Shutter Island is a psychological thriller, written by Dennis Lehane, the author of Mystic River.  You may have read the book or seen the movie.

It's 1954.  U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (soon to be played by Leonardo de Caprio in a Martin Scorsese film) and his new partner have orders to go to a small island near the northeast coast.  The island is home to the federally funded Ashcliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. 

They are there to investigate the disappearance of a patient, a murderess.  However, there seems to be no way that she could have escaped from the asylum.  The hospital administrator won't give them straight answers to their questions.  It seems he is hiding something (think psychological treatment in the 50's). 

Teddy soon feels that just about everything and everyone on the island is suspect.  As hospital staff try to convince Teddy that his suspicions are unfounded, he realizes that there may be no escape from the island.  Is anything as it seems on Shutter Island? 

When you start reading this book, don't give up if you think it is a little slow.  That is only the beginning.  Soon you will get caught up in its escalating intensity and plot twists.  You won't be able to turn the pages fast enough.  I know it kept me up late at night.

I'm a big fan of C.J. Box's Joe Pickett mystery series.  Open Season - his first novel - was nominated for a host of "first novel" awards.  Even though each book is its own story, a few plot lines continue throughout the series, so I recommend starting here.

Joe Pickett - rookie Wyoming game warden - is in the unenviable position of having scruples.  His honesty comes in handy as a father and husband, but not so handy when high-powered money interests pursue an oil pipeline project through an area home to an endangered species.  Reluctant to endanger his career, he nevertheless refuses to follow orders from supervisors who are complicit in the project.  A trio of dead elk hunters complicates matters a bit.

C.J. Box (Wyoming native and resident) creates a really likeable character in Joe Pickett.  He's a rookie, but no pushover.  He's passionate about the environment, but no environmentalist.  He's a bit of a bungler, but comes through when it really counts.  And, best of all, he has an intrepid sidekick dog and the obligatory trashed pickup truck.  What I really like about these books is that they are gritty and unpredictable, as good Wyoming tales should be.

It's the 5th night of Hannukah! Although, not one of the high holidays, Hannukah is still lots of fun to celebrate and a great opportunity to share cultures and customs from around the world with your non-Jewish children and students.

My all time favorite Hannukah book is Hershel and the Hanukkah goblins by Eric Kimmel ; illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.  While more of a ghost story than a story that teaches about Hannukah, it's a seat of your pants must read for older children.  Armed with only boiled eggs, a jar of pickles and a dreidel, Hershel of Osterpol must save Hannukah by tricking the goblins that haunt the local synagogue including the king of the goblins himself!

My favorite for preschool story time is Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah by Susan L. Roth. The short text of a favorite Hannukah song, this book shows the festive spirit of Hannukah as celebrated by some lively mice. Incidentally, if you want to hear the Barenaked Ladies do a version of this song, check out Barenaked for the holidays . 

Older childern might also enjoy The trees of the dancing goats by Patricia Polacco.  This beautiful story based on the author's own childhood describes how a Jewish community helps make Christmas special for their Christian neighbors who are all sick with the scarlet fever. Warning: this may not be a great choice for children who still believe in Santa Claus.

Growing up in the 1980s, I believed Russians to be strange people indeed.  My comprehension of them included wildly discordant characteristics: I thought them to be stoic, robotic drones who also hated people in the West with homicidal rage.  Since my teen years, thankfully, relations between the former Soviet Union states and the rest of the world have improved at least enough for me to have read some very good books about them, met a few of them, and learned a bit of the language.  One of those very good books is Orlando Figes's Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia.  The title is taken from a scene in Tolstoy's War and Peace in which a young countess responds to a traditional folk song.  Figes is a brilliant cultural historian who provides well-researched, compelling portraits of what political history often lacks: the people.

His newest work, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, may prove to be one of the most important works of 20th century history, if not for it's compelling writing and fascinating portraits of Russians living under the most oppressive regime ever, then for the fact that the archives Figes consulted for this book have been closed by Putin's government and possibly purged.  Figes tells the stories of children who informed on their own parents, parents who informed on their children, as well as other horrible permutations of adherence to the police state that permeated every area of Russians' public and private lives.  The guilt informers felt is shown to be second only to the fear that if they did not report on their family members' activities (real or imagined) they themselves would be considered anti-communists.  The NKVD (forerunner of the KGB) encouraged and recieved denunciations from citizens who believed reporting on others was their duty, but more often reports emanated from the malicious intentions of spurned lovers, co-workers anxious for promotion, or embittered servants. 

The stories of individual and family tragedy can become relentless and frankly, depressing.  There are really no happy endings or beautiful reconciliations in The Whisperers.  The efforts of the author, soldier and informer Konstantin Simonov, long after Stalin's death and Khruschchev's "rehabilitation" program, to have such works as The Master and Margarita published can not be separated from the deaths of those he sent to "re-education" camps.  Nevertheless, reading books such as The Whisperers is good for our individual and collective soul.  In order to understand the Soviet experience, and even more importantly to see that these conditions could exist again, taking in the enormity of the fear, pain and helplessness Soviet Russians endured can only help us guard against such regimes emerging in the future.

Steam trains are as much a part of Jimmy's life as breathing.  His father is a foreman on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad that passes through their tiny West Virginia town, and Jimmy plans to be a railroader one day, just like his father and older brothers.  His father, however, says steam trains are a dying breed, soon to be replaced to diesel engine trains. He wants Jimmy to find work elsewhere, maybe even go to college.

Set in the early 1940s, When the Whistle Blows is divided into seven slice-of-life chapters, each of which takes place on Halloween - or All Hallows' Eve, as Jimmy's father calls it.  The first story follows twelve-year-old Jimmy as he sneaks out late at night to observe a meeting of The Society, a secret fellowship to which his father belongs.  In subsequent tales we see Jimmy grow into a young man and hear stories of Halloween pranks, football championships, and trimuph and tradgedy on the railroad.

Fran Cannon Slayton perfectly captures the rhythm of small-town life during and after World War II, but where the book really shines is in her depiction of Jimmy's relationship with his taciturn yet loving father.  Just like the steam engines he works on, Jimmy's father is slowly dying.  As Jimmy is finally inducted into The Society, the book comes full circle, but as Jimmy notes, his story is only beginning.