What if the entire human race simply disappeared from the planet one day without warning? This scenario is exactly what Alan Weisman posits in this book as he speculates in detail how Earth might cope with what we’ve left behind and recover from our activities. How long would a skyscraper stand? What would happen to suddenly unmanned nuclear power plants? How would the environment recover? What types of human artifacts would linger longest?

I was enthralled by the detail and research Weisman presents, and wished the book could have been even more in-depth. However, by far the strongest sentiment I took away was that of dismay at how poorly we have treated our home. It would probably serve us right to get evicted!

Amanda and Dart are newlyweds in Lodestone, a tiny, struggling Arizona town, during The Great Depression. The life of a miner’s wife is not quite what Amanda, who grew up in New York Society, was expecting, although she’s determined to make the best of it. Struggling to make ends meet, Amanda’s interest is piqued by a legend of hidden gold in the desert. Dart is initially dismissive of the story, but as both his and Amanda’s pasts conspire against them and threaten their futures, he too ultimately gets sucked into a cross-country adventure.

Foxfire has a more modern feel than most of Seton’s other works. The language itself seems more modern than others that I have read. In fact, in several cases I was surprised that certain colloquialisms were used then just as they are today. Although not my favorite, I enjoyed it.

Mma Ramotswe, Botswana’s only female detective, is back with her usual charm and even more mysteries to solve, both professionally as well as in her personal life. A government official believes his brother is being poisoned, and a beauty pageant official needs help determining which girl is more deserving of winning. What’s more, Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni, Mma Ramotswe’s fiancé, is acting strangely, but her assistant Mma Makutsi proves herself capable in more ways than one.

Wonderful and highly enjoyable. I’ve also heard that the audio renditions of the book are superb.

Both having a love of sailing, John and Jean Silverwood dreamed of one day taking their children on the sailing adventure of a lifetime. Finally, in 2003, after putting everything financially toward this goal, they purchased a 55-foot catamaran and set sail indefinitely. Taking a leisurely route through various Caribbean ports of call, they eventually sail through the Panama Canal and into the wide open Pacific. Nearly two years into the trip, they meet with disaster when the boat runs aground on a coral bed during a storm and begins to disintegrate.

Parts of this book definitely make it difficult to stop reading. The shipwreck scenes were especially riveting. Unfortunately, their impact was negatively tempered by in-chapter flashbacks to prior family life and earlier scenes from the trip. I also didn’t find myself nearly as compelled by John’s contribution to the story, which seemed like more of an afterthought.

The latest Anita Blake installment features Anita joining Jason on a trip to North Carolina, providing emotional support as he visits his dying father. Of course, bad guys appear, and people get bloody.

I keep hoping Ms. Hamilton will take some of her critics’ (and fans’!) advice to heart and the series will improve, but alas! The first scene reads like bad fan fiction, and it’s pretty much all downhill from there, including the usual inane “As You Know, Bob” dialogue. Anita’s constant pregnancy scares are getting kind of old now, and the continued lack of editing made me keep thinking of how I would have rewritten particular sentences if I were her editor. At least this book is shorter than the previous ones!

Yalini is a young woman whose family emigrated from Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan civil war, and she narrates the stories of her relatives and ancestors.

The stories of are presented in no particular order with respect to timeline and characters, and I found it challenging to keep track of who was who. For the size of the book, Love Marriage took me a disproportionate amount of time to get through. It is essentially a lot of background information and no plot—not my kind of fiction book.

Hanna Heath, an expert book conservator, is summoned to Sarajevo to repair an ancient Jewish text. A few microscopic samples she has extracted from within the book’s binding lead her on an amazing journey to uncover the book’s colorful history since its creation over 500 years ago. On the way, Hanna also learns something about her own family secrets.

Brooks presents an intriguing historical mystery, but without the overt sensationalism of a book like The Da Vinci Code. PotB reminded me a little of Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which is a story of the “life” of a painting, rather than a book.

After witnessing her father and grandmother dying under questionable circumstances and suffering a brutal attack by her money-grubbing uncle, Geneviève Pasquier leaves her Paris home, intending to commit suicide. She is stopped at the river by La Voisin, one of the most famous witches and poisoners in French history, who offers to take her as an apprentice under a new, invented identity: that of a 150-year-old fortuneteller. In this time of the Sun King (Louis XIV), whose royal eye wanders constantly, Geneviève’s own fortune can easily be made through her services to high society ladies vying for the king’s attention.

Riley brings to life an intriguing era in French history, whose poison scandals are well-documented. Many of the characters are actual historical figures. Very enjoyable.

Wanderer is the name of a tiny alien whose species is recolonizing Earth by physically inserting themselves into the minds of human hosts. Usually, the host’s own consciousness is suppressed, but Wanderer still hears her host Melanie’s thoughts and occasionally even finds herself struggling to retain control of the body. Moreover, to her horror, she begins to share some of Melanie’s dangerous emotions, such as sympathizing with a pocket of human rebels who have so far avoided “implantation.”

I eagerly anticipated this book’s release as I was looking forward to seeing what else Ms. Meyer could do beyond Twilight. The premise itself was really interesting and unlike anything I’d read before, but compared with her other series I’m not sure why this book was published for adults. It might as well also be for teens, given the age of the protagonist and the level of interpersonal drama. One thing I was actually quite curious about was how the author would approach sex in an adult book. Since she has carefully, purposely and cleverly avoided it so far in her teen novels, I actually wasn’t surprised that she again manages to be circumspect here. In this respect, I felt her humans’ behavior was almost bordering on unnatural, especially given what humans do in desperate circumstances.

When I thought I had finished the book, I realized there were two more chapters. Looking back, I think the story would have had more WOW impact if those last two chapters had actually been omitted.

The title is fairly indicative of the book. Three gorgeous, red-headed, teenage sisters (Daria, Polly and Amelia) have just become swept up in their first big modeling break with The New Yorker magazine, while their brother Philip is left on the sidelines, unsure of how to cope with the changes and how he fits in.

Each sibling narrates a part of the story; unfortunately, their voices all sound exactly the same, and I couldn’t identify with any of them (nor did I find I wanted to, actually). The author chooses to take the most irritating verbal mannerisms of teenagers today, without a care for proper grammar, punctuation or sentence structure. Here is a sample sentence: “Which I know sounds like fun? But honestly is kind of boring.” The book is dripping with this kind of sloppy, slangy language. One can only hope the book saw further editing before its official release. I couldn’t wait to be finished with it.