Arcadia Public Library

Of all the things humans rely on plants for-- sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber-- surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs-- opium, caffeine, and mescaline-- and explores the cultures that have grown up around these drugs. He examines the powerful human attraction to psychoactive...

Overview of the history, properties and uses of opium with information on health effects and governmental efforts at interdiction.

Rising War Office star Mycroft Holmes persuades his brother, Sherlock, to volunteer at a friend's orphanage, where the suspicious death of a street urchin and a mysterious Chinese woman lead the brothers into the London opium trade's dark underside.

"Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war hero-turned-magnate, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity. After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul for the first time as the head of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to staunching the growth of the poppy fields in Fever Valley that feed the world's opiate epidemic. But on the drive back to Kabul from an anniversary trip with his wife, Rebecca, Daniel hits...

In nineteenth-century London, sixteen-year-old Sally, a recent orphan, becomes involved in a deadly search for a mysterious ruby.

Calcutta police detective Captain Sam Wyndham and his quick-witted Indian Sergeant, Surrender-Not Banerjee, are back for another exotic adventure set in 1920s India.

Eighteen-year-old aspiring chemist Elinor Dashwood and her younger sister Marianne, a budding detective, work together to solve the mystery of their father's murder.

"The teenage children of a convicted serial killer try to prove his innocence when a true-crime podcast reinvigorates interest in the case. Their fate intersects with cults, killers, cops, and convicts on the backroads of West Virginia in one brutal, unforgettable crash"--

"A period novel about a female detective who goes undercover (occasionally as a man), to infiltrate a smuggling ring, and navigates shifting allegiances once on the inside" --