Midsummer Reads

From the author of The Abortionist's Daughter, a gripping new novel about a raftingtrip through the Grand Canyon that changes the lives of everyone on board. Meet Peter,twenty-seven, single, and looking for a quick hookup; Evelyn, a fifty-year-old Harvardprofessor; and Ruth and Lloyd, river veterans in their seventies. There's Mitchell, anovereager history buff with no qualms about upstaging the guides with his knowledge.There's Jill from Salt Lake City, wanting desperately to spark some sense of adventure inher staid Mormon family; and seventeen-year-old Amy, so woefully overweight that she canbarely fit into a pup tent, let alone into a life jacket. Guiding them all is JT Maroney,who loves the river with all his heart and who, having made 124 previous trips down theColorado, thinks he has seen everything. But on their first night, a stray dog wandersinto their campsite, upsetting the tentative equilibrium of this makeshift family. Overthe next thirteen days, as various decisions are second-guessed and sometimes regretted,both passengers and guides find that sometimes the most daunting adventures on a ColoradoRiver trip have nothing to do with white-water rapids, and everything to do withreconfiguring the rocky canyons of the heart.

A sensation across Europe - millions of copies sold - a spellbinding amalgam of murdermystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It's about the disappearanceforty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families inSweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what hebelieves was her murder. It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently atthe wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance . .. and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hackerpossessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age - and a terrifying capacityfor ruthlessness to go with it--who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. Thisunlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vangerfamily, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism - and anunexpected connection between themselves. It's a contagiously exciting, stunninglyintelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of abrilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects oftheir world and of their own lives.