Our latest First Impressions pick is James McLaughlin's Panther Gap, the strange and beautifully descriptive story of a remote Colorado ranch, two siblings and an inheritance.

You can also check out our discussion of The Nazi Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch, an account of a little-known World War II assassination plot that many participants found much more engaging than your average history book.

In Editor's Choice, Kate Zernike's The Exceptions examines gender discrimination at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In our accompanying "beyond the book" article, we explore the life of Rosalind Franklin, whose work on DNA structure has been downplayed and misrepresented.

Plus, we have a new Wordplay and free books for members to request!

With best wishes,

Davina Morgan-Witts

BookBrowse Publisher

Each month, we share books with BookBrowse members to read and review. Here are their opinions on one recently released title.

"Panther Gap by James A. McLaughlin is a wild ride to a deceptively quiet, remote Colorado ranch. Hippie-spirit Bowman and his academic-track sister Summer grow up knowing there's more than what meets the eye in their idyllic existence. Behind the scenes, their family has amassed shocking wealth, and their secret inheritance brings a frightening array of suspicious characters and cartel operatives into their young lives. Bowman utilizes psychedelic rites and Summer ecological know-how in an attempt to rescue their ranch from a selloff. What the siblings fail to realize is that several powerful drug cartels in the area are far more interested in offshore funds, at the expense of Summer and Bowman's lives. Their story becomes more involving and fascinating as the chapters roll on, and the last few contain more than a couple of nail-biters. The author ties up the many loose ends very effectively at the conclusion and he has us genuinely caring for the welfare of his well-drawn characters." - Stephanie K. (Glendale, AZ)

"This book has something for everyone: crime, cartels, secrets, mysteries, mysticism, etc. I found the plot very intriguing. The relationship between the father and his son and daughter was fascinating. The descriptions of the land in Colorado called Panther Gap were wonderful. They made me want to find this special place and live there. I think many book clubs would enjoy Panther Gap and it would create lively discussions on many levels. I went on to read his other book Bearskin and enjoyed that too. If you like Don Winslow, this is a book for you." - Antoinette B. (Charlottesville, VA)

"I generally try not to judge a book by how quickly it draws me in—some books just build slowly—but within the first 20 pages of Panther Gap I knew I would have a hard time putting this down. Full disclaimer: this is not my normal genre of reading, but I sincerely hope that James McLaughlin is working on another book." - Patricia G. (Washington, DC)

From the New York Times bestselling authors of The First Conspiracy and The Lincoln Conspiracy comes the little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill FDR, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the height of World War II.

"I love Brad Meltzer's work. He makes history exciting and thrilling - which it is. Lots of history books seem to work hard to make the past as boring as possible. Taught well, history class in grammar, middle, high school and college should be riveting and informative...in my view, being knowledgeable about how our country and our world became how it is today is critical for our survival." - shirleyl

"Exceptional... It is revealing of the Nazi logic with enough depth to elicit horror and sorrow without being overly explicit. The people involved on all sides are made three-dimensional and real - some so real that it is impossible to believe that any humans could be so cold and calculating when it came to determining the fate of others." - katherinep

"World War II is complex and fascinating in so many ways. Trying to make sense of the history is difficult. Meltzer and Mensch add still another layer to that complexity. It is said that politics makes strange bedfellows. Stalin and Hitler were more alike than different, yet Roosevelt and Churchill became allies with Stalin. A conspiracy to eliminate all three leaders seems very real. I keep trying to peel the onion, and the authors offer still another perspective on those times." - lynne z

Members! This month's First Impressions and Book Club books are now available to request. Offer closes end of Saturday April 15.

Books are provided free of charge to BookBrowse members resident in the U.S. with the understanding that they'll do their best to either write a short review or take part in an online discussion forum (depending on whether the book is assigned for First Impressions or the Book Club). Members who choose to take part generally receive a book about every 3-4 months.

Not yet a member? Free books from our monthly First Impressions and Book Club offers are one of the many benefits of a BookBrowse membership. If you're interested in becoming a member, or renewing a lapsed membership, and do so before end of this Saturday (the 15th), you'll have the opportunity to request the book of your choice from these six titles. As a new or returning member, if you request just one title you have a very good chance of receiving it; if you request two or more titles, you will definitely receive one of them.

As debates about "wokeness" roil college campuses, it's important to remember that every action towards equality has engendered an equally strong reaction against it. Just like a law of physics, this push and pull has played out over decades, including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There, it took years not just to resolve gender discrimination issues, but even for discrimination in the faculty to be accepted as an actual problem. The story is captured in intimate detail by Kate Zernike in her new book, The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science.

The book centers around the experience of Nancy Hopkins who, in 1963, was studying at Radcliffe, which is Harvard's sister school. Harvard didn't accept women as undergraduates for most of its history, only merging admissions with Radcliffe in 1975, although some of Harvard's graduate schools were accepting women by the 1960s.

Hopkins became fascinated with the recent discovery of DNA and was a student of James Watson, one of the Nobel-prize-winning scientists credited with discovering the double-helix structure of DNA. ... continued

The discovery of DNA is one of the greatest scientific achievements in the modern era, and possibly one of the most significant in history. The credit has long gone to James Watson and Francis Crick, who publicized the famous double-helix structure of DNA and the rest, as PBS notes, "is Nobel Prize history."

The problem is this is an oversimplification at best and a rip-off at worst. Rosalind Franklin, an English female scientist, and her co-researcher Maurice Wilkins played a crucial role in the discovery of DNA's structure, but she was written out of that history until the late 20th century.

Franklin was born to a Jewish family in London on July 25, 1920, and she studied physics and chemistry at Newnham Women's College at Cambridge University. After obtaining her PhD, she moved to Paris in 1946 to focus on X-ray crystallography, a demanding and laborious process for identifying the structure of molecules. ... continued

Solve our Wordplay puzzle to reveal a well-known expression, and be entered to win a one-year membership to BookBrowse!

The answer to the last Wordplay: R Peter T P P

Meaning: To take money from one source to give to another that is virtually identical.

This phrase dates back to at least the 16th century as it is included in John Heywood's lengthy list of proverbs in the middle of the 1500s.

The reference to Peter and Paul could just be alliteration but most sources agree that it refers to the two apostles. One school of thought is that the reference is to Church taxes paid to either St Paul's in London or St Peter's in Rome (i.e. Church of England vs Catholic Church), but this would not seem to align with the interpretation of the expression as meaning to take from one body to give to another that is virtually the same.

What seems more likely is that it derives from the shared feast day of St Paul and St Peter and thus to rob the feast of St Peter to pay for the feast of St Paul is pointless. Both Peter and Paul share June 29th as their Saint's Day because tradition says that they were both martyred on the same day in Rome by Emperor Nero; although historical accounts suggest that Peter was probably killed in 64 AD and Paul three years later in 67 AD.