Local literature can be a surprising source of home state pride, no matter where you're from.
We found the most famous book set in each state. How many have you read? Check out the annotated map below.
Some people know what they want to do from an early age and focus on it relentlessly.
Others are driven enough to reinvent themselves, changing careers and industries, and continuously push until they find the thing that works.
Billionaire Mark Cuban, for example, faced hardship when he first started, writing in "How To Win At The Sport Of Business" that "when I got to Dallas, I was struggling — sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment." On the other hand, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was a Xerox salesman dreaming of good coffee.
As a reminder that the path to success is not always linear, we've highlighted what Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and 19 other fascinating and successful people were doing at age 25.
Before her name was known in every American household, Martha Stewart worked on Wall Street for five years as a stockbroker. Before that, she was a model, booking clients from Unilever to Chanel.
"There were very few women at the time on Wall Street … and people talked about this glass ceiling, which I never even thought about," Stewart said in an interview for PBS's MAKERS series. "I never considered myself unequal, and I think I got a very good education being a stockbroker."
In 1972, Stewart left Wall Street to be a stay-at-home mom. A year later, she started a catering business.
At age 25, Cuban had graduated from Indiana University and had moved to Dallas. He started out as a bartender, then a salesperson for a PC software retailer. He actually got fired because he wanted to go close a deal rather than open a store in the morning. That helped inspire him to open his first business, MicroSolutions.
“When I got to Dallas, I was struggling — sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment,” Cuban writes in his book “How to Win at the Sport of Business.” “I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation.”
Before she was Arianna Huffington, she was Arianna Stassinopolous and at the age of 21, she met the famed British Journalist Henry Bernard Levin while on a panel for a quiz show.
The two entered into a relationship and he became her mentor while she wrote the book "The Female Woman" attacking the women's liberation movement. The book was published when she was 23.
For the next few years, Huffington traveled to music festivals around the world with Levin as he wrote for the BBC. Her relationship with Levin eventually ended because he did not want to marry or have children. Huffington moved to New York City at the age of 30. That year, her biography of Maria Callas was published, which she dedicated to Levin.
She told William Skidelsky at The Observer:
"[Levin] was my mentor. Our second date was to see 'The Mastersingers' at Covent Garden. Our first trip abroad was to Bayreuth to see 'Wagner's Ring.'"
As 2013 comes to a close, it's time to look back at another incredible year in sports.
The lights went out at the Super Bowl, a soccer great retired, and many championships were celebrated.
We created a timeline of the images that captured the best moments of 2013.
34th Street in northwestern Baltimore is better known as Christmas Street. Every year from the day after Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, the 22 houses in the neighborhood string lights, put out a hubcap Christmas tree, and even run train sets in and around some houses.
It all started in 1991 when Bob Hosier first strung lights to connect his house with a neighbor's across the street, creating a canopy of Christmas lights on the block. He told Business Insider he has been taking his house to "the next level" since he moved to the street — into the house where his wife grew up — in 1982.
Hosier likes to cover his entire house in multicolored lights and only switches to white lights for New Year's Eve when he drops a ball in his front yard. The mayor even awarded Hosier a certificate for the best holiday decorations in the city.
Once the whole neighborhood got involved, 34th Street became a tourist attraction. Everyone can choose how to decorate his or her own house. There's no theme, and neighbors don't have to participate.
"But they usually want to join in when they see the rest of us out there laughing and carrying on while we decorate," Hosier said. "That's why I like the holidays. It's the one time when everyone goes out of their way to be civil to one another."
There isn't really competition among neighbors to outdo each other, Hosier said. They're all invested in making the "Miracle on 34th Street" the best it can be. Although living on 34th Street didn't directly inspire Hosier to go all-out with Christmas decorations, he did say it was a happy accident.
One year when he was remodeling his kitchen, he found even more of a connection between the iconic Christmas movie and Baltimore's 34th Street: It used to be common to line a floor with newspaper before covering it with linoleum, and under one square Hosier removed, he found a newspaper ad announcing the opening of the movie "Miracle on 34th Street."
"It was fate," Hosier said, "I framed it and hung it on my porch to remind myself how special what we do on this street is."
Neighbors on 34th Street string lights across the street to create a canopy of Christmas lights.
A utility pole turns into a palm tree when it's decorated with Christmas lights.
Everyone can put up whatever decorations they like, but Christmas lights tend to be the focus over props.
Baltimore's favorite beer has traditionally been National Bohemian, nicknamed Natty Boh.
Baltimore is an important hub for the crab industry since it's so close to the Chesapeake Bay, which for years was the East Coast's main source of blue crabs.
Local artist Jim Pollock built this hubcap Christmas tree.
Here's a look at an elaborate Christmas train display on 34th Street. 
SEE ALSO: Meet The Bronx Family With The Most Elaborate Christmas Decorations In NYC
The Instagram account of Murad Osmann went viral earlier this year, mainly thanks to the presence of his gorgeous girlfriend Natalia Zakharova, who is leading him around the globe in his photos.
The Moscow-based couple have continued to travel since the initial photos surfaced in March, and now Murad has a fresh batch of images in the series, titled "Follow Me."
The first picture happened entirely by accident in Barcelona, when Natalia and Murad were on vacation. "I had just finished a shoot there. She was a bit annoyed that I was taking pictures all the time and so she grabbed me by the hand and tried to pull me forward," Murad explained to Business insider. "That didn't stop me from taking pictures and that's how I took a picture of her pulling me."
The couple have since traveled to even more exotic destinations for Murad's work, including Spain, Istanbul, and New York City. They were even featured at an Art Basel exhibition at the Versace Mansion with American artist Alec Monopoly.
Natalia and Murad have also created a Facebook page to document their adventures, where fans can go behind the scenes of the shots and discover more about their travels — not to mention get inspired to hop on a plane and follow in the couple's footsteps.
"We are actually now planning our New Year;s trip either to Brazil, or to India," Murad told us. Sounds like we can expect even more amazing images from the handsome couple in 2014.
Source: Follow Me/Facebook
Source: Follow Me/Facebook
Source: Follow Me/Facebook
Nothing changes faster these days than science and medical advice.
That's why, when it comes to your general health, it's hard to know what information is right, wrong, and somewhere in between.
To find some of the most common health questions that people have, we turned to a book called "Your Health: What Works, What Doesn't" published by Reader's Digest in June 2010.
The book consulted dozens of experts and culled through hundreds of studies to bring readers a definitive answer to controversial questions about diet, fitness, disease, and medicine.
We've supplemented these answers with our own research to present a bottom line.
Keep in mind that new research continuously changes our understanding of "good and bad" health advice. We've done our best to provide answers based on the most current scientific evidence.
Short answer: Yes
The health benefits of olive oil come from the presence of polyphenols, antioxidants that reduce the risk of heart diseases and cancers.
But to get these healthy compounds, consumers should buy good-quality, fresh "extra-virgin" olive oil, which has the highest polyphenol content. Most commercially available olive oils have low levels of polyphenols associated with poor harvesting methods, improper storage, and heavy processing.
Short answer: No
In 2006, the nation's chest physicians agreed that the majority of over-the-counter cough medicines don't actually work. These colorful syrups typically contain doses of codeine and dextromethorphan that are too small to be effective.
Only cough suppressants that contain older antihistamines seem to relieve coughs. That includes brompheniramine, an active ingredient in Dimetapp.
Short answer: No
Following a review of 23 studies, a 1996 report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that sugar "does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children."
The age-old myth that kids misbehave when they eat large amounts of candy, cookies, and other junk food, could be related to the type of events where these foods are typically served. For example, kids are more wound-up at birthday parties and during Halloween when sweet treats tend to flow freely.
It's no coincidence that so many successful people get up early.
The early bird schedule is good for responding to people and events around the world, getting a head start on people in your own time zone, and also finding time for exercise and family. What's more, research shows that early risers tend to be happier and more proactive.
While a late schedule may make sense for some occupations, most people should take notes from the executives and other successful people on this list.
Immelt gets up at 5:30 in the morning every day for a cardio workout, during which he reads the papers and watches CNBC, he told Fortune. He claims to have worked 100 hour weeks for 24 straight years.
Burns uses early morning hours to get caught up on emails, getting up at 5:15 and sometimes working until midnight, she told Yahoo Finance.
She also uses the time to stay in shape, scheduling an hour of personal training at 6:00 A.M. twice a week, according to Laura Vanderkam's "What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast."
Marchionne splits his time between Turin, Italy and Auburn Hills, Mich.
When in the U.S., he gets up at 3:30 in the morning to deal with the European side and still have time for everything else, he told "60 Minutes."
"You and I have lived among workaholics in our day. I have never seen anything like Sergio," Obama "car czar" Steve Rattner said on the show. "When it was a holiday in Italy he'd come to America to work. When it's a holiday in America he goes to Italy to work. Saturdays and Sundays were just workdays to him and for his whole team. And anybody who signed up with Sergio signed up for the program.
Over the years, the tradition of ad agencies sending creative holiday cards to employees, associates, and loved ones adapted significantly for modern technology.
Now "holiday card" is a casual term that can refer to an online video, an app, a game, a GIF, or anything else creatives can think up.
This year, we highlighted 10 of our favorites.
There's an elaborate website meant for David Bowie, an egg nog variation of a beer pong game benefiting a dog shelter, and a site that lets users write a holiday message in the stars.
For this year's holiday card, Ignited created a character who shares five tips for creating the perfect holiday card. Hint: one ideal card looks something like a sloth covered in multicultural symbols covering all the year-end holidays.
The agency will donate five cents to the American Red Cross for every view, up to $2,500. It's worth watching:
Last Monday, space150 shared the above image via social media and a bus stop ad. They asked people if they would rather have $10 given in their name "to fight cyber bullying" or have $10 mailed to them. All it took was a tweet to them with either #GIVE or #RECEIVE.
By the end of Monday afternoon, they reached their limit of 150 tweets — 139 had donations made in their name to Pacer's National Bullying Prevention Center, and just 11 got 10 bucks. The Grinches also got a nice piece of coal.
All the VIA Agency wants for Christmas is David Bowie. They turned their weird obsession with the singer into a fun project using the Twitter trending topic #GetItToBowie as an attempt to get him to cover one of the VIA House Band's songs. They're offering a free six-song album of original holiday tunes, and they're clearly having a great time.
Their "card" was a link to getittobowie.com, which features some pretty great (and pretty awful) Bowie impressions.
Employees at Pfizer really love their jobs.
The pharmaceutical giant was voted the happiest company in America by its own workers for the second year running, according to an annual survey from job site CareerBliss. Health care company Kaiser Permanente took second place, followed by Texas Instruments.
To come up with its ranking, CareerBliss evaluated thousands of employee-submitted reviews across hundreds of companies. Workers were asked to rate their employers on several happiness factors, including work-life balance, company culture, compensation, and growth opportunities.
Each employee review was given an average score between one and five. These scores were tabulated to produce a company's overall rating, or "bliss score," with a higher score indicating happier employees.
Here's a look at the happiest companies in America, as well as each business's bliss score, average employee salary, and ranking on last year's list.
What it does: An American Comerica TV network that broadcasts everything from news to home entertainment to sports coverage
Bliss score: 3.974
Average salary: $78,000
Last year's ranking: No. 48
What it does: A diversified technology company that services the health care, lighting, and consumer lifestyle sectors
Bliss score: 3.975
Average salary: $78,000
Last year's ranking: No. 25
What it does: A multinational company that provides technology services, management consulting, and outsourcing
Bliss score: 3.979
Average salary: $80,000
Last year's ranking: No. 24
Christmas is celebrated all over the world, but every community has developed its own unique holiday traditions.
Some are sweet, but others strike us as downright strange.
We've gathered up some of our favorite Christmas traditions from around the globe. Did we leave yours out? Let us know in the comments.
Meredith Galante contributed to this post.
It's summer down under on Christmas Day. Temperatures in December are between 68 and 84 degrees Fahrenheit.
So Santa often pulls up on the beach on his surfboard. Carolers also gather in masse in major cities to sing by candlelight, and people decorate their homes with "Christmas Bush," a native plant.
In Austria, December is a time for festive events and frights.
Young men walk around dressed up as the Krampus, a devil-demon creature equipped with cowbells and rods, scaring adults and children.
The country is also known for its famed Christmas markets.
On Dec. 4, women in the Czech Republic place a cherry twig under water. If it blooms before Christmas Eve it means she will marry in the next year.
Another marriage-related superstition in the Czech Republic is that if a woman throws a show over her shoulder on Christmas day and it points to the door, she will soon be wed.
Whenever you're questioning whether you should click send on that email that might be a little too mean or not really funny, here's some advice — don't send it.
Whether intended for an internal list among friends, or blasted for a whole community to read, there are some emails that never should be sent — and it seems like the problem is particularly bad at colleges.
Students, professors, and administrators are all offenders — these are 10 emails that never should have been sent on a college campus.
Earlier this year, Gawker published an email sent by a member of the University of Maryland's Delta Gamma chapter to her sorority. In the "expletive and CAPS-ridden email tirade," the DG sister publicly and aggressively chastised the sorority for what she perceived as their awkwardness during parties.
Since it went viral, the letter has had numerous public readings, including by celebrities like Michael Shannon and Gilbert Gottfried.
Worst Line:"And for those of you who are offended at this email, I would apologize but I really don't give a f***. Go f*** yourself."
In 2006, a mechanical engineering professor at Michigan State University sent an email to the school's Muslim Student's Association in response to a planned on-campus protest. He used some terrible stereotypes to describe Islam — for example, saying that Muslim culture referred to women as "whores."
The professor later apologized for the "tactless and hyperbolic language" he used in the email.
Worst Line:"Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans."
While not technically an email error, Vassar College made a major Internet mistake last year when they falsely told 76 applicants that they were admitted to the school. Vassar accidentally left up a placeholder "test letter" that over 100 students viewed, before informing them that the verdict was due to a system error and may have been incorrect, the New York Times reported.
Vassar apologized to the effected applicants and said they would reimburse the $65 application fees.
Samsung and Apple are the two most profitable smartphone companies in the world. Together, they make practically 100% of all profits in mobile computing.
Right now the two giants each have a flagship device: The iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S4. The Galaxy S4 is due for an update pretty soon, but it can still hold its own in many respects. In fact, there are a ton of things it can do that the iPhone 5S, the darling of the high-end smartphone industry, can't do.
The mark of a truly top-notch hotel is its service.
In addition to the room upgrades, attentive staff, and perks like champagne, the world's best hotels go above and beyond great service to cater to the every whim of their guests and anticipate every desire.
A recent Quora thread asked, "what are the best service touches you've ever received at a hotel"? The answers revealed some incredible services you probably never knew existed.
"I had overslept [at the Al Faisaliah in Riyadh] and needed to finish some work and checkout quickly so I could make my flight back home. The butler had brought in my breakfast (they have butler service) and saw that I was rushing. He asked if I needed anything and I sarcastically replied "Well unless you can pack my bags." All I heard was a "why of course" and then he proceeded to perfectly fold all my dress clothes into my bags in a few minutes." -- Saikat B.
"When I wanted to eat at the rooftop restaurant but lacked the appropriate attire, Ian [the floor butler] brought a rack of suits to my room. When I called Ian to see when the jet ski rental booth closed, he told me it closed at six but not to worry. I did not know what this meant at the time. A few moments later, Ian called back to inform me that the rental booth reopened so that I could be dragged around on a tube behind a motor boat for a half hour. The Burj al Arab's service was almost uncomfortable." -- Alan D.
"I'll never forget one time on a Disney cruise when my cousin said he wanted nothing for dessert, and they brought out a plate with the word nothing written in chocolate sauce. It was cute, clever, and nice because he didn't have to sit there with no plate in front of him while everyone else ate, and it put a smile on all our faces." -- Kristen B.
"At the Maximilian hotel in Prague, you can get a goldfish delivered to your room." -- Sebastian I.
"I recently checked in [to The PennyHill Hotel in Surrey, UK] and requested a cot for my daughter. When I arrived they had put a cot in the room, put a couple of blankets in the cot but also left a champagne bucket on the side, a kettle, some still water, a few small soft towels and a teddy bear with a note saying 'we do not have a bottle warmer available however please feel free to use the champagne bucket as a substitute alongside hot water. We have also provided mineral water in case you have milk formula and a complimentary teddy bear for company, hopefully this will be the first of many happy nights here for your family, best regards'." -- Anthony S.
"I unintentionally booked a room with 2 queen beds, instead of 1 king. At check-in, when I realized this, I asked if there might be any king rooms available; the hotel was booked to capacity and there was nothing. I didn't raise too much of a fuss, though, and assured the front desk manager — despite his constant apologies — it was my fault for having booked the wrong room type, and appreciated their looking in to availability nonetheless."
"I dropped off everything at my room and left the hotel for a number of meetings I had in town that day. When I returned to the hotel in the evening, I found a note from the manager apologizing for my having gotten the wrong room type (even though it was my own fault!). More impressively, though, they had actually disassembled and removed the 2 queen beds that were in the room, and brought in a spare king bed and set that up; while they had no king rooms available, they did have some king beds and used one to turn my room in to what I wanted.
"What's more, they did all of that for just a single night as they upgraded me to a suite that had become available (with king bed) the next night until the end of my stay." -- Brian D.
"When we were at the Disney Ambassador Hotel at Tokyo Disneyland a couple of years ago, my sister left her glasses in our room when we went out to dinner. When we came back to the room, we found out that housekeeping had done this with a hand towel in the meantime:" -- Makiko I.
"It was a nice (but not luxurious) hotel in Japan. I had just woken up and prepared myself a cup of hot tea in my hotel room. I had just taken a sip or two when we decided to go down to the hotel restaurant for some breakfast. When we returned, we found the housekeeping staff had come to make up our room.
"One of the staff had placed a coffee cup saucer over the top of my tea cup, so my beverage would be hot when I returned (although they had no way of knowing if I would return so quickly). I took a sip of my (still) hot tea and thought to myself how thoughtful they were to have paid attention to such details. This happened many years ago, but I still remember fondly a little touch that meant a lot. I left them a generous tip, when I checked out." -- Garrick S.
"A friend left her purse, with most of her valuables, in my Tokyo hotel room as I checked out. The hotel didn't know her name. She realized her loss as the Narita Express train we were on pulled out of the station. As she had kept her passport and some credit cards separately and with her, we decided to continue on to Narita.
"At the airport when I checked in, I was told, 'United desk X has a message for you.' The message was from the hotel. It said, 'When cleaning your room, we found a purse and gave it to an Airport Limousine driver. It will arrive at Narita airport at XX:XX.' The time was five minutes after reading the message. Nothing was missing." -- Dick K.
"Because of a planned strike the next day by Air France, I had to leave the Sofitel Hotel in Cannes unexpectedly early in order to make my connections back to the US. In my hurry I left behind some of my clothes, toiletries, and a battery charger.
"The next year I chanced to stay at the same hotel and found all the items I had left behind cleaned, ironed, tagged, and lined up on the bed. My formerly dirty, sandy, wet Nike shoes looked new.
"I made a point of leaving an entire suitcase behind at this Sofitel. For the next 20 years it was always there waiting 1 year later. No charge." -- Fred L.
"The Delta Calgary South is not a resort destination, but I will never forget the kindness their staff demonstrated during a stay a few years back.
"A day or two after checking in, I came down with a pretty bad case of the flu. I limped thru one day of meetings, but finally surrendered, called my clients and cancelled my meetings.
"When the maid service knocked on the door, I explained I wasn't feeling well and wouldn't need their services for a day or two. An hour later I got a call from the manager asking if she could help in anyway. I told her I was fine and just needed to ride it out. She said she understood, and hoped I wouldn't mind that room service had just left a bowl of soup and pitcher of orange juice outside my door. I would never have ordered it for myself, but it was an absolute godsend.
"Over the next two days, I would hear a very discreet knock on the door and open it to find small, healthful snacks — fruit, tea, toast, broth — it was as if my fairy godmother was nursing me back to health." -- Andy E.
SEE ALSO: 16 Of The World's Best Cheap Hotels
The penthouse of New York City's Pierre Hotel hit the market for a record $125 million in late April.
But the property, which belonged to late investor Martin Zweig, has yet to find a buyer, and recently had its price slashed by 24% to $95 million, according to The New York Daily News.
Zweig initially listed the apartment for $70 million in 2007 but later pulled the listing; he died in February.
The apartment encompasses three floors and was originally the hotel's ballroom.
The 16-room spread is listed with Sotheby's International Realty.
2013 was a year of mystery and thrills, at least according to Amazon's list of best-selling adult books for the year.
While contemporary romance dominated last year's list with the likes of "50 Shades of Grey," this year's top spot went to Dan Brown's thriller "Inferno." It was also a very popular book at the New York Public Library earlier this fall.
"And The Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini and J.K. Rowling's crime thriller, "The Cuckoo's Calling," written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, rounded out the top three.
Amazon calculated its list of best-selling books by taking into account sales of print and Kindle edition books that were published in 2013. Check out the best-selling books below:
1. "Inferno" by Dan Brown: Brown's infamous hero Robert Langdon (from "The Da Vinci Code") heads once more into Italy. Langdon's latest mystery takes its cue from Dante's epic poem in the "Divine Comedy."
2. "And the Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini: Hosseini follows up "The Kite Runner" with another story set in Kabul, Afghanistan. His latest novel begins with a father telling his two young children a folktale. The story spans several decades and continents following the family's trials and tribulations from there.
3. "The Cuckoo’s Calling" by Robert Galbraith: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a super model's suicide in this classically-styled mystery written by J.K. Rowling under a pseudonym.
4. "The Husband’s Secret" by Liane Moriarty: Cecilia Fitzpatrick discovers a letter in which her husband confesses a dark secret that could ruin the life she built. She was supposed to receive the letter after he died, but stumbles across it while he is still very much alive.
5. "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" by Sheryl Sandberg: Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, shares her leadership secrets in a book that combines personal anecdotes, hard data and research. She aims to understand the bias against women in leadership positions and offer advice for women in the workplace and daily life.
6. "The Hit" by David Baldacci: Will Robie, a highly trained assassin, eliminates enemies of state for the U.S. government. When Jessica Reel, another assassin in the agency, goes rogue, Robie must stop her.
7. "Sycamore Row" by John Grisham: Jake Brigance, from Grisham's breakout hit "A Time to Kill" returns to Ford County to try a case that brings up old racial tensions. Before hanging himself from a Sycamore tree, Seth Hubbard leaves a handwritten will for his property that drags his adult children and his black maid into a conflict that spans generations.
8. "Entwined with You" by Sylvia Day: Book three of the Crossfire series finds Gideon and Eva with even more alone time than they've had in previous installments of this torrid romance.
9. "Never Go Back" by Lee Child: Child's latest novel in his Jack Reacher series follows the former military cop on a mission to find his missing commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, and clear his own name in the process.
10. "The Storyteller" by Jodi Picoult: Sage Singer is a baker trying to get over the death of her mother. Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group with his own demons, begins stopping by the Sage's bakery. They strike up an unlikely friendship.
11. "Alex Cross, Run" by James Patterson: Detective Alex Cross has a lot on his plate: A plastic surgeon, Cross got arrested for sleeping with teenage girls is out of jail, and this time with a new face, a young woman who recently gave birth is found murdered and the baby is missing, plus another serial killer is rumored to be on the loose in D.C.
12. "Doctor Sleep" by Stephen King: In his latest supernatural mystery, King invents the True Knot, a group of quasi-immortal RV-travelers who feed off the steam produced when children with "the shining" are slowly tortured to death.
13. "12th of Never" by James Patterson: Part of the Women's Murder Club series, Patterson's latest mystery picks up when Lindsay Boxer's daughter is born. But her bliss is quickly broken when San Francisco gets hit with multiple killings.
14. "Damaged: The Ferro Family" by H.M. Ward: In this romance, Peter is a college professor and Sydney, his teaching assistant, is running from her past and afraid to get too close to another person. Still, the two have unmistakable chemistry.
15. "Killing Jesus: A History" by Bill O’Reilly: Television and radio magnate Bill O'Reilly chronicles the political and historical events that led to the murder of Jesus of Nazareth. Historian Martin Dugard helped O'Reilly write it.
16. "Second Honeymoon" by James Patterson: A string of tragic accidents that left one newlywed couple dead in a sauna and another killed on a flight to Rome leads FBI Agent John O'Hara to suspect a serial killer is on the loose, and he's targeting honeymooners.
17. "Whiskey Beach" by Nora Roberts: Eli Landon is a Boston lawyer under investigation for the murder of his soon-to-be ex-wife. He takes refuge at his family's estate on Whiskey Beach. While there, he meets Abra Walsh, the local jack-of-all-trades, and things get complicated.
18. "The Billionaire’s Obsession: The Complete Collection" by J.S. Scott: This collection of 4 romance novels follows billionaire Simon Hudson as he woos Kara Foster with an offer she can't refuse.
19. "Surrender Your Love" by J.C. Reed: Brooke Stewart is a New York City realtor who doesn't do relationships, but that maxim gets tested when she meets Jett Mayfield, a green-eyed millionaire who isn't used to taking no for an answer.
20. "Six Years" by Harlan Coben: Jake Fisher watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man six years ago. But when Jake comes across the obituary for Natalie's husband Todd, he can't stay away any longer.
SEE ALSO: The Best New Books Of The Year, According to Goodreads
For most people, the daily commute to and from work is no fun.
But if you think you have it rough, these photos will make you feel a lot better.
Around the world, insane traffic, behemoth crowds, crippling strikes, and rough weather make other people's commutes simply hellish.
Take a look, and think about this the next time you're frustrated when your train is a few minutes late.
Given his rare four-star review of West Village sushi den Sushi Nakazawa earlier this month, it comes as no surprise that New York Times food critic Pete Wells declared it the best restaurant of 2013 in his year-end roundup for the newspaper.
Daisuke Nakazawa, the protégé of Jiro Ono (the subject of the documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi") opened the tiny restaurant earlier this year.
"A meal at Mr. Nakazawa’s counter is a guided tour of the potential of simple seafood on rice to amaze," Wells wrote. "With subtle fine-tunings of temperature and seasoning, he can make a piece of sushi into the kind of sense-filling experience you wish could last and last."
Other restaurants on Wells' year-end list included Greenwich Village red sauce joint Carbone; Betony, a spin-off from several alumni of Eleven Madison Park; and Uncle Boon's, a Thai restaurant in NoLiTa. You can find his full list here.
Since reservations at Sushi Nakazawa are next-to-impossible to secure, we rounded up some mouthwatering Instagram pictures from the lucky few who have tried the omakase meal ($150 at the sushi bar, $120 in the dining room).
Welcome to Sushi Nakazawa, the newest four-star restaurant in New York City.
Let's take a look at the four-star sushi, shall we?
Sea urchins!
And here's that same sea urchin (uni) out of its spiky shell:
His signature tamago, or Japanese omelette.
One last glimpse of the assortment at Sushi Nakazawa:
And dessert — a yuzu sorbet with pomegranate.
SEE ALSO: Don't Trust The Pictures Hotels Post On Their Websites
This is spooky stuff, but it's real and it's already happening.
Humans are augmenting themselves with computers and technology that will expand their abilities, and it's going to get more advanced and morally complex as time passes.
Imagine transplanting your entire consciousness into a computer. That's a new type of immortality. Imagine having a robotic exoskeleton that's not just part of your body — it is your body. That's a new type of existence entirely.
An excellent documentary called "Bionics, Transhumanism, And The End Of Evolution" takes a look at the endless wonder and potential of what happens when blood-and-meat humanity meets steel-and-silicon technology. The results are amazing, but what's even more compelling is where this stuff goes down the road as it gets more and more advanced.
Desti, a travel planning app, just released a series of maps that show where people from different states like to travel most.
The app analyzed travel searches performed by its registered users to collect data on where they are from and where they want to go.
"People in every state search more out of state than in state [for vacation]," Desti's founder and CEO Nadev Gur wrote in an email to Business Insider, "But Californians do the most in-state travel by far."
Other travel trends include Florida as a popular destination for people who live east of Texas, California as a popular destination for Floridians, and Texas and Tennessee as popular destinations in the South and West.
Florida is a popular place to travel for the eastern half of the U.S., while California wins the western half of the country.
People who live in Connecticut come to New York all the time, and surprisingly people from New Mexico make the trip fairly often as well.
New Yorkers plan a lot of vacations in Florida and California, but don't visit Idaho or North Dakota.
Not surprisingly, people from Nevada love to travel to California, but people from as far east as New Jersey and Vermont make the trip as well.
Californians visit the surrounding states like Nevada quite a bit. They also travel to New York pretty often.
It's Christmas Eve. That means that all over the world families are gathering together around dinner tables to celebrate.
But here in New York, we have our own tradition: eating at a Chinese restaurant.
In the beloved tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas, we've found the best Chinese restaurants in Manhattan.
Don't let the silly name fool you: Big Wong is a favorite among fans of classic small-plate, Hong Kong-style fare. It's a bit of a dive, but worth it for the congee (a rice porridge served with a variety of meats and sides).
There are several branches of the local Grand Sichuan chain, but the one on St. Marks Place is arguably the best one in the city.
The menu of traditional Sichuan dishes is so extensive that you may have trouble choosing.
The beloved Philadelphia restaurant chain finally opened its first outpost in New York's East Village this year, and early reviews are raving. Items on the menu are scored 1-10 based on spiciness, with 10 topping out at mouth-scorching.
Order the famed dan dan noodle appetizer, and follow it up with a hot pot or one of the dozen or so other options on the entree section of the menu.
