Each week we look at a collection of a few books on a topic. You can explore the books on your own, or use them as a foundation for building a display in your library!
It’s always fun to browse book titles, and it is always amusing to me to find books that have the same titles but wildly different stories. So check out this week’s selection of books, and see if you see a story – or two – that make you want to do some reading this week!
(And if you are doing the Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge, use any of these to fulfill two of the prompts!)
(As always: if you click on a link below, you can check out all the info from Amazon.com. And if you happen to buy a book, or anything else, on that trip to the store – CMLE gets a small percentage of Amazon’s profits: yay! Thanks in advance!)
Thin Air, by Richard K. Morgan “Hakan Veil is an ex–corporate enforcer equipped with military-grade body tech that’s made him a human killing machine. His former employers have abandoned him on a turbulent Mars where Earth-based overlords battle for profits and power amid a homegrown independence movement. But he’s had enough of the red planet, and all he wants is a ticket back home—which is just what he’s offered by the Earth Oversight organization, in exchange for being the bodyguard for an EO investigator. It’s a beyond-easy gig for a heavy hitter like Veil . . . until it isn’t.
When Veil’s charge starts looking into the mysterious disappearance of a lottery winner, it stirs up a hornet’s nest of intrigue and murder. And the deeper Veil is drawn into the game, the more long-buried secrets claw their way to the Martian surface. Now it’s the expert assassin poised against powerful enemies hellbent on taking him down—by any means necessary.”
Thin Air: A Shetland Mystery, by Ann Cleeves “A group of old university friends leave the bright lights of London and travel to Shetland to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends. But, one of them, Eleanor, disappears―apparently into thin air. It’s mid-summer, a time of light nights and unexpected mists. And then Eleanor’s body is discovered lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge.
Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to investigate. Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen the ghost of a local child who drowned in the 1920s. Her interest in the ghost had seemed unhealthy―obsessive, even―to her friends: an indication of a troubled mind. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor’s death than they first thought.
Is there a secret that lies behind the myth? One so shocking that someone would kill―many years later―to protect?”
Seed, by Michael Edelson “Fifty people go to sleep in their own beds and wake up in a compound in the middle of the jungle. Men and women from all walks of life with only one thing in common–none of them know where they are or how they got there. Alex is a paratrooper. Yael is a mathematician. Max is a law professor. They can’t leave–a lethal barrier surrounds the facility, but no one knows if it’s there to keep them in, or to keep something out.
The compound is comfortable and provides for all of their needs.
There’s a warehouse with DNA coded locks. Only Barbara, the doctor, can open a fully stocked operating room, and only Alex can get into an arms room with enough weapons to outfit an infantry platoon. There is enough food and other supplies to last for decades, but nothing to tell them who did this to them or why.
For Alex, it’s an intriguing mystery–anything is better than digging foxholes in the desert–but he and the others don’t realize that time is running out. On the other side of the barrier lies a horror beyond imagination, and the barrier is about to come down.”
Seed, by Rob Ziegler “It’s the dawn of the 22nd century, and the world has fallen apart. Decades of war and resource depletion have toppled governments. The ecosystem has collapsed. A new dust bowl sweeps the American West. The United States has become a nation of migrants -starving masses of nomads who seek out a living in desert wastelands and encampments outside government seed-distribution warehouses.
In this new world, there is a new power. Satori is more than just a corporation, she is an intelligent, living city that grew out of the ruins of Denver. Satori bioengineers both the climate-resistant seed that feeds a hungry nation, and her own post-human genetic Designers, Advocates, and Laborers. What remains of the United States government now exists solely to distribute Satori seed; a defeated American military doles out bar-coded, single-use Satori seed to the nation’s starving citizens.
When one of Satori’s Designers goes rogue, Agent Sienna Doss-Ex-Army Ranger turned glorified bodyguard-is tasked by the government to bring her
in: The government wants to use the Designer to break Satori’s stranglehold on seed production and reassert themselves as the center of power.
Sianna Doss’s search for the Designer intersects with Brood and his younger brother Pollo – orphans scrapping by on the fringes of the wastelands. Pollo is abducted, because he is believed to suffer from Tet, a newly emergent disease, the victims of which are harvested by Satori.
As events spin out of control, Brood and Sienna Doss find themselves at the heart of Satori, where an explosive climax promises to reshape the future of the world.”
The Lost World, by Arthur Conan Doyle “Adventure and mayhem, with humor sprinkled throughout, provide for a thrilling 1912 adventure through the jungles of South America that every reader should take.”
The Lost World, by Michael Crichton “It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end–the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely closed to the public.
There are rumors that something has survived. . . .”
The Chosen, by Chaim Potok “It’s the spring of 1944 and fifteen-year-olds Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders have lived five blocks apart all their lives. But they’ve never met, not until the day an accident during a softball game sparks an unlikely friendship. Soon these two boys—one expected to become a Hasidic rebbe, the other at ease with secular America—are drawn into one another’s worlds despite one father’s strong opposition.
Set against the backdrop of WWII and the creation of the state of Israel, The Chosen is a poignant novel about transformation and tradition, growing up and growing wise, and finding yourself—even if that might mean leaving your community.”
Chosen (Warrior Chronicles #1) by K.F. Breene “It is said that when war threatens the world, one individual will be selected by prophecy to lead the Shadow Warriors out of the Land of Mist and reclaim the freedom which has been stolen. ~~ Shanti has grown up under the constant threat of war. Since she helped her people defeat a raiding party by using a special power, she’s been a hunted woman. Carrying rare abilities and an uncanny fighting aptitude, Shanti is the only hope of salvation for her people. The problem is, she doesn’t believe in her own divinity, and when she flounders, she nearly fails in the duty hanging so heavy on her shoulders. It seems like any other day when Sanders and his band of misfit boys find a foreign woman clinging to life in the wastelands. Oblivious to the weapon they now have in their possession, they are content to harbor the mysterious woman until she is well enough to continue her journey. But when the war spreads its arms and lands on her borrowed doorstep, Shanti has no choice but to reveal her secrets, plunging her saviors into danger. If they band with her, they will face certain death. But to trade her to Xandre, the warlord desperate to add her to his war machine, would be to give up their entire way of life.”
The Innocent, by David Baldacci “America’s best hitman was hired to kill–but when a D.C. government operation goes horribly wrong, he must rescue a teenage runaway and investigate her parents’ murders in this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller.
It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn’t seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable. He refuses to pull the trigger. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and is on the run.
Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn’t an ordinary runaway–her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. Against all of his professional habits, Robie rescues her and finds he can’t walk away. He needs to help her. Even worse, the more Robie learns about the girl, the more he’s convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up, one that may explain her parents’ deaths and stretch to unimaginable levels of power.
Now, Robie may have to step out of the shadows in order to save this girl’s life…and perhaps his own.”
The Innocent, by Ian McEwan “Leonard, a young British electronics engineer was sent to Germany for an Anglo-American intelligence project after World War II. In the devastated city Berlin, the kind and pure Leonard met a beautiful Germany woman Maria and fell in love with her. The two young people were carried away in their love world. As the saying goes, fate always fools lovers. Where would their relation go after an accidental murder?”
Aphrodite, by Isabel Allende “New York Times-bestselling author Isabel Allende celebrates the pleasures of the sensual life in this rich, joyful and slyly humorous book, a combination of personal narrative and treasury of erotic lore.
Under the aegis of the Goddess of Love, Isabel Allende uses her storytelling skills brilliantly in Aphrodite to evoke the delights of food and sex. After considerable research and study, she has become an authority on aphrodisiacs, which include everything from food and drink to stories and, of course, love. Readers will find here recipes from Allende’s mother, poems, stories from ancient and foreign literatures, paintings, personal anecdotes, fascinating tidbits on the sensual art of food and its effects on amorous performance, tips on how to attract your mate and revive flagging virility, passages on the effect of smell on libido, a history of alcoholic beverages, and much more.
An ode to sensuality that is an irresistible blend of memory, imagination and the senses, Aphrodite is familiar territory for readers who know her fiction.”
Aphrodite, by Kaitlin Bevis “It’s not easy being perfect . . .
But Aphrodite is determined to prove that she’s more than just a pretty face. So when she’s asked to investigate strange events occurring on cruise ships, she’s all over it. Little does she guess just how much this mission is going to cost her . . .
The problem-demigods are mysteriously disappearing. Prepared to investigate, Aphrodite manages to charm herself into the best room on the ship. Unfortunately, the room is already taken. It belongs to the one demigod immune to her charm: Adonis.
Aphrodite doesn’t know what to make of Adonis. He obviously disapproves of her . . . yet he saved her life. And he’s hot! Then again, Aphrodite is still reeling from a disastrous-yet incredible-fling with Ares. Gods, these men are going to be the death of her.
But then Aphrodite realizes that Adonis could be the next target, and her investigation becomes personal. Only the more she uncovers, the clearer it gets that she’s in over her head. Confronted with a strange and powerful new opponent, Aphrodite realizes she might not be as immortal as she thought.
And Adonis may not be the one who needs saving . . .”
The Golden Ratio: The Divine Beauty of Mathematics