Am now reading Winter Study by Nevada Barr, a popular novelist and a favorite of mine. It's set on the Isle Royale in Lake Superior near the Canadian border and deals with the scientific study of wolves. In this book, there is a giant animal, possibly a wolf/dog hybrid that is terrorizing the wolf population as well as the scientists on the island in the Wolf Study project.
Of course, as you read on, the evildoers turn out to be. as expected, not the animals, but humans.
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A friend's reading a book about China reminded me of the 18th century classic story, Dream of the Red Chamber, which describes in detail the lives of men and women behind the walls of a large family compound in traditional China. It's basically a love story about two young people who grow up in the compound that houses a large extended family and whose love for each other is thwarted by the matchmaking of the matriarch in the family.
Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsueh-Chin is available used and new on Amazon and probably in many college libraries, if not in a large public library.
I recommend it for its portrayal of life in the old China, particularly among the women of the time. I read the book (which comes in two volumes) many years ago and plan to go back to it, hopefully with a new perspective (age and all that).
