The summer vacation season is coming to a close. Soon enough the kids will be back at school and you'll be back to the daily grind. Our writers have chosen several books to help you smooth that transition back to the "real world." All of the picks involve employment and careers -- both in real life and fiction. We have a look at finding a job, an exploration of the roots of the Mafia, the workings of the illicit international traffic in antiquities and two thrillers, one about how government-trained operatives are working for private money and another about how a selfless doctor finds his medical training enables him to hold his own against the intelligence community.

Author: Tory Johnson
Reviewed by: Aleksandra Todorova, Senior Writer, SmartMoney.com

So you re out of work, up to your ears in job applications, all networked out and have no job offers whatsoever. Will a career-help book help you land one? Sorry. In this brutal economy, bouncing back from a job loss is, well, a job that only you can do.

But if you need a kick in the behind to get you out of the pessimistic, self-pitying mindset that so many job seekers succumb to after months of rejection, Tory Johnson s "Fired to Hired" can certainly help you go, as Johnson puts it, from Blah to Ah!

her company Women for Hire, Johnson knows job seekers appreciate concrete advice. Happily, her book is light on generalities and heavy on practical tips. Her conversational style makes it an easy read, but what makes this book a page-turner (really!) are the experiences shared by high-profile executives and by the TV personalities with whom Johnson works on ABC s "Good Morning America."

Our favorite: Years ago, when Diane Sawyer walked into a TV station in her hometown of Louisville, Ky., to ask for a job, she was turned away. The reason? She wasn t "polished enough to be on television news."

The Lost Chalice

The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece

Author: Vernon Silver
Reviewed by: Sarah Morgan

"The Lost Chalice" is the fascinating story of how a band of grave robbers turned up two priceless ancient works of art and how these ill-gotten masterpieces made their way to Sotheby s, to private collections and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Silver shows how the illicit trade of stolen antiquities implicates the art world's most prestigious institutions. He takes us alongside detectives and reporters who doggedly pursue elusive treasures across decades and continents, chasing leads to Switzerland, Beirut and Malibu. Millions are made while laws and irreplaceable artworks are broken.

Silver creates a compelling narrative, but the power these objects exert over collectors from every walk of life leaves an even deeper impression than the lively, twisting plot he unfolds. Consider the Met's Sarpedon krater, created by famed Greek artist Euphronios and featuring a scene of the Trojan War. Even after the Met acquired this rare bowl, which was used to mix wine and water, curator Dietrich von Bothmer couldn't stop speaking in public about details of a lost chalice," an earlier work he should never have admitted he d seen. By the time you finish this book, you ll share a little of his obsession for such astonishing antiquities.

Vanished

Author: Joseph Finder
Reviewed by: Robert J. Hughes

Outsourcing has hit the spy racket. Now that the U.S. spends close to 70% of its intelligence budget on private contractors, loyalties lie less with country than with cash. In his new novel "Vanished," Joseph Finder combines this and other real-world scenarios, including those involving jailed financial tycoons and the misdirection of Iraq-bound money, into an original and gripping thriller.

The author, an intelligence expert, has crafted several bestselling thrillers set in the corporate arena, including "Power Play." His latest novel kicks off a series featuring Nick Heller, an iconoclastic (aren't they all?) investigator for a Washington, D.C., security company with way too many inside-the-Beltway connections for its own impartial good.

The basic arc of the story concerns the kidnapping of Heller's estranged button-down brother, who has been attacked after an outing at a local restaurant with his wife. The Heller brothers have a fraught history, but family ties are stronger than resentments, and Nick tries to find his brother Roger (and the reason for his abduction), uncovering along the way a trail of corporate and government deception.

Finder is that rare thriller author who actually writes well. He manages deft characterization, offhand one-liners and a fine sense of place. He also gives us a look at a new, increasingly dangerous world of intelligence-gathering and illuminates cutthroat ambitions in the business world that are at play even among executive assistants.

In the best thrillers everything is connected. Pay attention to the details here, because they all fit into the surprising and timely plot of this first-rate effort.

Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia

Author: Mike Dash
Reviewed by Matthew Heimer, Deputy Editor, SmartMoney

Lovers of mobster lore will spot one name that grabs them on the very first page of "The First Family": Corleone. But that s about as close to "The Godfather" as Mike Dash gets in his engaging account of the Mafia s unglamorous roots. Corleone yes, it s a real place was the Sicilian hometown of Giuseppe Morello, a.k.a. "The Clutch Hand," who by 1900 had risen to lead New York City s first tightly organized Mafia "family."

The Morello family's octopus reach extended over rackets involving everything from vegetable wholesaling to Harlem real estate, but counterfeiting was its specialty and, ultimately, its downfall. Dash, a British historian and journalist, traces the arc of these exploits with the help of troves of colorful (if not always reliable) testimony from informants, jailbirds and G-men.

The story comes across as a sepia-toned, almost quaint version of the classic Mafia feud narrative one where stilettos and horse carts take the place of machine guns and black sedans. And though the brutality depicted in "The First Family" will hardly come as a surprise to readers familiar with the genre, the period details keep the story fresh.

Rules of Vengeance

By Christopher Reich
Reviewed by: Robert J. Hughes

In his previous book, "Rules of Deception," author Christopher Reich introduced readers to the kind of thriller hero that movie audiences responded to in the wildly successful "Bourne" franchise: a man who lives by his wits and outfoxes his more highly-funded adversaries. But Reich's twist is original: His hero, Jonathan Ransom, isn't a trained spy suffering from amnesia and calling up skill sets that had become second nature. No, he is a physician (for Doctors Without Borders, no less) who has a knowledge of anatomy, a strong will to survive, and the ability to think on his feet (and on the run). These skills all came in handy in "Rules of Deception" as Ransom more than held his own against the trained operatives who tried to come between him and his wife who happens to be a spy.

In "Rules of Vengeance," Ransom is back with a, well, what the title says. Called to London from Africa where he is tending to the suffering (for a medical symposium and a quick rendezvous with that superspy wife), Ransom finds himself at the middle of a suicide bombing in broad daylight. He is accused of being the mastermind and apprehended by the police. Naturally, they don't believe him. Yet somehow Ransom, in Reich's inventive and fast-moving tale, is able to take matters into his own hands.

For Ransom, the stakes are high. He risks the truth about his wife, the truth about the bombing, and the prospect of his own future.

Reich has crafted an up-to-the-minute thriller that looks at the desperation for control among supposedly friendly espionage agencies in the U.S. and abroad (particularly Britain, with Russia thrown in for good measure) at a time when intelligence gathering has become so reliant on electronics that the personal touch (foul or fair) is overlooked. The writing is occasionally clumsy (his descriptions of people are run-of-the-mill) but Reich's plotting is superb, filled with surprises up to the last page.