Long ago in ancient times, the Golden Capstone, placed on top of the Great Pyramid at Giza during a rare solar event called the Tartarus Rotation, would prevent the world from coming to destruction by worldwide flooding and solar scorching. However, according to the legend, whosoever accomplished the task would gain absolute power over the world for a thousand years, prompting Alexander the Great to break the Capstone into seven pieces and hide them in the Seven Wonders of the World. Now, in 2006, the event of the Tartarus Rotation is about to roll around again, and race is on for the nations of the world to find and assemble the Capstone in order to gain ultimate power, including the U.S., Europe and the Vatican, greedy terrorists, and a coalition of seven small nations who think that no single country ought to have power of that magnitude. This coalition assembles an eight-person team led by Australian Indiana Jones-type Jack West Jr. to not only find the seven Capstone pieces, but outwit their other contenders in the process.

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In Got the Look, reader favorite Attorney Jack Swyteck finds himself falling in love with his new girlfriend Mia Salazar, only to find out she’s married. When Mia becomes the latest victim of a serial kidnapper who ransoms his victims off or kills them brutally, Jack’s caught between his sense of betrayal and his lingering feelings. What’s worse, Mia’s husband, who know about his wife’s affair, has no desire to pay off her ransom. It’s up to Jack, working with FBI agent Andie Henning, to discover the secrets behind Mia’s strange marriage and mysterious past, and rescue her from the clutches of a madman before it’s too late.

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Nathan Glass is many things: a retired life insurance salesman, burdened with an unfavorable cancer prognosis, divorced, and estranged from his son. He’s come to Brooklyn to find a quiet, solitary place to die, but instead finds his long-lost nephew Tom working in a local bookstore, a far cry from from the beginnings of a brilliant academic career when Nathan saw him last. With Tom’s boss Harry, Nathan’s world slowly begins to expand, leading him on a journey of self-rediscovery. Things become, of course, far from quiet, including incidents of forgery, disturbing revelations in a sperm bank, and the unattainable dream of a rural refuge. Nathan begins a book called The Book of Human Folly to recount every blunder, mistake, and pratfall he has made in his life, but instead finds his despair being swept away in the joy and sorrow of others.

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Lauren Willig’s sequel, The Masque of the Black Tulip to her smash debut The Secret History of the Pink Carnation revives its predecessor’s sense of fun, history, intrigue, romance and swashbuckling adventure. Modern day American graduate student Eloise Kelly is continuing her research into the Selwick archive, this time uncovering the story of Lady Henrietta Selwick who has her own adventure with Miles Dorrington in helping to protect her cousin Jane, England’s only hope against a Napoleonic invasion, the Pink Carnation, against the Black Tulip, France’s deadliest spy whose mission is to kill his (or her) English adversary.

Though this is McGarrity’s tenth Kevin Kerney novel, McGarrity shows no signs of slowing down. This time, smarmy rodeo star-turned executive film producer Johnny Jordan, a boyhood friend of Kerney, approaches him and offers him a lucrative offer to serve as a technical advisor on a contemporary western being shot on the Mexican border. Kerney agrees, thinking the vacation will be good for him, his wife Sara (a Lt. Colonel in the US Army), and their precocious three-year-old son Patrick, but when Sara is called to Ireland to track down a notorious gem smuggler and wartime deserter, Kevin is saddled with his child alone. Of course, things take a turn for the worse when a dead body is found on the border, and Kerney finds himself embroiled in a federal investigation along with Johnny Jordan’s troublesome behavior, all while his wife Sara finds herself at the center of a dangerous Pentagon plot.

Lilian Jackson Braun has defined the cat caper with her Cat Who … series, and the 28th installment, The Cat Who Dropped A Bombshell sees Koko and Yum Yum, James “Call me Qwill” Qwilleran’s famous Siamese feline duo back to solve another mystery. While the small town of Pickax is preparing sesquicentennial celebrations, Koko has developed a habit for dropping himself off balconies and occasionally landing in strange places, one such fall ending up on a strange young man visiting his relatives in town. As it turns out, the young man is the greedy nephew of wealthy Nathan and Doris Ledfield, and stands to inherit their entire vast fortune. Needless to say, when the couple fall deathly ill, all while a hurricane threatens to pummel Pickax and cut the festivities short, Qwill and his furry companions are on the case.

While many are aware of the Cold War, few possess a true understanding of its threat and significance and the events that transpired behind the scenes to wage a war of ideologies. John Gaddis presents a clear and insightful look into this era in his new novel The Cold War: A New History. In 1950, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Kim Il-Sung were seeing the the height of their powers and a bright future for Communism on the horizon. More importantly, the West was morally in debt due to colonialism and their monopoly on nuclear weapons was at an end. The threat of war, both ideological and nuclear, was imminent, and it seemed as if the end of the century would be a very dark one. Gaddis explains events and their import to readers in an organized and effective manner, including strategic dynamics that drove the age, illuminating portraits on major personalities, and fresh perspective on the era’s most crucial events that saw the eventual failure of communist rule and the victory of political and economic freedom.

In The Quiet Game author Greg Iles introduced us to lawyer hero Penn Cage, and now Turning Angel has us revisiting Cage, along with his best friend Drew Elliot, a highly respected doctor who had once saved Cage’s life on a hiking trip when they were boys. Being two of the most prominent members of their small town of Natchez, Drew and Penn are happy to sit on the board of their alma mater, St. Stephen’s Prep, but when the naked body of Kate Townsend, a student at the school, washes up along the banks of the Mississippi, the small community is devastated to learn that their esteemed doctor had a passionate affair with the girl and may have been involved in her murder.

Drew asks Penn to defend him, despite not exactly acting like an innocent man. Combined with a black prosecuter with a personal grudge of his own and an investigation that seems content to pin the blame on Elliott, it is up to Penn to get to the heart of the matter, starting with St. Stephen’s Prep. What he discovers when he returns to his old school is shocking, an insular world that is not as it appears, where jocks are steroid-crazed, girls are desperate for attention, and jaded teens are on the precipice of nihilism. When Penn finally arrives at the truth behind Kate Townsend’s death, his quiet little town will be forever changed.

Wealthy Pamela Webbon and Irene Stenson are best friends until one night during the summer after high school, after being dropped off at her home by Pamela, Irene walks into her kitchen to find her parents dead in what is later ruled as a murder-suicide. Irene flees her northern Californian town, but when, seventeen years later, Pamela sends her a cryptic email asking her for help, Irene is inevitably drawn back in. However, enlightenment is far from reach when she returns only to find her former best friend dead from a supposed drug overdose, and plenty of covered-up secrets involving Pamela’s father, a powerful senator campaigning for presidency who may or may not have been responsible for Irene’s parents’ deaths. There’s also ex-Marine turned lodge-owner Luke Danner who helps Irene investigate the mystery surrounding Pamela’s death and who may just prove to be something more. This well-paced page-turner is full of surprises to keep readers guessing until its thrilling conclusion.

In Physical: An American Checkup, author James McManus is one of many typical middle-aged, privileged Americans: he isn’t as active as he knows he should be, he likes his liquor and cigarettes, and he doesn’t think twice about getting a third helping of his wife’s cooking. Given his family’s long history of early heart attacks and death, these are not good things to be doing. Perhaps he isn’t like so many of us when he spends $8,000 to get a three-day physical at the Mayo Clinic, one of the best medical institutions in the world, but his experience oftentimes proves to be a hilarious and insightful look into not just the inner workings of such a prestigious clinic, but also into his own personal bad habits and impending mortality — habits that are shared by a great many of us.