This weeks must-read books

Backstrom:He Who Kills the Dragon byLeif GW Persson Vintage Crime

Curious about the source material for the new Rainn Wilson cop show? Its Swedish author Perssons creation, Evert Backstrom, a politically incorrect, Hawaiian shirt-wearing, hard-drinking, overweight homicide detective. Person describes him as a complete bastard in a world of almost entirely normal people. In this new English translation, an aging alcoholic is killed with a saucepan lid a friend hed dined with is the presumed killer. On doctors orders to quit drinking and to eat his vegetables, an especially irritable Backstrom investigates.

The Train to Crystal City:FDRs Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and Americas Only Family Internment Camp During World War IIbyJan Jarboe Russell Scribner

The name sounds like a fairyland amusement park, but it was quite the opposite. Crystal City, explains journalist Russell, was a WWII family internment camp in Texas for German, Italian and Japanese immigrants. The only US camp of its kind, Crystal City was a center for secret prisoner exchanges. Groups of immigrants and their children were traded for businessmen, diplomats, scientists and soldiers deemed more important by the US. A book that casts a light on a dark chapter in our history.

Lost & FoundbyBrooke Davis Dutton

A 7-year-old teams up with an 87-year-old for an adventure Down Under. Davis whimsical debut novel begins with loss, as a mother grieving over the death of her husband abandons young daughter Millie in an Australian department store. The book soon becomes about finding, as Millie falls in with two octogenarians a nursing home escapee named Karl and Agatha, a grumpy agoraphobic. As this unlikely team progresses around the continent by bus, train and car, the youngster and the oldsters discover a few things about life, family and love.

A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France byMiranda Richmond Mouillot Crown

Lost in translation? After spending a lifetime wondering why her Jewish immigrant grandparents hadnt spoken to each other since 1948, American memoirist Mouillot moved to the house in the South of France where her grandmother left her grandfather three years after the WWII. There, Mouillot discovers that after the couples wartime refugee experience in Switzerland, the marriage fell apart when her grandfather served as an interpreter for Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials.

Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad byEric Foner Norton

Pulitzer winner Foner takes a detailed look at dedicated abolitionists who risked their own lives to help escaped slaves find their way to freedom. Much new information was found in the journal of New Yorker Sydney Howard Gay, who documented the people he helped. Its a terrific and powerful story that will no doubt wind up on the big screen.

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This weeks must-read books