Book Chat: January 4: Monopoly & Other Games

"The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components. In entertaining,...

"The story of an uncovered voyage as colorful and momentous as any on record for the Age of Discovery-and of the Black mariner whose stunning accomplishment has been until now lost to history"-- "The story of an uncovered voyage as colorful and momentous as any on record for the Age of Discovery-and of the Black mariner whose stunning accomplishment has been until now lost to history It began with a secret mission, no expenses spared. Spain, plotting...

For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role...

Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality

When Stevie Bell, an amateur detective, begins her first year at a famous private school in Vermont, she plans to solve the cold case involving the kidnapping of the founder's wife and daughter shortly after the school opened.

"Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence--but even the best spy can't anticipate every potential threat in a world where dangerous actors lurk around every corner. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being...

Struggling author David Martin, upset over losing his lover to another man and trying to find success, takes an assignment to write a book that the editor promises will make him immortal and is thrown into a web of long-buried secrets, double-crosses, and madness.

"The new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Devil Wears Prada and Revenge Wears Prada--a dishy tell-all about a beautiful tennis prodigy who, after changing coaches, suddenly makes headlines on and off the court. Charlotte "Charlie" Silver has always been a good girl. She excelled at tennis early, coached by her father, a former player himself, and soon became one of the top juniors in the world. When she leaves UCLA--and breaks...

"When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war -- the invasion...

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have...