Dear BookBrowsers,

Short stories remind me of the commercial for Almond Joy. Yes, sometimes you feel like a novel...sometimes you don't. An intricately crafted short story is a window into a fully developed world in a bite-sized nugget. When you're crunched for time they're also a quick escape and a great introduction to a writer's work.

The right sort of short stories can also be great for book clubs, particularly at busy times of the year. Pick a story, maybe two or three, and you've got an easy month of reading, capped by an engaging discussion.

Here are our recommendations for short story collections, with a reading guide for each, for when you crave that perfect treat. Pairing with chocolate is entirely optional.

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At BookBrowse, we love mysteries, and we love traveling to interesting new places between the pages of good books. Put the two together and you get this month's special edition of BookBrowse Highlights: ten recently published or soon to publish mysteries set in far flung locations including China, Kenya, India, France, Bosnia, South Korea, Israel, Italy and Australia. Whether you like your mysteries cozy or hard-boiled, classic or thrilling, we've got you covered!

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Dear BookBrowsers,

Sadly, summer is mostly in the rear-view mirror now and while there's still time for barbecues and watermelon, the annual ritual of reading often prescribes light reads for the summer and more "serious" literature for fall.

This doesn't mean that we can't lighten up our reading with picks from the humor and satire pile, or indulge droll and dry wit. After all, laughter is the best prescription. And while the book club selections in this list might not be laugh-out-loud funny, they're sure to bring a smile to your face. If you'd like to, please share your own recommendations by posting at the bottom.

Your editor,
Davina

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As a true book lover you know: summer is all very well for an occasional guilty pleasure and a whole pile of page-turners to tote to the beach but the real serious lifting -- both literally and metaphorically -- in terms of reading comes with the turn of the leaves in fall.

This season we have many heavy hitters from darlings of the literary fiction world such as Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen, and also remarkable work from newer talent to keep an eye out for. Here are a dozen we have our sights trained on. Feel free to add your recommendations for upcoming fall releases as well.

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Dear BookBrowsers,

The Cold War might be a thing of the past but the "Red Menace" still rules the West's collective imagination. For those of us who remember the duck-and-cover drills, the race to space and the many subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which world geopolitics permeated everyday lives, a peek behind the Iron Curtain is as fascinating as it is informative. We present here a mix of fiction and nonfiction books specifically about Russia and Russians, both before and after the disintegration of the powerful federation that was the USSR.

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A book with pages that can kill more than 99% of bacteria while also educating communities on safe water habits has passed multiple trials in countries such as Ghana, Bangladesh and South Africa. What's more the book is very cheap to produce and one copy can filter sufficient water for an individuals needs for a full four years!

This extraordinary concept is the result of Dr Teri Dankovich's work over several years. Dr Dankovich, now a postdoctural researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh developed and tested the concept at McGill University in Canada and at the University of Virginia. Like Liter of Light, the concept is wonderfully simple:

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