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 2004
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.
A 
indicates an Overbooked Jump for Joy book.
June
- The Smallest People Alive
Author: Banner, Keith
Publisher: Carnegie Mellon $ 16.95 (paper) ISBN: 0887484263 Date: 2004
PW
Updated 6.1.04 - Without Blood
Author: Barricco, Allessandro
Publisher: Knopf $ 18 ISBN: 1400041457 Date: 2004Booklist
From the author of the acclaimed international bestseller Silk comes an unforgettable tale of the cruelty of war, a little girl's shattered world, and her lifelong quest for revenge and healing.
Updated 4.6.04 - Natasha: And Other Stories
Author: Bezmozgis, David
Publisher: FSG $ 18 ISBN: 0374281416 Date: 2004LJKirkusPW
The stories in this collection capture the immigrant experience with serious wit, while evoking boyhood and youth, and the battle for selfhood in a passionately loving Jewish family.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4.19.04 - The Dog Fighter
Author: Bokanowski, Marc
Publisher: Morrow $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060595604 Date: 2004LJ
In a stunning debut novel by 26-year-old Marc Bojanowski that is set in 1940s Mexico, a young man who becomes involved in a brutally violent spectator sport must choose his loyalties in the fight for a city's future.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Poets
Updated 4.20.04 - Blood Kin
Author: Chappell, Henry C.
Publisher: Texas Tech $ 27.95 ISBN: 0896725308 Date: 2004Booklist
Updated 4.27.04 - The Garden Angel
Author: Friddle, Mindy
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312326742 Date: 2004Kirkus
"The Garden Angel takes on the shifting alliances defined by family, love, and friendship with quirky grace and raucous wit. Mindy Friddle's details are shocking and flawless. I'm thankful for her reminder that our frail souls can be ultimately triumphant."--Julianna Baggott (Girl Talk, The Miss America Family).
Suggested Reading: Funny Fiction
Updated 6.10.04 - Waking Beauty
Author: Friedman, Elyse
Publisher: Three Rivers $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 1400051061 Date: 2004Kirkus
When Allison Penny miraculously wakes up thin and beautiful--a stark contrast to her last 22 years on earth--she experiences the blessing and curses of such an existence. This modern-day fairy tale proves that no matter how much we don't want to admit it, it's what's on the outside that counts.
Updated 5.10.04 - Grant Comes East
Author: Gingrich, Newt and William R. Forstchen
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312309376 Date: 2004PW
The former Speaker of the House's re-imagination of the Civil War continues in this sequel to the New York Times bestselling Gettysburg.
Suggested Reading: Alternative History Stars
Updated 5.17.04 - Way Past Legal
Author: Green, Norman
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060564547 Date: 2004Booklist
"After The Angel of Montague Street, Green gives us the less-than-angelic thief Manny, who's so nervous about his latest big score that he flees to peaceful Maine and tries going straight."--Library Journal.
Updated 5.7.04 - Something Borrowed
Author: Giffin, Emily
Publisher: St Martins $ 21.95 ISBN: 031232118x Date: 2004Booklist
Griffin presents her first novel about falling in love with the one guy you shouldn't.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Chicklit
Updated 6.1.04 - Scholarium
Author: Gross, Claudia
Publisher: Toby $ 19.95 ISBN: 1592640567 Date: 2004Kirkus
An overcast, rainy night in Cologne, The Chancellor of the newly-founded university charges Konrad Steiner, of the Masters in the Arts faculty, with the investigation of a brutal murder crime. Readers of Eco's The Name of the Rose will find this addictive! - Publisher's Marketing
Updated 4.26.04 - The Tarnished Eye:
A Novel of Suspense
Author: Guest, Judith
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743257367 Date: 2004Booklist
The New York Times bestselling author of Ordinary People crafts a gripping, character-driven novel of suspense that explores the fragile dynamics of family in the aftermath of tragedy.
Updated 3.22.04 - The Laments
Author: Hagen, George
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400062217 Date: 2004Kirkus
As odd as the globetrotting Lament family is, Hagen's feat is to make them universal through their restlessness, their responses to adversity, and especially their unwieldy love for each other.
Updated 4.26.04 - The Tyrant's Novel
Author: Keneally, Thoams
Publisher: Delacorte $ 25 ISBN: 0385511469 Date: 2004KirkusPW
In a work that evokes the classic cautionary tale Fahrenheit 451, Keneally masters the gripping perspective of a man caught between the unconscionable demands of his government and the meager prospect of running for his life.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction | Dystopian Stars
Updated 5.24.04 - Crossing
California
Author: Langer, Adam
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222747 Date: 2004KirkusPWBooklist
Poignant, ambitious, and tremendously fun, this fiction discovery of the season is a novel about two generations of family and friendship in Chicago from November 1979 through January 1981.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 6.1.04 - Resistance
Author: Lopez, Barry
Publisher: Knopf $ 18 ISBN: 1400042208 Date: 2004Booklist
From the National Book Award-winning author of Arctic Dreams comes a highly charged, stunningly original work of fiction--a passionate response to the changes shaping our country today. Telling their stories in nine fictional testimonies are men and women who have resisted the mainstream and who are now suddenly "parties of interest" to the government.
Updated 5.7.04 - Playing James
Author: Mason, Sarah
Publisher: Ballantine $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0345469550 Date: 2004LJ
A hilarious and charming debut novel, Playing James follows an adorable rookie crime reporter as she takes on love, loot, and a certain boy in blue.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Chicklit | Adult Books for Teens | Romance Stars
Updated 4.5.04 - The Shadow Runners
Author: Maverick, Liz
Publisher: Lovespell $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0505525895 Date: 2004Booklist
The third title in the 2176 series that features heroines who help restore democracy to the world and find love along the way. Falsely imprisoned, an escaped convict from a moon colony is asked to return to the place of her imprisonment by the one man she cannot trust--the man who stole her heart.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 11.29.04 - The Marriage Bed
Author: McBride, Regina
Publisher: Touchstone $ 23 ISBN: 074325497x Date: 2004LJ
In 1920s Ireland, Deirdre O'Breen's two daughters, aged 14 and 13, are about to abandon her for boarding school. Her panic over their leaving and the necessity of letting them go brings up her own agonized past.
Updated 5.20.04 - No Ordinary
Matter
Author: McPhee, Jenny
Publisher: Free Pr $ 23 ISBN: 0743260724 Date: 2004Kirkus
Heralded as "a smart novel of love, lust and life's miraculous randomness" (O, The Oprah Magazine), this lush new novel explores the complexities of familial relationships, as well as the nature of desire, love and motherhood.
Updated 4.8.04 - The Work of Wolves
Author: Meyers, Kent
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151010579 Date: 2004Booklist
In this unforgettable story of horses, love, and life, the entire ensemble of characters learn, in very different ways, about the strong bonds that connect people to each other and to the land on which they live. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.1.04 - The Last Day
of the War
Author: Mitchell, Judith Claire
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375421661 Date: 2004PW
In this beautiful love story and tragicomic tale, Yael Weiss, an 18-year-old from St. Louis, reinvents herself as Yale White, a 25-year-old Methodist, when she travels to Paris with the YMCA to work in a soldiers' canteen.
Sugested Reading List: World War Stars
Updated 5.24.04 - Osprey Island
Author: Nissen, Thisbe
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375411461 Date: 2004LJ
From the author of The Good People of New York ("Fabulous . . . Wonderfully satisfying . . . This is a voice I'd follow anywhere" --Elinor Lipman), a book about summer, that most incandescent and evanescent season -- about lazy days, fleeting love, and tempers that flare in the heat. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 6.17.04 - Coal Run
Author: O'Dell, Tawni
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 067089995x Date: 2004KirkusBooklistPW
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 6.21.04 - Between Two
Rivers
Author: Rinaldi, Nicholas
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060578769 Date: 2004KirkusBooklist
Rumanian refugee and concierge Farro Fescu observes the exotic cross-section of the world's population represented in his New York City condominium. This lush tapestry demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit even in the face of tragedy.
Updated 4.21.04 - This
Is Not Civilization
Author: Rosenberg, Robert
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618386017 Date: 2004LJ
Rosenberg's ambitious and addictive novel brings to life a culturally diverse group of well-meaning characters whose ambitions exceed their grasp. It is also a touching love story about those caught between age-old tradition and the contemporary world.
Updated 4.5.04 - Angels Crest
Author: Schwartz, Leslie
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 038551185x Date: 2004Booklist
Ethan Denton's near-perfect life is shattered when his three-year-old son disappears just before an unexpected blizzard blankets the region. Schwartz creates a rich cast of characters whose reactions to the tragedy reflect the complexities of human emotions.
Suggested Reading: Stormy Weather Stars
Updated 6.1.04 - Boaz Brown
Author: Stimpson, Michelle
Publisher: Walk Worthy $ 22.95 ISBN:0446532479 Date: 2004LJ
Prejudices that exist in the African-American church are addressed in this daring debut novel about a young Christian woman who finds her own racist attitudes--as well as those of her family, friends, and church--challenged when she is drawn to a man of a different race.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | Christian Fiction Stars | Dating Stars | Debuts
Updated 6.1.04 - The Master
Author: Toibin, Colm
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743250400 Date: 2004KirkusBooklistPWLJ
"A deep, lovely, and enthralling book that engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life: splendidly conceived and composed by a writer who is himself a master of his art."--Shirley Hazzard (The Great Fire).
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Biographical Fiction | Author, Author
Updated 5.4.04 - China
Author: Wall, Alan
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 031232779x Date: 2004KirkusBooklist
Updated 5.7.04 - Oblivion: Stories
Author: Wallace, David Foster
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316919810 Date: 2004Kirkus
This is the first new fiction in five years from one of the most prodigiously talented and original writers at work today.
Updated 4.26.04 - McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Issue Number 13
Author: Ware, Chris (ed)
Publisher: McSweeneys $ 12.95 ISBN: 1932416080 Date: 2004PW
Updated 7.19.04 - The Siege of
Salt Cove
Author: Weller, Anthony
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393058867 Date: 2004PW
Powerful, poignant, deeply funny, and enriched by the villagers' diverse voices, this is a contemporary farce about a town that dares to rebel against its own government, and to fight back when attacked.
Updated 4.12.04
May
- The Secrets
of Jin-Shei
Author: Alexander, Alma
Publisher: Harper SF $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060563419 Date: 2004LJ
The epic story of seven women in ancient China and their loyal bond of sisterhood--jin shei.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 3.1.04 - Adventures
of the Artificial Woman
Author: Berger, Thomas
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 22 ISBN: 0743257405 Date: 2004Booklist
From one of the great American writers comes a hilarious and sinister new novel in which a beautiful creation goes completely haywire.
Updated 4.6.04 - Amy and Jordan
Author: Beyer, Mark
Publisher: Pantheon $ 21 ISBN: 0375422706 Date: 2004PW
In this collection of more than 275 comic strips--originally published in the New York Press from 1989 to 1992--the existential anti-heroes Amy and Jordan go through every manner of anxiety-producing trial imaginable.
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novels and Comics Stars
Updated 3.22.04 - Delirious Summer
Author: Blackston, Ray
Publisher: Revell $ 12.99 (paper) ISBN: 0800759583 Date: 2004Booklist
To Neil Rucker, seven months, one week, and a day is too long to wait in between dates. But life as a Spanish language teacher to missionaries in Ecuador affords little opportunity for romance. When his worst student, Jay Jarvis, suggests a respite in Greenville, South Carolina, so begins Neil's delirious summer.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 6.10.04 - The Rule of Four
Author: Caldwell, Ian & Dustin Thomason
Publisher: Dial $ 24 ISBN: 0385337116 Date: 2004KirkusPW
When a long-lost diary surfaces, it seems Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris have found the key to a secret labyrinth. However, when a fellow researcher is murdered only hours after their find, the friends suddenly realize that they are caught in a web of great danger.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Rule of Four web site
Updated 3.15.04 - You Remind Me
of Me
Author: Chaon, Dan
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345441419 Date: 2004PWLJ
You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of striking events: In 1974, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother's pet Doberman; more than twenty years later another little boy disappears with out a trace from his mother's backyard; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer. Following the intertwined threads of these characters' lives, Chaon powerfully explores questions of identity, fate and circumstance: Why do we become who we become? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable? - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5.4.04 - The Half Brother
Author: Christensen, Lars Saabye
Publisher: Arcade $ 27 ISBN: 1559707151 Date: 2004KirkusPW
In stunning detail and elegant prose, this truly gripping, epic novel--a wonderful mixture of surreal comedy and touching intimacy--relates the lives of four generations of a far-from-ordinary family.
Updated 4.17.04 - Flowers
of Dinh Ba Forest
Author: Clark, Robert David
Publisher: Livingston $ 14.95 (paper) ISBN: 1931982309 Date: 2004Booklist
Updated 3.11.04 - Sweet Land
Stories
Author: Doctorow, E.L.
Publisher: Random $ 22.95 ISBN: 1400062047 Date: 2004KirkusBooklistLJPW
In these magnificent portraits of people living life in American today,the bestselling author brilliantly ranges over the American continent, from Alaska to Washington D.C., in fiction that illuminates the heart of modern life.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.22.04 - Nothing Lost
Author: Dunne, John Gregory
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400041430 Date: 2004KirkusLJ
Dunne's fascination with "the population of the forgotten, the rejected, and the left behind" in the emptiness of the American heartland is the bedrock of a story that twists through the labyrinthine strata of the media, the prisons, the courts, and politics.
Updated 5.4.04 - Strangers
and Sojourners: Stories from the Lowcountry
Author: Engel, Mary Potter
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 23 ISBN: 1582432643 Date: 2004Booklist
Struggling to wrest meaning from the tragic events of their lives, a motley cast of characters from the diverse and vital rural culture of the Lowcountry of South Carolina create unorthodox views of God, the world and justice, simply as a way to survive.
Updated 4.21.04 - American Desert
Author: Everett, Percival L.
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 078686978 Date: 2004KirkusPW
A man is decapitated in a car accident, then astonishingly comes back to life in this experimental, satirical, bizarre and oddly funny novel, which lampoons the press, religion, academia and our culture.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 2.23.04 - Eventide
Author: Haruf, Kent
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375411585 Date: 2004KirkusPWLJ
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 5.4.04 - Losing the Moon
Author: Henry, Patti Callahan
Publisher: New American $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0451211952 Date: 2004Booklist
When her first, great love suddenly reappears, a happily married mother of two becomes obsessed with the idea that maybe they really were meant to be together.
Updated 5.7.04 - A Tale of
Two Vikings
Author: Hill, Sandra
Publisher: Dorchester $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0843951583 Date: 2004Booklist
When twin Viking brothers are separated during battle, each must find a way to cope. But when the way leads each into the arms of two beautiful, feisty women, the warriors learn that love, too, is a battlefield.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 4.21.04 - The Cajun Cowboy
Author: Hill, Sandra
Publisher: Warner Forever $ 5.99 ISBN: 0446612952 Date: 2004Booklist
Louisiana hair stylist Charmaine LeDeux discovers that there is a second chance for love with Raoul Lanier, the man she thought she had divorced who tells her they are still married.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 6.10.04 - Lichtenberg and the
Little Flower Girl
Author: Hofmann, Gert
Publisher: New Directions $ 23.95 ISBN: 0811215687 Date: 2004Kirkus
Updated 4.26.04 - The Shunra and the Schmetterling
Author: Hoffmann, Yoel
Publisher: New Directions $ 16.95 (paper) ISBN: 0811215679 Date: 2004Kirkus
Updated 3.11.04 - The Soft Room
Author: Hueler, Karen
Publisher: Livingston $ 25/14.95 ISBN: 1931982317/19331982325 Date: 2004Booklist
Abby and Meg are nearly identical twins, with one major exception: Meg was born with a rare disease that renders her impervious to physical pain. As a child, this "ability" soon makes her contemptuous of the whimperings of children with their skinned knees and busted lips--despite medical warnings that the disease could eventually cost her life if she weren't careful to pay attention to bleeding and physical aches. The disdain over her physical imperviousness grows into a pre-teen haughtiness over her psychic superwoman self until the family is economically forced by her father's cancer to submit Meg to paying medical research. Suddenly, Meg is one of many abnormals, and like solitary high school geniuses thrown into a select university setting of hundreds of solitary geniuses, the plot thickens. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Twins
Updated 3.22.04 - Ordinary Wolves
Author: Kantner, Seth
Publisher: Milkweed $ 22 ISBN: 1571310444 Date: 2004PWBooklist
Stirring and vivid, this evocative novel depicts the life of a white boy raised among natives on the harsh Alaskan tundra.
Updated 5.13.04 - Dancing Arabs
Author: Kashua, Sayed
Publisher: Grove $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 0802141269 Date: 2004LJ
The debut novel by 28-year-old Arab-Israeli Kashua has been praised around the world for its honesty, irony, humor, and its uniquely human portrayal of a young man who moves between two societies, becoming a stranger to both.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5.20.04 - You
Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Brave
Author: Kelman, James
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151010420 Date: 2004LJ
Jeremiah Brown, a Scottish immigrant in his early thirties, has lived in the United States for twelve years. He has moved as many times, from the east coast to the west coast and back again, all in the hope his luck would change. To add to his restlessness and indecision, he now has a nonrefundable ticket to Glasgow to visit his mother for the first time in seven years. The question is, will the visit help him get over the pain of separation from a woman he met and loved in New York and with whom he had a little girl, or will it make it worse? In this rich, funny, superbly crafted novel, Kelman has once again created a memorable character-compulsive, obsessive, self-doubting, beer-loving, and utterly engaging-and a singular portrait of an immigrant's America. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 4.5.04 - The Marriage Test
Author: Krahn, Betina
Publisher: Berkley $ 6.99 ISBN: 0425196453 Date: 2004Booklist
The bestselling author of The Husband Test and The Wife Test returns to the Convent of the Brides of Virtue, where a proper young lady is about to learn some things about the way to a man's heart.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 5.7.04 - The Hamilton Case
Author: De Kretser, Michelle
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316735485 Date: 2004BooklistPW
Lawyer Sam Obeysekere's involvement in murder case that shakes the upper echelons of an island society makes a name for him, but sets his life on course for disappointment.
Suggested Reading: Legal Stars
Updated 4.12.04 - Herding Cats
Author: McCabe, John
Publisher: Black Swan $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 0552770906 Date: 2004Kirkus
Updated 2.10.04 - Within Arms'
Reach
Author: Napolitano, Ann
Publisher: Crown $ 23 ISBN: 1400051886 Date: 2004LJ
Single, 29 and pregnant, Gracie's decision to keep the baby is just one of a series of events for which her family--largely successful, competitive, and judgmental--isn't prepared. Their individual responses and crises form the strands of a mesmerizing story of guilt, love, betrayal, and the loyalty of blood.
Updated 4.20.04 - Double Play
Author: Parker, Robert B.
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399151885 Date: 2004KirkusPW
In a brilliant novel about a very real man, Parker tells the story of the 1947 baseball season--when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier--through the eyes of a difficult, brooding, wounded man hired to guard Robinson.
Suggested Reading: Biographical Fiction | Historical Fiction | Sports
Updated 3.29.04 - The Paid Companion
Author: Quick, Amanda
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399151745 Date: 2004KirkusBooklist
His intentions are purely practical. The Earl of St. Merryn seeks a woman to pose as his finace for a few weeks to keep the husband-hunters at bay while he goes about his business. The plan never included falling in love.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 4.6.04 - Pushkin
and the Queen of Spades
Author: Randall, Alice
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618433600 Date: 2004PW
Balancing sharp-witted humor with profundity, sexiness with psychological depth, this exhilarating ride through the racially divided heart of contemporary America probes the universal question of what it means to be a good mother.
Suggested Reading: African American Fiction Stars
Updated 3.1.04 - The Half-Life
Author: Raymond, Jonathan
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582344485 Date: 2004PW
While filming an amateur movie in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s, two teenage girls stumble across a pair of 160-year-old skeletons and the four lives converge in unexpected, startling ways.
Updated 3.11.04 - The
Ballad of the Low Lifes
Author: Remmert, Enrico
Publisher: Toby $ 19.95 ISBN: 1592640540 Date: 2004Kirkus
Meet Vittorio and Milo, two young drifters living by their wits in modern Turin, getting by on petty scams and swindles. The two young men have kept an idea in a back drawer for years, the Big Scam. It's going to make them rich, very rich. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 4.8.04 - Sympotmatic
Author: Senna, Danzy
Publisher: Riverhead $ 22.95 ISBN: 1573222755 Date: 2004LJ
A novel of acute psychological tension and unsettling questions of identity--the much anticipated follow-up to Senna's groundbreaking debut, Caucasia.
Updated 4.20.04 - Dying Declaration
Author: Singer, Randy
Publisher: Waterbrook $ 13.99 (paper) ISBN: 1578567769 Date: 2004Booklist
Cultures and lawyers collide in this fast-paced, edgy, and issue-driven suspense novel, which powerfully illustrates the triumph of grace over legalism.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 9.7.04 - The Perfect Age
Author: Skyler, Heather
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393058700 Date: 2004LJ
Following a middle-aged mother and her teenage daughter through three summers, this novel is an intimate picture of two sexual awakenings under one roof and their aftershocks on a family.
Updated 5.20.04 - The Ptolemies
Author: Sprott, Duncan
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 1400041546 Date: 2004Kirkus
Sprott's wildly imaginative yet historically accurate, and often hilarious work re-creates the early years of the House of Ptolemy (330-23 BC)--the dark, glittering, disastrous and forgotten 10-generation dynasty of Greek pharaohs of Egypt.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Egyptian Stars
Updated 3.25.04 - After
Author: Tristram, Claire
Publisher: FSG $ 20 ISBN: 0374103909 Date: 2004Kirkus
The thin line between love and hate is stretched to the limit in this mesmerizing fiction debut about an intense, erotic affair that veers into violence.
Suggested Reading: Terrorism
Updated 2.10.04 - Mister O
Author: Trondheim, Lewis
Publisher: NMB $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 1561633828 Date: 2004PW
Goofy silent one-page gags crammed with little frames showing Mister O, a round doodle of a man desperately trying to get across that darn chasm and never quite making it. This will keep you in stiches for pages. More of Trondheim's genius at work. - graphic novel
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novel Stars
Updated 5.3.04 - The News from
Paraguay
Author: Tuck, Lily
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0066209447 Date: 2004Kirkus
"As this biting, elegant novel examines the corrosive effects of a delusional dictator, it illuminates both a little-known corner of history and the world we live in now."--Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map.
Updated 2.10.04 - The Perfect Play
Author: Wener, Louise
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060585471 Date: 2004LJ
A young woman risks everything in search of her deadbeat professional poker playing father in this novel of high stakes, lost love and poker.
Suggested Reading: Take a Gamble | Magic & Magicians
Updated 4.20.04 - Mr. Famous
Author: Wolper, Carol
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222720 Date: 2004Booklist
An aging action star attempts reinvention as a serious actor and the result is pure comedy in this dead-on Hollywood novel from the author of the national bestseller The Cigarette Girl.
Suggested Reading: Film Stars
Updated 5.7.04
April
- Cherries
of Freedom
Author: Andersch, Alfred
Publisher: Toby $ 19.95 ISBN: 1592640524 Date: 2004Kirkus
A German soldier deserts in Italy during the Second World War, and for the first time, experiences real freedom. A classic of post war Germany. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: World Wars
Updated 4.8.04 - A Sundog Moment
Author: Baldacci, Sharon
Publisher: Warner Faith $ 19.95 ISBN: 0446533661 Date: 2004Booklist
In Baldacci's deeply moving debut novel, a woman with multiple sclerosis faces a new journey fraught with wrenching pain, enduring wisdom, and authentic joy.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9.7.04 - Slightly Sinful
Author: Balogh, Mary
Publisher: Dell $ 6.50 (paper) ISBN: 0440236606 Date: 2004PW
In this outing of Balogh's saga of the six Bedwyn brothers and sisters, passionate middle son Alleyne Bedwyn is cut off from his past only to find his future with a beautiful woman he'll risk everything to love.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 4.19.04 - To Err is Divine
Author: Bozai, Agota
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582432775 Date: 2004Kirkus
A bestseller in Hungary and Germany, this is the story of a woman who awakens one day with a halo that reveals the absurdity of her neighbors and the fickleness of life in a capitalist culture.
Suggested Reading: Questions of Faith
Updated 4.8.04 - My Seduction
Author: Brockway, Connie
Publisher: Pocket $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0743463226 Date: 2004Booklist
The "USA Today" bestselling author whisks readers to Regency-era Scotland with an exciting new romance trilogy--a scintillating, passionate, and surprising love story of three mysterious Highlanders and the women they are pledged to protect.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 6.1.04 - Little
Black Book of Stories
Author: Byatt, A. S.
Publisher: Knopf $ 21 ISBN: 1400041775 Date: 2004KirkusBooklistPW
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 5.3.04 - What to Keep
Author: Cline, Rachel
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 1400061830 Date: 2004Kirkus
This unique, three-section novel looks into the lives of Denny Roman and her family, all attempting variations on the theme "parent."
Updated 1.15.04 - Plain
Heathen Mischief
Author: Clark, Martin
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400040965 Date: 2004KirkusPWLJ
Of Martin Clark's spectacular first novel, the New York Times Book Review wrote, Like Nick Hornby in High Fidelity and Thomas McGuane in Nothing but Blue Skies, Clark has produced an oddly stirring portrait of a man in existential disarray." Which--wrote Malcolm Jones in Newsweek--made me laugh so hard I fell off the sofa." Plain Heathen Mischief ups the ante in existential hilarity; as Joel King (a defrocked Baptist minister) finds life even more bedeviling once he's served six months for a highly implausible crime. Now he's being sued for a cool $5 million, his wife wants divorce, the refuge provided by his sister turns as vicious as his parole officer, and a fresh start in Montana offers no hope for ex-cons of any religious persuasion. On the upside, a kindly former parishioner soon involves the hapless Joel in a flock of con men, crooked lawyers, conniving youth, and authorities bent on prosecution and harassment. In a bravura feat of storytelling Clark ranges from the cross to the double cross from Virginia to Las Vegas, from jail cells to trout streams, as he follows his Job-like hero to a redemption that no reader could possibly predict. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Black Humor | All Stars
Updated 5.4.04 - Sharpe's Escape
Author: Cornwell, Bernard
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060530472 Date: 2004PW
The newest Sharpe adventure--after New York Times bestselling Sharpe's Havoc--takes place in the fall of 1810 at the battle of Bussaco, Spain, the sack of Coimbra, Portugal, and at the Lines of Torres Vedras.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 3.15.04 - Heaven Lake
Author: Dalton, John
Publisher: Scribner $ 26 ISBN: 0743246349 Date: 2004PW
In this extraordinary debut novel in the tradition of Graham Greene, a Christian volunteer treks across China in search of love and revelation.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 12.29.03 - Love's Body, Dancing in
Time
Author: Duchamp, L. Timmel
Publisher: Aqueduct $ 16 (paper) ISBN: 0974655910 Date: 2004Booklist
Updated 3.11.04 - Have You Heard
Author: Ferrell, Anderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582341893 Date: 2004Kirkus
In the tradition of the great Southern storytellers, Have You Heard explores a small town torn apart by scandal.
Updated 1.15.04 - An Egg on
Three Sticks
Author: Fischer, Jackie
Publisher: Griffin $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0312317751 Date: 2004Booklist
Finally Abby is thirteen. A real teenager who only wants to pierce her ears, have a boyfriend, and run her own life. But when her mother suffers a nervous breakdown, Abby faces a life far different from what she hoped for. Set in the Bay Area in the '70s, An Egg on Three Sticks is Jackie Moyer Fischer's emotional, funny, and extraordinarily heartfelt novel about Abby's struggle to hold her family together, find love from a mother who has little to give, and simply try to be thirteen. With a voice completely fresh and honest, Abby takes us on a journey that is often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and overwhelmingly hopeful. But a journey no thirteen-year-old should have to take. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 5.7.04 - The Jane
Austen Book Club
Author: Fowler, Karen Joy
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399151613 Date: 2004KirkusBooklist
Nothing ever moves in a straight line in Fowler's fiction, and in her latest, the complex dance of modern love has never been so devious or so much fun. In this newest work, six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens.
Suggested Reading: Books About Books
Updated 3.22.04 - The Sea House
Author: Freud, Esther
Publisher: Ecco $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060565497 Date: 2004PW
Exploring the twisting paths people take, The Sea House is the story of one generation living in the footprints of another; a landscape shaped by lives, and lives shaped by landscapes.
Updated 2.23.04 - Awake
Author: Graver, Elizabeth
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805065393 Date: 2004LJ
A mother seeks freedom for her young son with a rare genetic disease--and rediscovers her own need for it in the process--in this powerful novel about family, identity, and love.
Updated 2.2.04 - With
Author: Harington, Donald
Publisher: Toby $ 19.95 ISBN: 1592640508 Date: 2004KirkusPWBooklist
The newest novel from the master of Stay More, Harington's mythical village in the Arkansas Ozarks, in which a peaceable kingdom is created in isolation from a most bizarre abduction gone wrong.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Ghosts
Updated 3.22.04 - Lives of Shadows
Author: Hodgson, Barbara
Publisher: Chronicle $ 24.95 ISBN: 0811839265 Date: 2004Booklist
Updated 6.1.04 - The Heartbreaker
Author: Howatch, Susan
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 1400041473 Date: 2004Kirkus
Deftly combining the sacred and the profane--the unmistakable hallmark of her fiction over the past decade--Susan Howatch gives us a spellbinding, suspenseful and psychologically intense new novel.
The financial heart of London--the City--is an adrenaline-charged square mile deep in recession in the 1990s, a place where sex is just another commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. And the City is where the life of Gavin Blake, who sells sex to high flyers, is finally about to unravel. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 3.25.04 - The
Laws of Invisible Things
Author: Huyler, Frank
Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 0805073302 Date: 2004PW
In this suspenseful and finely wrought first novel, a young doctor's encounter with a mysterious disease leads him to a crossroads between faith and reason.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Questions of Faith
Updated 3.1.04 - Transmission
Author: Kunzru, Hari
Publisher: Dutton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0525947604 Date: 2004PW
Updated 5.3.04 - In His Arms
Author: Laurens, Camille
Publisher: Random $ 22.95 ISBN: 0375506527 Date: 2004Booklist
A sensation in France, this international bestseller is a novel of desire, seduction, and obsession in the tradition of Marguerite Duras's The Lover and Susan Minot's Rapture.
Updated 4.6.04 - The Daydreaming
Boy
Author: Marcom, Micheline Aharonian
Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 153722264xBooklist
A masterful, fabulously realized depiction of the internal dislocation of an Armenian refugee, this is a fictional self-portrait that is at once lyrical and phantasmagorical, hallucinatory, and searingly acute.
Updated 3.22.04 - Right as Rain
Author: Marshall, Bev
Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 0345468414PW
The acclaimed novelist's new work traces 20 years of an unlikely friendship between two black women alongside the white family who employs them--set mid-century in America's rural South.
Updated 2.16.04 - Caramba: A Tale Told in Turns
of the Card
Author: Martinez, Nina Marie
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375413758 Date: 2004LJBooklist
This fast-paced, feisty tale of female friendship is the debut of a fresh and enchanting new literary voice. By turns a soap opera and a honky tonk spiritual guide, Caramba! combines romance with adventure and rolls them into one big hot tamale.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Latino/Latina Stars
Updated 3.11.04 - Some Great Thing
Author: McAdam, Colin
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151010285 Date: 2004PW
Jerry McGuinty is a simple, self-made builder who claims he can plaster a wall that will change one's life. Simon Struthers is a disaffected businessman who proves the old adage about money and happiness. Together they face the new Ottawa of the seventies: brash, bright, and ready for the taking.
Updated 3.11.04 - Heaven Lies
About Us: Stories
Author: McCabe, Eugene
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582344272 Date: 2004Kirkus
In these 12 stories, McCabe plumbs the soul of the Irish border counties, where confusion, divided loyalties, and heightened emotions are part of everyday life, whether that life is lived in the aftermath of "the great hunger" or in the face of the current Catholic/Protestant conflict.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars
Updated 2.23.04 - The Full
Cupboard of Life
Author: McCall Smith, Alexander
Publisher: Pantheon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0375422188 Date: 2004PW
Here is the fifth novel in the internationally bestselling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency hit series. Once again we are transported to Gaborone, capital city of Botswana, and into the world of Mma Ramotswe and her friends. - Book Jacket.
Updated 3.29.04 - Poe & Fanny
Author: May, John
Publisher: Algonquin $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565124278 Date: 2004Booklist
This first-rate historical fiction revolves around one of the most famous andtragic figures in American literature--Edgar Allan Poe.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction | Authors | Biographical Fiction | Poe Stars
Updated 4.27.04 - A
Question of Attraction
Author: Nicholls, David
Publisher: Villard $ 23.95 ISBN: 1400061814 Date: 2004Booklist
A brilliant romantic comedy, set in England in the 1980s, is about a young man discovering the world and himself during his first year at university.
Updated 2.23.04 - A Secret Word
Author: Paddock, Jennifer
Publisher: Touchstone $ 13 (paper) ISBN: 0743247078 Date: 2004Booklist
Capturing "the dreamy rhythms of adolescence between staccato moments of crisis," A Secret Word is about three young women "who find themselves transported into the cosmopolitan landscape of womanhood" (Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City).
Updated 4.6.04 - The Matter of
Desire
Author: Paz Soldan, Edmundo
Publisher: Mariner $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 0618395571 Date: 2004LJ
Paz Soldan--leading spokesperson for the McOndo literary movement, which embraces an urban vision of American pop culture in today's Latin America--combines elements of political thriller and family mystery with a torrid illicit love affair.
Suggested Reading: Latino/Latina Stars
Updated 4.5.04 - Women in the
Grove
Author: Peterson, Paula W.
Publisher: Beacon $ 22 ISBN: 08077083256 Date: 2004KirkusLJ
Paula Peterson"s memoir, Penitent, with Roses, was an unflinching account of her life as a woman and mother after being diagnosed as HIV positive. All the stories in Women in the Grove feature women living with HIV infection. Shot through with humor, warmth, and insight, Peterson succeeds in bringing us to a radically new understanding of life with AIDS. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: AIDS
Updated 2.2.04 - My Sister's Keeper
Author: Picoult, Jodi
Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743454529 Date: 2004Booklist
Written with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity, this novel is about a teen who was conceived as a bone marrow match for her sister Kate, and what happens when she begins to question who she really is.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 1.10.04 - I Dream
of Microwaves
Author: Rahman, Imad
Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374174016 Date: 2004Booklist
Absurd and unerringly close to the bone, this bitingly funny debut story collection trails a Pakistani-American actor searching for a way to play himself in "real, actual life."
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Asian American Stars
Updated 4.27.04 - Auriel Rising
Author: Redfern, Elizabeth
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN:0399151052 Date: 2004Kirkus
Redfern works literary alchemy in a novel that seamlessly incorporates the best of historical fiction, romance, and intrigue. Her storytelling powers have been compared to le Carr and Dickens, Thomas Harris and lain Pears.
Updated 1.26.04 - Dreaming the
Bull
Author: Scott, Manda
Publisher: Delacorte $ 25 ISBN: 0385336713 Date: 2004Booklist
The second part of the stunning fictionalization of the life of Britain's warrior queen, Boudica, immerses readers in a world of druids and dreamers, warriors and lovers, passion and courage.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 4.21.04 - Like the Red
Panda
Author: Seigel, Andrea
Publisher: Harcourt $ 13 (paperback) ISBN: 0156030241 Date: 2004LJ
Beneath Stella's mordantly funny take on her life is the decisiveness with which she disengages from it, planting clues and providing explanations for those who will try to understand the act she is about to commit. With perfect pitch, remarkable wit, and a spare, vivid prose, Stella turns her farewell to suburbia into a wry philosophical inquiry.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 2.2.04 - Ideas of Heaven:
A Ring of Stories
Author: Silber, Joan
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393059081 Date: 2004KirkusPW
Supple and precise, these stories cover lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Set in France, Italy, New York, and China, in the past and present, they are about longings--about how sex and religion become parallel forms of dedication and comfort.
Updated 3.15.04 - The Confusion
Author: Stephenson, Neal
Publisher: Morrow $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060523867 Date: 2004KirkusBooklistPWLJ
In this profoundly compelling adventure, Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in the late 1600s on the high seas. It is a time of breathtaking genius and discovery for men and women whose exploits define an age known as Baroque.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Historical Fiction Stars | Pirate Stars | Sea Stories
Updated 4.5.04 - Brother and
Sister
Author: Trollope, Joanna
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582344000 Date: 2004KirkusLJ
From the celebrated author of Marrying the Mistress and The Rector's Wife comes a keenly observed and elegant new novel about the families people are born into, and the ones they create.
Updated 2.13.04 - Y: The Last Man Book 3: One Small Step
Author: Vaughan, Brian, Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan
Publisher: DC $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 1401202012 Date: 2004PW
Suggested for a mature audience, this perfect blend of humor and drama is a fascinating tale of catastrophe and consequences when a mysterious occurrence instantaneously kills every male human on Earth--except for one.
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novel Stars
Updated 4.12.04 - Our Kind: A Novel in Stories
Author: Walbert, Kate
Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743245598 Date: 2004PW
From the award-winning author of The Gardens of Kyoto comes a witty novel about the lives of a group of women--once 1950s country-club housewives; today divorced, independent, and breaking the rules.
Updated 12.1.03 - Good Grief
Author: Winston, Lolly
Publisher: Warner $ 18 ISBN: 0446533041 Date: 2004PW
Good Grief is a brilliantly funny and heartwarming debut about a young woman who stumbles, then fights to build a new life after the death of her husband.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 3.1.04 - A Hole in Texas
Author: Wouk, Herman
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25 ISBN: 0316525901 Date: 2004Kirkus
From the legendary bestselling author comes a rollicking Washington novel about a media firestorm swirling around a vast hole in Texas and one obscure NASA scientist who gets swept up in the vortex and becomes a national figure overnight.
Suggested Reading: Space Age Stars
Updated 2.10.04 - Shadow of the Wind
Author: Zafon, Carlos Ruiz
Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 1594200106 Date: 2004Kirkus
The international literary sensation--a runaway bestseller in Spain--is about a boy's quest through the secrets and shadows of postwar Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 1.29.05
March
- Remember Me
Author: Azzopardi, Trezza
Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 0802117678 Date: 2004LJBooklist
The only debut novel to be short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2001, The Hiding Place became a national bestseller. With her second novel Azzopardi delivers a harrowing, elegant, and vivid portrait of a lost life at last reclaimed.
Updated 1.10.04 - Shining Hero
Author: Banerji, Sara
Publisher: Flamingo $ 13.95 (paper) ISBN: 0007135688 Date: 2004Kirkus
Updated 5.10.04 - The Miniaturist
Author: Basu, Kunal
Publisher: Phoenix/Weidenfeld & Nicholason $ 13/22.95 ISBN:0753817497/0297829262 Date: 2004Kirkus
Updated 4.26.04 - A Deal With
the Devil
Author: Carlyle, Liz
Publisher: Pocket $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0743470036 Date: 2004Booklist
The USA Today bestselling author of The Devil You Know pens a shimmering novel about a Scottish noblewoman on the run from her past and a powerful English lord brought to his knees by desire.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Romance Stars
Updated 3.11.04 - Bright
Starry Banner: A Novel of the Civil War
Author: Carter, Alden R.
Publisher: Soho $ 27 ISBN: 1569473552 Date: 2004KirkusPW
December 1862, outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the 43,000 men of Gen. Rosencrans' Army of the Cumberland faced the 38,000 Confederate soldiers of Gen. Bragg's Army. In arenas dubbed "the Slaughter Pen" and "Hell's Half Acre," Blue and Gray collide.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars
Updated 2.16.04 - Miss Wonderful
Author: Chase, Loretta
Publisher: Berkley $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0425194833 Date: 2004Booklist
The beloved USA Today bestselling author offers her long-awaited new novel--the tale of a bluestocking and a reformed rake who clash over a matter of business, and soon find themselves facing an entirely different sort of tension.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 3.22.04 - Clay Center
Author: Condon, Phil
Publisher: Eastern Washington Univ. $ 18.95 ISBN: 0910055955 Date: 2004Booklist
Updated 4.21.04 - The Lucky Ones
Author: Cusk, Rachel
Publisher: Fourth Estate $ 24.95 ISBN: 000716131x Date: 2004Kirkus
The prize-winning author of The Country Life evokes the magnetic bonds of family in this story of accidental connections and overlapping relationships.
Updated 12.10.03 - Dew Breaker
Author: Danticat, Edwidge
Publisher: Knopf $ 22 ISBN: 1400041147 Date: 2004LJKirkusBooklist
From the acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory comes a powerful story of a man known as a "dew breaker," a Haitian torturer, whose past crimes lie beneath his new American reality.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 2.23.04 - Antonio's Wife
Author: Dejohn, Jacqueline
Publisher: Regan $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060558008 Date: 2004Booklist
This warmly moving first novel is about an opera diva searching for the daughter she abandoned and a sensitive married seamstress torn between duty and destiny.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 2.5.04 - Ibid: A Life
Author: Dunn, Mark
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage $ 22 ISBN: 1931561656 Date: 2004LJ
The author of Ella Minnow Pea and Welcome to Highby returns with an hilarious novel written entirely in footnotes.
Suggested Reading: Books About Books
Updated 4.5.04 - Celestial
Harmonies
Author: Esterhazy, Peter
Publisher: Ecco $ 29.95 ISBN: 0060501049 Date: 2004KirkusPWLJ
A biographical, structurally innovative novel in the grand European literary tradition that spans multiple generations and three centuries of tumultuous Central European history.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.15.04 - Links
Author: Farah, Nuruddin
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222658 Date: 2004KirkusPWBooklist
Jeebleh is returning to Mogadiscio from New York for the first time in 20 years. It is not a nostalgia trip for him--Jeebleh's last residence here was a jail cell. Gripping, provocative, and revelatory, Links is the finest work yet from Nuruddin.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.22.04 - Moon in the Water
Author: Grayson, Elizabeth
Publisher: Bantam $ 6.50 (paper) ISBN: 0553584243 Date: 2004Booklist
Against the beauty, danger, and romance of the wild Missouri River country, two souls seek to make their marriage of convenience into something more in this compelling historical romance.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 3.22.04 - My Fine Lady
Author: Joe, Yolanda
Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525948082 Date: 2004Booklist
Joe has wowed thousands of fans with her lively storylines and savvy heroines. Now she introduces Imani, a rising star whose dreams and challenges will capture the hearts of many more. A delight on every page, My Fine Lady presents the dilemmas of romance, family, and career with Joe's signature wit and flair.
Suggested Reading: African American Fiction Stars
Updated 1.15.04 - Maze
Author: Karnezis, Panos
Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 0374204802 Date: 2004Kirkus
The New York Times Book Review calls Karnezis's writing "spry and playful, sly and macabre," observing that it "brings to mind the young Eudora Welty, especially in the fun it has with Greek legend and myth, while its intersection of gritty quotidian detail with flights of fancy recalls Gabriel Garcia Marquez." This first novel confirms Karnezis as one of Britain's most remarkable young authors.
Updated 12.10.03 - From Africa: New Francophone
Stories
Author: King, Adele (ed)
Publisher: Univ of Nebraska $ 40/15 ISBN: 0803227582/78101 Date: 2004Booklist
Updated 3.22.04 - Dirty Little
Lies
Author: Lane, Connie
Publisher: Dell $ 6.50 (paper) ISBN: 0440237475 Date: 2004Booklist
In this hilarious, action-packed tale, a sophisticated FBI agent is assigned to protect a Midwestern beauty queen from a stalker with ties to her past.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Romance Stars
Updated 2.23.04 - Aloft
Author: Lee, Chang-Rae
Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573222631 Date: 2004KirkusBooklistPW
Lee burst on the scene with Native Speaker, which won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award. Now, with Aloft, Lee has expanded his range and proves himself a master storyteller, able to observe his characters' flaws and weaknesses and, at the same time, celebrate their humanity.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Asian American Stars
Updated 3.1.04 - Breaking
the Tongue
Author: Loh, Vyvyane
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393057925 Date: 2004KirkusPW
This brilliant novel chronicles the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in World War II. Central to the story is one Chinese family. Expatriates, spies, fifth columnists, and nationalists--including the elusive young woman Ling-Li--mingle in this exotic culture as the Japanese threat looms.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World War Stars
Updated 2.2.04 - The Madonna
of Excelsior
Author: Mda, Zakes
Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374200084 Date: 2004KirkusLJPW
A new novel by a towering presence in contemporary South African literature. By turns earthy, witty, and tragic, The Madonna of Excelsior is a brilliant depiction of life in South Africa and of the dramatic changes between the 1970s and the present.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Questions of Faith
Updated 3.15.04 - Wedded Bliss
Author: Metzger, Barbara
Publisher: Signet $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0451208595 Date: 2004Booklist
The RITA Award-winning author delivers a heart full of bliss with this witty Regency tale of a bride who must convince her groom that love is more important than convenience.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Romance Stars
Updated 3.11.04 - The Outside World
Author: Mirvis, Tova
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 1400041619 Date: 2004KirkusBooklist
From the author of the bestselling The Ladies Auxiliary comes a hilarious comedy of manners about two Orthodox Jewish families brought together by the marriage of their children.
Updated 4.27.04 - Sabbath Creek
Author: Mitcham, Judson
Publisher: Univ of Georgia $ 22.95 ISBN: 0820325775 Date: 2004LJ
With elegant simplicity, Mitcham transcends the tired theme of race relations in the South with the tale of a lonely, heartbroken 14-year-old who, at long last, finds the closest thing to a father figure in a prickly old African-American man.
Updated 3.15.04 - One for My Baby
Author: Parsons, Tony
Publisher: Atria $ 24 ISBN: 0743456645 Date: 2004Booklist
As his world crumbles around him, Alfie Budd loses himself in a string of numbingly pointless affairs with his students at Churchill's Language School and tries to learn tai chi from an old Chinese man named George. Alternating seamlessly between laughter and tears, One for My Baby is an ingeniously turned story full of biting social insight and naked emotion.
Updated 3.11.04 - Little Children
Author: Perrotta, Tom
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312315716 Date: 2004KirkusLJ
"Tom Perrotta . . . is like an American Nick Hornby: companionable and humane, lighthearted and surprisingly touching."--Newsweek. "An absorbing, fleshed-out portrait of an American male edging toward adulthood by crossing seemingly rigid social boundaries. . . An overwhelmingly pleasing book."--The New York Times.
Updated 2.13.04 - The
Curious Case of Sidd Finch
Author: Plimpton, George
Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows $ 13.95 (paper) ISBN: 156858296x Date: 2004LJ
In April 1985, Sports Illustrated published an article that stunned the sports community. George Plimpton's 13-page profile of Sidd Finch, a mysterious pitcher who had been signed by the New York Mets and reportedly threw 168 mph, came complete with photos from spring training, scouting reports, and interviews with Mets players and management. A week later, SI apologized to readers around the world for their role in what is generally regarded as the greatest hoax in the history of sports journalism. The magazine had teamed up with the legendary author and Paris Review bon vivant for an April Fool's Day prank of unprecedented proportions. After the success of the article, Plimpton decided to turn the story into a novel - a rousing baseball fairy tale that is considered one of the most memorable sports novels of the last half-century. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 4.5.04 - Late Bloomer
Author: Pritchard, Melissa
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385503040 Date: 2004PW
After one failed marriage and numerous dating disasters, Prudence True Parker begins a journey for salvation. In a hilarious conclusion, the pieces of Parker's life fall into place at the annual Romance Writers convention in Texas. Smartly written, this is a high-spirited tale of romance, captivity, and savage love women of all ages will relish.
Updated 2.23.04 - Why She Went Home
Author: Rosenfeld, Lucinda
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 1400061857 Date: 2004Booklist
In this second installment of Phoebe Fine's life story, author Rosenfeld raises the emotional and romantic stakes for the protagonist--a single woman on the cusp of 30.
Updated 1.15.04 - The Princes
of Ireland: The Dublin Saga
Author: Rutherfurd, Edward
Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.95 ISBN: 0385502869 Date: 2004LJ
Rutherfurd has introduced millions of readers to the human dramas that are the lifeblood of history. His latest is a sweeping panorama steeped in the tragedy and glory that is Ireland, epitomizing the power and richness of Rutherfurd's storytelling magic.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Irish Stars
Updated 3.15.04 - Referred Pain: And
Other Stories
Author: Schwartz, Lynne Sharon
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582433011 Date: 2004Kirkus
Updated 12.10.03 - The
Anxiety of Everyday Objects
Author: Sheehan, Aurelie
Publisher: Penguin $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 0142003700 Date: 2004KirkusLJ
An original, witty, compulsively readable tale for any woman who has struggled with creative yearning and duty to the daily grind. In her absorbing debut novel, Sheehan's depiction of the working girl's life in the big city is as charming as it is inspiring.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | The Office
Updated 2.13.04 - Troll: A Love Story
Author: Sinisalo, Johanna
Publisher: Grove $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 0802141293 Date: 2004Kirkus
Sinisalo's sparklingly original novel is a wry, peculiar, and beguiling story of nature and man's relationship to wild things, and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves.
Updated 3.25.04 - Arkham Asylum: Living
Hell
Author: Slott, Dan, and others
Publisher: DC Comics $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 1401201938 Date: 2004Booklist
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novel Stars
Updated 4.6.04 - Delicate
Author: Sojourner, Mary
Publisher: Scribner $ 13 (paper) ISBN: 0743229703 Date: 2004LJ
Updated 3.15.04 - Animal Crackers:
Stories
Author: Tinti, Hannah
Publisher: Dial $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385337434 Date: 2004PWLJ
Updated 2.2.04 - The Book of Joe
Author: Tropper, Jonathan
Publisher: Delacorte $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385337418 Date: 2004LJ
Optioned by Warner Bros. for a motion picture, this witty and heartwarming novel is a captivating debut that proves hilariously and poignantly that sometimes you "can" go home again.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 3.15.04 - The Fires of Pride:
A Novel of the Civil War
Author: Trotter, William R.
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 26 ISBN: 0786712236 Date: 2004PW
The Fires of Pride concludes a two-part Civil War saga which brings America's most tragic conflict to life at Fort Fisher, a fortress on North Carolina's windswept coastline.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars
Updated 2.16.04 - Nixon Under the Bodhi
Tree and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction
Author: Wheeler, Kate (ed)
Publisher: Wisdom $ 16.95 (paper) ISBN: 0861713540 Date: 2004PW
Updated 3.11.04 - The Unveiling
Author: Wolfe, Suzanne M.
Publisher: Paraclete $ 19.95 ISBN: 1557253544 Date: 2004Booklist
When Rachel Piers, a brilliant conservateuse at a Manhattan art gallery, is given the dream assignment of restoring a mysterious medieval painting in a church in Rome, she uncovers layers of her soul that continue to haunt.
Suggested Reading: Questions of Faith
Updated 4.6.04
February
- The
Importance of a Piece of Paper: Stories
Author: Baca, Jimmy Santiago
Publisher: Grove $ 22 ISBN: 0802117651 Date: 2004Kirkus
In his first foray into short fiction, award-winning poet and memoirist Santiago Baca maps the territory where old-world traditions contend with new-world ambitions and disenfranchised characters struggle to make something of themselves in the world while somehow keeping their souls intact.
Suggested Reading: Latino/Latina Stars
Updated 12.10.03 - Uncle Rudolf
Author: Bailey, Paul
Publisher: St Martins $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312318340 Date: 2004KirkusBooklist
A two-time Booker Prize shortlisted author pens this haunting novel about the relationship between a man and his talented and eccentric uncle.
Updated 2.5.04 - Handsome Harry
Author: Blake, James Carlos
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060554789 Date: 2004Kirkus
The renowned author pens his most commercial novel to date--a thrilling retelling of the John Dillinger story.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Biographical Fiction
Updated 11.12.03 - Louis Riel: A Comic Strip
Biography
Author: Brown, Chester
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly $ 24.95 ISBN: 1896597637 Date: 2004PW
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novel Stars
Updated 3.15.04 - The Cloud Atlas
Author: Callahan, Liam
Publisher: Delacorte $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385336942 Date: 2004KirkusLJ
In a richly inspired debut reminiscent of Snow Falling on Cedars and The English Patient, this stirring novel, set against a magnificent Alaskan backdrop, reveals one of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II in a tale that is both a heart-quickening mystery and a unique love story.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Historical Fiction Stars | World War Stars
Updated 3.1.04 - Epicure's Lament
Author: Christensen, Kate
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0767910303 Date: 2004PWKirkusLJ
From the author of In the Drink, a compelling novel about a man smoking himself to death. A literary tour de force of bitter humor and gorgeously articulated misanthropy to rival the works of Martin Amis and John Lanchester.
Suggested Reading: Black Humor | All Stars
Updated 1.15.04 - Bet Me
Author: Crusie, Jennifer
Publisher: St Martins $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312303467 Date: 2004Kirkus
The biggest gamble of all is true love in this story about long shots, risk management, and great shoes--the best novel yet from the author of Faking It.
Suggested Reading: Best Bets | Romance Stars | Dating Stars
Updated 12.10.03 - Anything You Say
Can and Will Be Used Against You
Author: Drummond, Laurie Lynn
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060561629 Date: 2004KirkusLJ
Women cops are the focus of this riveting debut collection of short fiction by a former policewoman.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 11.18.03 - One Day the Ice Will
Reveal All Its Dead
Author: Dudman, Clare
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 067003276x Date: 2004PW
A haunting first novel based on the fascinating life of an Arctic explorer whose fearless pursuit of scientific discovery revolutionized our perception of the world. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 2.10.04 - Birth of Venus
Author: Dunant, Sarah
Publisher: Knopf $ 21.95 ISBN: 1400060737 Date: 2004LJ
The Birth of Venus is a tour de force from one of Britain's most innovative thriller writers. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a remarkable heroine with the same vibrancy as her beloved city.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Adult Books for Teens
Updated 12.29.03 - The Duet
Author: Elmer, Robert
Publisher: Waterbrook $ 12.99 (paper) ISBN: 1578567408 Date: 2004Booklist
When widower Gerrit Vandekamp takes his granddaughter to piano lessons one day, he finds himself drawn to her music teacher, a woman unlike any he has known. Neither can predict how their duet will sound as they practice the music of renewed hope and second chances.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 4.6.04 - Daisy's Back
in Town
Author: Gibson, Rachel
Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 006000925x Date: 2004PW
Former cheerleader Daisy Lee Monroe returns to her hometown of Lovett, Texas, to rock the world of Jackson Lamont Parrish--the bad boy she left behind--in this sassy, hot, and hilarious treat from the RITA Award-winning author.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 1.26.04 - Confessions
of Max Tivoli
Author: Greer, Andrew Sean
Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374128715 Date: 2004PWLJBooklist
A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which people live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Historical Fiction Stars | Immortalism Fiction Stars
Updated 2.5.04 - Holy Fools
Author: Harris, Joanne
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060559128 Date: 2004PWLJ
From the bestselling author of Chocolat comes a novel of love and betrayal, friendship and revenge, set in 17th-century France.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 12.29.03 - Miranda's Vines
Author: Kafka, Kimberly
Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525947639 Date: 2004Kirkus
Suggested Reading: Drink Up Stars
Updated 10.8.03 - The Teapots Are
Out and Other Eccentric Tales from Ireland
Author: Keane, John B.
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 0786712988 Date: 2004Kirkus
A fitting tribute to John B. Keane, for decades Ireland's favorite storyteller, this winning short story collection typifies the late author's folkloric imagination and storytelling arts.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars
Updated 12.29.03 - The Swallows
of Kabul
Author: Khadra, Yasmina
Publisher: Doubleday $ 18.95 ISBN: 0385510012 Date: 2004PWBooklist
The extraordinary bestselling novel from France, set in Kabul, this is a stunning portrait of life under the Taliban.
Suggested Reading: Afghanistan Stars
Updated 2.5.04 - An Almost
Perfect Moment
Author: Kirshenbaum, Binnie
Publisher: Ecco $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060520868 Date: 2004Booklist
Set in Brooklyn between the Eisenhower Era and the Age of Disco, a bittersweet novel about a mother and daughter whose search for faith and love leads to unexpected consequences.
Update