travels the world studying bears, whales, and whatever animal seems to need saving.

The plot flows easily but is interrupted by the men the sisters are involved with.  It seems that each time the story moves forward, each has a different man who is causing discomfort.  Two-thirds into the narrative comes a shocker that I didn't see coming.

The characterizations are well-developed and Glass concentrates more on how they get along, appear and disappear at various points in their life, and the deep bond that hold them together.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

This satire is about a television judge who ends up on the Supreme Court.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

The story follows naive Alice Lindgren and the path that leads her to the White House as first lady.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

"Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator of The Lace Reader, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations, but the disappearance of two women brings Towner home to Salem and the truth about the death of her twin sister to light." "The Lace Reader is a tale that spirals into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths in which the reader quickly finds it's nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction, but as Towner Whitney points out early on in the novel, "There are no accidents.""--BOOK JACKET.

"Abu Qasim, The Ruthless and cunning AI Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the G-8 in Paris, has escaped from the grasp of the Americans and is plotting his next move. A small band of powerful men, highly placed leaders of industry and politics in the West, have decided they need to target and destroy the terrorist and his inner circle before he can strike again. When a prominent Russian dissident is poisoned in London, however, it's clear that there's a very dangerous leak within the ranks of the Westerners, and that Abu Qasim has turned the tables on his rivals - it is now he who is pursuing, and his aim is to kill." "Admiral Jake Grafton dispatches special agent Tommy Carmellini to infiltrate the plot. He tracks the gorgeous and seductive Marisa Petrou, a French woman who may be Qasim's daughter and who has her own reasons for wanting him alive - or wishing him dead. Qasim, meanwhile, has a trick up his sleeve - one that he's been planning for years."--BOOK JACKET.

The Gargoyle is a fascinating amalgam of elements that have proven popular in recent fiction.  There's a careful attention to historical detail; there's a powerful shocking approach to suffering and pain; there's the teasing possibility that what is clearly impossible could be accepted as real.  Love is presented as an enduring force, even after (literally) centuries, and even in a context where sex is not an option.  The book is a masterful piece of writing, and an industry rarity:  a first novel that is already optioned in twenty countries.  The publishers call it "the most extraordinary debut novel of the decade," and they just may be right.

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

This is a fairly short book written almost completely in letters from one person to another.  The main character is Juliet, a mid-thirties woman who lived in London during WWII and wrote a newspaper column for one of the papers.  It is now 1946 and she receives a letter from a man who purchased a book by Charles Lamb that had her name and address in it. Dawsey Adams tells Juliet that he is a farmer on the Island of Guernsey who had never read much, but that sort of by accident, he became a member of the society to avoid trouble during the Nazi occupation of this British island.  She is intrigued and asks for more details and he has other members of the society begin to write to her as well. 

Annotation by: St. Louis Public Library staff.

"A series of unexplained deaths in foreign hospitals sends an idealistic UCLA medical student on a desperate search for answers in this tale from the master of the medical thriller." "Jennifer Hernandez is a fourth-year medical student at UCLA, just beginning an elective in general surgery, whose world is shattered during a break in an otherwise ordinary day. While relaxing in the surgical lounge of L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, she half listens to a TV segment on medical tourism: first-world citizens traveling to third-world countries for surgery. But when she hears her beloved grandmother's name mentioned, Jennifer's heart nearly stops: the CNN reporter says that Maria Hernandez has died, a day after undergoing a hip replacement in New Delhi's Queen Victoria Hospital." "Maria had raised Jennifer and her brothers from infancy, and the bond between grandmother and granddaughter was unbreakable. Still, the news that Maria traveled to India is a shock to Jennifer, until she realizes that it was the only viable option for the hardworking yet uninsured woman. Devastated, and desperate for answers, Jennifer takes emergency leave from school and heads to India, where relations with local officials go from sympathetic to sour as she pushes for more information. With revelations of other unexplained deaths compounded by pressure from Indian hospital officials for hasty cremations, Jennifer reaches out to her mentor, New York City medical examiner Dr. Laurie Montgomery, who has her own deep connection to Maria." "Laurie, along with her husband, Dr. Jack Stapleton, rushes to the younger woman's side, and discovers a sophisticated medical facility with little margin for error. As the death count grows, so do the questions, leading Laurie and Jennifer to unveil a sinister, multilayered conspiracy of global proportions."--BOOK JACKET.

"The death of a journalist leads Gabriel Allon to Russia, where he finds that in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He's playing by Moscow rules now." "It is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States." "One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire, however, is a more lucrative and deadly business. Kharkov is an arms dealer - and he is about to deliver Russia's most sophisticated weapons to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11 - and the clock is ticking fast."--BOOK JACKET.