Luis Soriano, a teacher in the small town of La Gloria, Colombia, has spent the past ten years bringing books to children of the rural communities on the back of his donkeys. For more information,…

BOCD’s

Trust No One by Gregg Horowitz

Over the past two decades, Nick Horrigan has built a quiet, safe life until, one night, a SWAT team bursts into his apartment, grabs him, and drags him to a waiting helicopter. A terrorist has seized control of a nuclear reactor, threatening to blow it up.

And the only person he will talk to is Nick.

When the come face-toface, he promises to tell Nick the real truth behind the events that shattered his life twenty years ago.

The Voice of the Night by Dean Koontz

No one could understand why Colin and Roy were best friends. Colin was so shy; Roy was so popular. Colin was nervous around girls; Roy was a ladies’ man. Colin was fascinated by Roy-and Roy was fascinated by death. Then one day Roy asked his timid friend: “you ever killed anything?” And from that moment on, the two were bound together in a game too terrifying to imagine…and too irresistible to stop.

9 Dragons by Michael Connelly

Detective Harry Bosch feels a close connection with a small shop in South L.A. and the owner John Li. So when Li is murdered, Henry promises to find the murderer and even goes so far as to get help from a detective in the Asian Gang Unit to translate both the language and the culture. But soon Henry finds himself closer to a crime ring that will spell disaster for him and his friends.

Plum Pudding Murder by Joanne Fluke

Christmas is here, and Hannah’s shop, The Cookie Jar, is hopping with orders for customers all over Lake Eden, Minnesota. The holiday season loses a little luster, however, when a local businessman is found dead in his office.  It seems the Lunatic Larry Jaeger went a little overboard with one of his hal-baked business schemes. His kitschy carnival at the center of town has drawn a lot of attention, and Hannah thinks it may have contributed to his death. Sifting through a suspect roll as long as Santa’s list, Hannah must find the killer and restore some yuletide joy.

Dracula the Undead by Dacre Stoker

The great grandnephew of Dracula scribe Bram Stoker, Dacre Stoker collaborates with Dracula historian Ian Holt to pen the first Stoker-family-supported sequel to the 1897 horror classic. Based on Bram Stoker’s own notes, this richly detailed novel once again thrusts readers into the realm of literature’s most monstrous creation.

Pursuit of Honor by Vince Flynn

Trying tp determine if a colleague is betraying CIA secrets, Mitch stands near a New York City restaurant in rainy darkness. With alert levels now sky high, he can’t believe anyone with Langley’s top security clearance could be so careless. And yet when Mitch overhears the man spill sensitive details and negotiate an “arrangement,” he sets into motion a carefully baited trap.  With one target now neutralized, Mitch resumes his search for three fugitive terrorists, who continue to hide their tracks with a sophistication he never expected.

Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby

In a dreary English town, Annie has stopped loving Duncan and started moving on with her life. soon, she’s sharing emails with reclusive American rocker Tucker Crowe, who stopped making music 22 years ago. tucker is about to release a stripped-down version of his greatest album, but coming back to terms with the world won’t be easy. The real test will come when he crosses the Atlantic to face his ex-wives and children-not to mention annie, who might embody his final chance for happiness.

Evidence by Jonathan Kellerman

A young couple is found murdered in a garish L.A. mansion. When Milo Sturgis is assigned the case, he is shocked by the grisly scene and calls in his friend Alex Delaware to aid him in solving this baffling case. The list of suspects begins to add up and soon both Sturgis and Delaware are in the crosshairs of a relentless killer who’ll kill anyone that gets in the way.

Rough Country by John Sandford

Angling for prize fish at a tournament in northern Minnesota, Virgil is called on to investigate a nearby shooting. Seems a lady took a bullet while kayaking at a women’s only resort-which would be right up Virgil’s alley if only the women in question were interested in what he had to offer.  decidedly flummoxed, Virgil soon discovers that another murder took place the year before-and that another seems sure to follow.

Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford

Shop Class as Soulcraft brings alive a experience that was once quiet common but now seems to be receding from society-the experience of making and fixing things with our hands. Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lck of connection to the material world a sense of loss and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to a cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing.

New MP3

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

“Chaos is coming, old son.” With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. As families prepare to head back to the city and children say goodbye to summer, a stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store. No one admits to knowing the murdered man, but as secrets are revealed, chaos begins to close in on the beloved bistro owner, Oliver. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets buried in the wilderness. A trail of clues and treasures, from first editions of Charlotte’s Web and Jane Eyre to a spider web with the word woe woven in it, lead the Chief Inspector deep into the woods and across the continent in search of the truth and finally back to Three Pines as the little village braces for the final, brutal telling.

(taken from covers)

BOCD

Last Night In Twisted River by John Irving

In 1954, the the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in new Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear.  Both the boy and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County-to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto-while pursed by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger who befriends them.

Between the Plums by Janet Evanovich

A collection of three Between the Numbers audiobooks in one volume: visions of Sugar Plum, Plum Lovin’ and Plum Lucky.

In Visions of Sugar Plums Trenton bounty hunber Stephanie Plum has just five days until Christmas and she has not tree, no presents, and cannout find a single twinkle light in her apartment.  A strange man in her kitchen doesn’t help matters either.

Diesel returns with a task in Plum Loving‘. Stephanie needs to find relationship expert Annie Hart-wanted for armed robbery-and Diesel knows where she is.  but someone else much more dangerous is after hart, too.

In Plum Lucky Stephanie and Lula head off to Atlantic City to find and protect Granma masur who has run off with a duffle bag full of money. Money Stephanie soon learns was stolen from a notorious mobster.

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44% of Americans believed God had created man is his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a PewForum poll in the same year, 42% believed that all life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time. The greatest Show on Earth is a stunning counterattack on advocates of “Intelligent Design”, explaing the evidence for evolution while exposing the absurdities of the creationist “argument”. Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence to make the airtight case that “we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection.”

(Taken from covers)

Pew Releases U.S. Religious Landscape Survey…11.10.09

On Tuesday, November 9th, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey results.

BOCD

An Echo In The Bone by Diana Gabaldon

Jamie Fraser knows from his time-traveling wife Claire that, no matter how unlikely it seems, America will win the Revolutionary War.  But the truth offers little solace, since Jamie realizes he might find himself pointing a weapon directly at his own son-a young officer in the British army. And Jamie isn’t the only one with a tormented soul-for Claire may know who wins the conflict, but she certainly doesn’t know whether or not her beloved Jamie survives.

Unfriend is Oxford Dictonary’s word of the year

Sir Ken Robinson

What do you think?

Half the Sky Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn guide us through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there and how a little help can transform their lives. A Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery escaped and built a thriving retail business that supports her family. An Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. Through these stories, the authors help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part It is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

As Sauron’s dark forces spread out from Mordor through the lands of Middle-earth, the fellowship forged to destroy the One Ring of Power is broken. Most of the fellowship’s survivors race toward Isengard, where the growing strength of the renegade wizard Sauron threatens to leave a lush land in desolation.  With huge armies building in preparation for the first great battles of the War of the Ring, the hobbits Merry and Pippin discover some unexpected allies.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

“Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.” so begins the story of Lily Casey Smith.  Jeannette Walls’s no nonsense, resourceful and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town-riding five hundred miles on her pony alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car, (I loved cares even more than I loved horses. They didn’t need to be fed if they weren’t working, and they didn’t leave big piles of manure all over the place”) and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette’s memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in “The Glass Castle“.

(Taken from covers)

12 indicted in Prince George’s County book theft ring
Twelve people have been charged with checking out more than $140,000 in books from Maryland colleges and community libraries and selling them for quick cash. Prince George’s County prosecutors announced the indictment November 10. About $87,000 worth of books were taken from the Prince George’s County Public Library alone between November 2008 and July 2009. Officials said the thieves targeted high-priced science and medical textbooks….
WBAL-TV, Baltimore, Nov. 10

But, cookies are good….