Nine Lords of the Night by E. C. Gibson

The author combines academia, archaeology, looters, revolution and corrupt police to create a gripping mystery set in the Chiapas region of Mexico. The disappearance of a female graduate student working on a dig at a Mayan site sets off an involved chain of events. Several story lines move between Harvard and Chiapas and involve graduate students and faculty, a revolutionary called The Professor and some truly evil bad guys. Mayan religion, both historical and present-day, weaves throughout the story. The author does a very good job of describing the jungle and the conditions of the Indians living there after the government's "pacification" program killed so many of them. This is a real page-turner and I couldn't put it down. I recommend this to those who like a good mystery. My only reservation is that I wasn't totally satisfied with the ending. But I won't play spoiler and will leave that to other readers to decide.

Unafraid: A Novel of the Possible by Jeff Golden

Suppose JFK did not die in Dallas and a relieved and grateful public gave him the political capital to do what he chooses. This is the premise of Unafraid by Jeff Golden. The novel conjectures what Kennedy would have done in both foreign policy (Cuba, Vietnam, Middle East) and domestically. The speeches and explanations the author writes for Kennedy are quite good and made me wonder if he had some background as a political speechwriter.
The point-of-view of the novel is provided by Caroline Kennedy, the last surviving member of the family, who is working with a biographer to write the definitive story of his eight years in office. This stepping out of the political narrative works well, giving a personal look at the events and the man.
Unfortunately, as the novel progresses and drastic changes in US policy are detailed, Kennedy seems to become a peg on which to hang the author's ideas and ideology. The reader loses sight of the historical Kennedy.
It is a fascinating premise and worth a look at.

Wheels on Fire: My Year of Driving and Surviving in Iraq

Michelle Zaremba joined the Ohio National Guard expecting to be called upon to deal with natural disasters. Instead, in 2004, her unit was called up for posting to Iraq. Through this memoir and her letters which were sent home and published in a local paper, she recounts her daily life with a compelling honesty and clarity. She was assigned to a convoy unit, driving trucks to deliver supplies to camps all over Iraq. This work gave her an unusual opportunity to see how soldiers were living and surviving all over the country. She describes how they dealt with incredible heat and cold, bugs, sand storms, and poor equipment. The most striking part of the story to me was her description of how they arrived in Iraq without sufficient supplies, soldiers arriving with no flack jackets, trucks with no armor or even doors. It is a tribute to their intelligence and ingenuity that they were able to find ways to work together to provide support for each other. I was also impressed with how she writes about the Iraqis with compassion and understanding even as she describes how she had to regard them as potential enemies. Also interesting is how she dealt with being a woman in command. She was a staff sergeant and often in command of the convoy but Army rules regarding the separation of females made it sometimes impossible to connect with the men under her command. Her story is told in a straightforward way, without any sense of being a victim or pointing fingers. This is a compelling look at day to day life in Iraq. I highly recommend this book.