In William Gibson's Spook Country, a stern federal security agent keeps prisoner a valuable addict who can translate Volapuk in order to track some Russian speaking illegal Cuban immigrants whose elderly leader is employing a tense computer genius, Bobby Chombo, to hide a truckload of contraband. Hollis Henry, a former rock star, now journalist, who is employed by a British magazine to ivestigate the new phenomenon of locative art (art that only be seen with a special helmet) drops gently into Bobby's world and immediately senses that Bobby is hiding more than art.

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Parents are offered guidelines for specific conversations with their children. I appreciated reading Boteach's perspectives on fundamental aspects of family. The book gives parents or guardians of children avenues for strenghtening or establishing better relationships. This book may be for those who are raising children but carries wisdom for any who read it.

In Cormac McCarthy's grim view of the future, the environment on the east coast of America has been destroyed by a massive, unexplained explosion. A dying man and his very young son travel south to escape the approaching winter.

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Charles Simic, the new U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is known for poems that infuse the everyday world with evocative imagery and haunting insight. Recently I sat down with one of his collections, My Noiseless Entourage. Using contemporary images in unique ways, the poems in this volume resonate long after the final word, giving us a new-found appreciation for what is usually deemed ordinary, and accomplishing what Wordsworth considered to be the ultimate goal of poetry: taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary.

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