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September, 2010

9 AM (Mon-Fri)
 

HOME TO HOLLY SPRINGS
by Jan Karon

Read by Jonie LaBouff. (14 episodes, 8/12-9/01/10)

Book jacket illustration.With Home to Holly Springs, New York Times-bestselling author Jan Karon launches a new series, The Father Tim Novels, featuring the retired Episcopal priest that her readers have come to love. With all the deep feeling, insight, and humor that fans of the Mitford series cherish, Karon in this novel takes Father Tim on a journey to his hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi. A host of fascinating encounters with people along the way ensure that the trip is colorful, though as Father Tim arrives in response to a mysterious summons, he may discover that home is where the heart is but also where secrets are hidden.

 

 


MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND
by Helen Simonson

Read by Marty Kwatinetz. (15 episodes, 9/01-9/21/10)

Book jacket illustration.Written with a delightfully dry sense of humour and the wisdom of a born storyteller, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand explores the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of family obligation and tradition.
When retired Major Pettigrew strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani village shopkeeper, he is drawn out of his regimented world and forced to confront the realities of life in the twenty-first century. Brought together by a shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship on the cusp of blossoming into something more. But although the Major was actually born in Lahore, and Mrs. Ali was born in Cambridge, village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as a permanent foreigner. The Major has always taken special pride in the village, but will he be forced to choose between the place he calls home and a future with Mrs. Ali?

 

TEACHING THE PIG TO DANCE: A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP AND SECOND CHANCES
by Fred Thompson

Read by Sally Miller. (10 episodes, 9/22-10/05/10)

Book jacket illustration.Fred Thompson has enjoyed a remarkable career in Hollywood and politics, but when he sat down to write a memoir about how he got to be the person he is, he discovered that his best stories all seemed to come out of the years he spent growing up in and around his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. It was a small town but not the smallest—after all, it was the county seat and it did have a courthouse, a couple of movie theaters, and its own Davy Crockett statue. For truly small, you had to travel to nearby Summertown, where the regular Sunday dinner was possum and chocolate gravy. But Lawrenceburg is where Fred got to be a kid, get in his share of trouble and scrapes, get to know folks he didn’t realize were so colorful at the time but sure does now, get married, have a few kids, become a man, and start his career as a country lawyer (pretty much in that order). And as Fred tells it, getting that law degree was something of a surprise for him, since in school he’d been less than stellar as a scholar. “Teaching Latin to someone like me,” he says, “was like trying to teach a pig to dance. It’s a waste of the teacher’s time and it irritates the pig.”

In these reflections, as hilarious as they are honest and warm, Fred touches on the influences—family, hometown neighbors and teachers, team sports, jobs, romances, and personal crises—that molded his character, his politics, and the way he looks at life today. We get to know the unforgettable characters who congregated at the Blue Ribbon Café, like the rotund gentleman called “Shorty” whose claim to fame was his ability to quickly suck in his stomach and cause his pants to fall to the floor. Or Fred’s Grandma Thompson, who became an early TV adopter for the sole purpose of watching “Wrestling from Hollywood” and who once had a “gourder” removed from her neck and subsequently walked around town with it in a handkerchief showing it to folks. One day Fred and an accomplice placed small explosive Fourth of July “cracker balls” under the four legs of their teacher’s chair. Mrs. Garner sat down and, despite the racket, didn’t flinch so much as a muscle—but Fred felt a twinge of the one emotion he hated most—shame. Fred idolized Coach Staggs from his high school football days, even though he was “like Captain Ahab without the humor” and didn’t like smart alecks, comics, or individualists, which put the young Fred at a disadvantage. More than anyone else from those days though, Fred remembers his mom and dad, who taught him that kids are shaped most of all by the love and support they can take for granted.

Teaching the Pig to Dance will delight everyone who admires Fred Thompson for his contributions to politics or for his work in movies and on TV, along with all those who just love to hear rollicking but unforgettable stories about growing up in a place where, as one of the local old timers put it, “We weren’t big enough to have a town drunk, so a few of us had to take turns.”


10 AM (Mon-Fri)

INSIDE OF A DOG
by Alexandria Horowitz

Read by Rosemary Scalessa (10 episodes, 8/20-9/02/10)

Book jacket illustration.

Psychology professor and dog person Horowitz was studying the ethology (the science of animal behavior) of white rhinos and bonobos at the San Diego Zoo when she realized that her research techniques could just as easily apply to dogs at the local dog park; there, she began to see "snapshots of the minds of the dogs" in their play. Over eight years of study, she's found that, though humans bond with their dogs closely, they're clueless when it comes to understanding what dogs perceive-leading her to the not-inconsequential notion that dogs know us better than we know them. Horowitz begins by inviting readers into a dog's umwelt-his worldview-by imagining themselves living 18 inches or so above the ground, with incredible olfactory senses comparable to the human capacity for detailed sight in three dimensions (though dogs' sight, in combination with their sense of smell, may result in a more complex perception of "color" than humans can imagine). Social and communications skills are also explored, as well as the practicalities of dog owning (Horowitz disagrees with the "pack" approach to dog training). Dog lovers will find this book largely fascinating, despite Horowitz's meandering style and somnolent tone.

 

HERK: HERO OF THE SKIES
by Joseph E. Dabney

Read by Mack Secord. (13 episodes, 9/03-9/21/10)

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Herk: Hero of the Skies is the story of the C-130 Hercules aircraft and its involvement in military, scientific, and humanitarian missions around the world. Joe Dabney takes readers through the turboprop s development by Lockheed Martin and the United States Air Force and recounts many of its heroic deeds, tracking its history from the initial A-model through the current C-130J.

GaRRS Note -- Every Hercules aircraft ever build was made at the Lockheed plant right outside Atalnta, in Marietta, Georgia.

 

 


 

HANK AARON AND THE HOME RUN THAT CHANGED AMERICA
by Tom Stanton

Read by Eric Roberts. (7 episodes, 9/22-9/30/10)

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Baseball has witnessed more than 125,000 home runs. Many have altered the outcome of games, and some have decided pennants and become legend. But no dinger has had greater impact than Hank Aaron's 715th home run. His historic blast on April 8, 1974, lifted him above Babe Ruth on the all-time list, an achievement that shook not only baseball but our nation itself. Aaron's magnificent feat provoked bigotry and shattered prejudice, inspired a generation, emboldened a flagging civil rights movement, and called forth the demons that haunted Aaron's every step and turned what should have been a joyous pursuit into a hellish nightmare.
In this powerful recollection, Tom Stanton penetrates the myth of Aaron's chase and uncovers the compelling story behind the most consequential athletic achievement of the past fifty years. Three decades after Hank Aaron reached the pinnacle of the national pastime, and now as Barry Bonds makes history of his own, Stanton unfolds a tale rich with drama, poignancy, and suspense to bring to life the elusive spirit of an American hero.


1 PM (Mon-Fri)

 

TINKERS
by Paul Harding

Read by Rosemary Scalessa. (5 episodes, 8/27-9/02/10)

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Harding's outstanding debut unfurls the history and final thoughts of a dying grandfather surrounded by his family in his New England home. George Washington Crosby repairs clocks for a living and on his deathbed revisits his turbulent childhood as the oldest son of an epileptic smalltime traveling salesman. The descriptions of the father's epilepsy and the "cold halo of chemical electricity that encircled him immediately before he was struck by a full seizure" are stunning, and the household's sadness permeates the narrative as George returns to more melancholy scenes.

The real star is Harding's language, which dazzles whether he's describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship.


AN ACTOR AND A GENTLEMAN
by Louis Gossett, Jr. and Phyllis Karas

Read by Maurice Glatzer. (10 episodes, 9/03-9/16/10)

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Award-winning African-American actor Lou Gossett, Jr. takes an unvarnished look at the daunting challenges and incredible triumphs of his fifty-year career

Louis Gossett, Jr. is one of the most respected African-American stage and screen actors, who rose to fame with his Emmy-winning role in the television mini-series Roots and Oscar-winning performance in An Officer and a Gentleman. Now he tells the story of his fifty years in the entertainment world—from his early success on the New York stage appearing with Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier in Raisin in the Sun, through his long Hollywood career working alongside countless stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Dennis Quaid. He writes frankly of his struggle to get leading roles and fair pay as a black man in Hollywood, the problems with drugs and alcohol that took years to overcome, and of his current work to eradicate racism and violence and give our children a better future.

Includes revealing stories and reminiscences involving famous performers, including Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, Shirley Booth, Sammy Davis, Jr., Steve McQueen, Richard Gere, Maggie Smith, Halle Berry, and Gena Rowlands
Spans half a century of American theater and film history, people, and performances.

Highlights the problem of racism in Hollywood and the challenges faced by African American actors from the 1950s and 1960s onward
Standing Tall penetrates the celebrity glitz and glamour to offer an honest, heartfelt portrayal of the African-American experience both in Hollywood and the New York theater world, as told by one of the nation’s most enduring and highly esteemed actors.

 

WOMEN INVENTORS & THEIR DISCOVERIES
by Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Ptacek

Read by Loretta Rucker (3 episodes, 9/17-9/9/21/10)

Interesting facts about 10 obscure American women who invented famous things fill the pages of this very readable book. Elizabeth Pinckney of the eighteenth century was responsible for the development of the commercial crop of indigo, the mainstay of the Southern economy before cotton. In the nineteenth century, Fannie Farmer invented the modern-day cookbook with standardized measures instead of "a handful of flour, and a lump of butter." The inventor of "liquid paper" correction fluid, the pioneer in child hygiene, the creator of cosmetics and hair products for black women, the inventor of the fiber from which bulletproof vests are made, the creator of the Barbie doll--these women are all featured. Each informative chapter is devoted to the life of one remarkable woman. The book includes many photos and a limited bibliography. For two other titles in the Profiles series, see this issue's Series Roundup.

 

 

OF MICS AND MEN: A LIFETIME OF BRAVES BASEBALL
by Pete Van Wieren and Jack Wilkinson

Read by Eric Singer. (10 episodes, 9/22-10/05/10)

As a boy growing up in upstate New York, Pete Van Wieren dreamed of becoming the play-by-play voice of his hometown heroes, the Triple A Rochester Red Wings. Instead, he found big-league broadcast heaven in Atlanta. In 1976, Van Wieren and another young broadcaster named Skip Caray, son of the legendary Harry Caray, were hired to call Atlanta Braves games. Over the next three decades, they were the voices of America's Team, as the Braves became known thanks to Ted Turner's TBS superstation. For 33 seasons, Van Wieren - nicknamed "the Professor" for his scholarly approach to baseball and resemblance to a college professor - saw it all and called it all, including mercurial owner Ted Turner's one-game stint as the Braves' manager in 1976. And then, in the midst of 15 seasons of mostly awful and often hilariously inept baseball, came the Miracle of 1991, when the Braves went from worst to first, captured Atlanta's heart, and nearly won one of the greatest World Series ever played.
 


10 PM (Mon-Sat)

 

INFAMOUS
by Ace Atkins

Read by Tom Jowers. (13 episodes, 8/23-9/08/10)

Book jacket illustration.

Set in 1933, Atkins's winning fourth history-based novel focuses on two figures who, as the author explains in an introduction, have been undeservedly lost in the shuffle of Depression-era gangsters: George Kelly, who ironically gets saddled with the nickname Machine Gun, and his wife, Kathryn. The fast-moving narrative spans a three-month period, starting with a fatal ambush in a parking lot outside Kansas City's Union Station in which hoods gun down several lawmen and the prisoner they were about to drive to Leavenworth.
This massacre leads to the FBI obtaining the authority to make arrests and carry weapons. The bulk of the action concerns the Kellys' kidnapping of Charles Urschel, a wealthy Oklahoma oilman, and its aftermath. Atkins (Devil's Garden) brings to vivid life the henpecked George and the bloodthirsty Kathryn as he convincingly conjures up a past era. Not just for crime fans, this should appeal to a wide readership. 

 

GAME CHANGE: OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS, MCCAIN AND PALIN, AND THE RACE OF A LIFETIME
by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin

Read by Jacquee Minor. (22 episodes, 9/07-10/01/10)

Book jacket illustration.

In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton—and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama's partner and America's face to the world. The mercurial performance of John McCain and the mesmerizing emergence of Sarah Palin.
Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character driven and dialogue rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, this is the occasionally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.


11 PM (Mon-Sat)

 

LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER
by John Irving

Read by Jim Beattie (22 episodes, 8/20-9/14/10)
 

Book jacket illustration.In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto–pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.

In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River–John Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long”–to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.

What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice–the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: “We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”


THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST
by Stieg Larsson.

Read by Tom Jowers. (23 episodes, 9/15-10/11/10)

Book jacket illustration.The stunning third and final novel in Stieg Larsson’s internationally best-selling trilogy

Lisbeth Salander—the heart of Larsson’s two previous novels—lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She’s fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she’ll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge—against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.
Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.


MIDNIGHT (Tues-Sun)

 

THIS TIME TOGETHER: LAUGHTER AND REFLECTION
by Carol Burnett

Read by Sally Miller. (10 episodes, 8/20-9/02/10)

Book jacket illustration.

THIS TIME TOGETHER is 100 percent Carol Burnett -- funny, irreverent, and irresistible.

Carol Burnett is one of the most beloved and revered actresses and performers in America. The Carol Burnett Show was seen each week by millions of adoring fans and won twenty-five Emmys in its remarkable eleven-year run. Now, in This Time Together, Carol really lets her hair down and tells one funny or touching or memorable story after another -- reading it feels like sitting down with an old friend who has wonderful tales to tell.

In engaging anecdotes, Carol discusses her remarkable friendships with stars such at Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, and Julie Andrews; the background behind famous scenes, like the moment she swept down the stairs in her curtain-rod dress in the legendary "Went With the Wild" skit; and things that would happen only to Carol -- the prank with Julie Andrews that went wrong in front of the First Lady; the famous Tarzan Yell...

 

KNOWN TO EVIL
by Walter Mosley

Read by Roy Harris. (10 episodes, 9/01-9/11/10)

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The Walter Mosley and his new hero, Leonid McGill, are back in the newNew York Times-bestselling mystery series that's already being hailed as a classic of contemporary noir. 

Leonid McGill-the protagonist introduced in The Long Fall, the book that returned Walter Mosley to bestseller lists nationwide -is still fighting to stick to his reformed ways while the world around him pulls him in every other direction. He has split up with his girlfriend, Aura, because his new self won't let him leave his wife-but then Aura's new boyfriend starts angling to get Leonid kicked out of his prime, top-of-the skyscraper office space. Meanwhile, one of his sons seems to have found true love-but the girl has a shady past that's all of sudden threatening the whole McGill family-and his other son, the charming rogue Twilliam, is doing nothing but enabling the crisis. 

Most ominously of all, Alfonse Rinaldo, the mysterious power-behind- the-throne at City Hall, the fixer who seems to control every little thing that happens in New York City, has a problem that even he can't fix- and he's come to Leonid for help. It seems a young woman has disappeared, leaving murder in her wake, and it means everything to Rinaldo to track her down. But he won't tell McGill his motives, which doesn't quite square with the new company policy- but turning down Rinaldo is almost impossible to even contemplate. 

Known to Evil delivers on all the promise of the characters and story lines introduced in The Long Fall, and then some. It careens fast and deep into gritty, glittery contemporary Manhattan, making the city pulse in a whole new way, and it firmly establishes Leonid McGill as one of the mystery world's most iconic, charismatic leading men. 


BACKSEAT SAINTS
by Joshilyn Jackson

Read by Rosemary Scalessa (11 episodes, 9/12-9/24/10)

Rose Mae Lolley is a fierce and dirty girl, long-suppressed under flowery skirts and bow-trimmed ballet flats. As "Mrs. Ro Grandee" she's trapped in a marriage that's thick with love and sick with abuse. Her true self has been bound in the chains of marital bliss in rural Texas, letting "Ro" make eggs, iron shirts, and take her punches. She seems doomed to spend the rest of her life battered outside by her husband and inside by her former self, until fate throws her in the path of an airport gypsy---one who shares her past and knows her future. The tarot cards foretell that Rose's beautiful, abusive husband is going to kill her. Unless she kills him first. 

Hot-blooded Rose Mae escapes from under Ro's perky compliance and emerges with a gun and a plan to beat the hand she's been dealt. Following messages that her long-missing mother has left hidden for her in graffiti and behind paintings, Rose and her dog Gretel set out from Amarillo, TX back to her hometown of Fruiton, AL, and then on to California, unearthing a host of family secrets as she goes. Running for her life, she realizes that she must face her past in order to overcome her fate---death by marriage---and become a girl who is strong enough to save herself from the one who loves her best. 

BACKSEAT SAINTS will dazzle readers with a fresh and heartwrenching portrayal of the lengths a mother will go to right the wrongs she's created, and how far a daughter will go to escape the demands of forgiveness. With the seed of a minor character from her popular best-seller, GODS IN ALABAMA, Jackson has built a whole new story full of her trademark sly wit, endearingly off-kilter characters, and utterly riveting plottwists.

 

STEP OUT ON NOTHING: HOW FAITH AND FAMILY HELPED ME CONQUER LIFE’S CHALLENGES
by Byron Pitts

Read by Renée Ford Clark. (8 episodes, 9/25-10/03/10)

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It was August 25, 2006, my first on-camera studio open for the CBS News broadcast 60 Minutes. Executive Producer Jeff Fager poked his head in the dressing room.” Good luck, Brotha! You’ve come a long way to get here. You’ve earned it.” 
…If only he knew. My mind flashed back to elementary school, when a therapist had informed my mother, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pitts, your son cannot read.”

In Step Out on Nothing, Byron Pitts chronicles his astonishing story of overcoming a childhood filled with obstacles to achieve enormous success in life. Throughout Byron’s difficult youth—his parents separated when he was twelve and his mother worked two jobs to make ends meet—he suffered from a debilitating stutter. But Byron was keeping an even more embarrassing secret: He was also functionally illiterate. For a kid from inner-city Baltimore, it was a recipe for failure.
Pitts turned struggle into strength and overcame both of his impediments. Along the way, a few key people “stepped out on nothing” to make a difference for him—from his mother, who worked tirelessly to raise her kids right and delivered ample amounts of tough love, to his college roommate, who helped Byron practice his vocabulary and speech. Pitts even learns from those who didn’t believe in him, like the college professor who labeled him a failure and told him to drop out of college. Through it all, he persevered, following his steadfast passion. After fifteen years in local television, he landed a job as a correspondent for CBS News in 1998, and went on to become an Emmy Award–winning journalist and a contributing correspondent for 60 Minutes. Not bad for a kid who couldn’t read.
From a challenged youth to a reporting career that has covered 9/11 and Iraq, Pitts’s triumphant and uplifting story will resonate with anyone who has felt like giving up in the face of seemingly insurmountable hardships.


2AM (Tues-Sun)

 

THE BRASS VERDICT
by Michael Connelly

Read by Don Kennedy. (14 episodes, 8/17-9/01/10)

Book jacket illustration.

Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next.

Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together.

Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, The Brass Verdictis sure to be his biggest book yet.

 

WE’LL BE THERE FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES
by Paul Shaffer w/David Ritz

Read by Marty Kwatinetz. (10 episodes, 9/14-9/24/10)


Book jacket illustration.

From Paul Shaffer, lifelong music junkie, hipster, and longtime leader of David Letterman's band, comes a candid, endearing, hilarious, and star-studded memoir of a life in-and love of-show business.

How does a kid go from a remote Canadian town at the tip of Lake Superior to the bright lights of Broadway and a gig leading the band on Letterman? This book is Paul Shaffer's answer to that question. From playing seedy strip joints in Toronto, to his first legitimate job out of college-which found him working with future stars (and friends) Gilda Radner, Martin Short, and Eugene Levy-to being first musical director of the nascent Saturday Night Live and helping to form the Blues Brothers, to being onstage every night with Dave and playing with the greatest musicians of our time, Shaffer has lived the ultimate showbiz life.

Now, in this hilarious, entertaining, and candid memoir-in which he dishes on everyone from John Belushi and Jerry Lewis to Mel Gibson and Britney Spears-Paul gives us the full behind-the-scenes story of his life, from banging out pop tunes on the piano at the age of twelve to leading the band every night at the Sullivan Theater.


NIGHT AND DAY
by Robert B. Parker

Read by Jim Beattie. (5 episodes, 9/25-9/30/10)

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Sometimes Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief Jesse Stone wonders how his town could have possibly earned its pristine name. Recently, lewdness seems to be rampant in this little hamlet. At the local junior high, principal Betsy Ingersoll insists on making surprise locker room inspections of female students' underwear, but her search for thongs and bikini panties is the least of Jesse's worries. Worse yet are the nocturnal wanderings of "The Night Hawk," a sex-starved voyeur whose window peeping has escalated into much more dangerous, confrontational acts. The author often called "America's greatest mystery writer" takes readers on a guided tour through the secrets of a small town.

 


5AM (Tues-Sun)


THE BROKEN WINDOW
by Jeffery Deaver

Read by Bill Davis. (18 episodes, 8/14-9/03/10)

Bestselling master of suspense Jeffery Deaver is back with a brand-new Lincoln Rhyme thriller.
Lincoln Rhyme and partner/paramour Amelia Sachs return to face a criminal whose ingenious staging of crimes is enabled by a terrifying access to information....
When Lincoln's estranged cousin Arthur Rhyme is arrested on murder charges, the case is perfect — too perfect. Forensic evidence from Arthur's home is found all over the scene of the crime, and it looks like the fate of Lincoln's relative is sealed.

At the behest of Arthur's wife, Judy, Lincoln grudgingly agrees to investigate the case. Soon Lincoln and Amelia uncover a string of similar murders and rapes with perpetrators claiming innocence and ignorance — despite ironclad evidence at the scenes of the crime. Rhyme's team realizes this "perfect" evidence may actually be the result of masterful identity theft and manipulation.

An information service company — the huge data miner Strategic Systems Datacorp — seems to have all the answers but is reluctant to help the police. Still, Rhyme and Sachs and their assembled team begin uncovering a chilling pattern of vicious crimes and coverups, and their investigation points to one master criminal, whom they dub "522."

When "522" learns the identities of the crime-fighting team, the hunters become the hunted. Full of Deaver's trademark plot twists, The Broken Window will put the partnership of Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to the ultimate test.
 

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
by Rebecca Skloot

Read by Rosemary Scalessa. (11 episodes, 9/04-9/16/10

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? 
          
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.


THE ELEVENTH VICTIM

by Nancy Grace

Read by Anne Teddlie. (13 episodes, 9/17-10/01/10)
 

Book jacket illustration.Hailey Dean is a young and tremendously successful criminal prosecutor in Georgia, equally proud of her career and her adoring fiance. But just a few weeks before the wedding, her fiance's murder and its aftermath send her into a tailspin. Grief-stricken and disillusioned with her profession, Hailey decides to leave Georgia for New York City; she hopes the change of pace and surroundings will help her heal. Transplanted to a lively, vibrant city where she has no ties and no painful reminders, Hailey embarks on a new career as a therapist. But just when she's beginning to feel settled in her new life, another tidal wave of turmoil engulfs her: Someone is murdering her patients, one by one. And the killer operates in the same way as the victims of the last case Hailey prosecuted. Clearly, Hailey hasn't left her past behind quite as well as she thought - and unless she returns to her true calling and solves the case, still more innocent people will die. Inspired by lawyer and television personality Nancy Grace's own beginnings as a prosecutor and the tragic death of her fiance, The Eleventh Victim is a compelling mystery full of intrigue that thrills from start to finish.

 

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