Henderson County Public Library

The McCone Files gathers all of Sharon McCone's short cases covering her entire career as staff investigator at All Souls Legal Cooperative in San Francisco. Each tale, including two written especially for this volume, is a miniature masterpiece of plotting, realistic characters and vivid settings. From the death of a clown in Diablo Valley to the disappearance of a young socialite on the Golden Gate Bridge, from the murder of a teenage gang leader in San Francisco to the drowning of an aged Japanese herb-gatherer, and from streets filled with juvenile runaways to the quietness of a mausoleum, Sharon investigates not only who committed the crimes but also what they say about our world toward the end of the twentieth century.

In "Almost Human," Mary Roach takes us to the savannahs of Senegal to meet a group of 34 chimpanzees, whose behavior and social structures have given scientists some important clues about the nature of their communication and intelligence.

In "The Genius of Swarms," Peter Miller looks at the collective behavior of ants, bees, and other insects for what they can tell us about social organization and how sometimes intelligence lies outside of the individual brain.