Need For reads

Fiction Wild child, gentle wisent Codex Orféo: A Novel By Michael Charles Tobias 242 pp. Springer Reviewed by David E. Hoekenga, M.D. This is a thriller about geo-terrorism, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust as it reverberates decades later, and grasping global pharmaceutical syndicates. The more interesting subplot involves the intriguing biology of Belarus, including a hundred species of bees, bracket fungi (a new darling in the fight against cancer), six-hundred-year-old oak trees, red squirrels and the beloved, ancient wisent, or European wood bison.   However, there were also ticks that could crawl undetected up one’s anus and deliver the universally fatal encephalitis that had in recent years increased four-fold in prevalence. The form of the novel is most unusual. It consists of ninety short chapters, one only three sentences long. The author uses this technique to “propel the reader into a continuous zone of the unexpected.”   It also includes thirteen high-quality photos b...