In Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, love and friendship are as uncertain as the shifting battle lines of the civil war. Lee McGuinness, a trauma surgeon on a humanitarian mission, is also on a personal quest: to find her companion-in-arms, Martin Carrigan, who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Has he been kidnapped for ransom? Or is he a traitor to his country, running arms to the insurgents? In search of someone - and something - to believe in, Lee must navigate a wilderness of mirrors in which greed, lies, and brutality are found among allies and enemies alike. In the tradition of Graham Greene and Robert Stone, Leslie Cockburn has written a haunting novel of intrigue and romance set in a deadly world of deception.

Baghdad Solitaire

Literature & Fiction

Cockburn, Leslie

Literary

Asahina & Wallace

Harris Strider, a psychiatrist in contemporary New York City, treats a socialite whose body seems to be inhabited by the soul of a young Jewish girl who died a hundred years ago in Russia's Pale of Settlement. Strider falls in love with the young girl and in an attempt to set her free, plunges headlong into a dangerous world of mysticism, Kabbalah, and a mysterious figure known as the Magiker Rebbe. The Magiker will make you think twice about the possibilities of reincarnation-and a love beyond time. Little wonder that Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, calls The Magiker, "a brilliantly researched and wonderful read, especially if you're a romantic."

The Magiker

Dennis, Charles

OUT OF THE BRONX, a stunning collection of stories by Jerome Kass, follows Joel Sachs, from his childhood in the Bronx to his adult life in Manhattan. Along the way we encounter his friends and family: his father, Lou, an inveterate gambler; his mother, Rose, whose anger toward Lou is often tempered by her need to take care of him; Joel's older sister, Fanny, whose sense of being unloved makes her want to tear the family apart; and his beautiful younger sister, Gloria, who will end up uncovering the family's deepest secrets. And of course, there is Joel, who as a boy tries to hold the family together and make the abnormal seem normal-and as a man seeks to break free from the people and places that still have him in their grip.

Out of the Bronx: The Joel Sachs Stories

Kass, Jerome

It's 1947 in Los Angeles. Mickey Cohen's men are taking over Bugsy Siegel's rackets. A Red-baiting Congressman is in town looking for Commies in the movie biz. And studio cop John McClellan, head of security for Continental Pictures, has his hands full-with a murdered mogul, the faked suicide of a former flame, a gossip columnist with a nose for studio dirt, and the promise of something like love with a beautiful young screenwriter. Nobody does Hollywood hard-boiled like Charles Fleming. "Beautifully written with all the period details dead-on, dialogue so breezy it'll make your hair stand on end, and a twisty, dangerous plot that keeps you guessing, THE STUDIO KILL is the Real McCoy. Buy it and do like I did-stay up all night and take one long wild ride." -Robert Ward, author of Red Baker and Four Kinds of Rain Charles Fleming is a veteran journalist who has worked for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Variety, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of "High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess" and the novels "The Ivory Coast" and "After Havana." He is also co-author of the New York Times bestsellers "Three Weeks in October" and "My Lobotomy."

The Studio Kill

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Fleming, Charles

Mystery

Professor Anthony Landau, renowned epidemiologist, returns to his home in the Berkeley Hills to find a woman, a former scientific colleague, naked and quite dead in his bed. Her death sets in motion a chain of events-and murders-that will have the locals terrified, UC Berkeley's academics pointing fingers, the cops under pressure to solve the crimes, the tabloid press crying for blood, and Landau as everyone's number-one pick for serial killer of the year. Robert Roper, the author of THE SAVAGE PROFESSOR, has been called, "an authentic American voice" (Newsweek) and "a major talent, clearly a master of disguises and the telling detail, a writer with a clear but perfectly eccentric vision" (USA Today). Of his previous book THE TRESPASSERS, The New Yorker wrote: "A novel about the regenerative potential of sexual passion . . . an exquisite novel that explores the dream states of pleasure with a captivating assurance."

The Savage Professor

Roper, Robert

"A brilliant analysis of the current political crises we face at home and abroad and how we might extricate ourselves by returning to our Founding principles. All who value freedom and believe in the American Experiment should read this book." - Linda Chavez, Fox News analyst and Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity What has happened to the American ideals of liberty and equality? Has America's image become tarnished at home and abroad? Does democracy itself merely trigger repression instead of fulfilling the promise of freedom? Can individual rights coexist with national security? In Rediscovering America, John Agresto urges a return to the founding principles of our republic in order to revive the great American experiment. Rejecting the simple slogans of both the left and the right, Agresto confronts the challenges that inequality and injustice pose to our ideals of democracy and freedom. From the burgeoning of new "rights" to the growth of entitlements, from clamor in the public square to ideological struggles in the halls of academia, Rediscovering America is a trenchant critique of our contemporary political culture. The art of American statecraft, Agresto argues, is both to free and to restrain, to turn individual liberty into a social good. Our task is to understand, respect, and transmit what the Founding Fathers hoped to accomplish, why they did what they did, and how they hoped to achieve it. Drawing on history, political theory, and current affairs, Rediscovering America is a searching examination of our country's crisis in self-understanding - and a ringing call to restore America's promise to its citizens and to the world. John Agresto, former president of St. John's College in Santa Fe and former Acting Chancellor, Provost, and Academic Dean at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, is the author of Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions and other books. "John Agresto cuts through the fog of present day debates to re-mind Americans that the way forward in the 21st century must be through a renewed commitment to the nation's founding ideals and institutions. This is a book that will inspire and inform every thoughtful American." - James Piereson, President, William E. Simon Foundation "An elegantly written and cogently argued account of how the recovery of America's first principles, rightly understood in the way the Founders themselves understood them, would go a long way toward alleviating the serious problems we face today.... This book should be required reading for all university students and concerned citizens." - Edward J. Erler, Senior Fellow, The Claremont Institute "If you want to understand why we should be patriots, and how to make America lovely and lovable once again, start with this pithy, accessible, instructive book." - Matthew Franck, Director, William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution "Agresto guides the reader to understand that America stands, first and foremost, for the principle of equality, a principle he then admirably defends from contemporary critics on both the right and the left." - Ralph A. Rossum, Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism, Claremont McKenna College

Rediscovering America

History

Agresto, John

Americas

They could be your neighbors, cousins, sisters, mothers. But even though they lived in another world at a different time, they share our human condition. These are the women whose lives of challenge, courage, and faith appear in the Bible. They include the familiar and the unfamiliar, the powerful and the powerless, the married and the widowed, the saintly and the sinful. Of course, our businesswoman today is quite different from Martha of Bethany or Tamar of Canaan back then. Or is she? Sister Carol Perry invites us to see these women and to imagine them asking us, "What might you have done had you been me?" We will have to make our own decisions in our own circumstances, and the women of the Bible can serve as models. They lived in a patriarchy because that is all their world knew. But they found a way to shape their lives, some with success and some without, and we cannot ignore them. AMONG WOMEN tells the story of a kinship that defies time and place. Carol M. Perry, SU, is the Resident Bible Scholar at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. She is the author of WAITING FOR OUR SOULS TO CATCH UP, one of AARP's "Best Books of 2014," and the coauthor of CALLED AND SENT. She has been a recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities grants, was selected as an Educator of the Year by the Association of Teachers of New York, and has lectured across the country on scripture, Christian feminism, and the role of women in the Biblical world. A Sister of St. Ursula, she is a graduate of Fordham University and earned an MA in theology at St. Mary's, Notre Dame. Sister Carol's blog can be found here: www.marblechurch.org/connect/blogs/sister-carol-perry Praise for WAITING FOR OUR SOULS TO CATCH UP by Carol M. Perry, SU: "Of the hundreds of books we have read in 2014, this slim little volume by a Roman Catholic nun has affected us most. Written with warmth and wit, WAITING FOR OUR SOULS TO CATCH UP offers specific, simple ways to help people find God in everyday life. A delight for the believer or the seeker on your list." - Deirdre Donahue and Christina Ianzito "The Best Books of 2014," AARP

Among Women

Perry, Carol M.

On a gray winter day in 1958, the body of a man washes up on Santa Barbara's breakwater. He has wounds much like those of the crucified Christ. Trevor Westin, a young writer with deep family connections to the city, sees murder where the local press and powers that be see only a simple case of drowning. Trevor goes on a dangerous search for answers. Along the way he will cross paths with beatniks, beach bums, Aldous Huxley, Dennis Hopper, and agents from the CIA. He will also be introduced to the brave new world of hallucinogenic drugs. Meanwhile, off the coast of Santa Barbara, at the bottom of the sea . . . 
"In his visionary and completely original debut, D.J. Palladino shows us how the California of Raymond Chandler turned into the land of Huxley and Pynchon and blew the mind (while transforming the consciousness) of the world. This is a light-filled, haunting, entirely essential work whose afterglow grows steadily more and more intense."--Pico Iyer, author of Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk.
"Vivid, rich, and poignant, Nothing That Is Ours is full of heartbreak and insight, a noirish glimpse insto the Santa Barbara of the fifties. Unforgettable."--Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award-winning author of China Lake and The Memory Collector.
"D.J. Palladino has crafted an impressive debut novel that's a real page-turner. Gripping and atmospheric: part mystery, all engrossing. It's a fascinating read that leaves you wanting more."--Tab Hunter, actor in Damn Yankees, The Pleasure of His Company, and Ride the Wild Surf.
"Move aside Carey McWilliams and Nathanael West. D.J. Palladino fuses luridly delicious details of neo-revisionist California history with the narrative flow one might expect if Raymond Chandler ever bumped into Thomas Pynchon at a drunken party. In the process, Palladino manages to save Santa Barbara from the burden of its obviousness, giving readers a rare glimpse of the town--during the late 1950s--when it was just becoming what it eventually would be."--Nick Welsh, senior news editor, Santa Barbara Independent.

Nothing That Is Ours

D.J. Palladino

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