Long Time Gone by J. A. Jance

Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins. ISBN: 0-688-13824-1

Once upon a time, a long time ago, a five year old girl named Bonnie, according to her version of events, saw two grownups do something really bad to a very nice neighbor woman named Mimi.

The Patriots Club

By Christopher Reich

Delacorte

ISBN 0-385-33728-0

Everything is finally going quite well for Thomas Bolden.

H. P. Lovecraft: Tales

Edited by Peter Straub

Publisher: Library Classics of the United States. ISBN: 1-931082-72-3

I want to offer you three absolutely unassailable arguments why you must have this book.

The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra
(Translated by Alberto Manguel)
Atria (Simon and Schuster), March 2006
ISBN 0-7432-8764-9
Hardcover

Let me begin by whole-heartedly recommending The Secret Supper, Javier Sierra’s international best-seller which was originally published in 2004 as La Cena Secreta in Spain and is now finally available in Alberto Manguel’s excellent English translation.

However, before you begin reading The Secret Supper, one of the most provocative and interesting novels of the last decade, you might want to prepare yourself in several ways:

• First, absolutely forget about other recent novels that attempt to develop similar fictional themes (e.g., The Da Vinci Code and its many clones) because Sierra’s singularly remarkable novel deserves special consideration for the ways in which the author masterfully confronts the theme of conflict between faith, reason, passion, and truth;
• second, consult the library or the Internet and find yourself a viewable copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, which you will probably want to consult frequently as you travel along the labyrinth of Sierra’s plot; the original of The Last Supper, incidentally, appears on the north wall of the refectory of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan;
• third, take some time to reacquaint yourself with the story of Jesus’ final days, the crucifixion, and the aftermath as that story appears in the Christian gospels of the New Testament;
• and fourth, keep in mind Leonardo da Vinci’s advice to one of the characters in The Secret Supper: “Everything, absolutely everything has a hidden meaning.”

The action begins in 1497.

The Empress of India by Michael Kurland
St. Martin’s Minotaur, February 2006
ISBN 0-312-29144-2
Hardcover

In early 1890, the Bank of England needs help. A shipment of gold (in exchange for newly minted paper currency) will be coming to London from India on board The Empress of India, and all sorts of potential problems stand in the way of a successful (and uninterrupted) transfer.