This morning I got to do one of my favorite things–be on KBBI‘s Coffee Table to talk about good reads, this time with KBBI’s Shady Grove Oliver and Terry Rensel. We got all your Christmas presents for you right here.

And without further ado, our recommendations:

Dana

• Children of War by Martin Walker

I’ve raved before about Martin’s Bruno Chief of Police books set in France’s Perigord. This is the best one to date, about homegrown Muslim extremism brought down to a real, human level in Bruno’s commune of St. Denis.

• Exo by Steven Gould

The fourth book in Gould’s Jumper series, and the second featuring teenage daughter Cent. The family that teleports together stays together.

• Sniper’s Honor by Stephen Hunter

Hands down the best thriller I read this year, and maybe in the last ten years. Retired sniper Bob Lee Swagger and journalist friend Kathy Reilly investigate the history of the White Witch, a Russian female sniper in World War II. Edge-of-seat plotting between past and present, and boy does this guy know how to write a shootout.

• Night Heron by Adam Brookes

An old-fashioned spy novel going full gallop from Xinjiang to Beijing to Hong Kong to Seoul to London and back again, with echoes of John Le Carre.

• Before the Poison by Peter Robinson

A man buys a house in Yorkshire and becomes obsessed with discovering the truth of the alledged murder that happened there years before.

• The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan

The second outing of Lady Trent, that student of dragons living in a fully realized fantasy world laid down on a Victorian England template. In this one, Lady Trent is obliged to invent flight.

• The Cold Cold Ground, The Sirens in the Street and In the Morning I’ll be Gone,

Adrian McKinty’s trilogy about constable Sean Duffy trying to serve and protect in Northern Ireland during the Troubles of the early 80’s. Gritty and real, this is a three-book flash photo of a time and place you won’t be able to forget.

• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield

When you’re done reading what his re-entry to Earth after five months on the ISS does to him, you being to wonder if astronauts aren’t becoming aliens or at least evolving into a different kind of human being while they’re on orbit. And you start wondering if space exploration shouldn’t be one-way.

• King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon by David R. Montgomery

A history of the Atlantic and the Pacific Northwest salmon, with object lessons for any Alaskans who would like to see the salmon runs here outlive them.

• The Valleys of the Assassins by Freya Stark

The travels of a British woman through Persia in the 1930s. Vivid and very funny.

And (drum roll, please) children’s picture book o’ the year: David Wiesner’s Mr. Wuffles!

Shady

• Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
• On Photography by Susan Sontag
• The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede
• Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William R. Maples
• Kitchen/Moonlight Shadow by Banana Yoshimoto

 

Terry

• The American Home Front 1941-1942 by Alistair Cooke
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• Kafka on the Shore and Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
• Blood Alone by James R. Benn
• Churchill’s Triumph by Michael Dobbs
• American Gods and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
• The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
• Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett
• And as always people called in with their own recommendations, as in

  Lee
  Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, One Summer by Bill Bryson, Gulp by Mary Roach, Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West.

  Ginger
  Steven Johnson’s How We Got to Now, Lorna Lanvik’s Oh My Stars, Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn, Gregory A. Freeman’s The Forgotten 500.

  Larry
  Nancy Lord’s Early Warming, Eva Saulitis’ Into Great Silence, and Peter Murray’s The Devil and Mr. Duncan.

  And Jenny called about the Teen Corps, where the Homer Bookstore has conscripted a group of Homer teenagers to read and review and recommend young adult novels. One TC hot title would be Wordless by AdriAnne Strickland.

  

Chatter Christmas gifts Coffee Table good books homer bookstore KBBI