The teenage children of a convicted serial killer try to prove his innocence when a true-crime podcast reinvigorates interest in the case. Their fate intersects with cults, killers, cops, and convicts on the backroads of West Virginia in one brutal, unforgettable crash.

What does it mean to bring progress—schools, electricity, roads, running water—to paradise? Can our consumer culture and desire to “do good” really be good for a community that has survived contentedly for centuries without us? In October 2008, climbing expedition leader and attorney, Jeffrey Rasley, led a trek to a village in a remote valley in the Solu region of Nepal named Basa. His group of three adventurers was only the third group of white people ever seen in this village of subsistence farmers. What he found was a people thoroughly unaffected by Western consumer-culture values. They had no running water, electricity, or anything that moves on wheels. Each family lived in a beautiful, hand-chiseled stone house with a flower garden. Beyond what they already had, it seemed all they wanted was education for the children. He helped them finish a school building already in progress, and then they asked for help getting electricity to their village. Bringing Progress to Paradise describes Rasley’s transformation from adventurer to committed philanthropist. We are attracted to the simpler way of life in these communities, and we are changed by our experience of it. They are attracted to us, because we bring economic benefits. Bringing Progress to Paradise offers Rasley’s critical reflection on the tangled relationship between tourists and locals in “exotic” locales and the effect of Western values on some of the most remote locations on earth.

In his bestselling work of “comic sociology,” David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class—those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation. Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.

Could summer in your neighborhood turn out to be better than an exotic holiday overseas? Ina and her new neighbor Vilmer are about to find out… na has no plans for the summer. Suddenly, she finds herself lying in front of the entire class, telling them she is going to the Mediterranean for three weeks. And then the lie keeps growing and growing via social media. The only problem is that the new boy in class has moved to Ina’s neighborhood and he will easily find out that she is not in the Mediterranean. Perhaps the best summer holiday is the one you thought would be the worst? A warm, believable story about friendship, first love, and social media from Norwegian author Marianne Kaurin.

The novel is based on a true story, my own story, which happened in 1998 in the Eastern Caribbean and in Western Europe. I was in my mid-fifties, recovering from a radioactive divorce, loss of home and family and my company, a successful ad agency. I had simply reached a point in my life where I had to make some new choices about the future, which at the time seemed like it would be shorter and less financially rewarding than what had gone before. I knew, however, that my broad life experiences would serve me well in whatever opportunities presented themselves. An attorney friend of mine, who was active in international finance and offshore banking, introduced me to Sir James “Son” Mitchell, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, in the Eastern Caribbean. I was hired to set up and promote banking conferences in Puerto Rico and London to introduce the island’s new banking laws to the world of international finance. And we had some encouraging early results. Until one night in San Juan, Son Mitchell asked me to get involved as a PR consultant in a murder trial in Kingstown, the capitol. Two rich hillbillies from West Virginia, on a coke and alcohol tour of the islands on their very large sailboat, had murdered a very popular, local water taxi driver. The couple was incarcerated, but had hired an expensive legal team with major press connections to crush the reputation of Son and his government’s legal system. I got involved, we had success early on, but then an extremely rich and powerful Italian “family” got involved. What started after that was a James Bondian adventure that became quite dangerous personally. And made me thankful for my experience as a Navy officer in Viet Nam. Quite naturally, a lot of beautiful women were involved in the process, and thankfully I got out alive. I wrote the novel in the first person because I did not want to stray from the spine of the story, although as a writer, I felt privileged to speak of my personal experiences growing up in the South, and the marvelous blessings that had come my way over the years. I hope you like the book. Dick Reed, author