The Abduction

by Mark Gimenez

When 10-year-old Gracie Brice is abducted, her tough, high-powered attorney mom doesn't hesitate-she immediately offers a reward of $25 million for Gracie's safe return. The money, coupled with the dramatic circumstances, brings out the paparazzi in droves. Gracie's dad, John, a high-tech geek who is about to become a billionaire following the sale of his company, melts under the pressure. But Gracie's grandfather, Ben, a highly decorated war vet, puts together a plan based on his instincts and a lone, credible tip phoned in among hundreds of bogus calls. The technogeek teams up with his battle-scarred dad, who has long handled his traumatic war experiences by drinking heavily, to bring Gracie home. Although there are implausible elements, including Gracie's irritatingly precocious manner, they all fade away once the pulse-pounding narrative kicks in. Gimenez's rage toward the media and bureaucracy only adds to the entertainment value.

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

by Michael Gates Gill

Yale graduate, prosperous ad exec: Gill has it all. Then he turns 60 and finds himself precipitously bounced from his job and saddled with the triple threats of a ruined marriage, an unexpected newborn, and a brain tumor. Despairing at the prospect of looming poverty, he stops at a Manhattan Starbucks to comfort himself with a latte. By chance he sits down next to Crystal, a young African American woman recruiting new workers for the coffee giant, and she offers him a job. Almost as an act of desperation, he accepts, and he dons the uniform of a barista-in-training at an Upper West Side Starbucks. This son of privilege who had hobnobbed with Queen Elizabeth, T. S. Eliot, and Jackie Onassis, now keeps daily company with a diverse crew of brash young New Yorkers for whom Starbucks' progressive employee benefits and demanding, inspiring standards of public service offer hope. Gill starts at the bottom, cleaning the bathroom, and he has trouble mastering the cash register. Over the months he learns to deeply respect Crystal, to appreciate the mutual support of his coworkers, and to genuinely cherish the passing parade of customers, each unique. To his own astonishment, he realizes that he actually looks forward joyfully to every hectic, exhausting workday. Other corporate giants can only envy the sheer goodwill that this memoir will inevitably generate for Starbucks. What a read. (Booklist)

The Ghost

by Robert Harris

When a celebrity ghostwriter is tapped to be the pen behind the man for the controversial former prime minister of Britain, he gets much more than he bargained for. Although his predecessor died under suspicious circumstances, the anonymous ghostwriter finds the lucrative offer to assist the infamous Adam Lang in cobbling together his memoirs-even if it means staying on a desolate Martha's Vineyard in the dead of winter-too hard to resist. Not unexpectedly, Lang harbors more dangerous secrets than it is safe for any one person to possess, and the ghostwriter finds himself increasingly enmeshed in a tangled web of treachery, deceit, and international espionage as he unravels a political cover-up that will resonate with contemporary readers. As it turns out, there is more than one "ghost," and the fast-paced narrative concludes with an unexpected twist. (Booklist)