A couple of new books have just come out–one by me and the other by a good friend. From Tao to Complexity, by Laurent Carrer, is about “The Merging of Ancient Practices and Scientific Discovery.”

Laurent Carrer is a writer, translator, and long-time student of Tai Chi and Qigong. He is also widely read in both modern science and Chinese philosophy. In this new book, he explores parallels and surprising points of agreement between the most advanced aspects of traditional Eastern and modern Western thought.

The subject matter of his book is so wide-ranging and deep that I thought it might be hard to get through it, but the author’s clear and engaging style makes reading a pleasure. Complex scientific concepts are clearly explained, and the parallels and connections with the ancient wisdom of Taoism are both surprising and satisfying. We are led seamlessly from relativity theory to the benefits of tai chi, and from there to the nature of cats, all in a light-hearted and inspiring narrative. You can dip in anywhere and become engrossed. I highly recommend this book as both a serious volume and a light-hearted diversion.

The other new book is another murder mystery by me. Death at Falconfields is the first of three (so far) traditional detective novels in a series called Murder on the Gulf Coast. In this first volume, storms and flooding in the small town of Hanbury unearth the body of a young Black man shot and buried on the margins of an old plantation.

Local cops conclude that the murdered man was passing through and got into an “altercation” with some unknown person. They’d like to close the book, but the local Black community is fed up with crimes against their own being brushed aside as unimportant. The sheriff agrees, reluctantly and under pressure, to accept Gil Tillier as an outside investigator, and what looks like an isolated incident turns out to have deep roots in the history of the rich southern Alabama farmland.

In the series, Gil Tillier, the reluctant homicide detective in Accidents of Life, has retired. He’s too young for that of course, only in his thirties, but he’s inherited just enough money to scrape by in the tiny town of Mars, Alabama, population 832, far away from the mayhem of his meteoric law enforcement career.

Tillier wants nothing more to do with murder, but thanks to his former chief—and his own reputation—local cops, victims’ families, and those accused of murder drag him into unsolved crimes and injustices in small towns along the Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle.

I’ve written the second and third volume, and I’ll be releasing them in 2026. Stay tuned!