Jack Reacher meets an attractive woman struggling along a Chicago street with her crutches. He stops to offer a steadying arm, and then they both turn to face twin handguns aimed at them. Reacher and the woman - who claims to be an FBI agent - are kidnapped and taken 2000 miles across America.
The Human Factor is the story of Maurice Castle, an MI5 agent married to a black South African woman. When information leaks are discovered in Castle's department, suspicion falls on his coworker, a young man named Arthur Davis. The bureau arranges Arthur's death, although they have no definite proof of his double-agency. It turns out that Castle is the double agent, turned during his time in Africa because of a desire to help his wife's people escape the scourge of apartheid.
Tony Hillerman is a national treasure, having achieved critical acclaim, chart-topping popularity, and a sterling reputation as an ambassador between whites and Indians. Fortunately, he's also still a marvelous writer, much imitated but never equaled. The Sinister Pig--his 16th novel to feature Navajo cops Joe Leaphorn and/or Jim Chee--isn't his best book, but it's still a pleasure from the first page to the last. Its plot is almost too complex to summarize, involving the mysterious shooting of an ex-CIA agent, financial shenanigans around oil-and-gas royalties, disappearing congressional interns, exotic pipeline technology, and the cross-border trade in both drugs and illegal aliens.
In Steel's latest, 42-year-old Tanya Harris loves her life as a mother of three, wife of a dashing San Francisco lawyer and moderately successful writer of short stories and soap opera scripts. She has long given up on her dream of writing a screenplay, but then her agent calls with a dream offer: a major director wants her and her alone to write the script for a new high-profile film.
Lipids and essential oils have strong antimicrobial properties — they kill or inhibit the growth of microbes such as bacteria, fungi, or viruses. They are being studied for use in the prevention and treatment of infections, as potential disinfectants, and for their preservative and antimicrobial properties when formulated as pharmaceuticals, in food products, and in cosmetics.
