Apple Turnover Murder

The latest installment in Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swenson mysteries was creative and well written. Hannah is still undecided about which man in her life to marry, and both of the men are giving off mixed signals. Our cookie baking sleuth finds yet another body and worse than that she wanted the victim dead. As we head back to Lake Eden, MN, during the annual charity fundraising campaign Hannah tries to figure out who had the best reason for wanting the victim dead, while trying to make sure they don't run out of apple turnovers. Dealing with her harried sister and keeping her cookie shop on track are a full time job to begin with, but add murder and you're left with one sleep-deprived sleuth. As usual it kept me guessing until the end about the who and why that make up a good murder mystery.--Sara G.

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A Carrion Death

This first book in a new mystery series by Michael Stanley introduces Detective Kubu. "Kubu" is the Setswana word for hippopotamus, and a fitting nickname for this large but tireless employee of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department. Kubu loves opera, food and drink in large quantites, and his wife Joy. Kubu dislikes being yelled at by his supervisor or his sister-in-law, but it happens with alarming regularity.

A deceptively slow pace brings the reader to the edge of her seat in this intricately plotted story featuring diamond smugglers and bushmen of the Kalahari. The details of modern life and landscape in Africa are worthy of any travel book.

Michael Stanley is the pen-name for the duo of Michael Sears and Stanely Trollip. Trollip divides his time between South Africa and Minneapolis--hence this first Detective Kubu story was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. --Jenny H.

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The Dog Says How

This memoir by Minnesota playwright and storyteller Kevin Kling is as funny as it is poignant. "Christmas dinner. All the relatives start to arrive: Aunt Charlene and Aunt Floy, two aunts that hug me, call me by my brother's name and say how much I've grown." Boyhood memories include taxidermy, Lutheran guilt, drive in movies and snow days. But some of the chapters are an adult's perspective on topics like personal geography and losing a parent. Throughout, Kling writes with lyricism and a stand-up comic's sense of pace. He zooms from personal minutiae to universal insights with a smoothness that made the book a finalist last year for the Minnesota Book Award. --Jenny H.

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Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

Jack Weatherford, a professor at Macalester College here in St. Paul, will change the way you think about world history. In this quick-reading and accessible book, he shows how Europeans were influenced by the technology, goods, and ideas of Native Americans. Weatherford argues that European nations couldn't have afforded expensive colonization attempts without the gold and silver looted from the Aztecs and Inca, and wouldn't have had the colonists but for a population explosion fed by Native American crops like corn and potatoes. If you thought Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond was a real eye-opener, you will want to see what Indian Givers has to offer. -- János

Request Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World from the Saint Paul Public Library.