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Wanted: Cook for remote camp. Location: Antarctica. Job Description: Cook meals at unspecified times for 7-100 persons. Duration: 4 months. Pay: Appallingly low. Facility: Scattered tents in the middle of nowhere. Entire facility buried sometimes for years when not in use. No Cuisinarts. No KitchenAids—no electricity. Stove sometimes belches fire and could burn down the camp. However, camp more likely to be blown away by storms.

Agatha Christie carefully weaves her story with clues that appear to be casually dropped, and which the reader may not take to heart. Her skill at tying up these loose ends will make the reader want to reread the story just to be able to appreciate those clues in the context of the story’s outcome. Ms. Christie’s skill at foreshadowing marks her as a master storyteller whose stories endure nearly a century after they were written.

Published in 1991, and winner of the Anthony Award and the Macavity Award, both for “Best First Mystery,” Murder on the Iditarod Trail chronicles the adventures of a musher (as Iditarod contestants are known) and a State Trooper as the former tries to elude and the latter tries to catch the person responsible for the deaths of three mushers and the maiming of three more.

As in her other novels, Eliot spends much introductory time on her main characters, many minor characters and their histories. It is not until halfway through the story that all the elements start to fall together. At this point, The Mill on the Floss is hard to put down--the further into the story you get, the less sure you are of Maggie's fate, the more engrossing her story becomes. These are the great novels, which leave you as conflicted and confused as the characters about which you are reading.

Published in July 1814, Mansfield Park is the story of Fanny Price who has been raised by her wealthy aunt and uncle as charity to her mother who married poorly. Treated as inferior by everyone except her cousin Edmund, Fanny's gratitude toward Edmund secretly grows into love. As suitors and other lovers come into the picture, the plot thickens and emotions run high in true Austen style.