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Trouble in Nuala.
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I’ve turned lessons from a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency into crime fiction loaded with intrigue and deception. My Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series pits the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico's drug cartels, government corruption, and social inequality. Readers will love Detective Cruz’s complex plots, fast action, and exotic location. I’m originally from upstate New York, the setting for the upcoming Galliano Club thriller series. My family tree includes a mayor, a Mensa genius, and the first homicide in the state of Connecticut with an automatic weapon. After killing two people, including his wife, my great-grandfather eluded a state-wide manhunt. He was never brought to justice.
The tropical atmosphere of contemporary Medellin,
Colombia is the setting for the first book in the Nikki Garcia corporate
espionage thriller series. Still reeling from her young son’s tragic death,
savvy international auditor Nikki Garcia accepts an assignment to investigate
fraud allegations at the Colombian affiliate of a multinational corporation. I
loved Nikki’s sharp-edged inner voice and canny observations.
The impeccable cultural details really caught my attention.
For example, right in the first scene, Nikki watches a wealthy businessman
light a cigar. From the Churchill brand to the way he lights it with a strip of
cedarwood to the way he makes her wait, not only could I see the scene in my
mind’s eye, but I could smell the tang of burning wood and tobacco and resent
his snobby attitude. So. Well. Done.
Infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar is long gone from
Medellin, but his dangerous legacy is not…
Named Best Fiction Book of the Year, 2017, by Killer Nashville!
Handsome Colombian men and life-threatening danger were not normally a part of Nikki's auditing job, but this assignment was anything but normal. Despite her emotional wounds, she accepts the challenge as a way to overcome the loss of her young son in a tragic event.
In the midst of the male-dominated business world in Colombia, she investigates mismanagement allegations and uncovers a sinister plot involving fraud . . . and possibly murder. She also discovers an attractive man who seems to have feelings for her. As her relationship with…
I’ve turned lessons from a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency into crime fiction loaded with intrigue and deception. My Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series pits the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico's drug cartels, government corruption, and social inequality. Readers will love Detective Cruz’s complex plots, fast action, and exotic location. I’m originally from upstate New York, the setting for the upcoming Galliano Club thriller series. My family tree includes a mayor, a Mensa genius, and the first homicide in the state of Connecticut with an automatic weapon. After killing two people, including his wife, my great-grandfather eluded a state-wide manhunt. He was never brought to justice.
This book really came as a surprise; the kind of surprise
where you can’t turn the pages fast enough. For one thing, the setting is
completely unique. It’s China, but not Beijing or another location that Western
audiences would easily recognize. No, the first Inspector Lu Fei mystery
takes us to Raven Valley, outside Harbin, China in a cold and unlovely
part of the country.
Lu Fei is the deputy chief of the Public Security Bureau
there, where a young woman’s murder upends the cycle of boredom and drinking.
Both security and Communist Party officials from Beijing descend on Raven
Valley and Lu is soon caught between his old boss in Harbin, who hates his
guts, and the upwardly mobile Beijing officials who will take credit for his
work if he solves the murder and stick a knife in his ribs if he doesn’t.
In Brian Klingborg's Thief of Souls, the brutal murder of a young woman in a rural village in Northern China sends shockwaves all the way to Beijing―but seemingly only Inspector Lu Fei, living in exile in the small town, is interested in justice for the victim.
Lu Fei is a graduate of China’s top police college but he’s been assigned to a sleepy backwater town in northern China, where almost nothing happens and the theft of a few chickens represents a major crime wave. That is until a young woman is found dead, her organs removed, and joss paper stuffed…
I’ve turned lessons from a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency into crime fiction loaded with intrigue and deception. My Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series pits the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico's drug cartels, government corruption, and social inequality. Readers will love Detective Cruz’s complex plots, fast action, and exotic location. I’m originally from upstate New York, the setting for the upcoming Galliano Club thriller series. My family tree includes a mayor, a Mensa genius, and the first homicide in the state of Connecticut with an automatic weapon. After killing two people, including his wife, my great-grandfather eluded a state-wide manhunt. He was never brought to justice.
Having travelled in Africa, I’m always keen to find books
set on the continent. It’s a bonus if suspense is involved and a double bonus
if the story hinges on the setting. This book gets high marks in both
departments. It was a better immersive experience than if I’d rented an Airbnb
and watched the action unfold from the front porch.
Rural South Africa is home to advice columnist and
cooking authority Tannie Maria (Tannie meaning Auntie, the respectful
Afrikaans address for a woman older than you) in the first book in this unique
and extraordinary series. A middle-aged widow, she offers advice and recipes to
the lovelorn and others who write the local newspaper.
One letter-writer is a woman desperate to escape her abusive
husband: an echo of Tannie Maria’s own fraught past. When the woman is
murdered, Tannie Maria becomes dangerously entwined in the investigation,
despite the best…
'Vivid, amusing and immensely enjoyable . . . A triumph' Alexander McCall Smith
Meet Tannie Maria: the loveable writer of recipes in her local paper, the Klein Karoo Gazette.
One Sunday morning, as Maria stirs apricot jam, she hears her editor Harriet on the stoep. What Maria doesn't realise is that Harriet is about to deliver a whole basketful of challenges and the first ingredient in two new recipes - recipes for love and murder.
A delicious blend of intrigue, milk tart and friendship, join Tannie Maria in her first investigation. Consider your appetite whetted for a whole new series…
I’ve turned lessons from a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency into crime fiction loaded with intrigue and deception. My Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series pits the first female police detective in Acapulco against Mexico's drug cartels, government corruption, and social inequality. Readers will love Detective Cruz’s complex plots, fast action, and exotic location. I’m originally from upstate New York, the setting for the upcoming Galliano Club thriller series. My family tree includes a mayor, a Mensa genius, and the first homicide in the state of Connecticut with an automatic weapon. After killing two people, including his wife, my great-grandfather eluded a state-wide manhunt. He was never brought to justice.
The South Pacific nation of Fiji is a magical place, as
I found out many years ago on a scuba trip that evolved into a circuit of the main
island of Viti Levu. For tourists, the island chain offers the gold standard of
tropical paradise resorts, but the story for the Fijians is considerably more
complicated. The islands are widely scattered, race relations led to government
coups, economic opportunities are limited, and old ways are under pressure from
modern expectations.
Using cultural elements like canoe racing, as well as a
foreboding sense of the conflict inherent in Fijian life today, Fiji becomes a
marvelous place for trouble. I could almost smell the hibiscus! And the
sunscreen! This story nearly had me booking a flight before I was halfway
through.
Fiji’s complexities are woven into the plot, which would be
impossible to set anywhere else. Modern beach fun and age-old traditions…
An island paradise. A grisly murder. Can a detective put his rugby days behind him to tackle a killer case?
Josefa “Joe” Horseman holds out hope for a comeback. But after riding high in top class rugby, returning to the Fiji detective force with a bum knee and a promotion-hungry new partner wasn’t what he had in mind. So he knows he'll have to up his game when guests at an island resort discover a young maid’s corpse snagged on the reef.
Sorting through the victim’s list of jealous admirers, Horseman's under pressure to solve the case before the high-end…
I fell into the world of tea by chance in the 1980s when I gave up a career in higher education to open a 1930s style tearoom in southwest London. I grew up in the 1950s in a typical British family that drank tea throughout the day but little did I know, as I baked endless supplies of scones and cakes for the tearoom at 4 am every day, that I would end up writing books and magazine articles, editing a tea magazine for the UK Tea Council, speaking at world tea conferences, training staff in hotels, travelling to almost every major tea producing country, and eventually working today as Director of Studies at the UK Tea Academy.
I dip into this must-have book all the time – for pleasure but also to learn and check facts. The four authors own the wonderful tea store, Camellia Sinensis in Montreal, Canada. They are extremely experienced in tasting and selecting teas from around the world for their business and just love sharing their infectious passion for tea and their extensive knowledge of the growing regions, growers, and manufacturers. As well as discussing the most important tea origins, they highlight some of the personalities and industry specialists they have met on their tea journey and whose insights help us understand the day-to-day work of tea gardens and factories. The book also includes invaluable advice on brewing and tasting tea, and the section on tea and gastronomy offers some absolutely stunning recipes for cooking with tea.
An updated edition of the "World's Best Tea Book" acclaimed by the 2014 World Tea Awards.
This widely praised bestseller has been updated to incorporate the changing tastes of tea drinkers, developments in production, the impact of climate change and an expanded and more highly developed tea market. This third edition improves Tea with this revised and extended content plus new photographs.
TeaTime Magazine called Tea "the reference work we've been waiting for", noting its value to students. Library Journal praised it as a "definitive guide to tea (that) will appeal to die-hard tea enthusiasts." Tea House Times found it…
Writers often get labeled as either nonfiction or fiction writers. In grad school, it was very difficult to study across genres, which I found very frustrating: To me, the most important thing about a book has always been the voice. A novel? A memoir? Essays? Stories? Don’t pin me down, just give me something with a voice that propels me forward, that is unique and sparkling and unputdownable. When I find books with voices so singular and propulsive, I return to them over and over.
A dizzying, intoxicating, completely engrossing memoir by another poet, who’s most famous as the author of The English Patient. I always feel a little tipsy, in the best way, reading this one.
Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and sets out as an adult from Canada to discover the mysteries left behind by eccentric, long-lost family members in a land he loves. Newspaper articles, pictures, ghost stories, and poetry comprise this one-of-a-kind narration. When his brother pleads with him to get this family history right, you feel the weight of the request as heavy as a summer rain.
In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India, " Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.
When my father died in 1998, bladder cancer, I was 41 years old and privileged to be his primary caregiver for five weeks. My first major loss and it was as though a mack truck had been driven through my chest. Ten years later, my mother died, after nine years of dementia, which is like losing someone twice. That was a more ravaging grief. Twelve years later, my nephew died, a month away from his 36th birthday. And in 2022, one close friend of mine took his own life and another died of cancer at age 57. Grief is the subject I gravitate toward in the books I read and the essays I write.
This book is about the most horrifying loss imaginable: the author loses her parents, her husband, and her two young sons all at once, in the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the day after Christmas, 2004. She and her family were spending the holiday in Sri Lanka when the wave hit and overtook the jeep in which they were attempting to flee. I can’t come up with a better justification for suicide than this—she’s lost everyone; she wonders why she was spared, just to suffer these losses every minute of every hour of every day. The book is both a horror story and a testament to human strength. I assure you, you won’t be able to put it down.
The book opens and we are inside the wave: thirty feet high, moving at twenty-five mph, racing two miles inland. And from there into the depths of the author's despair: how to live now that her life has been undone?
Sonali Deraniyagala tells her story - the loss of her two boys, her husband, and her parents - without artifice or sentimentality. In the stark language of unfathomable sorrow, anger, and guilt: she struggles through the first months following the tragedy -- someone always at her side to prevent her from harming herself, her…
Nicholas Jubber has written for the Guardian, Irish Times and Telegraph, amongst other publications. He has won the Dolman Travel Book Award, for which he has been shortlisted three times, and his books have been picked by National Geographic, Wanderlust and the New York Times, amongst other publications, for their books of the year.
The scale of this ancient Indian epic is off the charts, fusing Hindu iconography with story beats of startling familiarity. Monkeys build a bridge between India and Sri Lanka, an army of demons takes on the vanguard of the gods and the villain is felled by a celestial bow. An influence on storytelling down the ages – notably Star Wars – it’s a tale as exciting as it is charming, with a surprisingly downbeat coda, as Queen Sita discovers that being rescued by her divine husband isn’t enough to survive the prejudices of her age.
Which version to read? Arshia Sattar’s 1996 translation is available in Penguin translation. I can’t testify to its accuracy, but it’s a magnificent read.
One of India's greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country's moral and cultural consciousness. For generations it has served as a bedtime story for Indian children, while at the same time engaging the interest of philosophers and theologians. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, the Ramayana tells the tragic and magical story of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, an incarnation of Lord Visnu, born to rid the earth of the terrible demon Ravana. An idealized heroic tale ending with the inevitable triumph of good over evil, the Ramayana is also an…
I’ve been a street musician, set up kindergartens, worked in special needs education, and run wood-fired showers in a field for meditation retreats. I’m also associate professor of sociology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. I became a Buddhist partly out of interest in a very different culture and started wondering how Buddhism got from Asia to the West. I think about this through my own experience of teaching meditation, being an activist for 35 years, living in five countries, and learning ten languages: what do you have to do to make an idea come alive in a different culture?
I love this warm-hearted and rich account of the first Americans to become Buddhist: the romantics who fell in love with Asian cultures, the rationalists who thought of Buddhism as a science or philosophy of human existence, and the esotericists who sought magical powers and powerful initiations. From Lafcadio Hearn’s celebration of “old Japan” to Countess Canavarro who set up a nun’s order in Sri Lanka, via Theosophists, vegetarians, and atheists, this book is a fantastic collection of people’s lives which were both transformed by meeting Buddhism and yet remained distinctively American even in their new form.
This work examines 19th-century America's encounter with one of the world's major religions. Exploring the debates about Buddhism that followed upon its introduction to the USA, the author shows what happened when the transplanted religious movement came into contact with America's established culture and fundamentally different Protestant tradition. The text, first published in 1992, traces the efforts of various American interpreters to make sense of Buddhism in Western terms. Tweed demonstrates that while many of those interested in Buddhism considered themselves dissenters from American culture, they did not abandon some of the basic values they shared with their fellow Victorians.…
I have always been fascinated by beauty and art. As a child growing up in India, I sketched frequently. Later, I became obsessed with photography. In 1999, I moved from my first academic job to join the newly forming Center of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.The move was an opportunity to rethink my research program. In addition to studying spatial cognition, attention, and language, I decided to investigate the biological basis of aesthetic experiences. At the time there was virtually no scholarship in the neuroscience of aesthetics. It has been an exciting journey to watch this field grow. And, it has been exhilarating to start the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, the first research center of its kind in the US.
Ellen Dissanayake was a primary force in the modern era to bring evolution into the conversation of why we have and often revere art. For her, art promotes social cohesion in small groups and making objects special through ritual lies at the root of making art. If you want to learn about how evolution might have promoted the creation of art, this book is the place to start.
"Dissanayake argues that art was central to human evolutionary adaptation and that the aesthetic faculty is a basic psychological component of every human being. In her view, art is intimately linked to the origins of religious practices and to ceremonies of birth, death, transition, and transcendence. Drawing on her years in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, she gives examples of painting, song, dance, and drama as behaviors that enable participants to grasp and reinforce what is important to their cognitive world."-Publishers Weekly"Homo Aestheticus offers a wealth of original and critical thinking. It will inform and irritate specialist, student,…
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