6 - Completed 03/06/06

The Penultimate Peril Book the Twelfth
Lemony Snicket

Regardless of how they pass their time while at a hotel, the three siblings will be sure to take in all the interesting sights and sounds -- and write them down -- just in case this episode turns out to be the darkest yet in a series of unfortunate events.

5 - Completed 02/24/06

White Ghost Girls
Alice Greenway

"Summer 1967. The turmoil of Mao's Cultural Revolution is spilling over into Hong Kong as war rages in nearby Vietnam. White Ghost Girls is the story of Frankie and Kate, two American sisters living in a foreign land in a chaotic time. With their war-photographer father off in Vietnam, Marianne, their beautiful but remote mother, keeps the family in Hong Kong, frightened of losing her husband to a mistress or to the addiction of war itself." "Although bound together by living overseas, the sisters could not be more different - Frankie pulses with rebellion and risk, while Kate's the watchful one, all eyes and ears. Marianne spends her days painting watercolors of the lush surroundings, leaving the girls largely unsupervised, while their Chinese amah, Ah Bing, does her best to look after them. One day in a market, the girls decide to run off - with tragic results." "Immersed in the heat and color of late-1960s Hong Kong, a city shimmering between sea and sky, it is a world of fishermen, junks, and unexplained bodies floating up in the sea of plotting rebels, temple gods, and ghosts." In this novel, the girls tumble into their teenage years against an extraordinary backdrop both sensuous and dangerous. This tale of sacrifice and solidarity gleams with the kind of intense, complicated love that exists only between sisters.

4 - Completed 02/20/06

5th Horseman
James Patterson

An angel of death is stalking the halls of a San Francisco hospital. Recuperating patients on the verge of release are suddenly stricken and die. Nobody can identify the cause -- or the culprit. In their most gripping case yet, James Patterson's Women's Murder Club convenes to track down a killer who hides among healers. A powerful hospital and courtroom thriller.

3 - Completed 02/13/06

The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini

Despite their class differences, Amir, the son of a wealthy businessman, and Hassan, his devoted sidekick and the son of Amir's household servant, play together, cause mischief together, and compete in the annual kite-fighting tournament -- Amir flying the kite, and Hassan running down the kites they fell. But one day, Amir betrays Hassan, and his betrayal grows increasingly devastating as their tale continues. Amir will spend much of his life coming to terms with his initial and subsequent acts of cowardice, and finally seek to make reparations.

Hosseini's depiction of the cruelty children suffer at the hands of their "friends" will break your heart. And his descriptions of Afghanistan both before and after the war will haunt readers long after they've read the last page. The Kite Runner is a stunning reminder that the dark hearts of adults are made, step-by-step, by the hatred they learn as children, and that all it takes for evil to triumph is for a good man to stand back and do nothing.