WIRED

Julie Garwood

Berkley Books

Allison Trent doesn't look like a hacker. In fact, when she's not in college working on her degree, she models on the side. But behind her gorgeous face is a brilliant mind for computers and her real love is writing--and hacking--code. Her dream is to write a new security program that could revolutionize the tech industry. Hotshot FBI agent Liam Scott has a problem: a leak deep within his own department. He needs the skills of a top-notch hacker to work on a highly sensitive project: to secretly break into the FBI servers and find out who the traitor is. But he can't use one of his own. He finds the perfect candidate in Allison. Only, there's one problem--she wants nothing to do with his job and turns him down flat. What Liam doesn't know is that Allison is hiding secrets that she doesn't want the FBI to uncover. But Liam will do nearly anything to persuade her to join his team, even break a few rules if that's what it takes. A temptation that could put his job--and both of their futures--on the line.

Persons Unknown

Susie Steiner

Random House

As dusk falls, a young man staggers through a park, far from home, bleeding from a stab wound. He dies where he falls, cradled by a stranger, a woman's name on his lips in his last seconds of life. Detective Manon Bradshaw handles only cold cases. Five months pregnant, in pursuit of a work-life balance rather than romantic love, she's focused on being a good mother to her two children: her adopted twelve-year-old son, Fly Dent, and the new baby. But the man died just yards from the police station where she works, so Manon can't help taking an interest. And as she sidles in on the briefing she learns that the victim, a banker from London worth millions, is more closely linked to her than she could have imagined. When the case begins to circle in on Manon's home and her family, she finds herself pitted against the colleagues she once held dear: Davy Walker and Harriet Harper. Can Manon separate what she knows about the people she loves from the suspicion hanging over them? Can she investigate the evidence just as she would with any other case?

Made for Love

Alissa Nutting

Ecco Press

Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane--his extremely lifelike sex doll--as her roommates. Life with Hazel's father is strained at best, but her only alternative seems even bleaker. She's just run out on her marriage to Byron Gogol, CEO and founder of Gogol Industries, a monolithic corporation hell-bent on making its products and technologies indispensable in daily life. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked. But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human "mind-meld," Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. The world she escapes into is a far cry from the dry and clinical bubble she's been living in, a world populated with a whole host of deviant oddballs. As Hazel tries to carve out a new life for herself in this uncharted territory, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. His threats become more and more sinister, and Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron's virtual clutches once and for all. Perceptive and compulsively readable, Made for Love is at once an absurd, raunchy comedy and a dazzling, profound meditation marriage, monogamy, and family.

On Trails: An Exploration

Robert Moor

Simon & Schuster

"The best outdoors book of the year" (Sierra Club), from a debut talent who's been compared to Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, and Jared Diamond. On Trails is a wondrous exploration of how trails help us understand the world--from invisible ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet.

In 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds. He learned the tricks of master trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee trails, and traced the origins of our road networks and the Internet. In each chapter, Moor interweaves his adventures with findings from science, history, philosophy, and nature writing. Throughout, Moor reveals how this single topic--the oft-overlooked trail--sheds new light on a wealth of age-old questions: How does order emerge out of chaos? How did animals first crawl forth from the seas and spread across continents? How has humanity's relationship with nature and technology shaped the world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life? With a breathtaking arc that spans from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, the whole of On Trails allows us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew.

Together, Closer: The Art and Science of Intimacy in Friendship, Love, and Family

Giovanni Frazzetto

Penguin Books

For readers of Oliver Sacks and Stephen Grosz, a wondrous, deeply felt book that explores intimacy through the stories of eight relationships, from the author of Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love. The bonds we are capable of feeling toward other people--how we know and belong to one another--provide fascinating glimpses into the intricacies of human behavior. Intimacy is that moment when our true identity is revealed to another, when traumas, fears, and ambitions are shared. Through the ordinary stories of eight relationships, Giovanni Frazzetto has woven an extraordinary narrative of togetherness. He shares the details of romantic partners trapped in a long cycle of attraction and rejection, a single woman who finds herself deep in a fictional relationship with a boyfriend she has invented out of frustration with her love life, and a couple absorbed in a years-long clandestine affair. But intimacy can also extend beyond romantic encounters: coping with the loss of a loved one, dealing with overbearing or emotionally distant parents, or celebrating the joys and comforts of our dearest friends.

The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball's Most Historic Record

John Eisenberg

Houghton Mifflin

When Cal Ripken Jr. began his career with the Baltimore Orioles at age twenty-one, he had no idea he would someday beat the historic record of playing 2,130 games in a row, a record set forty-two years before by the fabled "Iron Horse" of the New York Yankees, Lou Gehrig. Ripken went on to surpass that record by 502 games, and the baseball world was floored. Few feats in sports history have generated more acclaim. But the record spawns an array of questions. When did someone first think it was a good idea to play in so many games without taking a day off? Who owned the record before Gehrig? Whose streak--Gehrig's or Ripken's--was the more difficult achievement? Through probing research, meticulous analysis, and colorful parallel storytelling, The Streak delves into this impressive but controversial milestone, unraveling Gehrig's at-times unwitting pursuit of that goal (Babe Ruth used to think Gehrig crazy for wanting to play every game), and Ripken's fierce determination to stay in the lineup and continue to contribute whatever he could even as his skills diminished with age. The question looms: How do these streaks compare? There were so many factors: the length of seasons, the number of teams in the major leagues, the inclusion of nonwhite players, travel, technology, medical advances, and even media are all part of the equation. This is a book that captures the deeply American appreciation--as seen in the sport itself--for a workaday mentality and that desire to be there for the game every time it called.