GIST
A page-turner pitting one of San Francisco's finest, who's suffering from a possibly fatal disease, against a serial killer with a strange power over women. Should appeal to those who like perverse crimes, short chapters, and scant text-along with a plot twist at the end.

WORLDVIEW
Cheap thrills materialism.

CAUTION
Sex and crudity.

GIST
Evocative cross-generational and cross-cultural tale of a Chinese-American woman who struggles with commitment (she's been living with a guy for 10 years) and with her mother. The increasingly argumentative mother's stories about her past keep changing, but journals, translated from Chinese, reveal the truth and open up new possibilities for the future.

WORLDVIEW
Thoughtful humanism.

CAUTION
Adultery.

GIST
Luke Chandler lives in rural Arkansas, 1952. His world consists of the family's 80 acres and the nearby small town with its handful of stores and the Baptist and Methodist churches. Harry Caray's baseball broadcasts are the highlights of summer evenings. Then come the events that change his life forever.

WORLDVIEW
Down-home humanism.

CAUTION
Some profanity.

GIST
Incoherent story made up of one part Carrie, one part Stand by Me, and one part Aliens. While on their yearly hunting trip, four boyhood friends encounter a man with foul-smelling gas. Turns out there's a nasty alien eating him alive from the inside out. The aliens spread like a fungus, and wherever they go so goes an ability to read minds.

WORLDVIEW
Mysticism.

CAUTION
Foul language.

GIST
Binchy is a master of the big sprawling family saga, set in modern day Dublin. She shows two partners in a catering business, both happily involved in relationships-one married and one not. Over the course of the business's first year, through good times and bad, she follows these family relationships to the predictable outcome.

WORLDVIEW
Humanism.

CAUTION
Accepting of divorce, homosexuality, adultery.