Contagion the DVD is an engrossing, totally arresting movie!  Not for children, the reality and ugliness and fear of a major pandemic is terrifyingly portrayed.

The Jane Austen Book club is reading Margaret Maron this year. She's a North Carolina native whose first novel, "Bootlegger's Daughter" won every major mystery award for best first novel. That book was the first to feature Deborah Knott, whose colorful Daddy was a bootlegger. Deborah is an attorney who decides to take a stand against "mean-minded judicial pettiness" and take on the Old Boy's Club by running for a retiring judge's seat.

Unless you have been living in a bunker the last few months, you can’t have missed the promotion for the new movie “The Hunger Games.”  Before the movie, was the book, however, and it quickly became a huge publishing sensation.  Two other books followed in the series and I remember back to when the last book was due.

Restless in the Grave starts out with an atypical opening sequence for Dana Stabenow’s Alaska-based mysteries.  It starts on a hilltop in Helmand province, Afghanistan, where a young Afghani, kidnapped and trained by the Taliban for this one mission, aims a brand new high-tech weapon at a helicopter, killing all inside.

The scene switches to Alaska, where the protagonists of Stabenow’s two Alaskan series, Liam Campbell and Kate Shugak meet up.&

The end of an epoch has come and shown us all that the technological sea change which is the computer has reached the high tide mark on the shore.  Encyclopedia Britannica will no longer offer a print edition.