“Smiley’s People” by John le Carre – End of the Oldest Line
John le Carre has not only entertained us, but shaped our collective view of espionage through his innumerable novels, but I believe few have caught the readers’ imaginations as well as those of the Karla Trilogy. In Smiley’s People, the final chapter, we follow a retired George Smiley who finds himself summoned to identify the remains of an old spy he used to manage. Trying to piece together his secrets, Smiley finds himself on a final collision course with his old nemesis, Karla himself.
“Death on the Nile” by Agatha Christie – An Open Heart to Evil
Even the most dogged detectives deserve to rest and retire, but such is not the fate awaiting Hercule Poirot, on-duty until his last heartbeat. In Death on the Nile, one of Agatha Christie’s most celebrated novels, we follow the now-retired detective as he gets pulled back into the thick of a murder while vacationing in Egypt and sailing down the Nile river. What’s worse, the murderer has no intention of stopping, and as the bodies keep piling up, so does the pressure on Poirot to solve the impossible scenario before him.
“The Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson – Fair of the New World
Erik Larson has a knack for bringing history to life through his meticulously-researched books, and in The Devil in the White City, he takes us to 1890s Chicago, as it prepares to launch its own World Fair. However grandiose the plan to “out-Eiffel Eiffel” might be, it is rife with unpredictable challenges and complications, some of them deadly. Meanwhile, a now-notorious serial killer is busy setting up shop, using the fair and the booming city as his own hunting ground.
“Island” by Aldous Huxley – A Life of Self-Realization
Aldous Huxley has spent much of his intellectual power conceiving of utopic societies, seeing before him the heights humanity could one day reach, before promptly tearing them down and exposed their impossible flaws. In his last novel, Island, he tells the story of a journalist, Will Farnaby, who shipwrecks on the island of Pala, whose inhabitants have formed a bizarre and yet seemingly-idyllic society. Nevertheless, the threat of the outside world always looms large.
“If You Tell” by Gregg Olsen – Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Short Summary Many have perhaps forgotten the story of the Knoteks (or never heard of it, since it happened in the early 2000s), but Gregg Olsen is certainly here to rectify that with his true crime hit book, If You Tell. In it, he follows the lives of Nikki, Sami and Tori Knotek, who have the misfortune of being daughters to an insanely evil and psychotic mother, Michelle, whose crimes made all the national headlines back in 2004.
