A Right to Die by Rex Stout

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

In 1964, a wealthy young white woman is killed in Harlem.  Nero Wolfe and Archie must find out who really did it.

Audio:  5 hrs. 6 min.
Print:  190 pages

The Cat from Hue: A Vietnam War Story

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

Along with wartime portraits and a chronicle of daily life in a war zone, this book reveals the author's personal antiwar sentiment and admiration of American soldiers.  He brings back a cat who adopted him in Hue.

Audio:  31 hrs. 39 min.
Print:  864 pages

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She tells this heart-breaking, gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the doomed, unprepared Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing, particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has a beautiful and personal side as well:  rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; while business-minded Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British expatriate come to Nigeria to write a book about Igbo-Ukwu art.  How this group is impacted by the brutality of war will stay with the reader for a very long time.  It is a searing history lesson in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing. 

543 pages -- 18 hours, 56 minutes

Hellhound on His Trail

Author: Hampton Sides
Audio Hours: 15.2 hours
Pages: 480


Cover blurb:
On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Motel. The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened. As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King’s assassin that would lead them across two continents. With a blistering, cross-cutting narrative that draws on a wealth of dramatic unpublished documents, Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers, delivers a non-fiction thriller in the tradition of William Manchester's The Death of a President and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. With Hellhound On His Trail, Sides shines a light on the largest manhunt in American history and brings it to life for all to see.


My take:
This is a great book. Vibrant and detailed without being too boring. I listened to the book and wasn't bored at any point. The author is thorough, he does a great job intertwining all the accounts and information without it being too cumbersome for the reader. Anyone will like this book, especially those with an affinity for history.

Love, Janis by Laura Joplin

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

Her sister Janis was a hippie at heart, a blues singer, and a loyal and loving member of her family at home.  Many stories from the time she left home to her death. 

Audio:  14 hrs. 16 min.

Print:  394 pages