MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

PATRICIA CORNWELL

In "Hornet's Nest" by Patricia Cornwell, readers are plunged into a gripping world of crime and suspense set in Charlotte, North Carolina. As Deputy Chief Virginia West and her rookie partner investigate a series of brutal and baffling murders, they uncover a web of corruption and deceit that threatens to shake the city to its core. Cornwell weaves a complex and thrilling narrative, delving into the minds of both the victims and the perpetrators, keeping readers on the edge of their seats until the final page. "Hornet's Nest" is a riveting mystery that showcases Cornwell's talent for crafting compelling characters and twisty plots.

London. LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. 1997. 374p.

By Rosemary A. Kelanic

Black Gold and Blackmail seeks to explain why great powers adopt such different strategies to protect their oil access from politically motivated disruptions. In extreme cases, such as Imperial Japan in 1941, great powers fought wars to grab oil territory in anticipation of a potential embargo by the Allies; in other instances, such as Germany in the early Nazi period, states chose relatively subdued measures like oil alliances or domestic policies to conserve oil. What accounts for this variation? Fundamentally, it is puzzling that great powers fear oil coercion at all because the global market makes oil sanctions very difficult to enforce. Rosemary A. Kelanic argues that two variables determine what strategy a great power will adopt: the petroleum deficit, which measures how much oil the state produces domestically compared to what it needs for its strategic objectives; and disruptibility, which estimates the susceptibility of a state's oil imports to military interdiction—that is, blockade. Because global markets undercut the effectiveness of oil sanctions, blockade is in practice the only true threat to great power oil access. That, combined with the devastating consequences of oil deprivation to a state's military power, explains why states fear oil coercion deeply despite the adaptive functions of the market. Together, these two variables predict a state's coercive vulnerability, which determines how willing the state will be to accept the costs and risks attendant on various potential strategies. Only those great powers with large deficits and highly disruptible imports will adopt the most extreme strategy: direct control of oil through territorial conquest.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. 230 p

By Rohinton Mistry

With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

NY. Vintage. 1997. 603p.