Cederholm clearly explains the CSS techniques required to build a "bul­let­proof" website: one that is robust in the face of text resizing, window resizing, disabled images, etc, with minimal, se­man­ti­cal­ly correct markup that works across all the major browsers.

Anyone who's serious about building a modern website should read this book.

Cederholm builds up his examples, one step at a time, in a clear manner. For the shorter examples, he tends to show the entire CSS or XHTML again and again, with the latest changes high­light­ed …continue.

Nabb's recurring character, Marshal Guarnaccia, is a non-com­mis­sioned officer in the cara­binieri, the Italian military-style police, who is stationed in Florence. Guarnaccia is a slow, dogged plodder and a wallflower, who is largely overlooked by those who encounter him, but who nonethe­less gets to the bottom of mysteries.

An old case, involving a series of double murders over a twenty-year period, has been reopened for political reasons. Several police officers, including the Marshal, have been seconded to a task force. The Marshal is troubled by what is clearly an attempt by …continue.

The first book in a trilogy that tells the fictional history of the Templars.

The Order of the Rebirth in Sion is a secret society whose roots go back to Jerusalem before the time of Christ, whose members are drawn from French noble families. When the Pope starts the First Crusade to seize Jerusalem back from the Muslims, a handful of the Order tag along in the hopes of dis­cov­er­ing their order's secrets in the long-lost Temple of Solomon. Under the guise of warrior-monks protecting …continue.

The third book in the Merchant Princes series.

Miriam Beckstein, is a tech journalist in Boston, who discovered in the first book that she was born in a parallel world, and that she and some of her relatives hold a rare gene that allows them to step between worlds. In her feudal home world, her relatives have become merchant princes, wielding enormous power over the local economy.

Miriam, thoroughly American, doesn't fit in well in that other world, and resents becoming a pawn in her family's dynastic games. Meanwhile, back on …continue.

Walt the Wonder Boy can walk on air. Really. He was a nine-year-old orphan pulled off the streets of 1920s St. Louis by Master Yehudi and taught in a long, grueling process to levitate and walk through the air. Walt becomes a huge hit and he and Master Yehudi travel around America, pulling in the crowds. It can't last of course and Walt loses his ability once puberty strikes. Master Yehudi dies and Walt settles into a second career as a small-time crook and club owner in 1930s Chicago. He goes …continue.

We saw the movie last week and I remarked that I had never read any of the Chronicles of Narnia books, so Emma dug out her copies.

The book is old-fashioned and innocent. It reminds of some of the British books that I read in my childhood, such as the Famous Five.

By way of an enchanted wardrobe, four plucky human children fall into a parallel world, where they are acclaimed as saviors, fulfilling a prophecy. They quickly fall afoul …continue.

At End of Day is Higgins' last novel, published after his death. McKeach and Cistaro are crime bosses who have avoided arrest for more than 30 years. Partly because they're very smart, very competent, and quite paranoid. Partly because they have a secret deal with the local FBI office: they provide in­for­ma­tion in return for protection. All good things come to an end, of course.

Higgins' style is odd, conducted largely in monologue. His characters jaw and jaw. Boy, do they love the sounds of their own …continue.

At Cozi.com, we use the jQuery JavaScript library to do all kinds of complex and wonderful DHTML and Ajax tricks in our web client. Extremely powerful, very elegant: I commend it to your attention.

John Resig is the lead developer on the jQuery team. This book is not about jQuery, though if you work your way through it, you'll be well equipped to understand the jQuery source code.

This book covers modern JavaScript techniques, in particular, object-oriented JavaScript, un­ob­tru­sive DOM ma­nip­u­la­tion, Ajax, and cross-browser warts. It covers a lot …continue.

Smiley's People is the last book in le Carré's Karla Trilogy, begun in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and continued in The Honourable Schoolboy.

George Smiley is called back from retirement when one of his former contacts, a Russian general turned emigré, is found murdered. Working alone and exercising his con­sid­er­able tradecraft, Smiley discovers a fatal chink in the armor of his old adversary, Karla, the Russian spymaster. He gets the go-ahead to execute a sting, which will ultimately lead to Karla's defection.

Once again, le Carré crafts a subtle and …continue.