Indonesia, etc., Elizabeth Pisani, Well written kind of travelogue. Instead of being written by a tourist, it's written by a news reporter/ HIV researcher. So the perspective and locations are very different than a typical travelogue. It gives a very nice feel of Indonesia.
Faceless Killers, Henning Mankell. This is one of a the large Wallander series of murder mysteries set in southern Sweden. I read it to get a feel for how much the BBC Wallander series matches the books that it is derived from. I prefer the TV series. These are good but not gripping murder mysteries.
No Sooner Met, Seanan McGuire. This is a long short story, but since it's published separately I'll list it with books. A nice little story from the October Daye series.
Poor Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. This is a kind of "round two" on using evidence and analysis in assessing efforts to deal with global poverty. Rather than being pure speculations, it takes the results of early RCTs and micro-economic analysis to discuss what is working and what is not working.
Collected works of Arvin Alchian. These are premier quality discussions of various aspects of micro-economics. It's the kind of stuff that I didn't get in school, and oddly didn't really come across until recently. It's also two volumes of 800+ pages each. Examples:
What is the meaning of Profit, Cost, and Inflation? I learned definitions by accountants and accounting standards. These papers look at the underlying economic relationships behind the accounting definitions. It's an interesting and different perspective.
how does knowledge or lack of knowledge affect trade? For example, incorporating non-uniform knowledge distribution and a cost of obtaining knowledge leads directly to predicting sticky wages and unemployment. Specialists, agents, etc. change the equilibrium price relations. This work is complementary to the related work of Coase on knowledge and organizational structures. It has direct relevance in current Internet situations where the cost of obtaining knowledge is changing dramatically.
Monsters of Education Technology, Audrey Waters. She's a "Cassandra of Education Technology". This is a collection of speeches, rather than written essays. They were good speeches, but as a result the whole lacks rigor and substance. Arguments are posed, but not defended. It's a problem that is inherent to speeches.