Table of Contents
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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
Seeing Stars
Lists of (mostly) hardcover books which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ).
The review journal assigns the star.
Out and About. . .
I'm playing around at Shelfari, LibraryThing, and Good Reads. I've set up links to my pages on these sites. And, yes, I have a hard time keeping up-to-date on these sites...
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Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Overbooked is the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.
Starred Reviews
Fiction Stars 2000
September 9, 2008
January - June
Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically by author. Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted. Aindicates an Overbooked Jump for Joy book.
June
-
In the Name
of Salome
Author: Alvarez, Julia
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN: 1565122763 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW
Based on the lives of two heroic Latin women, Alvarez's sweeping fourth novelspans more than 100 years in the tumultuous history of the Caribbean.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Latino/Latina Stars | Biographical Fiction
Updated 5/11/00 -
Emotionally
Weird
Author: Atkinson, Kate
Publisher: Picador $ 25 ISBN: 0312203241 Date: 2000
PW
In this thoroughly original and hilarious new novel from the author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, a mother and daughter take refuge in the house of their ancestors in Scotland and spin tales of their lives, as strange things begin to happen around them.
Updated 4/19/00. -
The
Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks
Author: Banks, Russell
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.50 ISBN: 0060173963 Date: 2000
PW Library Journal
Broad in scope and rich in imagination, this new collection by the author of Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter includes the best of his previous anthologies, newly revised, plus nine new short stories
Updated 6/6/00. -
The
Marines of Autumn
Author: Brady, James
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312262000 Date: 2000
PW
The Korean War affected the lives of all Americans, yet little is known beyond "M*A*S*H". This new novel of the Chosin Reservoir Campaign is about Tom Verity, a man brought to Korea to monitor Chinese radio transmissions. Within hours, he is thrust into MacArthur's last daring foray and witnesses firsthand the horrors of war.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Marines
Updated 4/27/00. -
The
Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes
Author: Bram, Christopher
Publisher: Morrow $ 26 ISBN: 0688175694 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW
From the imagination that created Father of Frankenstein, the basis for the Academy Award-winning film Gods and Monsters, comes an emotionally riveting historical novel about an improvisational pianist who believes his music is sometimes inspired by the spirit world.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 5/4/00. -
When
I Was Five I Killed Myself
Author: Buten, Howard
Publisher: Overlook $ 19.95 ISBN: 1585670391 Date: 2000
PW
First published in the U.S. as a young adult novel, Buten's bittersweet portrayal of childhood received wide acclaim. In France, it has come to be considered a modern classic for children and adults alike, with more than a million sold. This is eight-year-old Burton Rembrant's story as written in pencil on the walls of the Quiet Room at a home for disturbed children.
Updated 4/13/00. -
The
Tale of Murasaki
Author: Dalby, Liza
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385497946 Date: 2000
Library Jounral
"The Tale of Murasaki" brings vividly to life the fascinating 11th-century world of the creator of Japan's enduring masterpiece, The Tale of Genji. Liza Dalby is not only a most remarkable scholar of Japan--she is a keen storyteller".--Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha.
The Tale of Muraraki web site.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 6/6/00. -
Diamond
Dust: Stories
Author: Desai, Anita
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 061804213x Date: 2000
Library Journal Booklist
Gathering together radiant new stories, Diamond Dust travels from India to the American Northeast, deftly exploring the tensions between social obligation and personal independence, between old traditions and new.
Suggested Reading: Stars of India
Updated 6/12/00. -
Saving
Elijah
Author: Dorf, Fran
Publisher: Putnam $ 25.95 ISBN: 039914630x Date: 2000
PW
Updated 4/19/00. -
Jim the Boy
Author: Earley, Tony
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316199648 Date: 2000
PW Library Journal
A ten-year-old boy takes his first tentative steps toward adulthood in a tiny southern town in the early 20th century, measuring himself against the high standards set by his mother and uncles and the long shadows cast by his dead father.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 5/19/00. -
Cross
Dressing
Author: Fitzhugh, Bill
Publisher: Avon $ 24 ISBN: 0380977567 Date: 2000
Kirkus
An advertising man is forced to impersonate his twin brother, a Catholic priest, in this audacious satire from the acclaimed author of Pest Control. Soon, Dan finds himself admiring the good-looking, gun-toting Sister Peg, who gives him impure thoughts about renouncing his vow - not that he ever took one.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction | Twins | Satirical Stars
Updated 4/19/00. -
A & R
Author: Flanagan, Bill
Publisher: Random House $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375502661 Date: 2000
Kirkus
James Joyce meets Hunter S. Thompson" (Boston Globe), in this wise and wickedly funny story - written by a music industry veteran and senior VP of VH1 - about a new golden boy at a major record label who uncovers a plot to depose its founder.
Suggested Reading: Music - Fiction Stars
Updated 6/22/00. - The Best
of Jackson Payne
Author: Fuller, Jack
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375405356 Date: 2000
PW Booklist Library Journal
A musicologist sets out to explain the life and work of the tormented African-American jazz saxophone player, Jackson Payne. As he discovers the family secrets that tortured Payne and the musical doubts that haunted him, the musicologist begins to fathom the depths of his own obsessions.
Suggested Reading: Music - Fiction Stars | All Stars
Updated 5/19/00. -
The Sooterkin
Author: Gilling, Tom
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670891525 Date: 2000
PW
This wickedly funny, magical, upside-down epic from Down Under holds up a mirror to history and human nature. It opens in the winter of 1821 as a seal pup is born to ex-convict Sarah Dyer and her husband, William, a dishonorably discharged soldier.
Updated 6/22/00. -
Wild Life
Author: Gloss, Molly
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0684867982 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Booklist
A free-thinking, fiercely independent writer of women's adventure stories finds herself in a mysterious world that challenges her concept of reality, after she agrees to join a search party for a missing child who has disappeared in the Great Northwest Woods.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 7/5/00. -
Bee Season
Author: Goldberg, Myla
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385498799 Date: 2000
PW Booklist
"Myla Goldberg's Bee Season is a bittersweet coming-of-age in which wise little Eliza Naumann's quirky passion for spelling bees unites and divides her family while revealing universal truths about the often crippling pain of love".--Martha McPhee, author of Bright Angel Time.
Suggested Reading: Bittersweet Stars
Updated 6/12/00. -
Blood
Latitudes
Author: Harrison, William
Publisher: MacMurray & Beck $ 24.95 ISBN: 1878448978 Date: 2000
Kirkus
In the harrowing and uncertain world of modern Africa, retired journalist Will Hobbs searches for his missing son, who has disappeared into the turbulent continent in search of stories, just as his father had once done. A journey through dark rings of conflict and famine, of passion and glimmering hope. - Publisher marketing.
Updated 4/13/00. -
The
Question of Bruno
Author: Hemon, Aleksandar
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 038549923x Date: 2000
PW Booklist Library Journal
A novella and stories linked by characters, by locations, and by interwoven substories, The Question of Bruno is set in Chicago and Sarajevo and is a book about the trauma of war and how an exile makes a new life in a new land.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Former Yugoslavia
Updated 7/20/00. -
Julius
Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District
Author: Katchor, Ben
Publisher: Pantheon $ 22 ISBN: 0375401059 Date: 2000
PW
From one of the most poetic and gifted comic-strip artists working today - and author of The Jew of New York - comes the first collection about his beloved protagonist, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer.
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novels
Updated 6/30/00. -
Windchill
Summer
Author: Mailer, Norris Church
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375503196 Date: 2000
PW
Absorbing summer reading for fans of Bailey White and Lee Smith: A fresh and funny debut novel that brings to life a host of unforgettable characters coming of age in a small town in Arkansas during the summer of 1969.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Summertime Stars
Updated 4/13/00. -
Dream Stuff:
Stories
Author: Malouf, David
Publisher: Schocken $ 22 ISBN: 0375420533 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW
From the internationally acclaimed author of Remembering Babylon comes a collection of evocative stories that encompass a half-century of Australian life. From tropical settings to backsoil country, from the aboriginal outback to city streets, these stories conjure the complexity of memory and the stuff of dreams.
Updated 4/19/00. -
The Other
Side: A Novel of the Civil War
Author: McColley, Kevin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0684857626 Date: 2000
PW
In the tradition of Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, the author of Praying to a Laughing God takes an epic look at the Civil War through the eyes of one young man, as he makes a harrowing journey from the innocence of Ohio farm life to the violence of the battlefield.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Fiction Stars
Updated 5/11/00. -
Stop
Breaking Down
Author: McManus, John
Publisher: Picador $ 18 ISBN: 0312262787 Date: 2000
Booklist
Tales of young people pushed to the brink of endurance and survival - from the Smoky Mountains and the deserts of Utah to the Pacific Northwest and the Washington beltway -highlight this short-story collection written by a 22-year-old graduate of Goucher College.
Updated 6/12/00. -
Becoming
Madame Mao
Author: Min, Anchee
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0681004076 Date: 2000
Library Journal Booklist PW
From the bestselling author of Red Azalea comes a strikingly original, erotically charged portrayal of Madame Mao, one of the most vilified women of the 20th century.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars | Asian American Stars | Biographical Fiction
Updated 4/13/00. -
Living
To Tell
Author: Nelson, Antonya
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0684839334 Date: 2000
PW Booklist
In this deeply affecting novel, an author who has been selected by The New Yorker as one of the best American fiction writers under forty weaves a rich tapestry of family life that encompasses pregnancy, suicide, broken hearts, addiction, redemption, mortality, and forgiveness.
Updated 6/12/00. -
Plowing
the Dark
Author: Powers, Richard
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374236412 Date: 2000
Kirkus Library Journal PW
On the shores of Puget Sound, a band of virtual reality researchers is building an empty white room that can become a jungle, a painting, or a cathedral. In a war-torn Mediterranean city, an American is held hostage in another empty white room. These two remote places will be linked by the power of the imagination.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4/13/00. - Fierce Invalids
Home from Hot Climates
Author: Robbins, Tom
Publisher: Bantam $ 27.50 ISBN: 0553107755 Date: 2000
Booklist
The bestselling author of Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas and Skinny Legs and All makes his triumphant return. Robbins explores, challenges, mocks, and celebrates virtually every major aspect of our contemporary era as he brings onstage the most complex and compelling character he's ever created.
Updated 4/13/00. -
An
Obedient Father
Author: Sharma, Akhil
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374105014 Date: 2000
PW Booklist
Ram, a Delhi school inspector, supports his daughter and granddaughter by collecting bribes for a Congress Party boss. On the eve of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, one reckless act bares the lifetime of violence and sexual shame behind Ram's dingy public career and thrusts him into a deadly political campaign. A debut novel .
Suggested Reading: Stars of India
Updated 7/5/00. -
Chang
and Eng
Author: Strauss, Darin
Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525945121 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
Everyone has a story to tell. Some of us even have two. Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng Bunker were the Siamese twins for whom the term was coined, one of the 19th century's most fabled oddities. Narrated by Eng during the final moments of his life, Chang and Eng follows the extraordinary lives of the twins from poverty to wealth, from hopeless solititude to boundless love, from the court of the King of Siam to the crowded bedroom of their North Carolina home. Chang and Eng is an unforgettable and sublimely moving story that reveals the longings and humanity of these remarkable twins. - Publisher marketing.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Biographical Fiction | Twins
Updated 4/6/00. -
First
Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa: Stories
Author: Stuckey-French, Elizabeth
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22 ISBN: 038549971x Date: 2000
PW
Updated 5/11/00. -
Marrying
the Mistress
Author: Trollope, Joanna
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670891509 Date: 2000
Library Journal Kirkus PW
What happens when the esteemed head of a family - an English judge - announces he is leaving a 40-year marriage to marry his mistress? This provocative new novel is quintessential Trollope, combining her trademark sensitivity with a new boldness and unsentimental honesty.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 5/4/00.
May
- The
Toughest Indian In the World: Stories
Author: Alexie, Sherman
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 0871138018 Date: 2000
PW Booklist Kirkus
The author of Reservation Blues now presents an anthology pf love stories--his first since the bestselling The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4/17/00. -
The Boomer
Author: Asher, Marty
Publisher: Knopf $ 15 ISBN: 0375410090 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Poignant, funny, persistently powerful, this meditation explores human finitude, the hollowness lurking behind the smooth surface of American life and dreams, and the lost hopes, rage, and loneliness that overtake a generation at middle-aged maturity. 100 illustrations.
Updated 4/6/00. -
The
Year of Jubilo: A Novel of the Civil War
Author: Bahr, Howard
Publisher: Henry Holt $ 25 ISBN: 0805059725 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Library Journal
Written with scrupulous respect for historical accuracy, The Year of Jubilo is the story of Civil War soldier Gawain Harper, who returns to his home in Cumberland, Mississippi, only to find that a showdown awaits him that once again pits South against North, and dignity against defeat.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Fiction | All Stars
Updated 3/16/00. -
The Feast
of Love
Author: Baxter, Charles
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375410198 Date: 2000
PW
In vignettes both comic and sexy, men and women speak of and desire the ideal mates who may be hiding in the unmapped sphere of possibilities living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Characters' voices resonate together in a tapestry that depicts the most irresistible arena of life.
Updated 3/15/00. -
Tuff
Author: Beatty, Paul
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375401229 Date: 2000
PW
When 19-year-old Winston "Tuffy" Foshay is offered $20,000 to run for city council, he gamely embarks on one of the most outlandish campaigns in political history, one that topples both his vision of the world and his place in it.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 4/14/00. -
Headlock
Author: Berlin, Adam
Publisher: Algonquin $ 21.95 ISBN: 1565122666 Date: 2000
Booklist
Suggested Reading: Take a Gamble
Updated 4/17/00. -
Trans-Sister
Radio
Author: Bohjalian, Chris
Publisher: Harmony $ 24 ISBN: 0609604074 Date: 2000
PW
The bestselling author of Midwives and The Law of Similars now uses subtlety to explore the very nature of love and identity.
Updated 4/13/00. -
Half A
Heart
Author: Brown, Rosellen
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374299870 Date: 2000
PW
In this unforgettable novel about race and motherhood from the bestselling author of Before and After, Miriam Vener's life is suddenly shattered with the appearance, after almost 18 years, of Ronnee, her biracial daughter. Raised by her father, Ronnee wrestles with her fury at her mother's mysterious disappearance from her life in this story of estrangement, intimacy, and identity. -
Deus Lo
Volt! A Chronicle of the Crusades
Author: Connell, Evan S.
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 30 ISBN: 1582430659 Date: 2000
Library Journal Kirkus
God Wills It! From the best selling author of Son of the Morning Star comes a magisterial recounting of the Crusades, telling - in stunning immediacy - one soldier's first-hand experience of the defining war of Christendom. - Publisher marketing.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Crusades
Updated 3/21/00. -
Eating
Naked
Author: Dobyns, Stephen
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 23 ISBN: 0805060227 Date: 2000
PW
In his first collection of stories, Dobyns, peerless chronicler of the menace and unease that lurk in small-town America, turns his attention to the dark, inescapable forces that test the patience, fidelity, and even good sense of the most ordinary people. The 16 stories range from surreal to poignant, from chilling to comic. -
Hunts
in Dreams
Author: Drury, Tom
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 22 ISBN: 039594113x Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
One of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists" returns to the American Midwest with a powerful and often funny chronicle of one October weekend in the lives of a precarious family. Hunts in Dreams is guided by a wry and warm-hearted sensibility and populated with appealingly flawed characters whose quirks, desires, and self-contradictions are our own."--Wally Lamb.
Updated 3/16/00. -
Light
at Dusk
Author: Gadol, Peter
Publisher: Picador $ 24 ISBN: 0312203365 Date: 2000
PW
In this atmospheric new novel by the author of The Long Rain, three Americans launch a desperate search across Paris for a kidnapped boy. In the process, they must challenge the moral burdens of their past, and in an attempt to rescue the child, find a way to redeem themselves.
Suggested Reading: Paris Stars -
Stern Men
Author: Gilbert, Elizabeth
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0395836220 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW
In this big, wise, funny first novel, the fishing feud between two Maine islands escalates daily until Ruth Thomas gets a glimpse of Owen Wishnell, a silent young Courne Haven Adonis with a preternatural gift for catching lobsters. Their passion is fast, furious, and forbidden. Their only hope is an unlikely truce.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 3/16/00. -
The
Binding Chair: A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society
Author: Harrison, Kathryn
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679450009 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Library Journal
This mesmerizing novel by the author of the bestselling The Kiss is set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, and it tells the story of two women whose lives intertwine - fascinating, tiny-footed Mai and Alice, her Western niece.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
Updated 3/16/00. -
Sam the Cat
Author: Klam, Matthew
Publisher: Random $ 22.95 ISBN: 0679457453 Date: 2000
PW
An O. Henry Award winner, with a cult following in literary circles, distills into nine high-energy stories the pure, comically painful truth about young men and women trying to get it on with each other and on with their lives.
Updated 4/19/00. -
Stonedial
Author: Konrad, George
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151006199 Date: 2000
Library Journal
Updated 3/13/00. -
The
Fundamentals of Play
Author: Macy, Caitlin
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375504133 Date: 2000
PW
Sometimes funny, sometimes melancholy, always surprising, The Fundamentals of Play evokes with assurance and originality the twilight of an American aristocracy. It also is the debut of a commanding new voice in American fiction.
Updated 4/6/00. -
Anil's
Ghost
Author: Ondaatje, Michael
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375410538 Date: 2000
PW Booklist
In modern day Sri Lanka, a forensic anthropologist is sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island.
Updated 4/3/00. -
Destiny
Author: Parks, Tim
Publisher: Arcade $ 24.95 ISBN: 1559705175 Date: 2000
PW
Updated 3/16/00. -
Buddha's
Little Finger
Author: Pelevin, Viktor
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670891681 Date: 2000
Library Journal
In this hilarious novel about identity and Russian history, a leading St. Petersburg poet unexpectedly finds himself in the midst of the 1919 civil war in Russia, serving as commissar to the legendary Bolshevik commander Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev and his machine-gunner sidekick, Anna.
Updated 5/2/00 -
Motherkind
Author: Phillips, Jayne Anne
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375401946 Date: 2000
PW Booklist
A major new novel from the author of Machine Dreams. The story of a young woman whose care for her dying mother coincides with the birth of her first child, and who must, in a single year, come to terms with the pairing of radiant beginnings and profound loss. - Publisher marketing.
Suggested Reading: Hospice
Updated 5/3/00. - Remembrance Day
Author: Porter, Henry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0684865491 Date: 2000LJ
After witnessing a London bus explode, Constantine Lindow wakes up the next day to find himself in the hospital with two cops frowning down at him. To prove his innocence, he must locate a maniac who sets off bombs with nothing more than a cell phone.
Suggested Reading: Terrorism
Updated 7.12.05 -
Tides of
War: A Novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War
Author: Pressfield, Steven
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385492529 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Library Journal Booklist
The internationally bestselling author of Gates of Fire returns with a stunning novel of the Peloponnesian War and Alcibiades, the man whose heroics and passions fueled the epic struggle. Narrated by the conqueror's trusted bodyguard and hired assassin in a mesmerizing death-row confession, Tides of War is historical fiction at its finest - a full-bodied, flesh-and-blood retelling of one of history's pivotal conflicts.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars | Biographical Fiction | Ancient Greece
Updated 4/3/00. -
Lucy
Crocker 2.0
Author: Preston, Caroline
Publisher: Scribner $ 22.50 ISBN: 068485449x Date:2000
Kirkus
The author of the beloved Jackie by Josie promises to charm readers of Cathleen Schine and Diane Johnson with her eagerly awaited second novel about a computer-clueless mom who becomes a most unlikely cyberspace superstar.
Updated 3/16/00. -
The Battle
Author: Rambaud, Patrick
Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 0802116620 Date:2000
Kirkus Library Jounral
The winner of the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Academie Francaise, The Battle is a brilliant, compelling novelization of the battle of Essling, Napoleon's first major defeat.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 4/6/00. -
Blameless
Author: Reardon, Lisa
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375504052 Date:2000
Library Journal Booklist
While one of her young charges - quiet enough to be overlooked - lies dead in a closet, Mary Culpepper must wrestle with the fact that she's retreated from life. As a troubled relationship tightens around her, the trial of the dead child's mother approaches.
Updated 4/3/00. - The Human
Stain
Author: Roth, Philip
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 27 ISBN: 0618059458 Date: 2000
Kirkus Booklist PW
Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciations and rituals of purification, the newest novel by award-winning author Philip Roth concludes his eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives begun in American Pastoral and continued in I Married a Communist.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Reading Group Stars
Updated 3/23/00. -
Pastoralia
Author: Saunders, George
Publisher: Riverhead $ 22.95 ISBN: 1573221619 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
From an author named by The New Yorker as one of the "20 Best American Fiction Writers Under 40" comes a hilarious, inventive, unforgettable collection of stories. "A savage satirist with a sentimental streak."--The New York Times.
Updated 4/6/00. -
Gone
for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican War
Author: Shaara, Jeff
Publisher: Ballantine $ 26.95 ISBN: 0345427505 Date: 2000
Kirkus Library Journal
With his acclaimed bestsellers Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, Shaara expanded upon his father's Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War classic, The Killer Angels. Now, in Gone for Soldiers, he carries readers back 15 years before that momentous conflict, when the Civil War's most familiar names were experiencing combat for the first time in the Mexican-American War.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 5/19/00. -
Summit
Avenue
Author: Sharratt, Mary
Publisher: Coffee House $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1566890977 Date: 2000
PW
Updated 3/16/00. -
Fool's Gold
Author: Smith, Jane S.
Publisher: Zoland $ 24 ISBN: 1581950195 Date: 2000
Library Journal
Updated 5/2/00 - White Teeth
Author: Smith, Zadie
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375501851 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
A spectacular, riotously entertaining epic set in post-World War II London, White Teeth is a novel of two families - the Joneses and the Iqbals - whose hilarious and tortured lives capture all the optimism and absurdity of the past half-century. "Zadie Smith's fizzing first novel is about how we all got here - from the Caribbean, from the Indian subcontinent, from 13th place in a long ago Olympic bicycle race - and about what "here" turned out to be."--Salman Rushdie.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction | Debuts | Reading Group Stars
Updated 3/16/00. - The Man
Who Wrote the Book
Author: Tarloff, Erik
Publisher: Crown $ 23 ISBN: 0609604686 Date: 2000
Library Jounral
From the author of Face-Time comes an engaging, hilarious, sexy romp of a book about a college professor's unorthodox take on the academic imperative to publish or perish.
Suggested Reading: Books about Books
Updated 5/9/00. - The Pied Piper's
Posion
Author: Wallace, Christopher
Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585670138 Date: 2000
Booklist
In 1648, the ancient town of Hamelin struggled to survive the most savage war Europe has ever known. In 1946, group of refuges is falling victim to a mysterious disease at a quarantine camp in Poland. Is there a connection between the two calamities?
Suggested Reading: Folk and Fairy Tale Stars
Updated 4/17/00. -
Deep
in the Heart
Author: Warner, Sharon Oard
Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 038532006x Date: 2000
Kirkus
Warner's first novel tells the story of two women living worlds apart in Austin, Texas, until difficult choices about love and motherhood force their lives to converge.
Suggested Reading: Debuts -
Married
Man: A Love Story
Author: White, Edmund
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 03754000052 Date: 2000
Kirkus Library Journal Booklist
Pushing 50, an American furniture scholar in Paris has an affair with a young and married French architect. In a desperate quest for health and happiness, they travel from Venice to Key West to Montreal to Providence. Finally, in the Sahara, their love is pushed to the ultimate crisis.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | AIDS
Updated 5/19/00.
April
- Ravelstein
Author: Bellow, Saul
Publisher: Viking $ 22.50 ISBN: 067084134x Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Booklist Library Journal
When Abe Ravelstein, a brilliant professor, suggests that his friend write a memoir or life of him, the two share a celebratory trip to Paris where they explore thoughts on mortality, philosophy, history, old suits, and friends old and new. The mood of this journey turns more somber once they have returned to the Midwest and Ravelstein succumbs to AIDS in this elegy to friendship and lives well (or badly) lived.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | AIDS -
Like
Normal People
Author: Bender, Karen E.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0395945151 Date: 2000
PW Booklist
An acclaimed debut already excerpted in The New Yorker, this novel follows Lena, a 45-year-old, child-like woman, and her day-long escape from her residential home with her troubled 11-year-old niece.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 4/3/00. -
The
Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living
Author: Clark, Martin
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375407251 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
Undistracted by children, hobbies, or a rewarding marriage, Evers Wheeling, a semi-dissolute judge from Norton, North Carolina, is moving quickly down the road to nowhere - until the morning he is confronted by a young woman whose dim-witted brother is up on drug charges.
Suggested Reading: Black Humor -
Being Dead
Author: Crace, Jim
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374110131 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Booklist
A haunting new novel about love, death and the afterlife by the award-winning author of Quarantine. Baritone Bay, mid-afternoon: A couple, naked, married almost 30 years, lies murdered in the dunes.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | After Life Stars
Updated 4/17/00. - Pillars of Gold
Author: Ellis, Alice Thomas
Publisher: Moyer Bell $ 22.95 ISBN: 1559212845 Date: 2000
Kirkus -
Ladysmith
Author: Foden, Giles
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375409203 Date: 2000
Library Journal
From the author of the Whitbread Award-winning The Last King of Scotland comes a tale of a town under siege in colonial Africa during the Boer War, and a young woman who finds love and freedom in the midst of the horror and deprivation of war.
Updated 4/13/00. -
American
Skin
Author: de Grazia, Don
Publisher: Scribner $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0684862220 Date: 2000
Kirkus
A timeless story about a young man's need to find comfort and a sense of belonging, as well as a stunning portrait of the class and racial tensions that pervade our society, American Skin is the American story American literature is not complete without. . . . Full of images and humor and action and questions" (Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine. -
Requiem
Shark
Author: Griffin, Nicholas
Publisher: Villard $ 23 ISBN: 0375503366 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
Set in the 18th century's golden age of piracy, this literary debut is the tale of a young recruit, William Williams, and his forced apprenticeship to Captain Roberts, slaver-turned-pirate captain.
Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Historical Fiction Stars | Pirate Stars -
More
Than You Know
Author: Gutcheon, Beth
Publisher: Morrow $ 23 ISBN: 0688174035 Date: 2000
Library Journal PW
This haunting novel bridges two centuries, two mother-daughter relationships, and two tragic love stories in a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine. -
Keeneland
Author: Hagy, Alyson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684855038 Date: 2000
PW Library Journal
A compelling novel set at Kentucky's Keeneland race track. When her estranged husband becomes indebted to impatient loan sharks, Kerry Connolly learns that liking a horse doesn't make it faster and loving one means genuine risk.
Suggested Reading: Horse Tales -
Never
Love a Cowboy
Author: Heath, Lorraine
Publisher: Avon $ 6.50 (mass market paper) ISBN: 0380803305 Date: 2000
PW
An award-winning author returns with an exuberant romance featuring the wayward son of an English earl who falls in love against his will with a sassy Texas saloon keeper's daughter.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 3/24/00. -
Blue
Bedspread
Author: Jha, Raj Kamal
Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375503129 Date: 2000
Library Journal
Described by John Fowles as "remarkable, almost a coming of age of the Indian novel, " this powerful, penetrating debut work by a young Calcutta journalist is about the love and hope that can survive in the midst of family violence.
Suggested Reading: Stars of India
Updated 4/3/00. -
Le Mariage
Author: Johnson, Diane
Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525945180 Date: 2000
PW Library Journal
In her sparkling, new comedy of manners, the bestselling author of Le Divorce puts a contemporary twist on this venerable form with her keen-eye portraits of modern-day Americans living in Paris.
Suggested Reading: Paris Stars
Updated 3/13/00. - Traveling Light
Author: Kittle, Katrina
Publisher: Warner $ 18.95 ISBN: 04465248085 Date: 2000
Booklist
A dancer-turned-school teacher encounters a string of bad luck in the form of a career-ending injury and the slow death of her brother but slowly to come to terms with life and relationships and discovers how fortunate she really is.
Suggested Reading: AIDS
Updated 4/17/00. - English
Passengers
Author: Kneale,
Matthew
Publisher: Doubleday/Talese $ 25 ISBN: 0385497431 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus Booklist
When a band of smugglers sails for Tasmania, believed to be the Garden of Eden, they find the British "civilization" of the aboriginal tribes is in full force. Each character has a voice in the narration in this bravura performance, which sets new standards for historical and nautical adventure writing.
Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars |
Also, Kalimantaan by C.S. Godshalk. -
Shopping
Author: Kramer, Gavin
Publisher: Soho $ 22 ISBN: 159471894 Date: 2000
Booklist
Suggested Reading: Shopping
Updated 4/3/00. -
Mr. Phillips
Author: Lanchester, John
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399146040 Date: 2000
Kirkus Booklist
With his eye for the telling detail, his ear for the commonplaces of speech that make us who we are, his sympathy for the very ordinariness that sets us each apart, the author of Debt of Pleasure has created another jewel of a novel. -
In the
Fall
Author: Lent, Jeffrey
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 25 ISBN: 0871137658 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Booklist
"An extraordinary first novel that bears no resemblance to a first novel" (Jim Harrison), In the Fall tells the heartrending story of three generations of an interracial American family, from the end of the Civil War to the Great Depression.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Fiction | All Stars | Debuts -
Madame
Author: Libera, Antoni
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374200068 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
Madame is an unexpected gem: a first novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity - and the comic "sentimental education" of a schoolboy who falls in love with his French teacher. -
Krupp's
Lulu: Stories
Author: Lish, Gordon
Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows $ 22 ISBN: 1568581548 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Updated 4/19/00. -
No
Great Mischief
Author: MacLeod, Alistair
Publisher: W.W. Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393049701 Date: 2000
PW Library Journal
This novel weaves together the story of a Scottish man who sets sail with his wife and 12 children for Cape Breton in 1779 and the tale of his descendant, who struggles with family loyalty 200 years later on the same bleak landscape.
Updated 6/6/00. -
Summer
Gone
Author: Macfarlane, David
Publisher: Crown $ 23 ISBN: 0517702622 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW
This haunting novel about love experienced and love remembered is also an unforgettable celebration and evocation of the brief beauty of a northern summer.
Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars
Updated 3/21/00. -
Shadow
Baby
Author: McGhee, Alison
Publisher: Harmony $ 23 ISBN: 0609606328 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Shadow Baby is eleven-year-old Clara Winters' story. Clara, who lives with her no-frills mother Tara in the foothills of the Adirondacks, is obsessed by a need for family - or at the very least the knowledge of one. She learns that she had a twin sister who died at birth; she knows she must have a father somewhere; she knows little bits and pieces about her mother's father, whom she's never met; and that's all she has. In her search for information and attention, Clara meets an elderly immigrant who lives in a trailer park on the outskirts of her town. Their relationship, along with Clara's overactive fantasy life, finally brings her to learn the truth about her history and to gain some knowledge about what it means to be a grown-up. - Publisher marketing. - Tulip Fever
Author: Moggach, Deborah
Publisher: Delacorte $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385334893 Date: 2000
PW
With critical raves from Britain and film rights already sold to Steven Spielberg, Tulip Fever is a tour de force set in 1630s Amsterdam - a tale about a smoldering passion that develops between a married woman and the artist painting her portrait.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars -
In Babylon
Author: Moring, Marcel
Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 0688176453 Date: 2000
Booklist
Published in Europe to critical acclaim, this richly imagined international bestseller weaves a gloriously inventive and very human story about man's constant drive from the Old World to the New - and his desire, despite everything, for home and homeland.
Updated 3/16/00. - Blonde
Author: Oates, Joyce Carol
Publisher: Ecco $ 27.50 ISBN: 0060196076 Date: 2000PW
In her most ambitious work to date one of America's most celebrated writers examines the inner, spiritual life of the woman who became Hollywood's most enduring legend--Marilyn Monroe--as seen through her own eyes. "Grimly compelling".--Wall Street Journal.
Suggested Reading: Hollywood & Film Stars
Updated 8.2.04 -
Wild
Decembers
Author: O'Brien, Edna
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618045678 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
O'Brien's latest novel charts the quick and critical demise of relations between "the warring sons of warring sons" fighting over inherited land in the countryside of western Ireland.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars -
Blue Angel
Author: Prose, Francine
Publisher: Harpercollins $ 25 ISBN: 006019541x Date: 2000
Kirkus PW
Deliciously risque, this new work by the author of Guided Tours of Hell offers a withering take on modern academic mores, a scathing tale of colliding cultures that vividly shows just what can happen when academic politics crash head-on with political correctness. -
Horse
Heaven
Author: Smiley, Jane
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 037540600x Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Booklist Library Journal
The universe of horse racing - passionate, cold-hearted, pure, corrupt - is revealed in Smiley's new novel that combines the intense feeling of her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres with the wit, pace, and brightness of Moo.
Suggested Reading: Horse Tales | All Stars | Humorous Fiction
Updated 4/12/00 -
Music
and Silence
Author: Tremain, Rose
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374199892 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus Booklist
In the year 1629, a young English lute player named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish court where he must find the path that will realize his hopes and save his soul. Short-listed for the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Music and Fiction | All Stars
Updated 4/17/00. -
Ray
in Reverse
Author: Wallace, Daniel
Publisher: Algonquin $ 21.95 ISBN: 1565122607 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Booklist
In this follow-up to Big Fish, Ray Williams, now sitting in heaven, reflects back on his difficult life - including his adulterous marriage, moments of sexual confusion, his worst deed, and his one good one.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Humorous Fiction -
The
Republic of Wine
Author: Yan, Mo
Publisher: Arcade $ 26.95 ISBN: 1559705310 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Updated 4/6/00.
March
- Despair
Author: Alexis, Andre
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805059792 Date: 2000
PW -
Kitty
and Virgil
Author: Bailey, Paul
Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585670103 Date: 2000
PW
Kitty Crozier wakes up in the hospital and sees the fleeting image of Virgil Florescu, a dissident poet who swam across the Danube to escape Ceausescu's Romania. A subsequent vision of Virgil signals the beginning of the most important relationship of Kitty's life - one in which previous lives will be oddly connected. - Banyan Tree
Author: Nolan, Christopher
Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559705116 Date: 2000
PW - Prozac Highway
Author: Blackbridge, Persimmon
Publisher: Marion Boyers $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 071453059x Date: 2000
Library Journal -
Fay
Author: Brown, Larry
Publisher: 1565121686 $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565121686 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus -
Making
Love to the Minor Poets of Chicago
Author: Conrad, James
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312204728 Date: 2000
Booklist
In a novel of love, ambition, poetry, and nuclear waste, Conrad imagines an influential poetry professor who insists that a nuclear storage project also include an epic poem.
Suggested Reading: Poets -
Welcome
to Temptation
Author: Crusie, Jennifer
Publisher: St. Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312252943 Date: 2000
PW
Sophie Dempsey wants to help her sister film a video and then get out of Temptation, Ohio. Mayor Phin Tucker wants to play pool with the police chief and keep things peaceful. But when Sophie and Phin meet, they both get more than they want.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars -
The
Sound of One Hand Clapping
Author: Flannagan, Richard
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 0871138026 Date: 2000
PW
Winner of the Australian Bookseller's Book of the Year Award, The Sound of One Hand Clapping is a dazzling novel of war, family, migration, and the search for new beginnings. -
Place
Last Seen
Author: Freeman, Charlotte
Publisher: Picador $ 23 ISBN: 0312242271 Date: 2000
Kirkus
The unforgettable story of a family crisis, Place Last Seen is written in the tradition of Ordinary People and The Deep End of the Ocean. -
The
Gates of the Alamo
Author: Harrigan, Stephen
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0679447172 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus LJ
This full-scale novel about the siege and fall of the Alamo weaves in a love story between an American naturalist and a widow innkeeper who, along with her 16-year-old son, get swept up in the harrowing events of the heroic battle.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars | All Stars -
Gambler's
Rose
Author: Hawkes, G.W.
Publisher: MacMurray & Beck $ 24.95 ISBN: 187844896x Date: 2000
Kirkus -
American
By Blood
Author: Huebner, Andrew
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684857707 Date: 2000
Booklist
Three U.S. Army scouts leading an infantry column arrive a day late to the battle of Little Bighorn to find the bloody ruins of Custer's troops. Their mission to clear the land of the Indian tribes then becomes one of vengeance, forever changing their sense of manhood, honor, and country.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars -
Conspiracy
of Paper
Author: Liss, David
Publisher: Random $ 25 ISBN: 0375502920 Date: 2000
Kirkus PW Booklist Library Journal
"In A Conspiracy of Paper, David Liss has woven a tale of 18th-century finance, murder, and religion that is a remarkable debut and a thoroughly satisfying novel." - Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars | Debuts -
The
Barbarians Are Coming
Author: Long, David Wong
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399146032 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus LJ
In a tale that alternates between black comedy and out-and-out slapstick, Louie explores the painful alienation between a Chinese-American man and his immigrant father - a conflict that is deepened by the son's decision to become a chef instead of a doctor.
Suggested Reading: Black Humor Reading List | Asian American Stars | All Stars -
Vacant
Possession
Author: Mantel, Hilary
Publisher: Owl $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0805062718 Date: 2000
Kirkus
Ten years after Muriel does her mother in, she gets out of the mental asylum ready for vengeance in a macabre, terrible twist. Through disguises, she's able to torment those who sent her to the asylum.
Suggested Reading: Black Humor Reading List -
Mondo
Desperado: A Serial Novel
Author: McCabe, Patrick
Publisher: HarperColllins $ 24 ISBN: 0060194618 Date: 2000
Library Journal
With his trademark blistering wit and macabre genius, McCabe presents a series of connected narratives that interweave the surreal lives of dementedly funny inhabitants of the insular Irish town of Barntrosna.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars -
Every
Thing in This Country: A Novella & Two Stories
Author: McCann, Colum
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 21 ISBN: 0805063986 Date: 2000
Kirkus
In his fourth book, McCann, a "bold and mesmerizing" writer, turns to the Troubles and reveals, as only fiction writers can, the reverberations of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of men and women, parents and children.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars -
Water,
Carry Me
Author: Moran, Thomas
Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573221384 Date: 2000
Booklist Library Journal
The author who made an impressive literary debut with The Man in the Box pens this breathtaking love story of a young woman's journey from innocence to betrayal, across the vivid brightness and darkness that is the heartbreaking landscape of her beloved Ireland. -
A
Trip to the Stars
Author: Nicholas, Christopher
Publisher: Dial $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385318049 Date: 2000
PW
Christopher draws powerfully on his singular gifts to craft an epic tale about a young boy and his adopted aunt who are separated when he is kidnapped while in her care. -
Exile
Author: O'Conaire, Padraic
Publisher: Clo Iar-Chonnachta Teo $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1874700621 Date: 2000
Booklist
Updated 4/3/00. - Bodega Dreams
Author: Quinonez, Ernesto
Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375705899 Date: 2000
PW -
Carolina
Moon
Author: Roberts, Nora
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399145923 Date: 2000
PW
Returning as an adult to her hometown of Progress, South Carolina, Tory Bodeen plans to put the past behind her and open a stylish home-design shop. Following her friend, Hope's, brutal murder - unsolved to this day - she is determined to find a measure of peace and free herself from the haunting visions of that terrible night. But her return will be more difficult and frightening than she ever expected because Hope's killer is nearby as well.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars -
In America
Author: Sontag, Susan
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374175403 Date: 2000
PW Booklist Library Journal
In a glorious, sweeping new novel by the bestselling author of The Volcano Lover, Sontag once again bases her work on a real story. In 1876, a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalewska, Poland's greatest actress, travels to California to found a "utopian" commune. In America is a big, juicy, surprising book about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the fate of idealism, and about the world of the theater.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
Updated 3/13/00. -
Gertrude
and Claudius
Author: Updike, John
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375409084 Date: 2000
PW
Updike's 19th novel brings to life the story of Gertrude and Claudius, King and Queen of Denmark, before the action of Shakespeare's Hamlet begins.
Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars | Legendary Characters
February
- The Plato Papers
Author: Ackroyd, Peter
Publisher: Doubleday $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385497687 Date: 2000
Kirkus
The Plato Papers treads a thin line between fantasy and biography as London's greatest orator lectures at the turn of the 38th century. Perfectly timed for the year 2000 as we imagine millennia beyond our own, "this masterpiece of contemporary writing will entertain readers for years to come" (Jay Parini, author of The Last Station). -
The
Verificationist
Author: Antrim, Donald
Publisher: Knopf $ 21 ISBN: 0375408223 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
A gathering of psychoanalysts and a narrator with a dissociated personality whose vantage point is the ceiling of a pancake house - these are the basic elements of this deadly serious, desperately playful, off-the-wall and perfectly on-target new novel. -
The
Natural Order of Things
Author: Antunes, Antonio Lobo
Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 0802116582 Date: 2000
PW
Antonio Lobo Antunes has been described by Paris Vogue as "the greatest living Portuguese writer.... He has been compared to Celine ... (but) he owes as much to Proust in the complexity of his style. One could also invoke Malcolm Lowry or Cormac McCarthy for the visionary power, the buried violence."
The Natural Order of Things is a tale of two families and the secrets that bind them; the history of Portugal as family history. The voices and memories of his characters -- an army officer being tortured in prison on charges of conspiracy; an elderly man, once a miner in Mozambique, now reduced to dreams of "flying underground"; a diabetic teenage girl and the middle-aged husband she despises; the officer's illegitimate sister, locked away to haunt the house, like Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre -- create a portrait of a disintegrating society that attains the brilliant surreality of Elias Canetti and Nikolai Gogol. - Publisher Marketing. -
Rose
Garden and Other Stories
Author: Brennan, Maeve
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 23 ISBN: 1582430500 Date: 2000
Kirkus
From the author of The Springs of Affection comes a second collection of 20 masterly short stories written during the glory days of The New Yorker. -
The
Suburbs of Heaven
Author: Brown, Merle
Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569471827 Date: 2000
PW -
Mr.
Spaceman
Author: Butler, Robert Olen
Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 0802166604 Date: 2000
PW LJ
A humorous and touching novel about an alien being's arrival at the turn of the millennium - by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. -
City
of God
Author: Doctorow, E.L.
Publisher: Random $ 25 ISBN: 0679447830 Date: 2000
PW Library Journal
Beginning in mystery - the theft of a large brass cross from St. Timothy's Episcopal Church and its reappearance on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism - this mordantly funny masterwork by the author of Billy Bathgate and The Waterworks emerges as a narrative of the 20th century written for the 21st. "Doctorow is a master of atmosphere . . . he knows the art of storytelling inside and out."-- Newsweek.
Updated 3/13/00. - The Fifth Season
Author: Downs, Robert
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582430489 Date: 2000
Kirkus -
S: A Novel from the Balkans
Author: Drakulic, Slavenka
Publisher: Viking $ 22.95 ISBN: 0670890979 Date: 2000
LJ
Set in 1992, during the height of the Bosnian war, S. reveals one of the most gruesome aspects of war - the rape and torture of civilian women by occupying forces. Through a series of flashbacks, S., a Bosnian woman, relives the unspeakable crimes she has endured and in telling her story, depicts the blackest side of human nature during wartime.
Suggested Reading: Former Yugoslavia -
With
Your Crooked Heart
Author: Dunmore, Helen
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 0871137739 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
Bestselling British author Helen Dunmore delivers a dark, twisting tale of betrayal and fierce love - the story of Louise, a tough and introspective Londoner trapped in a subtle battle between two brothers. -
The
Danish Girl
Author: Ebershoff, David
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670888087 Date: 2000
PW
Inspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener and his California-born wife, this tender portrait of a marriage asks "What do you do when someone you love wants to change?" -
Moth
Smoke
Author: Hamid, Mohsin
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374213542 Date: 2000
Kirkus Library Journal
When Daru loses his job as a banker in Lahore, he begins a long fall from grace. Too clever for his own good, he descends into drug dealing and heroin addiction, and he rapidly spirals downward in a society increasingly polarized between decadent haves and discontented have-nots. -
Delirium
of the Brave
Author: Harris, William C.
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312254954 Date: 2000
LJ
Two friends -- one white, one black -- die in each other's arms during a Civil War battle. Follow their families from the Civil War to the present as four generations of soldiers, aristocrats, and hardball politicians confront new challenges and celebrate new triumphs, while trying to uncover the secret the two men left behind. Surrender to this tale of murder, intrigue, love, war, and friendship set against the backdrop of Savannah's powerful Irish-Catholic aristocracy and the South's most sensuous locale. - Publisher marketing. -
The
Vision of Emma Blau
Author: Hegi, Ursula
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0681829975 Date: 2000
PW LJ
From one of our century's most distinctive literary voices comes the eagerly anticipated companion novel to the bestselling Stones from the River. Hegi creates a fascinating picture of immigrants in America: their dreams and disappointments, the challenges of assimilation, the love that bonds generations, and the cultural wedges that drive them apart.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Slab Rat
Author: Heller, Ted
Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0684864967 Date: 2000
Kirkus Booklist
In the pitch-perfect tradition of Nick Hornsby, Christopher Buckley, and Martin Amis comes Ted Heller with a razor-sharp, highly comic novel of ambition, deception and lethal office politics.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction | Office Stars -
Pay
It Forward
Author: Hyde, Catherine
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684862719 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
Already optioned for film, this poignant novel of a young boy's unfailing belief in an individual's power to change the world and the ultimate goodness of the human spirit is destined to become a classic. Demonstrating the same universal appeal as Forrest Gump, Hyde's story is a down-to-earth look at the virtue of innocence and of faith - not in a deity, but in humankind. -
Test
Pattern
Author: Klein, Marjorie
Publisher: William Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0688172849 Date: 2000
Booklist
Brilliantly recreating the innocence and energy of the '50s, Test Pattern is a tour de force of imagination showing how a new TV set forever changes the lives of the Palmer family in 1954.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars -
Storm
Riders
Author: Leslie, Craig
Publisher: St Martins $ 24 ISBN: 0312245548 Date: 2000
PW Kirkus
Storm Riders follows the challenges and tragedies of Clark Woods, a single father who is raising a troubled adopted Native American son - a psychological page-turner from the award-winning author of Winterkill and The Sky Fisherman. -
Two Moons
Author: Mallon, Thomas
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375400257 Date: 2000
Booklist
Astronomy, politics, and romance join forces in this post-Civil War novel from the writer John Updike has called "one of the most interesting American novelists at work."
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars -
Among
Prisoners: Short Stories
Author: Manley, Frank
Publisher: Coffeehouse Press $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1566890896 Date: 2000
Kirkus
In this searing new collection after his successful novel, The Cockfighter, Frank Manley continues his deft exploration of the underside of the American experience. In the tradition of Flannery O'Connor, Manley presents a cultural snapshot that is poignant, grotesque, ironic, and ultimately fascinating. Manley's contemporary characters are prisoners of their own view of the world and their own beliefs and prejudices about those who are different from them. - Publisher Marketing. -
Handyman
Author: Nichols, Linda
Publisher: Delacorte $ 20 ISBN: 0385334370 Date: 2000
Booklist
An accidental therapy session is the catalyst for change in this winsome, witty debut novel - a love story about two people who don't realize they're made for each other until it's almost too late.
Suggested Reading: Debuts -
Wonderful
Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker
Author: Remnick, David with Susan Choi (editors)
Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 0-375-50356-0 Date: 2000
PW
Published for The New Yorker's 75th anniversary, this anthology of works of and about the city features such authors as John O'Hara, Harold Brodkey, Wendy Wasserstein, John Updike, Jamaica Kincaid, John Cheever, and Julie Hecht - the list reads like a literary pantheon. -
Reap
Author: Ricstad, Eric
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670885177 Date: 2000
Booklist
A bold debut novel weaves a coming-of-age story into the gritty lives and desolate beauty of Vermont's northeast kingdom.
Suggested Reading: Debuts -
Scandalmonger
Author: Safire, William
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 27 ISBN: 0684867192 Date: 2000
Library Journal
Exploding any notion that political sex scandal is a recent phenomenon, our press-hounded Founding Fathers star in an outrageous - and fact-based - novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. Safire demonstrates how media intrusiveness into private lives and politicians' manipulation of the press are as old as the Constitution in this entertaining and thought-provoking historical novel.
Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars -
Make
Believe
Author: Scott, Joanna
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316776165 Date: 2000
PW
When four-year-old Bo is orphaned in the car accident that kills his mother, he becomes the focus of a fierce custody struggle between his two sets of very different grandparents. As the grownups play out their secret desires, hidden resentments, and stubborn self-righteousness, Bo finds himself at the mercy of a fallible adult world. With a child's perfect but partial understanding, he flees into himself - away from the sea of strangers - where he inhabits an eerie inner landscape filled with the dreamlike intensity unique to the imagination of a child. - Publisher marketing. -
The
Lion Next Door
Author: Simonds, Merilyn
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399145915 Date: 2000
Booklist
The author of The Convict Lover offers a debut collection of stories that follows one woman's journey from child to adult through spectacular and enchanting landscapes and through the darker, more mysterious terrain of the human heart.
Suggested Reading: Debuts -
Abe
Author: Slotkin, Richard
Publisher: Holt $ 27.50 ISBN: 0805041230 Date: 2000
PW
In a brilliant work of historical imagination, award-winning historian Slotkin recreates the childhood of Abe Lincoln, including a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans.
Suggested Reading: Biographical Fiction | Lincoln -
Fly-Truffler
Author: Sobin, Gustaf
Publisher: Norton $ 19.95 ISBN: 0393048322 Date: 2000
Kirkus Library Journal
Through his whole life, Philippe Cabassac has fly-truffled - stalking the flies that lay their eggs directly over the tasty truffles. But after his wife's death, the truffles represent more than a delicacy; they open up a dream world where Philippe often visits his deceased spouse.
Suggested Reading: After Life Stars - Book of
Revelation
Author: Thompson, Rupert
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375409270 Date: 2000
Kirkus -
Harbor
Lights
Author: Weesner, Theodore
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 23 ISBN: 0871137666 Date: 2000
Kirkus
When a Maine lobster fisherman is diagnosed with a rapidly developing cancer, he finds himself driven to make peace with his family and is forced to confront the compromises of his past. -
When
Mountains Walked
Author: Wheeler, Kate
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 23 ISBN: 0395859913 Date: 2000
PW Booklist
In her much-anticipated first novel, the award-winning writer Kate Wheeler weaves a romantic, multi-generational story that travels from South America to India to New England. It tells of two parallel love affairs, years apart, in places remote and exotic.
Suggested Reading: Debuts -
Some
Things That Stay
Author: Willis, Sarah
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374105804 Date: 2000
PW
For the first time in her nomadic-style life, 15-year-old Tamara Anderson is happy. But once again, Tamara's life is shaken when she learns her mother has tuberculosis, which leaves the teenager in charge of two younger siblings and an artistic - and near lunatic - father.