TENSE, TAUT FINANCIAL THRILLER from Norb Vonnegut is set in the rarefied world of global hedge fund skulduggery.

A SUDDEN TRAGEDY links two Cape Cod families in this delicate, complex, elegaic novel.  Truly touching.

REINVENTING THE MEMOIR as poem, Maxine Hong Kingston invites us into her luminous and introspective life.

IRREVERENT, WELL RESEARCHED lightning tour through behavioral economics shows why things cost what they do.

SURLY AND SARCASTIC as Spade, quixotic as Marlowe, Turkish-German detective Kemal Kayankaya is simply The Man. B PLUS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TURK! (KEMAL KAYANKAYA SERIES #1)
Melville House Publishing
2011

LUMINOUS, ENCHANTING MEMOIR about a woman connecting with a wild snail as her own life is slowed by illness. A MINUS

THE SOUND OF A WILD SNAIL EATING
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
2010

GRIMLY COMIC NOVEL follows the bloody vendetta between two groups of misfits: 20ish slackers v. 40ish spinsters. B PLUS

POPULAR HITS OF THE SHOWA ERA
W. W. Norton & Company
2011

SEARING, INTENSE NOVEL traces the complicated friendship between two women artists in New York. Unforgettable. SOLID A

TOXICOLOGY
Viking Adult
2011

FLUFFY ROMP CENTERS around hard-luck 40-something New York socialites turned high-class call girls; silly fun. SOLID B

THE BEST LAID PLANS
Random House Publishing Group
2011

PROVOCATIVE, SHARP BOOK by French medieval historian challenges readers to look beyond the conventional wisdom.