Best-selling author Dean Koontz is famous for his science fiction, horror and fantasy writing, but in Bliss to You: Trixie's Guide to a Happy Life, he defers to his beloved, deceased dog Trixie by serving as editor of her advice on how to lead a happy life.
Deceased? Why, yes! According to Koontz, Trixie, a golden retriever originally trained by Canine Companions to assist persons with disabilities, had her career cut short because of elbow surgery. Forced into early retirement, she then came to live with Koontz and his wife Gerda where, after a number of happy years, she passed away shortly before her twelfth birthday.

Nonetheless, in life she had already made her mark as an author in her own right with her witty contributions to Koontz's web site, and after her demise she began posting messages and musings she labeled TOTOS--Trixie On The Other Side--to Koontz's computer.
Each night, Koontz would shut down the machine only to find it switched on again in the morning. And there, displayed on the screen, was Trixie's latest chapter. In eight chapters, she expands on necessities for bliss: Calm, Beauty, Fun, Wisdom, Meaning, Others, Humility, Loss and Gratitude.

Sensible of life's brevity and the need for simplicity, Trixie keeps her own counsel and writes in a style sometimes referred to as pidgin: economical, easy to understand, and very much to the point. For example, "To see beauty of world, must really, really, really look. Not look through. Not look at. Must look into." And, "Beauty helps calm you. Bad day at work, you almost assaulted fellow worker with stapler. Spend evening in garden, star-gazing, cuddling puppy, will lose homicidal urge." Or, "Calm is first step on road to bliss. Mustn't be angry, not even if have reason to be angry. Cannot be angry even at crazy Aunt Edna when she knits paw booties and berets with ear holes, makes you wear them when she visits."

January is a time when many resolve to improve themselves and their existence in the New Year. Bliss To You is a good place to begin for those wanting some competent guidance, even if, as Trixie herself candidly acknowledges, she does make cats the butt of occasional jokes.

Do you experience the playback mode of songs in your brain? These are described as earworms from the German word ohrwurm which means "stuck song syndrome." Daniel J. Levitin, a former rock musician, session musician and record producer, explains this as a function of the auditory short-term (echoic) memory. This book has a neuropsychological outlook on how music affects our brain, mind and spirit. The author is a practicing neuroscientist and runs the Laboratory for Musical Perception and Cognition at McGill University. An entire chapter discusses the importance of foot tapping, rhythm, loudness, harmony and musical pulse. His discussion of groove as the quality that moves the song forward, the musical equivalent of a book that you can't put down, engages your musical sensibility with examples from Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, the Pretenders and especially Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." In Great Britain an experiment on fetuses demonstrated that children at age one could recognize music exposed to them in the womb. One musical piece was singled out for each baby from Mozart to the Back Street Boys. The author shares his views on The Mozart Effect, the claim that music listening improves task performance. The reader will have a lot of fun with the author's references to popular music and personalities. Scan the book's index; you will find Eminem, Louis Armstrong, AC/DC, Austin Lounge Lizards, Rick James, Prokofiev, Otis Redding, Paula Abdul, Johnny Cash and others.

What do a murder, an invention and an ocean liner have in common? All share an enthralling "CSI-type" tale in Erik Larson's latest narrative non-fiction, "Thunderstruck." Guglielmo Marconi was attempting to replace the enormous undersea communication cable with the invention of wireless radio early in the 1900s. Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American doctor living in England who was reduced to selling patent medicines for a living. Larson combines the story of the inventor's experiments with the story of Crippen's murder of his wife and flight from England on a luxury ocean liner. Crippen killed his difficult, domineering wife with poison. He then skinned her, burned parts of her body and buried the rest in his cellar. He later convinced his lover to flee to America in the hopes of escaping prosecution. The two stories are totally unrelated until the end when the new wireless technology is used to aid Scotland Yard in the pursuit of the criminals. The story is fast-paced with many interesting character portrayals. While the book reads like fiction, Larson was able to incorporate many historical events of the day and time. Erik Larson has written a similar book in "Devil in the White City" and a historical account of the Galveston hurricane of 1900 with "Isaac's Storm."

Disaster-prone writer Ken Foster (who was living in New York during the September 11 terrorist attacks AND in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina) finds himself adopting an ever-growing collection of homeless dogs, from a beagle abandoned at a New York City dog run to a pit bull at a Mississippi truck stop to a border collie at a shopping mall. "The Dogs Who Found Me" recounts the stories of a dozen dogs who chose Foster to rescue them. Initially reluctant, Foster set a four-hour time limit for placing the first strange dog he brought into his New York City apartment, only to discover that this would be the first of many dogs who seemingly would choose him to lead them, one way or another, to their new home. In addition to the personal stories, "The Dogs Who Found Me" offers expert advice and answers essential questions: How should you approach an abandoned dog? How do you integrate a temporary animal guest into your household? What resources are available in your area? Are some dogs beyond rescue? Why do some dogs fear your help? Should we ever give up on a dog? Foster's style is blunt, funny and poignant. He smoothly melds the events of his turbulent life along with the gritty details of rescuing abandoned dogs into a piece that goes to the heart. Anyone who loves dogs as much as Foster will recognize themselves in him.

"Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed", by Pulitzer and Aventis Prize winner, Jared Diamond, examines failed and successful societies around the world and throughout history . Diamond explores what these societies had in common, why one failed and the other flourished, one is extinct and the other prospering. He takes the reader through a brief history lesson, explores archaeological evidence, and draws conclusions that factored into each society's breakdown or prosperity. He discusses five socioeconomic factors that caused most failures to colonies that may have lasted ten years, to long-lived societies that have prospered or failed due to ecological, geographical, or social changes. Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies" (1998 Pulitzer Prize winner) covered geographic growth of civilizations and how each society gained advantages over existing or competing social groups. In "Collapse...", Diamond explores early societies such as Easter Island, The Anasazi, Iceland, and Greenland, as well as many modern societies such as Japan, Rwanda, and Haiti. He discusses how the choices these societies made directly influenced their current success or failure. Readers who love history or have ever asked the social, geographical, or economic question "Why?" will find Diamond's "Collapse..." an interesting and fulfilling read.

In the author's note he states that as a historian he "knew a wicked hurricane could alter world history". Douglas Brinkley is an academic historian at Tulane University, resident of New Orleans and commentator for network news channels. The Great Deluge covers the week of Saturday, August 27th to Saturday, September 3 with hundreds of personal detailed descriptions of Katrina. Private individuals, government employees, members of the Coast Guard and FEMA, Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center and celebrities such as Harry Connick, Jr., author Anne Rice and Fats Domino provide a rich storytelling narrative of an historical cataclysm. The book opens with a description of the Ninth Ward's SPCA evacuation of 263 dogs and cats two days before landfall. When Hurricane Katrina was enroute Brinkley vertically evacuated his family to a 15th floor condominium where his family observed the Mississippi River "roaring backwards" due to the storm. News personalities faced challenges and frustrations that provide dimensions to coverage viewed by the American television audience. NBC's Tony Zumbado's search of Memorial Medical Center adds a nightmare shadow to the tragedy. The raw emotional impact will give the reader déjà vu to his own reactions during the week's events.