Bookshelf

(New York: Ballantine, 2018)
As a New York Times best-selling author noted: “A devoted teacher and his driven students provide something like a perfect picture of what it means to be human: striving with a noble purpose, failing with resilience, and always finding humor and humanity even in the face of tremendous pressure. Both teacher and students will surely teach you many things, but perhaps more important than the lessons is the sheer wonder inhabiting these pages.” The author has worked as an Emmy-winning producer for CBS News and as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Newsweek.

(Sag Harbor, N.Y.: Permanent Press, 2018).
Former Chicago homicide detective Jack Starkey is lured out of retirement on Florida’s Southwest Gulf Coast when two dead bodies are found shot execution-style aboard a sailboat drifting in the sound. Little does he realize that his leisurely lifestyle will now include an investigation involving offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, corrupt state politicians, a Russian oligarch, and the angry father of a boy who’s not getting much Little League playing time.

(Birch Tree Books, 2018).
The third book in the “Charles and Louise” series finds the senior secret agents embarking on a trip to the Netherlands, at the request of the U.S. president, to harass a terrorist cell living in a houseboat. The author, now retired from his career as a speech pathologist, has published some 50 articles and nine books including Stuttering, co-authored with his wife, Janet Givens, which made Choice magazine’s 1996 list of Best Academic Books.

(Corvallis, Ore.: Oregon State University Press, 2018).
This memoir traces the author’s life and career from his work as a geologist at an oil company, to his time as program director for oceanography at the National Science Foundation and later as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to his presidency at Oregon State. He shares how the lessons learned in industry and government helped him guide the university through a period of severe budget restrictions. One chapter is devoted to his time at Hamilton.

(New York: SelectBooks, 2018)
“The shelves are heavy with books on yoga, but they do not show, scientifically, the connection between yoga and the DNA,” note the authors, who explore the interconnection of DNA and kundalini (a latent spiritual energy), and how diet, lifestyle, and meditation can help purify the body to its highest potential. Meade is a columnist and author of 30 books.

(Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
The author, an assistant professor of Spanish at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., “explores Queen Esther as an idealized woman in Iberia, as well as a Jewish heroine for conversos in the Sephardic Diaspora in the 16th and 17th centuries” by analyzing retellings of her life found in European and American literary texts.

Winchester, Va.: Red Moon Press, 2017)
A compilation of the author’s work described by the publisher as poems “of emotional weather, often wry, sometimes caustic, frequently amusing.” In this, his first full-length collection, “It is clear that when his poems do bulk up, there is a cumulative power and plangency to be had, more than any single poem could possibly offer.”

(New York: Guilford, 2017)
“This valuable volume presents a synthesis of four decades of systematic work within one of the most comprehensive, profound research programs on human motivation in the history of psychology,” noted a reviewer and professor at the University of Maryland. “It is a true milestone in motivational research, as rich in conceptual insights as it is in exciting findings. The book offers a formidable set of answers as to why people do what they do, and with what consequences.” Deci is the Helen F. and Fred. H. Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Rochester.

(Utica, N.Y.: North Country Books, 2017).
Based on a true story, the author’s first novel tells of Josephine McCarty, who in 1872 was indicted for murdering a man on a streetcar in Utica. Despite witnesses and common consensus that she would hang, officials called in a high-powered lawyer to aid the prosecution. Perhaps they realized the case was more complex than it seemed. “Compelling story which kept me intrigued to the last page,” wrote one reviewer.

(self-published: blurb.com, 2017)
A charmingly small book and simple tale of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem told through the wonder of butterfly metamorphosis.