Inferno by Dan Brown

This showed up on my doorstep unexpectedly - thanks to Dad who sent it as a surprise!  Another book starring Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code, this one follows Langdon as he wakes in Florence suffering from amnesia.  

An adventure from the start, he embarks on a fast-paced chase around several pieces of art Dante's Inferno.  Interspersed with Langdon's travels across Europe around the Inferno are several chapters around an eccentric leader of a "transhuman" movement - one that believes that overpopulation is imminent and deadly, and that changes to our genetics can change human history for the better.

I liked this book more than Brown's last one, The Lost Symbol.  This seemed to be better written (as airport reads go) and though many hundreds of pages long, I didn't see many places that I would have cut.  I was kept entertained throughout the book and had trouble putting it down.

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

Mom had given me a copy of this book a couple years ago and I never quite got to it.  Needing a new novel, I gave it a try.  It was really good - one part of the story took place during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during WWII and the other took place a few decades later.  The author captured the feel of Hong Kong in both eras very well; I wasn't really familiar with this culture before then.

In the more recent story, an Englishwoman named Claire comes to Hong Kong as a newlywed, only to find that her husband travels a lot and she is lonely.  She takes a job teaching piano for an affluent Chinese family, where she begins an affair with their chauffeur Will, an Englishman.  In the story taking place during WWII, Will falls in love with a half-Chinese woman.  During the Japanese occupation, he is interned in a camp but she isn't; both of them make difficult choices to survive the war.

This book was an amazing combination of excellent storytelling, strong character development, clear time-and-place setting, and obstacles for the characters to stumble over.  I really enjoyed it.

Live by Night by Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane is somewhat of a Boston institution.  Author of (among others) Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River, his last book The Given Day was a sweeping epic of the Policeman's Strike in Boston during the 1920's.  This book takes off when that one ends, following Joe Coughlin, the police chief's errant son.

Coughlin is a minor criminal when this book begins - bank robberies, that sort of thing.  When he falls for a mobster's girlfriend and then ends up in jail, his only choice is to become part of organized crime.  Moving to Florida during Prohibition to profit from importing rum, he begins to build his own crime syndicate there.  The story follows his rise as a mob boss there.

I really had a good time reading this book.  I was fascinated to read about the business deals he did, and loved reading about how he resolved personnel conflicts.  Like a young Corleone in The Godfather, he learns how to make deals, punish people, and manage a complex love life.  I don't know if Lehane has plans to continue this saga, but I hope so.