An Unkindness of Ravens

Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford -- a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex.

Words such as cardinal and scarlet can describe the same color but they take on markedly different meanings when we use them to consider the worth of a cardinal man or a scarlet woman. The comparison seems to conjure significantly more prejudice when we consider that a cardinal man is revered as righteous while a scarlet woman is reviled as wicked, particularly in terms of her sexual activity. In a similar way, by contrasting other pairs of words, we can see how they too invite discriminatory connotations in terms of what we value: Christian and pagan, crusade and jihad, highbrow and lowbrow, wizard and witch, right and left, white and black.

CSI - Cold Burn

When a park ranger discovers the naked body of a woman in the Lake Mead National Park, the Las Vegas CSI team is called in to investigate. With Grissom away at a convention, Catherine Willows heads up the unit to try and discover why this woman's body would be left in such a public place - as if someone wanted her to be found. Catherine, Warrick & Nick do not know who the Jane Doe is, but they know that she was suffocated and then frozen after she died so they have no idea how long ago she was killed.

Charted Knitting Designs: A Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns

The three volumes comprising Walker's knitting treasuries, published in 1968-72 by Scribner, have long been out of print. They have recently been reissued by Schoolhouse Press and should be seriously considered for purchase by large public libraries and textile collections.
Barbara G. Walker, author of The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, and many other books, is a member of the Morris Museum Mineralogical Society and the Trailside Mineral Club of the New Jersey Earth Science Association.

Every Last One: A Novel

In her latest, Quindlen (Rise and Shine) once again plumbs the searing emotions of ordinary people caught in tragic circumstances. Mary Beth Latham is a happily married woman entirely devoted to her three teenaged children.