Good to great [kit]: why some companies make the leap— and others don't by Jim Collins — Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. The research team then contrasted these good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness — why some companies make the leap and others don't. The findings may surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice.

The tiger's wife: [kit] a novel by Téa Obreht — Natalia, a young doctor, arrives in a Balkan country on a mission of mercy. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. But Natalia is also confronting a private mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel. Searching for clues, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. "These stories," Natalia comes to understand, "run like secret rivers through all the other stories" of her grandfather's life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.

The storyteller a novel [kit] Jodi Picoult — At 25, Sage Singer is scarred, both physically and mentally, by the car accident that took her mother's life. A baker who works at night in a New Hampshire shop run by a former nun, Sage shuns almost all human contact, save for her coworkers and her funeral-director boyfriend, Adam, who is married to another woman. Sage ventures out of her comfort zone to befriend Josef Weber, an elderly retired teacher, who throws her world into chaos when he tells her that he's a former SS officer and asks her to help him end his life. Sage, whose grandmother Minka survived the Holocaust, reaches out to the Department of Justice and is connected with Leo Stein, a charismatic attorney and Nazi hunter. Leo travels to New Hampshire to investigate Sage's claims, which leads them to Minka, who shares a surprising connection to Josef.

We're celebrating Earth Day from April 14-27 and want you to join us! There will be events for everyone including:

• Biodiversity LIVE! — Sunday, April 14, 2:00-3:00 PM
• Meatless Mondays with Door to Door Organics — Monday, April 22, 7:00-8:30 PM
• Heart of Michigan - Michigan Made Products — Tuesday, April 23, 7:00-8:30 PM
• Rain Gardens and Live Walls — Thursday, April 25, 7:00-8:30 PM
• Native American Dancers — Saturday, April 27, 2:00-3:00 PM

Lives like loaded guns: Emily Dickinson and her family's feuds [kit] by Lyndall Gordon - In 1882, Emily Dickinson's brother Austin began a passionate love affair with Mabel Todd, a young Amherst faculty wife, setting in motion a series of events that would forever change the lives of the Dickinson family. The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination. Gordon digs deep into the life and work of Emily Dickinson, to reveal the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, and presents a woman beyond her time who found love, spiritual sustenance, and immortality all on her own terms.

The Nature Conservancy announced a first-of-its-kind television and Web special, designed to convene a discussion on the solutions to the threats posed by dangerous invasive species in the Great Lakes. This special event "Great Lakes Now Connect: Invasive Species" broadcast on January 15, but you can still view it as an archive. For more information on invasive species search CPL's Science in Context database for "invasive species" or "biological invasions."

[Goby by Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory is licensed by CC BY-NC 2.0]