Lifestyle

This week’s must-read books

The Setup Man
by T.T. Monday (Doubleday)

Johnny Adcock is an old relief pitcher for the fictional big league San Jose Bay Dogs — just one wrong pitch away from being released. He’s probably more valuable for his side business: Adcock is a private eye, emphasis on private. A young teammate being blackmailed over his wife’s shady past asks for his help. But before Adcock gets started, the teammate is killed, along with a 17-year-old girl, in a car crash. Monday has a “Dragnet”-like, just-the-facts style and offers lots for baseball fans to enjoy as well, with lines like: “I’ve always marveled at how much cops look like out-of-shape second basemen — or maybe how much second basemen (Jeff Kent, for example) look like in-shape cops.”

Mission at Nuremberg An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis
by Tim Townsend  (William Morrow)

In his first book, religion writer Townsend explains that as the architects of the Holocaust went on trial at Nuremberg, the Geneva Conventions required spiritual guidance for them. Enter Henry Gerecke, a middle-aged US Army chaplain from St. Louis, about to go through what he called the most frightening experience of his life, attempting to establish a relationship with Nazi leaders including Hermann Göring and Albert Speer, on trial for crimes against humanity. He wound up escorting the 11 Nazis who were hanged to the gallows.

The Fishing Fleet Husband-Hunting in the Raj
by Anne de Courcy (Harper)

There was no Match.com in Victorian England. But women did have their ways of finding a mate. Between 1850 and 1950, many left the comforts of home for the unknown of India. There, with a surplus of British men serving the empire, they set about finding a husband. British author de Courcy chronicles the difficult voyages of these women, the “exotic” social lives that awaited them, as well as their trials on the subcontinent where they often wound up following their husbands to isolated plantations and jungle outposts.

Busted A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love
by Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker (Harper)

Fans of “The Front Page” and “All the President’s Men” will be transfixed by this astounding tale of police corruption. At the same time old-school tabloid reporters Ruderman and Laker are uncovering the story, their paper, the Philadelphia Daily News, is sinking — losing staff and other resources. But they persevere and end up not only with a great story, but a Pulitzer Prize.

The Lost Sisterhood
by Anne Fortier (Ballantine)

Author Fortier dissects the parallel lives of a modern-day scholar and an ancient Amazonian queen — thought to be a myth — in her newest book. Oxford’s Diana Morgan — a female Indiana Jones — suggests the Amazons are real. Hired to investigate some ancient writing on a wall in North Africa, Morgan discovers the name of the first Amazon queen, Myrinia, and traces her path to the ruins of ancient Troy. Morgan fights to save the Amazon’s real story, while Myrinia fights to save the tribe itself — a millennia apart.