Bookshelf

(Virginia Beach, Va.: Köehler Books, 2020).
A thousand miles off course, a private plane strikes a lighthouse and crashes near snowy Lake Superior. The pilot’s body is found, but three VIP passengers are missing. Combine that with a deadly snowmobile accident, an upstart congressional candidate, and alarming discoveries in Isle Royale National Park, and local sheriff Sam MacDonald finds he has more than enough challenges as the solitude of the North Shore is disrupted by events that could have national and international repercussions.

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2021)

Selected by Publishers Weekly as one of its Top Ten Books in Business and Economics for Spring 2021, this book employs tools of microeconomics to investigate how individual economic choices in response to climate change will transform the larger economy. The author, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business at Johns Hopkins University, “suggests new ways that big data can be deployed to ease energy or water shortages to aid agricultural operations and proposes informed policy changes related to public infrastructure, disaster relief, and real estate to nudge land use, transportation options, and business development in the right direction.”

(Louisville, Ky.: Sarabande Books, 2021)

Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and boasting a 2020 Pushcart-winning story, this collection of 13 tales is described as “part domestic horror, part flyover gothic.” Collins’ characters — including a young woman who must give birth to future iterations of herself; a widower who kills a horse en route to his grandson’s circumcision; a summer camper who is haunted by a glass eye and motorcycle crash — must choose to fight or flee the “big bad” that dwells within us all.

(Seattle: Marrowstone Press, 2020).
The prolific poet has given us another collection, this one described as one book of poems composed of two. According to the publisher: “Its epigraph is taken from the English Romantic poet, John Clare: to ‘turn the blue blinders of the heavens aside/To see what gods are doing.’ In Weltner’s book, the gods are such fundamental powers and presences as the past, memory, human existence in place and time, passion in all its senses, and what glimpses of transcendence humanity is allowed to see. It is a poetry of quest and questioning, of a late life looking back, of form and freedom pondering those essential things long pondered before us.”

(self-published, 2019)

Focusing on the plight of Cavaar, a 9-year-old street urchin, and Alera, a young noblewoman longing for a life of freedom from her abusive father, this novel is the first in an original character-driven fantasy series about confronting darkness within and without.

(Scotts Valley, Calif.: CreateSpace, 2020).
Technology growth, cultural divides, and a hyper-paced world are creating confusion, fear, and separation in our society. So maintains the author, who has led global tech human resource teams with the goal of enabling individuals to prosper so companies can prosper. In his book, he looks at such questions as “How do we understand that we have more in common than not?” and “What can each of us do to heal differences while leaving a meaningful, personal legacy?”

(Boston: Everidge Press, 2019)
A murder mystery combines with a story of heroism and betrayal — all taking place in Boston’s old South End. The author invites readers to travel back in time as he explores life in the rented rooms and funky old bars of a dying neighborhood.

(Winchester, United Kingdom: Business Books, 2021).
The author, a third-generation co-owner of a plastic bag manufacturing company, takes readers along on his journey to eight states, three national parks, and three countries as he experiences the life-changing education and adventures that led him to finding sustainability for his business and himself. The book won a Gold Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association.

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2020).
Having retired after 45 years of university teaching, the author has released his 12th scholarly book, one in which he discusses U.S. policies toward Latin America during a critical period of the Cold War. One reviewer noted that he “proves tough but fair. He pulls no punches against Kissinger’s vicious support for dictators. Yet Rabe also appreciates the former secretary of state’s open-mindedness on issues ranging from economics to the Panama Canal.”

(Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2021)
These microstories explore the pitfalls and triumphs of dating as a millennial. Part I (portions of which take place at Hamilton) introduces readers to a college relationship that stretches from New York City to Texas and rips apart. “Part II is what happens after — the gritty, lonely, and sometimes dazzling world of dating in New York City: fix-ups, first dates, third dates, many, many Bumble dates, one terrible Tinder date, the often strangeness of two strangers, the often thrill of two strangers, and even one glorious cab driver who doubles as a love psychic,” the publisher noted.