The Toadstool Bookshops of Keene, Milford, and Peterborough, NH

Just turned sixteen, Beatrice has a choice to make – one that every sixteen-year-old has to make. She has to decide which faction she wants to spend the rest of her life with. Will she choose the faction she was brought up in (and, therefore, get to stay with her family)? Or will she choose a faction more in line with her own personality (and, therefore, have to leave her family)?

This debut YA novel is very well written. It has action and adventure, mystery and secrets, familial love and a budding romance. Furthermore, there were a couple of twists in the plot that were so surprising (in a good way), that I was floored! Divergent is a great read!

If you'd like to take a fun (and funny) walk on the dark side, this is just what the doctor ordered.

Dr. Johannes Cabal is a necromancer who came by this distinction in the usual way. (He sold his soul to the Devil.) However, the doctor finds that this was not such a good deal. Wanting his soul back, Cabal marches down to the Underworld and demands an audience with the Devil. Intrigued, the Devil makes him an offer.

The author, Jonathan L. Howard - who is also a game designer and a scriptwriter - deftly combines charm and humor and the macabre to fashion a fantastic story that you will be loathe to put down.

Daniel C. Goldie, CFA, CFP & Gordon S. Murray have written an informative little book called The Investment Answer: Learn to Manage Your Money & Protect Your Financial Future. It discusses "the five decisions every investor needs to make", namely:

1. Do you really want to do this yourself?

2. How do you want to allocate your assets?

3. How and why would you want to diversify?

4. Will you be an active investor or a passive investor?

5. Why and how will you need to rebalance your portfolio?

Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch, and Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

Long ago, there was a War in which the forces of Light and the forces of Dark were so evenly balanced that, were the War allowed to continue, there would be absolutely no survivors. To prevent total annihilation, the leaders of the opposing sides decided upon a truce and drew up the Grand Treaty. The forces of Light created a group called the Night Watch, whose job was to make sure the Dark Ones didn’t violate the Treaty. The forces of Dark instituted a Day Watch to make sure that the Light Ones didn’t violate the Treaty. And a third group, the Inquisition, was formed to arbitrate disputes between the Watches.

These entertaining books, set mostly in modern-day Moscow, follow the career of Light Magician Anton Gorodetsky, an agent of the Night Watch.

Lukyanenko’s Watch series is built upon an interesting metaphysics and is peppered with Russian humor.

Allen Steele is a marvelous hard science fiction writer. The books of his Coyote Trilogy are top-notch, as is Spindrift. Galaxy Blues continues the story.

After much planning, Jules Truffaut decides to sneak aboard a Coyote Federation flagship with the aim of starting a new life on Coyote. After stealing a shuttle and crash landing on Coyote, he finds himself being escorted to Coyote’s prison, there to await his deportation back to earth. But before he can be deported, a billionaire entrepreneur makes him an offer he can’t refuse.