Linda C Beatty

Millions of Karon fans will be thrilled that it's life as usual in the wildly popular Mitford series: A beloved town character lands a front-page obituary, but who was it, exactly, who died? And what about the former mayor, born the year Lindbergh landed in Paris, who's still running for office? All this, of course, is but a feather on the wind compared to Muse editor J. C. Hogan's desperate attempts to find a cure for his marital woes. Will it be high-def TV or his pork chop marinade?

Roland Merullo's playful, eloquent, and life-affirming novel finds the Pope and the Dalai Lama teaming up for an unsanctioned road trip through the Italian countryside to rediscover the everyday joys of life that can seem, even for the two holiest men in the world, unattainable.

When his sister tricks him into taking her guru on a trip to their childhood home, Otto Ringling, a confirmed skeptic, is not amused. Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he'd planned. But in an effort to westernize his passenger---and amuse himself---he decides to show the monk some "American fun" along the way.

52 Ways to Walk is a short, user-friendly guide to attaining the full range of benefits that walking has to offer--physical, spiritual, and emotional--backed by the latest scientific research to inspire readers to develop a fulfilling walking lifestyle.

Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.

People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semifinals, and they actually have a shot at winning.

Extraordinary things happen when we harness the power of both the brain and the heart. Growing up in the high desert of California, Jim Doty was poor, living with an alcoholic father and a mother chronically depressed and paralyzed by a stroke. Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor.

Soon after banker Willard Carmichael and his young bride arrive in Pickax, a string of petty burglaries follow. Then Willard meets his demise—an apparent victim of a mugging—and the banker's home restoration project goes to the widow's cousin. Though the clues are as elusive as a cat burglar, the suspicious Qwill and his feline companions, Koko and Yum Yum, are determined to catch a thief—and a killer.

As soon as banker Willard Carmichael and his flashy young wife, Danielle, arrive in Pickax, the town is hit by a rash of pilfering that soon escalates from a stolen pair of sunglasses and gloves to the entire charity collection of the Indian Village Bridge Club. Then Willard is murdered in an apparent mugging, and his wife's cousin, Carter Lee, appears to be too eager to pick up where Willard left off on a valuable business project. Luckily for Pickax, Qwill and the cats decide to do some surreptitious investigating before the small town is destroyed by a big-time crime wave.

No matter how sophisticated or wealthy or broke or enlightened you are, how you eat tells all. Geneen Roth's masterwork, Women, Food and God explores the relationship between how we eat and how we see ourselves in the world.