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THE MURDERESS

When Los Angeles train station authorities force open two leaking, putrid-smelling trunks, the dismembered female bodies they find horrify them. Yet what leaves them especially aghast is the idea that Ruth Judd, the pretty young woman who presents a claim ticket for the trunks, could possibly be involved in what clearly appears to be murder. […]

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SOUTH OF MY DREAMS

Clementi spent much of her early 20s as a journalist in various European countries, dealing with sexual assault and harassment from a number of her supervisors before heading to Israel to live in a kibbutz to recover from a breakup with a boyfriend who had “an ego of steel, a heart of mud, and a […]

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THE WINTERTON DECEPTION

Thirteen-year-old Hope and her twin brother, Gordon, are looking forward to seeing their newly discovered Winterton cousins, who were introduced in the series opener. Hope figured out that the enigmatic Ms. Springer is actually matriarch Jane Winterton, who faked her own death to try to get her quarrelling offspring to reconcile. Hope convinced her grandmother […]

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WOODROW WILSON

Historian, lawyer, and former Congressman Cox writes that Wilson was the first Southern Democrat to occupy the White House since Andrew Johnson. Scholars have long considered him a giant among presidents for his progressive reforms and leadership in World War I. They have not ignored his flaws, emphasizing the censorship, suppression of civil rights, and […]

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APRIL STORM

Texas author Meacham began writing novels in retirement; this last was completed before her death in 2021 at age 83. Her heroine, Kathryn Walker, is the put-together, 40-something wife of a successful orthopedic surgeon; both have come a long way from their impoverished, almost Dickensian backgrounds. Now their daughter is at college in Boulder and […]

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BUILDING A LIGHT

Following an injuryas a competitive runner during his senior year of high school, Tao learned about the field of physical therapy and found it to be a “profound, eye-opening experience.” By 2020, he’d taken the most difficult, but potentially most rewarding first step in his career: residency at a health clinic in San Francisco. As […]

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BECAUSE YOU ARE MINE

Boaz’s novel opens two weeks after George’s mother, Louise, vanished from Willow, New Mexico. In the year or so before her disappearance, George and their girlfriend, Truley, had been living with Louise in her home. Cobbling together part-time jobs, the two semi-adrift 20-somethings pursued their creative pursuits while Louise, a native New Yorker and former […]

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CAVE-IN

Even after a generation, the small Vancouver Island town of Tass is feeling the effects of the Big One, a sinkhole that swallowed an entire church full of people. No bodies were ever recovered. Sixteen-year-old Hudson has always delighted in exploring the area’s sprawling cave systems, but he’s recently become increasingly worried about the looming […]

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SONGS FOR THE OFFSEASON

One day, Dustin is planning to spend an epic summer in Japan with his baseball team, playing the sport he loves more than anything. The next, he’s at the funeral of his 20-year-old cousin, a college baseball player with an undetected heart condition. There, Dustin meets Andrea, and despite his negative first impressions, they grow […]

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EXPLORING CAREERS IN AI

Allen opens by describing how AI’s increasing prevalence has created new jobs and altered existing ones—for example, by automating many repetitive tasks. At the same time, AI is requiring people to develop new skills in areas such as writing, legislation, ethics, and machine-learning engineering. Five subsequent chapters go into more detail about the impact of […]