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.
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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 2002
September 9, 2008
July - December
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.
December
- Hotspur
Author: Brown, Rita Mae
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345428226 Date: 2002
PW
In her marvelous new work, bestselling novelist Brown returns to the fascinating world of foxhunting she brought so vividly to life in Outfoxed.
Suggested Reading: Virginia Stars
Updated 11.05.02 - A Winter Marriage
Author: Hardie, Kerrie
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316076228 Date: 2002Kirkus
Divorced three times and recently widowed by her fourth husband, Hannie Bennet is an unapologetic professional wife, marrying for financial security instead of love. When she meets Ned Renvyle, writer and world traveler, Hannie believes she's found a suitable new mate. But what at first seemed to Hannie like a convenient union quickly becomes a personal prison.
Updated 9.30.02 - The Snowman's
Children
Author: Hirschberg, Glen
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 0786710829 Date: 2002Kirkus
The Snowman's Children is a moving, psychologically intense first novel that tells the story of an incident from one man's childhood in the 1970s, when a serial killer called The Snowman stalked the streets of suburban Detroit.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9.9.02 - A Jeweler's
Eye for Flaw: Stories
Author: Hodgen,Christie
Publisher: Univ of Mass $ 24.95 ISBN: 1558493743 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 9.30.02 - The
Angel With One Hundred Wings: A Tale from the Arabian Nights
Author: Horch, Daniel
Publisher: St. Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312284187 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistLJ
A beautiful adventure story and romance, this tale opens in the City of Peace, as Baghdad was once called. With engaging characters and rich imagery drawn from alchemy, the Koran, and early Islamic mystics, this is a literary masterpiece that captures the magic of the Middle East.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists | Fairy and Folk Tales
Updated 12.23.02 - Duchess in Love
Author: James, Eloisa
Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0060508108 Date: 2002PW
From one of the freshest voices in romantic fiction comes a witty yet sensual tale. Forced as a young girl to marry Camden, the Duke of Girton, Gina is left by her new spouse--who also leaves the marriage unconsummated. Now a well-known lady in London, Gina is desired by many men, but gives herself to no one. Cam returns to find his bride is now the toast of the "ton"--and that he's falling in love with her.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 11.05.02 - Ancient Joe
Author: Morse, C. Scott
Publisher: Dark Horse $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 1569717958 Date: 2002PW
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novel Stars
Updated 11.27.02 - A Wanted Man
Author: Parra, Nancy J.
Publisher: Avalon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0803435668 Date: 2002Booklist
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - Adele: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story
Author: Tennant, Emma
Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060004541 Date: 2002Kirkus
Following the success of Scarlett and Rebecca's Tale, this is the brilliant companion novel that captures the era and spirit of Charlotte Bronte's romantic classic, Jane Eyre.
Suggested Reading: Books about Books
Updated 10.10.02
November
- The
Stories of Alice Adams
Author: Adams, Alice
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 0375412859 Date: 2002Library JournalPW
From the short story writer who has been called "the master of the genre" (Los Angeles Times), and praised as "an inimitable voice--quick, deft, brilliantly evocative" (Joyce Carol Oates): the best of her short fiction gathered in one volume--53 stories that reveal with candor and grace the hidden workings of human relationships.
Updated 9.7.02 - Bow's Boy
Author: Babcock, Richard
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743227271 Date: 2002Kirkus
In the tradition of Peace Like a River and Plainsong comes a richly textured and moving novel about friendship and heroism in small-town America in the early days of the Vietnam War.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 9.9.02 - Into the Night
Author: Brockmann, Suzanne
Publisher: Ballantine $ 26/$6.99 ISBN: 0345458850/0804119724 Date: 2002Booklist
While scoping out a California naval base for a presidential visit, White House staffer Joan DaCosta is accompanied by Navy SEAL Lt. Mike Muldoon. Against her better judgment, Joan is drawn to the handsome young officer. While tensions mount between them, fueling their growing attraction, a terrorist plot soon involves them in a race to save the President's life.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 11.05.02 - Saints
of Big Harbour
Author: Coady, Lynn
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618119760 Date: 2002Library Journal
Coady's third book, her first to be published in the United States, portrays a small community in Nova Scotia and the power of gossip and violence within it. Guy Boucher, a fatherless teenager, finds himself at the center of an ugly rumor involving a girl idealized by her town. Through his eyes and the stories of those who surround him, several versions of truth emerge and combine.
Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
Updated 11.20.02 - Welcome to Higby
Author: Dunn, Mark
Publisher: MacAdam Cage $ 25 ISBN: 931561176 Date: 2002PW
From the hilarious author of Ella Minnow Pea comes a comical tour de force--a Southern tale about simple dreams--that captures the soul of small-town America with a big slice of apple pie.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Stars
Updated 8.13.02 - The Book of
the Heathen
Author: Edric, Robert
Publisher: Dunne $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312288883 Date: 2002Kirkus
1897. In an isolated station in the Belgian Congo, an Englishman is to be tried for the murder of a native child. Imprisoned in a makeshift jail, Nicholas Frere awaits the arrival of the Company's official investigator while his friend, James Frasier, attempts to discover the circumstances which surround the charge.
The world around them is rapidly changing: the horrors of the Belgian Congo are becoming known and the flow of its once-fabulous wealth is drying up. Unrest flares unstoppably into violence.
Frere's coming trial will seek to determine considerably more than the killing of a child. But at the heart of this conflict is a secret so dark, so unimaginable, that one man must be willingly destroyed by his possession of it, and the other must both sanction and participate in that destruction.
In a narrative of ever-quickening and growing intensity, "The Book of the Heathen" explores notions of honor, friendship, justice and reason in a world where men have been forced by circumstance to descend into an abyss of savagery and terror. "The Book of the Heathen "is a stunning novel that truly evokes a Conradian heart of darkness.
- Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 9.9.02 - Gods and Legions:
A Novel of the Roman Empire
Author: Ford, Michael Curtis
Publisher: Dunne $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312275382 Date: 2002Library Journal
Fresh on the heels of his successful debut, The Ten Thousand, Ford recreates the remarkable life and times of the Emperor Julian.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 9.8.02 - Forbidden Fruits
Author: Hamilton, Julia
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312305044 Date: 2002Kirkus
From the author and "thoughtful, articulate novelist" (The Times London) of Other People's Rules, comes a mesmerizing tale of scandal and redemption within the ruling class.
Updated 8.13.02 - The Secret
Author: Hoffman, Eva
Publisher: Public Affairs $ 25 ISBN: 1586481509 Date: 2002PWLJ
In this gripping debut novel, Hoffman uses the near future to reflect on the fast-moving present and to explore various kinds of secrets: intimate secrets and family secrets, the kinds of secrets that can be decoded from clues, and the kind that only lead to more tantalizing questions about the nature of consciousness and self-knowledge.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9.23.02 - A Girl from
Zanzibar
Author: King, Roger
Publisher: Turtle Point $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1885586604 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 8.13.02 - The Ecstatic
Author: Lavalle, Victor
Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 0609610147 Date: 2002PW
Something is wrong with Anthony, and it's getting worse. Schizophrenia runs in his family's blood, picking off an uncle here, a mother there, and has now found a home in Anthony's mind. From the acclaimed author of the short-story collection Slapboxing with Jesus comes this inventive, funny, and heartbreaking first novel.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | African American Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - Avoidance
Author: Lowenthal, Michael
Publisher: Graywolf $ 16 (trade paper) ISBN: 1555973671 Date: 2002Library JournalPW
Jeremy struggles to write his dissertation on the Amish and the laws of expulsion. How does someone, excluded entirely from the only community they have ever known, live the rest of their life? After extensive interviews with Beulah— a young woman banished— Jeremy is no closer to understanding her choice than he is to his own peculiar exile.
Camp Ironwood, set in the Vermont woods, is more than a summer distraction for restless adolescent boys— it is a place to belong. And not unlike the Amish community, it is a place where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For Jeremy, first as a camper and later as the co-director, the usual camp activities become their own kind of ritual that binds the community. But when he is blindsided by the seductive charm of Max, a fourteen-year-old boy from Manhattan, all arms and legs and attitude, Jeremy must confront his desires, and worse yet, uncover the dark secrets of his beloved Camp Ironwood.
In this powerful and daring novel, Lowenthal elegantly draws unexpected parallels between the Amish and Camp Ironwood. By doing so, he ingeniously explores an age-old dilemma: individual desires versus the good of a community. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Summer Camp
Updated 10.08.02 - Child of My Heart
Author: McDermott, Alice
Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374121230 Date: 2002Booklist
McDermott's haunting new work--her first since the bestselling Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award--is narrated by a woman who was born beautiful. On the cusp of 15, her witty, deeply etched evocation of all that was really transpiring under the surface during a seemingly idyllic season gives her wry tale its remarkable vividness and impact.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars
Updated 7.6.04 - Behold Faith and Other
Stories
Author: Noyes, Tom
Publisher: Dufour $ 14.95 (paper) ISBN: 0802313388 Date: 2002
Kirkus
Updated 10.31.02 - Our Simple Gifts:
Civil War Christmas Tales
Author: Parry, Owen
Publisher: Morrow $ 14.95 ISBN: 0060013788 Date: 2002Kirkus
In these wonderfully poignant tales, Parry transports readers to a faraway world--a place fraught with despair and uncertainty, where only the holiday spirit could bring hope: the American Civil War. Told in the authentic voices of those who lived and fought during the conflict, here are four stories that embody the simple yet often forgotten pleasures that define the season.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars | Christmas Stories
Updated 9.9.02 - Highlander
Heros
Author: Reding, Jaclyn
Publisher: Signet $ 6.50 (paper) ISBN: 0451207408 Date: 2002Booklist
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.24.02 - Your Mouth
is Lovely
Author: Richler, Nancy
Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060096772 Date: 2002Library Journal
Your Mouth Is Lovely follows the story of Miriam, a teenager sent into Siberian exile for murder. In a letter to her daughter--whom she was forced to give up at birth--Miriam presents a haunting flashback to a shtetl in Belarus, where everyone, except herself, knew the secrets of her parents' past and the mystery behind her young mother's suicide.
Updated 10.16.02 - As Above, So Below:
A Novel of Peter Bruegel
Author: Rucker, Rudy
Publisher: Forge $ 23.95 ISBN: 0765304031 Date: 2002Booklist
In 16 chapters, each headed by one of the artist's famous works, Rucker brings the painter's progress and his colorful world to vibrant life, doing for Bruegel what the bestselling Girl With a Pearl Earring did for Vermeer.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Biographical Fiction | Art Stars
Updated 12.2.02 - The Cave
Author: Saramago, Jose
Publisher: Harvest $ 25 ISBN: 0151004145 Date: 2002Kirkus
The story of an elderly potter coping in a contemporary world, The Cave is an enigmatic, ironic, witty, and tender masterpiece by the Nobel Prize-winning author of All the Names and Blindness. "A magnificent novel and an allegory of our times."--Dario de Noticias (Portugal).
Updated 9.9.02 - The Glorious Cause
Author: Shaara, Jeff
Publisher: Ballantine $ 29.95 ISBN: 0345427564 Date: 2002PW
New York Times bestselling author Shaara brilliantly portrayed the origins of the American Revolution in Rise to Rebellion--now he continues the amazing saga of how thirteen colonies became one nation.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | 1776 Stars
Updated 9.30.02 - The
Trelayne Inheritance
Author: Shannon, Colleen
Publisher: Love Spell $ 6.99 (paper) ISB0505527937 Date: 2002Booklist
As women who live near her uncle's isolated estate die, their bodies drained of blood, chemist Angelina Corbett cannot help but wonder if the rumors of a "vampire" haunting the estate are true--especially after meeting their enigmatic neighbor, the Earl of Trelayne. Angelina doesn't need scientific evidence to know Apollo is her soulmate, but will his dance lead her to ecstasy or to the downward spiral of the damned?
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 12.2.02 - The Winter Queen
Author: Stevenson, Jane
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 0618149120 Date: 2002Library Journal
Set in Holland in the 17th century, The Winter Queen is a sweeping portrait of the tumultuous history and politics of the era as well as an immensely moving account of a strange and magical love affair. At its center are two royal exiles: Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, and her clandestine lover, an African prince of shamanic gifts, sold into slavery and freed after years of bondage.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 10.16.02 - Seek My Face
Author: Updike, John
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375414908 Date: 2002BooklistKirkus
John Updike's provocative and absorbing 20th novel, like his first, The Poorhouse Fair (1959), takes place in one day, a day that contains much discussion and some rain.
Updated 8.27.02
October
- Paradise Alley
Author: Baker, Keith
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060195827 Date: 2002KirkusPW
Three Irish immigrant women become trapped together in New York City during the Draft Riots of the Civil War. Paradise Alley is a story of the intersection of the Irish- and African-American experiences in the crucible of 19th century New York--a story of race and hatred, love and war, of risk and dauntless courage.
Suggested Reading: Civil War Stars | Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 9.9.02 - One Hundred
Demons
Author: Barry, Linda
Publisher: Sasquatch $ 24.95 ISBN: 1570613370 Date: 2002PW
Updated 9.9.02 - Gypsy Man
Author: Bausch, Robert
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151001723 Date: 2002Library Journal
Penny Bone is terrified of the town's local legend of a child-stealing phantom. Penny's husband, John, is in prison for an accidental murder. An eerie succession of events will take these people into the bull's-eye of risk that everyday life presents, and illuminates how an elusive truth lives behind every legend.
Suggested Reading: Virginia Stars
Updated 10.08.02 - All Saints' Day
Author: Benoit, Brent
Publisher: Overlook $ 26.95 ISBN: 1585673129 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 12.23.02 - No
Way to Treat a First Lady
Author: Buckley, Christopher
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507345 Date: 2002Kirkus
An ambitious First Lady is on trial for the death of her philandering husband and only one man can save her--her ex-boyfriend, the most shameless defense attorney in America.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction
Updated 8.13.02 - The
Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Raw Footage
Author: Coover, Robert
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 0802117244 Date: 2002Kirkus
A sparkling love song to the magic of moving pictures, and a meditation--both joyous and serious--on how sex compels and invents us, The Adventures of Lucky Pierre is a spectacular tour de force from an American master. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Hollywood & Film Stars
Updated 7.17.02 - Black Sunshine
Author: Date, S.V.
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399149465 Date: 2002Booklist
Readers have flocked to Date's darkly comic stories: novels that are "biting and irreverent" (Orlando Sentinel). Date's latest is packed with razor-sharp wit and a raft of delightfully subversive characters and is satire of the highest order.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction | If You Like Carl Hiaasen | Florida Fiction
Updated 9.9.02 - Forever
Author: Deveraux, Jude
Publisher: Pocket $ 7.99 (paper) ISBN: 067101420x Date: 2002PW
A classic fairy tale is mixed with a modern love story in Deveraux's imaginative new novel--her first original paperback since 1998's An Angel for Emily. Darci Monroe falls in love with her employer, millionaire Adam Montgomery. When Adam asks Darci to use her psychic gift to help him, she makes a sacrifice greater than he imagined.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars | Fairy and Folk Tales
Updated 9.30.02 - The Watchers
Author: Djaout, Tahar
Publisher: Ruminator $ 23 ISBN: 1886913544 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 9.9.02 - Baudolina
Author: Eco, Umberto
Publisher: Harcourt Brace $ 27 ISBN: 0151006903 Date: 2002Booklist
The bestselling author of The Name of the Rose returns to the Middle Ages with a wondrous, provocative an beguiling tale of history, myth an invention. As always with Eco, this abundant novel includes dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, and vicarious reflections on the postmodern age.
Updated 7.15.02 - Agape, Agape
Author: Gaddis, William
Publisher: Viking $ 22.95 ISBN: 0670031313 Date: 2002Library Journal
The late William Gaddis wrote four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas.
Updated 9.23.02 - I Hate to See That Evening
Sun Go Down: Collected Stories
Author: Gay, William
Publisher: Free $ 24 ISBN: 074324088x Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 9.9.02 - The
Solitude of Compassion
Author: Giono, Jean
Publisher: Seven Stories $ 15 (paper) ISBN: 1583225242 Date: 2002Kirkus
First published in France in 1932, The Solitude of Compassion is a collection of stories about small-town life in Provence. Jean Giono invents a village of characters, often warm and admirable, at times immoral or coarse, who populate a world of striking reality.
Updated 12.02.02 - The Torn Skirt
Author: Godfrey, Rebecca
Publisher: Perennial $ 11.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0060094850 Date: 2002KirkusLJ
Desperate for guidance, for friendship, for some sign that she's not a freak of nature, Sara has a fleeting encounter with the mysterious Justine--the girl in the torn skirt. Already acclaimed in Canada for its raw intimacy and fresh, original voice, this is a daring debut that gives voice to the profound and universal experience of teenage isolation, desire, and despair.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 11.20.02 - Disturbances
of the Inner Ear
Author: Hackett, Joyce
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786710462 Date: 2002PWKirkus
With his hypnotic internal logic, Hackett conjures a ravaged landscape in which anything is possible. Hackett's musical language creates a pitch-perfect first-person narrative that is evasive yet intimate, and utterly unforgettable.
Updated 8.13.02 - The Monsters
of St. Helena
Author: Hansen, Brooks
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374270198 Date: 2002Library Journal
Brooks Hansen's new novel is the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's last exile, in 1815, on the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic, "the place on earth farthest from any other place." - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Napoleon
Updated 11.20.02 - In the River
Sweet
Author: Henley, Patricia
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421270 Date: 2002Library Journal
From the author of Hummingbird House--a National Book Award Finalist--comes an emotionally enthralling novel about family and faith, and what it means to be moral in a world of conflicting moral codes.
Suggested Reading: New Orleans
Updated 8.16.02 - The Crazed
Author: Jin, Ha
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421815 Date: 2002BooklistPW
A luminous new novel from Ha Jin--his first since the universally praised, national Book Award-winning, and bestselling Waiting. This time Jin takes on contemporary China and its conflicts between convention and individualism.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars
Updated 9.30.02 - The Navigator
of New York
Author: Johnston, Wayne
Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.95 ISBN: 0385507674 Date: 2002PWKirkusBooklist
From the bestselling author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams ("brilliant and accomplished"--Annie Proulx), comes an epic novel of one man's quest for the secret of his origins that ranges from the bustling streets of 19th-century New York to the remotest regions of the Arctic.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars Lists
Updated 10.24.02.02 - Ignorance
Author: Kundera, Milan
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060002093 Date: 2002PWBooklist
A man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned 20 years earlier when they chose to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? Kundera takes dizzying concepts such as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transforms them into a polyphonic and moving work.
Updated 9.7.02 - Blue Shoe
Author: Lamott, Anne
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222267 Date: 2002PW
In a disarming blend of everyday life and the sublime, of reverence and irreverence, and of humor and grace, Lamott speaks directly to closely held concerns, bringing comfort to anyone whose family life can feel overwhelming and uncontainable.
Updated 8.27.02 - The Miracle
Author: L'Heureux, John
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871138573 Date: 2002PWKirkus
L'Heureux has been acclaimed as a "master storyteller ... elegant, cunning, and wickedly funny" (The Washington Post). Now, in a pitch-perfect, deeply satisfying work of fiction, he enters the world of an unorthodox young priest whose faith is put to the test.
Suggested Reading: Questions of Faith
Updated 8.13.02 - The Lost Garden
Author: Humphreys, Helen
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393051838 Date: 2002Booklist
Leaving London for the Land Army to grow food for the war effort, a young woman discovers a mysterious lost garden and the story of a love that becomes her own.
Updated 8.13.02 - Darkness
Author: Maraini, Dacia
Publisher: Steerforth $ 21 ISBN: 1586420488 Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 9.23.02 - Cloud of Sparrows
Author: Matsuoka, Takashi
Publisher: Delacorte $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385336403 Date: 2002PW
Set amid the violence and beauty of 19th century Japan Matsuoka takes readers beyond the epic tradition of James Clavell's Shogun and into a majestic realm of samurai and geishas, ninjas and Zen masters.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 8.13.02 - Terrible Angel:
A Novel of Michael Collins in New York
Author: McEvoy, Dermot
Publisher: Lyons $ 22.95 ISBN: 1585747424 Date: 2002PW
An Irish hero seeks redemption on the streets of New York, seventy years after his death.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Alternative History Stars
Updated 9.7.02 - Fishbowl
Author: Mlynowski, Sarah
Publisher: Red Dress Ink $ 12.95 (paper)ISBN: 0373250207 Date: 2002Booklist
Three women newly rooming together discover the meaning of living in a fishbowl after a small fire leads to a big repair bill and a big realization about insurance, bonding, and friendship.
Suggested Reading: Chicklit Stars
Updated 10.15.02 - The Dark Highlander
Author: Moning, Karen Marie
Publisher: Dell $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0440237556 Date: 2002PW
Degeus MacKeltar crisscrosses from 16th-century Scotland to modern-day Manhattan fighting the 13 Druids who possess his soul, dooming him to an eternity of sexual pursuit. When antiquities student Chloe Zanders is drawn into Degeus's world, she is caught up in an ancient prophecy that sweeps her back into time to medieval Scotland--where she fights the evil spirits for the heart of one irresistible man.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 9.9.02 - The Tapestries
Author: Nguyen, Kien
Publisher: Litte Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316284416 Date: 2002PW
Painting a vivid portrait of the beautiful, lush, and sparkling world of turn-of-the-century Vietnam, The Tapestries is a riveting love story by the author of the brilliantly received memoir, The Unwanted.
Updated 8.27.02 - July, July
Author: O'Brien, Tim
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 26 ISBN: 0618039694 Date: 2002LJKirkus
Terrifically rich in story, full of unforgettable characters, July, July is the definitive novel of the baby boom generation, the men and women whose lives were molded and defined by the 1960s. Set at the 30th high school reunion of Minnesota's Darton Hall College class of 1969, it provides a portrait of those launched into adulthood at the moment when this country, too, lost its innocence.
Updated 7.17.02 - I
Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
Author: Pearson, Allison
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375414053 Date: 2002PWBooklist
In a novel that is at once uproariously funny and achingly sad, Pearson captures the guilty secret lives of working women--the self-recrimination, the comic deceptions, the giddy exhaustion, and the despair.
Suggested Reading: Chicklit Stars | Reading Group Stars
Updated 9.7.02 - Reconsidering
Riley
Author: Plumley, Lisa
Publisher: Zebra $ 5.99 ISBN: 0821773402 Date: 2002Booklist
Having based her bestselling relationship book on her own personal experience with gorgeous, outdoorsy photojournalist Riley Davis, who stole her heart then skipped town, author Jayne Murphy organizes a workshop for dump-ees. But the "retreat" she's planned could be a disaster when she finds out that the leader for her group's week-long nature jaunt is Riley. Will their past attraction re-ignite?
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - Born Twice
Author: Pontiggia,Giuseppe
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375413103 Date: 2002PW
The first major book by one of Italy's most distinguished novelists to appear in America, this is an award-winning fictional memoir of a man's transfiguring experiences raising a son whose disabilities were caused at birth by the carelessness of a single doctor.
Updated 9.30.02 - All is Vanity
Author: Schwartz, Christina
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385499728 Date: 2002PW
Widely celebrated for her debut novel, Drowning Ruth, Schwarz once again proves herself to be a writer of depth and range as her newest novel probes into the mysteries of the human heart.
Updated 9.9.02 - Great
Dream of Heaven: Stories
Author: Shepard, Sam
Publisher: Knopf $ 20 ISBN: 0375405054 Date: 2002Booklist
In these 17 elegantly terse stories, Shepard taps the same wellsprings that have made him one of the most acclaimed--and distinctly American--playwrights: sex and regret, the yearning for a frontier that has been subdivided out of existence, and the even deeper gulf that separates men from their true selves.
Updated 9.9.02 - Rosamund
Author: Small, Bertrice
Publisher: NAL $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 0451206371 Date: 2002Booklist
From the bestselling "queen of romance" (Literary Times) comes a sweeping novel of a young woman's unexpected journey from the border of Scotland into the intimate chamber doors of a young, handsome Henry VIII.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.15.02 - The Autograph Man
Author: Smith, Zadie
Publisher: Random $ 26 ISBN: 037550186x Date: 2002Library Journal
The eagerly anticipated second novel form Smith about an autograph trader on a picaresque journey in search of enlightenment.
Suggested Reading: Picaresque Stars
Updated 10.16.02 - Down
to a Soundless Sea: Stories
Author: Steinbeck, Thomas
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345455762 Date: 2002LJ
Drawing upon the rich history and culture of Northern California to depict what happens at the edge of a frontier, Steinbeck traces the troubles of an extraordinary cast of characters in a world where the rocky cliffs shape their lives and the generations to come.
Updated 8.13.02 - The Little Friend
Author: Tartt, Donna
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0679439382 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistPWLJ
The hugely anticipated new novel by the author of The Secret History--"an elegant, edifying work of art" (Entertainment Weekly). Even more transfixingly suspenseful than its predecessor, this is a dark novel of lost childhood, rich in moral paradox, as a 12-year-old Mississippi girl sets out to find her brother's murderer.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists | Reading Group Stars
Updated 10.16.02 - In Her Shoes
Author: Weiner, Jennifer
Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743418190 Date: 2002PW
As she did in Good in Bed, Weiner has created a story that is by turns poignant and comical as she unfolds the tale of how three women who have nothing in common but their shoe size find each other--and themselves.
Suggested Reading: Chicklit Stars
Updated 8.27.02 - Cheops: A Cupboard for the Sun
Author: West, Paul
Publisher: New Directions $ 25.95 ISBN: 0811215199 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 10.10.02 - Clara Callan: A Novel
Author: Wright, Richard B.
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060506067 Date: 2002Kirkus
Wright's celebrated novel--2001 winner of both the Governor General's Award and the Giller Prize--beautifully evokes the relationship between two sisters in a time when people escaped from reality through radio and movies, when the Dionne Quints made headlines, and when the growing threat of fascism in Europe was a constant worry.
Suggested Reading: Epistolary Stars
Updated 8.13.02
September
- The Book of
Illusions
Author: Auster, Paul
Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 0805054081 Date: 2002BooklistKirkusLibrary JournalPW
In this rich and emotionally charged work, a man's obsession with a silent film star sends him on a journey into a shadowy world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists
Updated 8.27.02 - The Last Good
Chance
Author: Barbash, Tom
Publisher: Picador $ 24 ISBN: 0312287968 Date: 2002PW
This darkly funny debut is the deftly plotted story of a dying lakeside town and the four characters who must find their way through their own unexpected transformations as they question, "What is the price of loyalty, goodness, and love?"
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 8.13.02 - Annie Dunne
Author: Barry, Sebastian
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670031127 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
A summer of adventure, pain, delight, and ultimately epiphany unfolds for two children and their elderly caretakers in this poignant and exquisitely told story of innocence, loss, and reconciliation.
Updated 8.13.02 - Hello
to the Cannibals
Author: Bausch, Richard
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.95 ISBN: 006019295x Date: 2002Booklist
At the end of the 20th century, Lily Austin is writing a play about the famed British explorer and travel writer Mary Kingsley. Through Kingsley's writings, Lily finds in Kingsley's courage and resourcefulness the inspiration she needs to navigate the complicated waters of intimacy and betrayal, kindness and love. Hello to the Cannibals is Bausch's most dazzling and beautifully crafted novel to date.
Suggested Reading: Virginia Stars
Updated 10.15.02 - The Sheltering Sky
/ Let It Come Down / The Spider's House
Author: Bowles, Paul
Publisher: Library of America $ 35 ISBN: 1931082197 Date: 2002Library Journal
Three works by America's great writer-in-exile are gathered in this annotatedcollector's edition, the companion to Collected Stories and Later Writings.
Updated 9.23.02 - The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt 3w
Author: Brownstein, Gabriel
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 039305151x Date: 2002PW
In this brilliantly inventive collection of stories, the author captures the disparate lives of the residents of Manhattan's West 89th Street from marriages, car accidents, love affairs, and adoptions.
Updated 7.22.02 - Caramelo
Author: Cisneros, Sandra
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0679435549 Date: 2002KirkusPWBooklistLJ
An extraordinary new novel from the author of The House on Mango Street is a multigenerational story of a Mexican-American family whose myriad voices create a dazzling weave of passion, poignancy, and the stuff of life.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists | Latino/Latina Stars | Reading Group Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - The
Contortionist's Handbook
Author: Clevenger, Craig
Publisher: Macadam Cage $ 23 ISBN: 193156115x Date: 2002Kirkus
Suggested Reading: First Fiction
Updated 7.17.02 - How the Water
Feels
Author: Eggers, Paul
Publisher: Southern Methodist $ 19.95 ISBN: 0870744739 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 8.27.02 - Skirt & Fiddle
Author: Egolf, Tristan
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 0802117228 Date: 2002Kirkus
Egolf burst onto the literary scene with his first novel, Lord of the Barnyard, garnering renown around the world and instantly establishing himself as an audacious and inventive young writer. Skirt and the Fiddle is his frenetic, hilarious love story about a group of misfits in a flophouse.
Updated 6.29.02 - Middlesex
Author: Eugenides, Jeffrey
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 27 ISBN: 0374199698 Date: 2002LJKirkus
Spanning eight decades, Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. Eugenides was named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars
Updated 7.17.02 - Crimson
Petal and the White
Author: Faber, Michael
Publisher: Harcourt $ 26 ISBN: 015100692x Date: 2002KirkusBooklistLJPW
Richly textured, this novel is set in 1870s London. Nineteen-year-old prostitute Sugar yearns for escape from a terrifying brothel. Her ascent through Victorian society offers an intimacy with host of unforgettable characters as Sugar tries to lift her body and soul out of the gutter.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars Lists | Reading Group Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - Quiet Storm
Author: Howzell, Rachel
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 074322616x Date: 2002LJ
Smart, kind, and beautiful, Rikki Moore was always the star of her well-bred family. But the world doesn't know that storms ripple just beneath Rikki's image of perfection. Addressing a subject often avoided in many African-American families, A Quiet Storm reveals the secret anguish of a family pulled apart by mental illness and the tragedy that results from their denial.
Updated 7.16.02 - Coast Liners
Author: Harris, Joanne
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060198125 Date: 2002PW
The New York Times bestselling author of Chocolat and Five Quarters of the Orange returns with a poignant, sensual story of love and rebirth. Coastliners has been optioned for a movie.
Updated 9.7.02 - Nowhere Man: The Pronek
Fantasies
Author: Hemon, Aleksander
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385499248 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistPW
The author of the celebrated debut, The Question of Bruno, returns with the engrossing and hilarious mind-and language-bending adventures of his endearing hero, Jozef Pronek.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists
Updated 9.7.02 - The Mulberry Empire
Author: Hensher, Philip
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0375414886 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
Spanning a decade and moving between London and Calcutta, The Mulberry Empire explores the doomed 1839 mission of some 50,000 forces of the British Empire as they entered Afghanistan to overthrow a hostile amir.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | First Fiction Debuts | Biographical Fiction | Aghanistan Stars
Updated 9.7.02 - Things
You Should Know
Author: Homes, A. M.
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0688167128 Date: 2002PW
The most daring voice of her generation, Homes writes with terrifying compassion about the things that matter most. Her distinctive narratives illuminate dreams and desires, memories and losses, and the profound need for connection, demonstrating how extraordinary the ordinary can be.
Updated 7.15.02 - In the Image
Author: Horn, Dara
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393051064 Date: 2002BooklistPW
Not just a fine first novel, this is a young woman's coming of age story, a romantic love story, and a spiritual journey, each infused with the lessons of history.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 8.27.02 - The House
on Eccles Road
Author: Kitchen, Judith
Publisher: Graywolf $ 22 ISBN: 155597368x Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 9.23.02 - Miniatures
Author: Labiner, Norah
Publisher: Coffee House $ 23 ISBN: 1566891361 Date: 2002KirkusPW
Updated 9.16.02 - Sinclair Lewis:
Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth
Author: Lingeman, Richard R. (ed)
Publisher: Library of America $ 40 ISBN: 1931082081Date: 2002Library Journal
Written at the height of his power in the 1920s, the three novels in this volume continue the rigorous unmasking of American middle-class life begun by Lewis in Main Street and Babbit.
Updated 10.16.02 - Speaks
the Nightbird
Author: McCammon, Robert R.
Publisher: Elliott & Clark $ 29.95 ISBN: 1880216620 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 6.29.02 - Piano Tuner
Author: Mason, Daniel Philippe
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375414657 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary Journal
A hypnotic tale of myth, romance, and self-discovery, this extraordinary fiction debut tells the story of a British piano tuner sent deep into Burma in the 19th century, where he encounters thieves, soldiers, and an enchanting but elusive woman.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Debuts | Reading Group Stars | Burma
Updated 8.16.02 - Gorgeous Lies
Author: McPhee, Martha
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 015100613x Date: 2002Kirkus
Returning to the Furey-Cooper family introduced in her Bright Angel Time, McPhee sets this follow-up 20 years later and explores the fate of this American family as it comes to terms with the complex tangle of its emotional legacies.
Updated 6.29.02 - Heart of Redness
Author: Mda, Zakes
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374528349Date: 2002Kirkus
Zakes Mda sets a story of South African village life against a notorious episode from the country's past, the result is a novel of scope and deep human feeling, of passion and reconciliation. As the novel opens Camugu, who left for America during apartheid, has returned to Johannesburg only to be disillusioned by the problems of the new democracy.
Updated 7.3.02 - In Revere,
in Those Days
Author: Merullo, Roland
Publisher: Crown $ 22 ISBN: 0609610325 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistLibrary Journal
From acclaimed novelist Merullo comes a poignant and compelling coming-of-age story set in a large Italian-American family in the working-class community of Revere, Massachusetts.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists
Updated 9.7.02 - Family Matters
Author: Mistry, Rohinton
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0375403736 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistPW
At once sweeping and intimate, comic and tragic, Family Matters--by the author of A Fine Balance --is the story of a 1990s Bombay family dealing with their elderly patriarch, who is suffering from Parkinson's disease.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists
Updated 7.15.02 - Not a Sparrow
Falls
Author: Nichols, Linda
Publisher: Bethany House $ 16.99 ISBN: 0764227556 Date: 2002Booklist
In this powerful story of redemption and love, a prodigal young woman from the hills of Virginia flees the men who have lured her away from a godly upbringing into a life of desperation. A heart-tugging tale about the extraordinary struggles that turn ordinary people into heroes.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 8.13.02 - When
the Emperor was Divine
Author: Otsuka, Julie
Publisher: Knopf $ 18 ISBN: 0375414290 Date: 2002PWLibrary JournalBooklist
Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any previously written--a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World War Fiction Stars | Debuts | All Stars Lists | Asian American Stars | Reading Group Stars
Updated 9.7.02 - Lullaby: A Novel
Author: Palahniuck, Chuck
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385504470 Date: 2002Kirkus
From the author of The New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club comes a scintillating, cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times.
Updated 6.29.02 - Touch Wood
Author: Porter, Joe Ashby
Publisher: Turtle Point $ 15.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1885983647 Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 9.23.02 - Desolation
Author: Reza, Yasmina
Publisher: Knopf $ 19 ISBN: 0375410872 Date: 2002PW
In this symphonic monologue, the author--an internationally acclaimed playwright--offers a first novel of extraordinary brilliance: An old man reflects upon his life, marriage, friendships, love affairs, and the enragingly separate existence of his spoiled, and lost, only son.
Updated 8.27.02 - The Last Girls
Author: Smith, Lee
Publisher: Algonquin $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565123638 Date: 2002BooklistKirkusPW
Revered for her powerful female characters, Smith tells a brilliant story of how college pals who grew up in an era when they were still called "girls" have negotiated life as "women."
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists | Reading Group Stars
Updated 7.31.02 - The Ties That Bind
Author: Snoe, Eboni
Publisher: BET $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 1583143386 Date: 2002Booklist
The conclusion to the Family Reunion series finds Essence Stuart confronting her biological father, politician Cedric Johnson, after he cruelly rejects her. Essence also has a chance encounter with detective Titan Valentine, who Cedric has hired to investigate her. When they fall in love, it takes Grandfather Johnson's meddling to get the couple to admit their feelings and take a chance at love.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - The Story
of Lucy Gault
Author: Trevor, William
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670031542 Date: 2002KirkusPWBooklistLibrary Journal
The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland, but the threat of arson leads nine-year-old Lucy's parents to leave Ireland for England. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away. In this profound and moving story of love, guilt and forgiveness, Trevor has written a novel that stands alongside the best literature in the English language.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists | Reading Group Stars
Updated 9.7.02 - The
Divine Economy of Salvation
Author: Uppal, Priscila
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN: 1565123654 Date: 2002Kirkus
In the tradition of The Secret History and Lying Awake, The Divine Economy of Salvation is a dark, powerful, and suspenseful story that captures the innocence and cruelty of adolescence and the mysteries of adulthood.
Updated 7.3.02 - One Man's Bible
Author: Xingian, Gao
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0066211328 Date: 2002PW
The Nobel Prize-winning author of Soul Mountain presents this shockingly candid novel--a fictionalized account of his own life under the Chinese communist regime--that reveals one man's experience of China's brutal Cultural Revolution.
Updated 8.13.02
August
- A Summer to
Remember
Author: Balogh, Mary
Publisher: Delacorte $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385335350 Date: 2002Booklist
Readers have been clamoring for the story of Lauren, the jilted bride from Balogh's One Night for Love. Now, the wait is finally over, for Lauren finds true love when she strikes a bargain with the handsome Viscount "Kit" Ravensberg.
Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars | Romance Stars
Updated 6.29.02 - The Soldier's
Return
Author: Bragg, Melvyn
Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559706392 Date: 2002BooklistLibrary Journal
When Sam Richardson returns in 1946 from the "Forgotten War" in Burma to his home in England, he finds the war has changed him and his family. As they strive to adjust, the bonds of love and loyalty are stretched to the breaking point in this taut and profoundly moving novel.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World War Fiction Stars
Updated 8.16.02 - Bridal Favors
Author: Brockway, Connie
Publisher: Dell $ 6.99 ISBN: 0440236746 Date: 2002Booklist
Evelyn White has never forgotten the first time she met Justin Powell--or the shocking indiscretion that left the military hero in her debt. Desperate to save her aunt's foundering enterprise as a wedding planner, Evelyn's ready to call in her IOU. All she needs is Justin's ancestral home, where she's determined to prove that a woman innocent in the ways of love can turn a simple wedding into the social event of the season.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - Faking It
Author: Crusie, Jennifer
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312284683 Date: 2002Kirkus
Matilda "Tilda" Goodnight and Davy Dempsey both want something gorgeous gold-digger Clea Lewis has. When they cross paths in Clea's bedroom, Tilda and Davy reluctantly join forces to battle with a determined femme fatale, an inept art collector, a disgruntled heir, false identities, and worst of all, real love.
Suggested Reading: Chicklit Stars | Romance Stars
Updated 6.29.02 - The
Vintage Book of War Stories
Author: Faulks, Sebastian (ed)
Publisher: Vintage $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN:1400030404 Date: 2002Library Journal
The editors have assembled a powerful collection including some of the past century's finest writers--from Isaac Babel to Tim O'Brien--coming to terms with the dismal inheritance of war.
Suggested Reading: World War Fiction Stars
Updated 9.23.02 - Standing
in the Rainbow
Author: Flagg, Fannie
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0679426159 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistPW
Fannie's back in town--at her funniest, most touching, rooted, and surprising best. She has also brought along several characters from her earlier bestseller, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, plus some new folks to make readers smile, laugh, and cry.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists | Humorous Fiction
Updated 7.22.02 - A Parchment
of Leaves: A Novel
Author: House, Silas
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN: 1565123670 Date: 2002Kirkus
When House made his debut with Clay's Quilt, it touched a nerve and became a bestseller. His second novel, set in 1917, tells the story of Vine, a beautiful Cherokee woman who marries a white man. As haunting as an old-time ballad, this book is filled with the imagery, dialect, music, and thrumming life of the Kentucky mountains.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 8.13.02 - Dear Mr. President
Author: Hudson, Gabe
Publisher: Knopf $ 19 ISBN: 0375413952 Date: 2002PW
From one of the brilliant newcomers featured in The New Yorker's Fiction Debut Writers of 2001 issue--eight stories and a novella that take on the Gulf War with audacity, inventiveness, humor, and a startling emotional resonance.
Suggested Reading: Gulf War Stars
Updated 7.3.02 - When Strangers
Marry
Author: Kleypas, Lisa
Publisher: Avon $ 7.50 (paper) ISBN: 0060507365 Date: 2002PW
Dreading her wedding to a fianc she despises, Lysette Kersaint seeks sanctuary with Maximilien Vallerand, whom she fears. Everyone talks about his dark past, yet her heart races when she's near him. Maximilien sees the alluring Lysette as the perfect instrument of his sworn vengeance. But can an innocent beauty free the love trapped in his tormented soul?
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 7.15.02 - Paradise Dance
Author: Lee, Michael
Publisher: Leapfrog $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0967952069 Date: 2002Library Journal
A trace of Raymond Carver mixed with Dave Barry.
- Publisher marketing.
Updated 10.08.02 - In
the Middle of All This
Author: Leebron, Fred G.
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151008345 Date: 2002PW
A gripping and skillful novel of escalating suspicions and family tensions written by a literary talent who has been compared to Richard Ford and Raymond Carver. Leebron's compelling novel brings readers into the world of domestic unease as two couples and their families wrestle with empathy's limitations in the uncompromising teeth of mortality.
Updated 6.29.02 - The Music of a Life
Author: Makine, Andrei
Publisher: Arcade $ 21.95 ISBN: 1559706376 Date: 2002KirkusLJ
His father is a dramatist, his mother an opera singer. But during Stalin's reign of terror in the 1930s, both parents are arrested. Alexei Berg flees, and begins his endless journey until he lands, two decades later, in a snowbound train station in the Urals, where he relates his harrowing saga to the novel's narrator.
Suggested Reading: Stalin
Updated 7.16.02 - The
Second Coming of Lucy Hatch
Author: Moyer, Marsha
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060081651 Date: 2002PW
A sparkling new voice introduces farm wife Lucy Hatch, a widow at age 33 who returns to her tiny Texas hometown, contemplating a life of solitude. The last thing she expects is to find Ash Ferrell, a dashing man who teaches Lucy to work through her heartache. As their romance blossoms, Lucy and Ash must endure an irate ex-girlfriend, a false arrest, and a 20-year flood.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 6.29.02 - After the Quake
Author: Murakami, Haruki
Publisher: Knopf $ 21 ISBN: 0375413901 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistPW
In 1995, the physical and social landscape of Japan was transformed by the Kobe earthquake and the poison gas attacks in the Tokyo subways. By a world-class writer, this is a short but powerful book whose importance is emphasized by its hideous timeliness, and whose great gift is both comfort and understanding.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists
Updated 7.30.02 - Transplanted
Man
Author: Nigam, Sanjay
Publisher: Morrow $24.95 ISBN: 068818191 Date: 2002PW
Sonny Seth is a medical resident at a New York hospital servicing a community of eccentric expatriates from India. Sonny's most demanding patient--known as the Transplanted Man--is a high-level Indian government official whose major organs have been transplanted at least once. Now deathly ill and hunted, he pulls Sonny into a soul-searching journey.
Suggested Reading: Stars of India | Medical Fiction
Updated 7.9.02 - Girl, in Parts
Author: Paul, Jasmine
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 158243218x Date: 2002Kirkus
Gritty and realistic, A Girl, In Parts is never sentimental about either poverty or childhood as it follows a young girl with limitless dreams and confidence in an uncertain world. First novelist Jasmine Paul has crafted an elegant coming-of-age story in 97 perfectly told vignettes.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction
Updated 6.10.02 - New
Stories from the South: The Year's Best 2002
Author: Ravenel, Shannan (ed)
Publisher: Algonquin $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1565123751 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 6.29.02 - Must Be Magic
Author: Rice, Patricia
Publisher: Signet $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0451206754 Date: 2002Booklist
Feeling like an outcast among her magically gifted sisters, Lady Leila Staines plans to seek out scientist Dunstan Ives, a dark, brooding, logical aristocrat who may help her unlock her potential and help her grow herbs and flowers for her potions. But soon their explosive mix of botany and biology creates a spark that is pure magic--and pure passion.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 8.13.02 - Fruit of Stone
Author: Spragg, Mark
Publisher: Riverhead $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 1573222232 Date: 2002Booklist
From the author of the award-winning memoir Where Rivers Change Directions comes a brave, soulful, and poetic first novel that depicts the friendship between blood brothers as it plays out on a strange and fateful journey across the American West.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction Debuts
Updated 7.15.02 - The Girl from
the Coast
Author: Toer, Pramoedya Ananta
Publisher: Hyperion $ 22.95 ISBN: 0786868201 Date: 2002Booklist
In feudal Java, where both privilege and poverty lived side-by-side, women were little more than chattel. From the world-renowned author of The Mute's Soliloquy and The Buru Quartet comes a heartbreaking novel about innocence and power.
Updated 8.13.02 - Heaven of Mercury:
A Novel
Author: Watson, Brad
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393047571 Date: 2002Kirkus
A dark, riotous Southern novel of sex, death, and transformation. Brad Watson's first novel has been eagerly awaited since his award-winning debut collection of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men. Here, he fulfills that literary promise with a humorous and jaundiced eye.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5.20.02 - The Judges
Author: Wiesel, Elie
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375049092 Date: 2002Library Journal
From the writer, humanist, activist, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, a gripping story of guilt, innocence, and the perilousness of judging both. This powerful novel reflects the philosophical, religious, and moral questions that are at the heart of Elie Wiesel's work.
Updated 6.7.02
July
- Mahattan
Monologues
Author: Auchincloss, Louis
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 061815289x Date: 2002PW
Auchincloss is "one of the essential American writers" (Kirkus Reviews), and his 57th book testifies to this fact. In Manhattan Monologues, Auchincloss charts a colorful New York century through a series of personal accounts from the rarefied circle that fills his best fiction.
Updated 6.29.02 - Critical Injuries
Author: Barfoot, Joan
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 25 ISBN: 1582432082 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 6.29.02 - The Hermit's Story
Author: Bass, Rick
Publisher: Houghton $ 22 ISBN: 061813932x Date: 2002BooklistPW
From the author of Colter and Where the Sea Used to Be comes a new and diverse collection of short stories.
Updated 5.23.02 - Epileptic, Book 1
Author: B., David
Publisher: Fantogrpahics $ 24.95 (paper) ISBN: 2844140858 Date: 2002PW
Grahic Novel
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novel Stars
Updated 6.3.02 - House Under Snow
Author: Bialosky, Jill
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151006857 Date: 2002PWLibrary Journal
The first novel by an acclaimed poet and author of Subterranean, House Under Snow is a story of mothers and daughters, of sexual identity, and of a family slowly disintegrating after the premature death of its patriarch.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 6.29.02 - No True Gentleman
Author: Carlyle, Liz
Publisher: Pocket $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0743437845 Date: 2002PW
Lady Catherine Wodeway knows the dark, mysterious Maximilian de Rohan is no true gentleman--especially when he gives her a scandalous kiss. But when a woman of means is brutally murdered--and Catherine's brother is suspected--Max is called in to investigate. Catherine knows it will take more than a gentleman to uncover the truth--and capture her heart.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 6.3.02 - Tales of
Protection
Author: Hansen, Erik Fosnes
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374272409 Date: 2002PWKirkus
Tales of Protection is a novel about people in different places in different epochs--contemporary Norway, 19th century Sweden, and Renaissance Italy--whose stories are bound together by the author's original and searching inquiry into why things happen the way they do.
Updated 6.29.02 - You
Are Not a Stranger Here
Author: Haslett, Adam
Publisher: Doubleday $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385501676 Date: 2002PW
Carrying the reader into the lives of people confronting the concerns of both classic literature and contemporary life, the nine stories of this collection are written with an arresting combination of finely wrought prose and strong feeling.
Updated 7.9.02 - Life at These
Speeds
Author: Jackson, Jeremy
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312288085 Date: 2002Kirkus
The Sweet Hereafter meets Chariots of Fire in this touching first novel about a teen who runs track and endures a horrible tragedy. Years later, when he has come to terms with his past and begins to heal, another tragedy enters his life. Jackson relates a story of fearsome sadness, yet imbues it with humor, creating an understated novel of remarkable poignancy.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 6.10.02 - The Moth Diaries
Author: Klein, Rachel
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582432058 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
Updated 7.15.02 - Inflating a Dog:
The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch
Author: Kraft, Eric
Publisher: Picador $ 25 ISBN: 0312288042KirkusBooklist
Ella Leroy dreams of escaping the dreary routine of her 1950s wife-and-mom life. Without telling her husband, she enlists her son Peter and his locally-notorious girlfriend Patti in a scheme: to buy a run-down clamboat and reinvent it as an elegant cruising vessel for summer people in the beach town of Babbington, Long Island.
Updated 6.29.02 - Fragrant Harbor
Author: Lanchester, John
Publisher: Putnam $ 25.95 ISBN: 0399148663 Date: 2002PWKirkusLJ
Fragrant Harbor takes the reader from the intrigue and double-dealing of the 1930s through the savagery of the Japanese occupation to contemporary Hong Kong. The result is a novel that proves Lanchester is a versatile and talented contemporary novelist.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
Updated 7.16.02 - The Year of Ice
Author: Malloy, Brian
Publisher: St Martins $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312289480 Date: 2002Booklist
In this debut novel about a boy dealing with his mother's death, a painfully revealing year threatens to shatter the tenuous bonds between the teen and his father.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 6.29.02 - Half in Love: Stories
Author: Meloy, Maile
Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743216474 Date: 2002Kirkus
This much-anticipated debut confirms that Maile Meloy is a writer to watch, with 15 stories that combine a distinct voice and a striking wisdom about her characters and the worlds they occupy.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5.9.02 - Peter Loon
Author: Reid, Van
Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 067003052x Date: 2002Library JournalKirkus
Readers have been clamoring for a new Van Reid novel with the easy, innocent charm and page-turning exploits of Cordelia Underwood, Mollie Peer, and Daniel Plainway. Their wait is over. Set a century earlier, just after the American Revolution, Peter Loon brings us more of the irresistibly etched characters, intriguing adventures, and wonderful storytelling that we've come to expect. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 6.10.02 - The Whore's Child: And
Other Stories
Author: Russo, Richard
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375411682 Date: 2002KirkusPWLJ
In his first collection, a master storyteller focuses on a fresh and fascinating range of human behavior. With a fluency of tone that will surprise even his devoted readers, Russo captures both bewildering horror and heartrending tenderness with an absorbing, compassionate authority.
Suggested Reading: All Stars Lists
Updated 7.16.02 - Lovely Bones
Author: Sebold, Alice
Publisher: Little Brown $ 21.95 ISBN: 031666343 Date: 2002BooklistLibrary JournalPW
In the hands of a brilliant new novelist, and through the eyes of her winning new heroine, this tale of family, memory, love, and living is told by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and builds out of her family's grief the most hopeful and joyful of stories.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | All Stars Lists | Reading Group Stars
Updated 6.29.02 - The Book of Splendor
Author: Sherwood, Frances
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393021386 Date: 2002PWBooklist
An epic tale reminiscent of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, this is a historical novel about the most unlikely of lovers, interwoven with the mysticism of the Jewish occult.
Updated 6.3.02 - Trolley
Author: Simon, Claude
Publisher: New Press $ 22.95 ISBN: 156847342 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 6.10.02 - A Rose in Winter
Author: Sole, Linda
Publisher: Severn $ 25.99 ISBN: 0727856537 Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 9.23.02 - All the Way Home
Author: Tatlock, Ann
Publisher: Bethany $ 11.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0764226630 Date: 2002Booklist
From the award-winning author of the compelling novel A Room of My Own comes a heart-wrenching story of two women and their rediscovery of a childhood friendship. Laced with soul-touching humor, All the Way Home is a moving portrayal of the vital importance of family and the bitter consequences of prejudice.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 6.29.02 - Portable
Promised Land: Stories
Author: Toure
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316666432 Date: 2002Library Journal
With stunning language and dazzling characters, this debut by Tour introduces Soul City, a wholly imagined utopia where magic happens and black is beautiful.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction Debuts | African American Stars
Updated 6.7.02 - In Search
of Klingsor
Author: Volpi, Jorge
Publisher: Scriber $ 26 ISBN: 0743201183 Date: 2002PWLJ
Already an international bestseller, In Search of Klingsor traces an American physicist's thrilling search to unmask HitlerUs chief science advisor, the man whose work on the German atomic bomb threatens Allied security.
Updated 7.16.02 - That's
True of Everbody
Author: Winegardner, Mark
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151008647 Date: 2002Kirkus
In the multicolored canvas of this debut short-story collection, the author of Crooked River Burning returns to the Midwest to cast a compassionate eye on its denizens who lead lives of not necessarily quiet desperation.
Updated 5.20.02 - Fierce People
Author: Wittenborn, Dirk
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582342423 Date: 2002PW
Dropped into a world more savage than anything in "National Geographic, " more cutthroat than anything New York's grimy downtown streets have to offer--the exclusive rural community of Vlyvalle, New Jersey--15-year-old Finn Earl and his recovering mother must fight for survival.
Updated 5.3.02
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