If you have read The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo and its sequel, The Girl who Played with Fire by Larsson, then you will definitely want to read the concluding book The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. If you haven’t read the first two books, you will want to after reading this one.

Lizbeth Salander’s last encounter with her father and half brother didn’t go well. She was shot, buried and left for dead. What Zalachenko didn’t expect was that his daughter, Lizbeth, would climb right back out, find a weapon, and return the favor.

Both arrive in the same hospital, but Lizbeth acquires an alley in Dr. Jonassen, the surgeon responsible for removing the bullet lodged in her skull. Two and two are not adding up to four for the good doctor as he watches her struggle to make a full recovery. When he is contacted by Journalist Mickel Blomkvist, and made party to some of the facts regarding her upcoming trial, the doctor feels his suspicions and caution is justified. He can hold the process at bay only so long, however. “I can’t keep them out any longer,” he confesses to Lizbeth one afternoon during his rounds.

“Let them come,” she replies in a chillingly calm whisper. You can just feel her gearing up for battle.

Lizbeth must prepare to face a gauntlet of corrupt mental institution officials, government agents who covered up for the brutalities of her mercenary father, and a court system that is once again trying to have her declared insane. The only way out of this mess is to plough straight through it, kick the hornet’s nest, and let the stings fall where they may.

This is one of those books that come along all too infrequently. Set in 14th Century England, the drama in this book revolves around the tension between the old, pagan beliefs of village residents and the new Christian beliefs put forth by the local priest. Tension also exists between a group of women, a part of the Beguine movement from Flanders. These women are from all walks of life, some having traveled from Flanders, some coming from the local area. They are religious, but are not overseen by any religious institution and, thus, live a life of freedom that is unusual for the time. When climatic changes bring about a variety of disasters, the Beguines are blamed and tensions between the women and the villagers erupt. Within the Beguine community there is also a tension between the disgraced daughter of the local lord who is given a book by a Beguine woman, Marguerite Porete, who was labeled a heretic and was burned at the stake. This book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, questions the need for clerical intervention between believer and God. All the various tensions are skillfully handled through depiction of strong characters. As the book seems to hurtle on towards disaster on all sides the reader is left breathless and apprehensive as no hope seems to be possible for any of those who fill the pages of this book. The historical research is top notch and Ms. Maitland's depiction of medieval society is accurate and does not sugar coat the realities of 14th Century life. From start to finish this is a fantastic book!

If you only read one book this year, please read this one. This book is for parents, teachers, caregivers, or anyone how loves kids. Why? Because the internet is accessible to children of all ages, and finding safe and healthy ways to engage in social media use is an essential survival tool.

Ms.Shawn Edgington starts by relating to the reader what at first sounds like the harmless story of her daughter’s encounter with a boy on the Myspace. com site. Here is a mother who thought all her bases were covered by getting her daughter to adhere to a few straight forward rules; but the situation goes horribly wrong in spite of all her precautions.

No stranger to risk management, as CEO of an insurance firm, Ms. Edgington approved each friend request, kept the login and password out of her daughter’s control and tried to be present while her daughter was actively online. When the first negative posts began to appear she thought simple monitoring and providing positive reinforcement of her daughter’s self esteem were enough. What happened next will make you want to cry.

Children are using social media as a means of seeking affirmation and building relationships at a time when they want to know how the world sees them. The feedback they are getting could potentially be deadly. Bullying and other forms of abuse can be going on right under your nose. The good news is there are positive actions and methods to combat negative encounters. Know what the signs are and what your child maybe feeling but not saying. Know what it means when there are too many friends, or too few. Be alert for phrases that can indicate unusual sexual interest during an online chat or post. Lean how to print out chat transcripts, block cyber-bullies and more. You can make a difference!

Read the book, get evolved, and start early to dialogue with the young people in your life.

A charming story of the Queen of England who discovers the joy of reading, rather accidentally. She stumbles across a mobile library and immediately catches the reading bug. This bug slowly changes the Queen as her reading habits increase, which cause her staff (equerries, a new word I learned) some distress.

I could relate to the Queens' process into becoming a "reader" because there is something intimate that happens to you when you become a "dedicated reader", it expands your world. It causes you to question and investigate everything around you and of course want to read more.

A brilliant book depicting what reading can do to you.

Oh yes, one last thing, the ending was unexpected, funny and just perfect.

A haunting collection of stories, Stay Awake, features men and women pursued by their past misdeeds, where dreams and reality mingle to form moments of nightmare and regret.

Healing after job loss: 100 practical ideas is a book that inspires the reader to think positively after being laid off. Taking this pivotal step, the person will overcome negative feelings and personal pressures in order to establish a recovery process in which the self-identity will be strengthen. Polishing the spirit will make the person shine and rediscover skills and passions that were hidden in the dark room for so many years. Working from the inside out will give the person the tools necessary to conquer the world. Visualization and transformation are the two words that will empower the reader to go on in the new life search. Some of the strategies exposed in this book are related with the acknowledgement of the job loss; the time that is needed to mourn sad feelings; the renewed set of intentions for the new beginner; the updated group of actions that must be taken in order to accomplish the main goal; and how to allow transformation for the rejuvenated person to become. These techniques will aid the reader to achieve goals in the revitalized road map of life. Alan D. Wolfelt and Kirby J. Duvall emphasis the need to connect with nature as a way to find happiness and enjoy life at the maximum level.

This is available only through OverDrive, our electronic e-book media, but it's well worth the effort. This is the book you want at your finger tips when the MIT version of the free in-browser application App Inventor goes live.

In this case you will want to work in two browser windows:one to have the e-book open and one to manipulate the in-browser app. The book will walk you through setting up your environment, working with an emulator, construting your content, signing and packaging your finished app, and much more.

This is a must-have for anyone who is interested in creating an application for the Android operating system but was afraid to learn to code!

I found Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich full of opinionated diatribe without being deeply rooted in factual information. The author would start with something from history or a scientific study then she would veer off into a lengthy personal narrative. The book needed some serious editing because the same information/opinions would crop up again and again. While some of her points seemed well thought out, others were more personal. For instance her chapter on how corporate America's attempt to spin lay-offs as positive--don't think of this as an end, think of this as an oportunity--made a lot of sense. On the other hand her vicious and very personal dislike for Martin Seligman, a prominent researcher in the field of positive thinking was very unpleasant and detracted from the veracity of the author's argument against research-based positive thinking. I typically like my nonfiction more rooted in fact, perhaps this created a bias against this book in my mind. At times it seemed as if I'd strayed into the print version of an obnoxious and infammatory talk show.

Anne does it again! Remember when you just could put down Interview with the Vampire? This new look at the wolf in all of us is like a return to the good old days of Ricedom.

This book reminds me to the 1978 movie “Wolfen” in which the pack singled out and judged humans who strayed into their territory. Here Rice adds a twist by allowing her main character to be fully human in all ways except during the full moon. During those times he is compelled to violence (either as a doer or a viewer), and his saving grace seems to be that his targets are “evil” in some form.

This book is a thinking reader’s version of the werewolf story; it’s full of moments of calm humanity and intellectual aspirations. This book is also a look at our darker passions and the moral code constructed to hold them in check.

Rice has risen from her slumber of the last few lack-luster titles and is giving us one of her best.

Hello again dear Reader, She's in trouble with the Guild of Sage-craft - again. Wynn, after a brief meeting with old friends Leesil, Chap (the fey-Wolf),and Magiere (the Dhampire), is dragged before the Premin Council for questioning. They want to know everything about her little side trip to the hidden Seatt and what she found in the Dwarven depths.

Meanwhile, the elves of the Eastern Continent are hunting the "Pale Demon" and her companions. They are determined to take her alive, but others of the group just await an opportunity for vengeance.

Wynn is held captive inside the Guild and her friends are in mortal danger. How will she gain access to the last translations of the ancient Scroll of the Enemy? How will she be able to use that knowledge to avert the destruction that is foretold in the ancient writings if the royal family and her own superiors will not work together with her friends? For it is her friends (including Chane) who hold the key to survival.

This is interesting;--all the subject headings for this books denote that it is about the physical make-up of neo-Tudor buildings, or as the book dubs it, Tudoresque architecture. But the subject matter is really about the historical, psychological and sociological imputus behind various styles of architecture, the how and why of Tudoresque as a useable past and ever popular present. As such this is a facinating book, looking at why people prefer what they do. The authors are persuasive, erudite in the many relevant fields and plain fun to read if you like this sort of thing. And I do.

This is an excellent short intoduction to Dickens. Because short, it must cut many corners, but it does not shortchange them, leaving arrows pointing in the right direction. Best of all, the author has a interested, appreciative but not whitewashing attitude to both the man and his works. She expects no perfections in either and as such is well suited to her subject, whose multifacited greatness was offset by weaknesses particularly galling to modern tastes. So--if you want to place the life in context with the works, or see if there is anything to this Dickens fellow after all, this is a good place to start.

It is hard to review a book when, after reading it, you are not quite sure why it was written. True, Jessica Mitford gives reasons for it in her introduction, but they do not seem to to be quite enough. So there must have been some private undertones, perhaps the need to quell false rumors, dispell a debt, honor an old committment deeper than any testified to, all of which lead to the reader reading on, but all the time waiting for realization, for a rabbit to emerge from a hat.

No rabbit, however, appears. And so this story of the difficult life of a privilaged child of aristocracy who was disturbed by said privilages, tried to do something about it, but just ended up being blown all about by the winds of the 20th century, feels oddly incomplete. One gets a firmer sense of the indomable Mitford than of her subject. What is wanted is perhaps a more objective work on Toynbee, something with more facts, points of view and excerpts from his own work, which we are often told is excellent, but would like to find out for ourselves. In short this works alright as a teaser, but not so great as a full meal.

Told through the eyes of a horse named Joey, this is a story set during WW I. Joey has been lovingly raised on a farm where he shares the work with an older mare named Zoey. Albert, the young son of the farm's owner, loves Joey and is heartbroken when his father sells him to the British Army. Joey is soon sent abroad to fight in the war. The author depicts the war realistically, but with care since the book is written for children. Joey's war experiences include the loss of many of those close to him, both equine and human. But the book ends on a happy note. Beautifully written with a strong anti-war message, War Horse, should engage readers of all ages with it's simple, touching story.

You've see the show? Well, here is the book. And if you like the show, you will like the book. The book describes what pickers are, what they do and how Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz became pickers, first regular pickers and then pickers for a TV show. With all sorts of folksy side stories illuminatingt he way, this guide does not so much add knowledge as dispence a few tidbits of fact, mostly reenforcing stuff the show has already communicated. In short, too short on original content to buy, but a perfect book to borrow from your local library.

The third Ruth Galloway mystery continues the story from the first two with Ruth having given birth to a daughter, Kate. When she returns to work she gets drawn into another mystery when the bones of six men are discovered on a local beach. Uncovered by coastal erosion, the bodies are bound together which of course indicates murder. DCI Nelson and Ruth come face to face with each other while they work to figure out who the bodies belong to and how they were killed. It is apparent that someone local knows about the murders and this person will go to any length to make sure the truth is never discovered. Further complicating the situation is Ruth's friend from Bosnia, Tatjana, who comes to stay with Ruth while she is lecturing at a nearby university. Ruth and Tatjana met and became good friends when Ruth was working in Bosnia identifying bodies buried in mass graves during the violence there. Ruth is as fiesty and independent as ever, but she begins to doubt her parenting abilities when Tatjana accuses her of putting her career above her child. Told with humor and full of believable characters, this Ruth Galloway mystery doesn't fail to satisfy!

The Janus Stone takes up Ruth Galloway's story just a few months after the ending of the first book in this series, The Crossing Places. Ruth is pregnant and determined to keep her baby despite the challenges of single motherhood. She is drawn into another mystery when bones are discovered buried on the site of a former children's home which is being demolished in otder to build ritzy condominiums. Ruth is drawn into the investigation and is once again paired with DCI Harry Nelson. Funny, down to earth, and totally believable, Ruth Galloway is a pleasure to spend time with. The other characters in The Janus Stone are just as well-developed as is Ruth. Some we met in the first book and some are new, but they are all engaging.

The poetry of common sense is often humor. A good comic straight-person (the crazed other can be external or internal,) taps into a shared vein of frustration and amazement that most of us feel when the world (or us, or another) loses at least a portion of its freakin mind. Since the world (etc.) often loses at least a portion of its mind, that makes for a lot of good material.

Here Fey, who is a master of common sense humor, uses portions of her own life as material. This is one of those celebrity memoirs that uses only surface material from the celebrity's life, so there is no danger of pathos getting in the way of a good time. You need a winter vacation but can not even afford a sun lamp -- read this book. You'll not only feel refreshed afterwards, you might even feel that common sense and intelligence have a decent chance after all.

This book is perfect for anyone interested in poetry who finds the form of older poetry, all that rhyme and meter stuff, off-putting. Oliver is a good guide through the basics, and communicates her poet's sensitivity to, and excitement over, language and its poetic uses. This is concise introduction that is useful both inside classrooms and out.

This is a worthwhile book on several levels. A survey of the British fictions that dealt with matters of faith, most especially the three divisions of the Anglican Church: High, Low and Broad, it is written well enough to interest non-scholars who have enjoy reading novels by George Eliot or George MacDonald or other novelists of the time. It is also good for scholars of Victorian England or anyone interested in the intellectual heritage of the Church of England.