The Scarecrow – Michael Connelly
Starred Review. Bestseller Connelly comments on the plight of print journalism in a nail-biting thriller featuring
reporter Jack McEvoy, last seen in 2004′s The Narrows. When Jack is laid off from the L.A. Times with 14 days’ notice to tie up loose ends, he decides to go out with a bang. What starts as a story about the wrongful arrest of a young gangbanger for the brutal rape and murder of an exotic dancer turns out to be just the tip of an iceberg that takes McEvoy from the Nevada desert to a futuristic data-hosting facility in Arizona. FBI agent Rachel Walling, with whom he worked on a serial killer case in 1996′s The Poet, soon joins the hunt, but as the pair uncover more about the killer and his unsettling predilections, they realize that they too are being hunted. With every switch between McEvoy’s voice and the villain’s, Connelly ratchets up the tension. This magnificent effort is a reminder of why Connelly is one of today’s top crime authors.
Popularity: 58%
Gone Tomorrow – Lee Child
New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers.
Four are okay. The fifth isn’t.
In the next few tense seconds Reacher will make a choice–and trigger an electrifying chain of events in this gritty, gripping masterwork of suspense by #1 New York Times bestseller Lee Child.
Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret. Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds, wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.
Because a race has begun through the streets of Manhattan in a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. Susan Mark’s plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan . . . from a former Delta Force operator now running for the U.S. Senate, to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell–and to a host of others who have just one thing in common: They’re all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or maybe just enough to get him killed.
In a novel that slams through one hairpin surprise after another, Lee Child unleashes a thriller that spans three decades and gnaws at the heart of America . . . and for Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, it’s a mystery with only one answer–the kind that comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye.
Popularity: 68%
Divine Justice – David Baldacci
Near the start of bestseller Baldacci’s less than compelling fourth Camel Club thriller (after
Stone Cold), former CIA assassin Oliver Stone (aka John Carr) boards a New Orleans–bound train at Washington’s Union Station after shooting to death a well-known U.S. senator and the nation’s intelligence chief, the two men responsible for his wife’s murder. Ever the Good Samaritan, Stone intervenes in a fight on the train, but when the Amtrak conductor asks to see his ID, he gets off at the next station, knowing his fake ID won’t withstand scrutiny. So much for Stone’s vaunted ability as a resourceful planner. This sudden detour takes Stone to Divine, Va., a mining town where he becomes enmeshed in corruption and intrigue—and falls, in just one of several clichéd situations, for an attractive if beleaguered widow. Series fans should be satisfied, but this effort lacks the imagination that distinguished Baldacci’s debut, Absolute Power (1996). (Nov.)
Popularity: 59%
Ready, Fire, Aim – Michael Masterson
Whether you’re thinking about starting a new business or growing an existing one, Ready, Fire, Aim has what you need to
succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavors. In it, self-made multimillionaire and bestselling author Masterson shares the knowledge he has gained from creating and expanding numerous businesses and outlines a focused strategy for guiding a small business through the four stages of entrepreneurial growth. Along the way, Masterson teaches you the different skills needed in order to excel in this dynamic environment.
If you had the opportunity to work where, when, and with whom you wanted—all while getting paid very well—would you take it? Self-made multimillionaire and bestselling author Michael Masterson did, and with Ready, Fire, Aim he’ll show you how to do the same.
Whether you’re thinking about starting a new business or growing an existing one, Ready, Fire, Aim has what you need to succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavors. In it, Masterson shares the knowledge he has gained from creating and expanding numerous businesses and outlines a focused strategy for guiding a small business through the four stages of entrepreneurial growth. Along the way, Masterson teaches you the different skills needed in order to excel in this dynamic environment.
While some of the concepts covered may seem novel, all of them have been proven to work time and again. Among other things, you’ll discover:
*Why selling is your first business priority and the one thing you should never stop doing
*The handful of numbers that are critical to every business
*When to cut your losses short and when to let your winners run
*The front-end/back-end method of doubling profits easily
*Why having a Plan B is as important as Plan A, and when and how to create it
*The difference between pushers, thinkers, organizers, and sellers, and how to attract the ones you need for your business
Over the course of his remarkably successful career, Michael Masterson has helped start and develop dozens of multimillion-dollar businesses, including one whose revenues exceeded $135 million and another still growing at $300 million. Now, with Ready, Fire, Aim, he’ll show you how to make your way to the top by designing powerful marketing campaigns that will regularly outsell your competitors; implementing innovative operational procedures that will reduce costs and hassles; and using the revolutionary power of the Internet to reduce customer complaints and increase profits.
To start and grow multimillion-dollar businesses over and over again you have to master certain skills. Ready, Fire, Aim reveals what those skills are and shows you how to quickly master them. Filled with in-depth insights and expert advice, this remarkable guide for entrepreneurs gives you a blueprint for business and financial success that will allow you to enjoy life to its fullest.
Popularity: 71%
Bones – Jonathan Kellerman
In this run-of-the-mill police procedural from bestseller Kellerman, his 23rd novel to feature L.A. consulting psychologist Alex
Delaware (after Compulsion), high school miscreant Chance Brandt has been assigned to perform community service at the Bird Marsh, a nature sanctuary near Marina del Rey. After Chance dismisses as a prank an anonymous phone call warning him that there’s a corpse buried in the marsh, Lt. Milo Sturgis, now Special Case Investigator for the LAPD, and Sturgis’s team find four bodies there, all women missing their right hand. When Sturgis identifies one of the victims as Selena Bass, who worked as a piano teacher for the wealthy Vander family, the police focus on Travis Huck, the manager of the Vanders’ Pacific Palisades estate, as the prime suspect because Travis has a criminal past. Kellerman fans wanting more of the same should be satisfied, though Sturgis gets less benefit from Delaware’s psychological expertise than usual.
Popularity: 60%
The Associate – John Grisham
“GRISHAM HAS A FIELD DAY…The Associate grabs the reader quickly and becomes impossible
to put down.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Grisham’s confident style hasn’t changed, and THERE’S SUSPENSE APLENTY.” —People
“Grisham makes it easy for us to keep flipping the pages…A DEVASTATING PORTRAIT OF THE BIG-TIME, BIG-BUCKS LEGAL WORLD.” —Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post
“Throughout, Grisham unwinds the spool of his narrative at a MASTERFUL, page-turning pace that pulls readers in and keeps them wanting more…The Associate is an absorbing thriller that’s A FITTING FOLLOW-UP TO THE FIRM.” —The Boston Globe
“COMPULSIVELY READABLE…You’re peering into a secret world of power and money. What more could you or any red-blooded American ask for?” —Time magazine
“A PAGE-TURNER…Kyle McAvoy recalls Mitch McDeere from Grisham’s breakout novel The Firm. He’s young, idealistic, handsome, a little too cocky for his own good, but a brilliant lawyer who gets pulled in over his head and given an education in how the world really works.” —The Los Angeles Times
Product Description
If you thought Mitch McDeere was in trouble in The Firm, wait
until you meet Kyle McAvoy, The Associate
Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.
But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want—even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.
Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.
With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains—from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country—and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.
Popularity: 68%
Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? – Seth Godin
Godin’s latest business handbook (after Small Is the New Big and The Dip) revisits some of his most popular marketing advice,
while emphasizing that it can’t just be applied willy-nilly. In past decades, he says, companies were able to get rich by making average products for average people, but those markets have long since been sewn up; mass is no longer achievable [or] desirable. Rather than simply rely on mass media to raise product visibility, New Marketing treats every aspect of interacting with customers—including customer service and the product itself—as an opportunity to grow the organization. In order to be successful with such marketing techniques, a company must change its practices across the board. Otherwise, you’re just putting whipped cream on a meatball. Godin has a perspective on everything from blogs (don’t bother unless you really have something to say) to the long tail (if it’s as valuable to your company as the top sellers are, why aren’t you paying more attention?). His arresting conversational style is sure to once again set the business world talking. (Jan.)
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Godinis a clear-eyed visionary with strong and sensible ideas on how the new economy can, should and will function."Miami Herald (Miami Herald )
"Godin…is a clear-eyed visionary with strong and sensible ideas on how the new economy can, should and will function."—Miami Herald (Miami Herald )
[Godin's] arresting conversational style is sure to once again set the business world talking. – Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly )