Literature

On this week’s Shelf Discovery, Kristin sets out on a classic spy mission with the 1941 thriller Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes.

Title: Above Suspicion

Author: Helen MacInnes

Pages: 343

Publisher: Titan Books

ISBN: 978-1781161531

And read Kristin's full review on NightsAndWeekends.com.

Of all the posters plastered around Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters — "Move Fast and Break Things," "Done Is Better Than Perfect" and "Fail Harder" — Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has a favorite: "What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?"

"[It's] something that I think is really important and I think very motivating," Sandberg tells NPR's Renee Montagne. " ... I wrote in my book, what I would do if I wasn't afraid is, I would speak out more on behalf of women."

Back in 1988, it wasn't until the 62nd round of the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft that the Los Angeles Dodgers finally picked Mike Piazza. Nobody expected him to make it in the big leagues. But he did. He made his major league debut with the Dodgers on Sept. 1, 1992, and he hit his first home run just 12 days later.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

On this week’s Shelf Discovery, Kristin braces herself for the end of the world in author Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Time Untime.

Title: Time Untime

Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Pages: 414

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

ISBN: 978-0312546618

And read Kristin's full review on NightsAndWeekends.com.

If you've ever shot the breeze, had a heart-to-heart or bent somebody's ear — in fact, if you've ever talked at all — odds are you've used an idiom. These sometimes bizarre phrases are a staple of conversation, and more than 10,000 of them are collected in the latest edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, which came out this week.

It was no less than the master of dystopian fiction, George Orwell, who noted in a 1946 essay that "political language has to consist largely of euphemism. ... Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air ...

On this week’s Shelf Discovery, Kristin explores New York City’s underground with Adam Mansbach’s Rage Is Back.

Title: Rage Is Back

Author: Adam Mansbach

Pages: 304

Publisher: Viking Press

ISBN: 978-0670026128

And read Kristin's full review on NightsAndWeekends.com.

André Brink is one of the most well-known anti-apartheid writers in South Africa. His latest novel Philida, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is set in 1832 in the South African Cape, just two years before emancipation.

The title character lodges a complaint against her master, Francois Brink, who is also the father of her four children. He'd promised her freedom, but then backs out and marries a wealthy white woman.