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During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

From assassins coming to kill a potential presidential candidate to thieves crashing an auction of costly wines, the stories in Ridley Pearson's crime thrillers may be fiction but their setting of Sun Valley, Idaho, is very real.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has taken U.S. readers by storm. Not since the arrival of Ikea on these shores has Sweden made such an inroad into the American home and imagination. But critic Maureen Corrigan says the impressive "Ice Age" of Nordic mystery writing is well under way.

Jobs have become one of the most important barometers in assessing the president's performance, and the latest report shows that, in some ways, the economy has slipped backward. The anemic economic recovery is taking a political toll on the president, amplifying his other challenges.

In James' Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer is wise enough to understand that if you're not happy without a man, you certainly won't be happy with one. Writer Rhoda Janzen loves the book because it shows what a woman does once she acknowledges her own complicity in the life she has chosen.

Author Anthony Horowitz loves nothing more than when a young fan asks him to sign a battered copy of a book in his Alex Rider series — young adult fiction featuring a skateboard-riding teen spy. When it comes to his favorite thriller, he recommends Ian Fleming's "Crime de la Crime" in Goldfinger.

Friends Brian Sykora and Roger Horowitz create fruit ice pops inspired by the traditional Mexican frozen treat paletas. Though they're not making a living from it yet, the entrepreneurs are selling Pleasant Pops from a bicycle cart at a weekly farmers market. Their best seller? Cucumber chili.

As a librarian and a reader, Nancy Pearl scours the shelves in search of hidden treasures — titles you may have missed. Her findings include two chilling thrillers, one exquisite 1960s memoir, a lively biography of George Orwell, an example of historical fiction at its very best, and much more fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Few people have heard of Julio Lobo, but his history is intertwined with that of his home country. Lobo was Cuba's richest businessman until the revolution drove him into exile.

Critics have said for years that minorities were being unfairly penalized by tough penalties for crack possession.