The spy who came for Christmas, by David Morrell

 

This is a short (233 pages) spy novel about a man who's on the run from his Russian-mafia kidnapping partners. It turns out he is deep undercover but has reached the limit of what he's willing to do to stay that way. He's on the run, shot in the arm, with a baby under his coat, as he tries to evade his fellow kidnappers in Santa Fe on Christmas Eve. He takes refuge in a home with a woman and her young son and has to defend the home from the mobsters while keeping everyone alive. This is a fast, propulsive read from the author of First blood, the book that launched the Rambo character and films. Well-written, this is a real page-turner.

Garden of lamentations, by Deborah Crombie

 

This mystery is the 18th in a series written by Deborah Crombie that stars Detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James and which is set in London. I haven't read any of the earlier books in the series, so I was jumping into the middle of characters and plot lines that carried over from earlier books. In some series, that's not a problem, but I found it hard to connect to these characters until quite a way into the narrative. This mystery follows two plot lines. One focuses on Kincaid as he investigates loose ends and suspicions from previous books in the series. Gemma is wrapped up investigating the murder of a young woman whose body was found in a garden surrounded by a block of homes where she both worked and had friends. I would suggest starting this series from the beginning.

The Templar legacy, by Steve Berry

This is an enjoyable and entertaining thriller about the search for the lost Templar wealth and the discovery of the descendants of the 700 year old order which was demolished in the early 14th century.
 

The Wager: a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder, by David Grann

 

This was my State College book club's April pick, but not something that I would normally have chosen. For some reason, I'm not drawn to tales of the sea, even though I do like nonfiction and history. Nevertheless, I'm glad they chose this book because it was a riveting story about the ship and its voyage around Cape Horn that led to its destruction on the rocks off of a small island. The surviving sailors set up camp on the island and eventually split into two groups to try to escape. Only a few members of each group made it to safety, and their competing stories about their ordeals make up the narrative of this book. Grann, who also authored Killers of the Flower Moon, presents all of the competing versions without judgment, leaving it to the readers to decide for themselves who's at fault.

How to relax, by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

This is a great little book (116 pages) that serves as a primer on how to relax focusing on short meditations using the breath and mantras to help. It consists of brief one or two page essays or paragraphs on topics that will help you relax in a lot of different ways. Headers such as Resting, Healing, Awareness of the breath, Stopping, Looking deeply, and many more look at the different ways that we are over-stressed and anxious and the many ways that we can use to reverse those states. It's part of a series of publications with similar titles: How to sit, How to eat, How to Love, etc.

The dictionary of lost words, by Pip Williams

This is one of my favorite books of the past year. Set in Oxford, England at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, it is the story of Esme, daughter of one of the lexicographers who created the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Esme spends most of her childhood hanging around the Scriptorium, a converted shed in the backyard of the OED's original editor, Dr. Murray. She becomes obsessed with words, especially those that are discarded because they aren't important or significant. She realizes that many of these lost words are deemed of no importance because they relate to marginalized elements of society, such as women and the poor, and she takes it upon herself to save and document the meanings and uses of those words. I loved how the methods used by the lexicographers to research and document the many meanings of words are revealed; it shows the truly monumental effort that went into creating the first edition of the OED. While Esme is a fictional character, many of the others in the book are historical. The backdrop to this story is the fight for women's right to vote and World War I and the impact of both on both men and women. This is a riveting and compulsive read!