The Browser: "Legally Dead"

Block out a chunk of time if you pick up this book. It's a stunner you will not be able to put down. Buchanan sets aside her recurring character, reporter Britt Montero, to introduce super-stud Michael Venturi, a disillusioned specialist in the federal Witness Protection Program and former Marine special operative. He's lonely and grieving the untimely death of his wife and unborn child, unwilling to tap the multimillion-dollar settlement he got after the deaths. Venturi's job is to provide new identities for government witnesses until one of his clients goes bad and kills two young girls. Venturi blames himself and moves in to neutralize the situation -- read: take the guy out. He flees New York for Miami, where he connects with Danny Trado, a buddy from the Marines and undercover CIA agent. Venturi intends to settle into a quiet life fishing in the Everglades until he literally stumbles upon a man attempting suicide. He saves him and then decides to kill him, but not really. He and Trado stage his death and set up a new identity. It's a well-intentioned venture that gets out of hand as a constant parade of clients appears, each with good reason to leave their old lives behind. You can sense that things will turn bad, and they do. The Witness Protection Program finds Venturi and turns up the heat, and someone begins killing all the clients Venturi has set up. It's a wild ride from there on out. The ending is a shocker, but it will also make you ask, "Why didn't I see that coming?"

JUDY ROMANOWICH SMITH, NEWS DESIGNER

It's one of the bloodiest and least-known chapters in American history: In 1831, Nat Turner, a Virginia slave who had taught himself to read and write and who reeled with religious visions, interpreted an eclipse as a divine sign that blacks should rebel against their white masters. Before he was captured and hung, he led a slave rebellion in which about 60 white men, women and children were slaughtered. Artist Kyle Baker's historically accurate renderings are now gathered in the graphic nonfiction collection "Nat Turner." Baker draws on Turner's confessions to tell the story of his family members' lives in slavery, of the rebellion itself and of Turner's capture and execution. Baker's black, white and gray drawings -- graphic in more than one way -- spare us nothing: not the brutality of slavery, not the horrific slaughter carried out by the often drunk rebels, not the dismemberment of Turner's body after his death. And yet the book is neither overly sensationalistic nor sympathetic to the rebels or victims. It is serious history, well-rendered. It's not, however, for readers under 13; nightmares will ensue.