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From Publishers Weekly

Literary agent Olson (of the Donadio Olson Literary Agency) moves to the other side of the desk with this gripping, intelligent first novel of art thievery, treachery and revenge. It's 1944, and a group of Greek partisans are hiding from the Germans near the village of Katarini. Their leader has put into play a scheme involving a German officer who wants to trade a cache of weapons that will be used to fight the Communists after the war for a painted icon known as the Holy Mother of Katarini. The plan goes awry, and the ancient Byzantine icon disappears, only to resurface 56 years later on the wall of a private chapel in the New York City home of a Swiss banker named Kessler. After Kessler dies, various parties-the Greek Orthodox Church, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an elderly Greek gangster and other mysterious characters-vie to acquire the icon, which is said to posses paranormal powers. Kessler's granddaughter Ana and young Matthew Spear, an assistant curator at the Met, are swept up in the tangled plots to buy or steal the icon. The story twists back and forth between wartime Greece and the present day as the history of the icon and the men who lust for it is gradually revealed. Only the violent and inevitable end brings understanding and a measure of peace to those under the icon's spell.

From Booklist

In this debut thriller, the fast-paced action moves between a Greek village during World War II and the contemporary art scene in New York. There is also-no doubt with the popularity of The Da Vinci Code in mind-a patina of religious wonder shrouding the story. Two elderly friends/rivals, who fought both Communists and Nazis in Greece, are related by blood, broken dreams, and their quest to track down a religious icon, a Byzantine panel of the Virgin Mary reputed to have mystical healing powers. The grandson of one and the godson of another, Matthew Spear, is an art historian at the Met, and when the icon surfaces after the death of a collector, Matthew finds himself caught up in its deadly wake. Although both plot strands are nicely developed, it sometimes takes so long to get back to the World War II story that readers may forget who's who. Yet the evolution of the characters holds our attention, the action is gripping, and the quest for the ever-illusive icon provides just the right gossamer string to tie it all together.

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits. And then she discovers something amazing – she is a "free agent," with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?<

Well-known for young adult novels (; ), Okorafor sets this emotionally fraught tale in postapocalyptic Saharan Africa. The young sorceress Onyesonwu—whose name means Who fears death?—was born Ewu, bearing a mixture of her mother’s features and those of the man who raped her mother and left her for dead in the desert. As Onyesonwu grows into her powers, it becomes clear that her fate is mingled with the fate of her people, the oppressed Okeke, and that to achieve her destiny, she must die. Okorafor examines a host of evils in her chillingly realistic tale—gender and racial inequality share top billing, along with female genital mutilation and complacency in the face of destructive tradition—and winds these disparate concepts together into a fantastical, magical blend of grand storytelling.<

A riveting and moving memoir, written in crisp Hemingwayesque prose and set amid the wild, uninhibited surf culture of Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s.

From the age of three, Norman Ollestad was thrust into the world of surfing and competitive downhill skiing by the intense, charismatic father he both idolized and resented. Yet it was these exhilarating tests of skill that ultimately saved his life when the chartered Cessna carrying them to a ski championship ceremony crashed 8,000 feet up in the California mountains, leaving his father and the pilot dead. The devastated eleven-year-old Ollestad had to descend the treacherous, icy mountain alone. is a powerful and unforgettable true story that illuminates the complicated bond between an extraordinary father and his extraordinary son.