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

All Stars 2003

August 19, 2008

Fiction titles which received three or more starred reviews from major review sources.

Brick Lane
Author: Ali, Monica
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743243307
Kirkus LJ PW
A stunningly accomplished debut and already an international sensation--the story of one outsider's quest to find her voice. What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This principle ruled her life.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 6.25.03
Oryx and Crake
Author: Atwood, Margaret
Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 03885503857
Kirkus Booklist PW
With command of her material and with her sharp wit and dark humor, Atwood projects a conceivable future of the world, a place left devastated in the wake of ecological and scientific disaster, and populated by a cast of characters who will continue to inhabit dreams long after the book is closed.
Updated 4.7.03
Drop City
Author: Boyle, T.C.
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670031720
Kirkus Booklist PW
Boyle has proven himself to be a master storyteller who can do just about anything. But even his most ardent admirers may be caught off guard by his ninth novel, for Boyle has delivered something completely unexpected: a serious and richly rewarding character study that is his most accomplished and deeply satisfying work to date.
Updated 1.3.03
A Son of War
Author: Bragg, Melvyn
Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559706864
Kirkus LJ Booklist
This novel takes up where The Soldier's Return left off, following the lives of the Richardson family from 1947 to the mid-1950s. If the earlier novel focused on the father, Sam, the sequel gives equal emphasis to the son, Joe, who is eight as the story opens and an adolescent as it closes.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 8.13.03
The Guards
Author: Bruen, Ken
Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312303556
Kirkus PW LJ
In this mesmerizing work of crime fiction, an ex-member of The Guards--Ireland's police force--is approached in a Galway bar by a dazzling woman with a strange request and a rumor about his talent for finding things.
Link: Guardian article - Down the mean streets of Galway
Updated 12.23.02
A Memory of War
Author: Busch, Frederick
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393049787
PW Kirkus Booklist
Psychologist Alexander Lescziak has a life of quiet sophistication, until a new patient declares that he is the doctor's half-brother, the product of a union between Lescziak's Jewish mother and a German prisoner of war.
Updated 1.06.03
A Whistling Woman
Author: Byatt, A. S.
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0375415343
Kirkus PW Booklist
The triumphant conclusion to Byatt's dazzling quartet of novels about English life is set in the late 1960s as the world begins to split. While Frederica--the spirited heroine of the novels--falls into a career in television in London, tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life and those of the people she loves.
Updated 12.2.02
Long For This World
Author: Byers, Michael
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 039589171x
PW LJ Kirkus
Byers' award-winning debut collection, The Coast of Good Intentions, won universal praise for its mature wisdom and deeply affecting characters. Now his exhilarating first novel showcases his extraordinary gifts in the suspenseful story of a geneticist grappling with an astonishing discovery.
Updated 4.8.03
Persuader
Author: Child, Lee
Publisher: Delacorte $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385336667
PW Kirkus Booklist
Introducing Persuader, Child's most electrifying suspense novel yet--featuring his utterly unique hero, ex-Army cop Jack Reacher. This time Reacher goes undercover to investigate the disappearance of a federal agent from a drug dealer's home.
Updated 3.31.03
Lost Light
Author: Connelly, Michael
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316154601
Kirkus Booklist PW LJ
The bestselling author of City of Bones and Chasing the Dime brings lone wolf Harry Bosch out of retirement and on a wild excursion into evil, seeking the truth about a cold case that still haunts the LAPD, movie studios--and Bosch himself.
Updated 3.31.03
The Furies
Author: Eberstadt, Fernanda
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0375412565
Kirkus Booklist PW
In a tale of sexual obsession gone wrong, Gwen Lewis finds herself unable to be a mother without driving away Gideon, the father of her child, while he--determined to save their daughter from Gwen's moneyed values--is driven to spectacular self-destruction.
Updated 9.22.03
The Master Butchers Singing Club
Author: Erdrich, Louise
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0066209773
Kirkus Booklist PW
A brilliant new book by one of America's most acclaimed novelists, in The Master Butchers Singing Club Erdrich creates a fictional world filled with memorable characters who grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature.
Updated 12.23.02
Our Lady of the Forest
Author: Guterson, David
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375412115
LJ Kirkus PW
In a suspenseful and emotionally charged story of faith at a contemporary crossroads, the bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars offers a provocative new novel about a teenage girl who claims to see the Virgin Mary.
Updated 7.28.03
Great Fire
Author: Hazzard, Shirley
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374166447
Kirkus PW Booklist LJ
This is Hazzard's first novel since The Transit of Venus, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The conflagration of her title is the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars
Updated 10.7.03
The Mammoth Cheese
Author: Holman, Sheri
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871139006
LJ PW Kirkus
On publication of her last novel, The Dress Lodger, The New York Times declared Holman an author with "an outstanding, generous, and fertile imagination." Now Holman delivers a sharp, contemporary story steeped in history that will captivate a new audience while gratifying readers of her earlier work.
Updated 6.19.03
Where the Truth Lies
Author: Holmes, Rupert
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 SBN: 0679452206
Kirkus LJ Booklist
" Rupert Holmes seats you gently next to an irresistible narrator only to entangle you completely in her twisted, dark, exhilarating troubles. The ensuing thriller crosses a Dickensian world of deceit and destiny with the slipping glory of 1970s New York and Los Angeles. Every character is so alive with delicious secrets that you'll never suspect Where the Truth Lies." --Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 6.25.03
Due Preparations for the Plague
Author: Hospital, Janette Turner
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 039305764x
Kirkus Booklist PW
Hospital's electrifying new novel is a tightly woven web of familial and national histories, of sexual and political passions, and of individual and national complicities in the age of terrorism. She probes with astonishing acuity the murky worlds of espionage and intelligence gathering and the painful meaning of survival.
Updated 5.29.03 What I Loved
Author: Hustvedt, Siri
Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 0805071709
PW LJ Booklist
From the author of The Enchantment of Lily Dahl comes a powerful and heartbreaking novel that chronicles the epic story of two families, two sons, and two marriages."
Updated 2.20.03
Deafening
Author: Itani, Frances
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871139022
PW LJ Kirkus
Elegantly written and profoundly moving, Deafening is a tale of remarkable virtuosity and power, set on the eve of the Great War and spanning two continents and the life and loves of a young deaf woman in Canada named Grania O'Neill.
Updated 6.19.03
The Known World
Author: Jones, Edward P.
Publisher: Amistad $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060557540
Kirkus LJ Booklist
Henry Townsend, a black bootmaker and former slave in antebellum Virginia, becomes a proprietor of his own plantation--as well as his own slaves. This modern masterpiece explores what happens when he dies and "the known world" unravels.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | African American Stars
Updated 10.2.03
Keeping Watch
Author: King, Laurie R.
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553801910
Kirkus LJ Booklist PW
After years of rescuing children and on the brink of retirement, Alan Carmichael decides to rescue one last teenager from an abusive parent. But, once the boy is safely hidden, Carmichael begins to doubt his decision to intervene: Has he turned a killer free to kill again?
Updated 2.4.03
Shutter Island
Author: Lehane, Dennis
Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 0688163173
Kirkus PW Booklist
The New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and master of the new noir returns with a scorching psychological thriller set in 1954 at Ashcliffe Hospital--a federal institution for the criminally insane. As a storm threatens to strand U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule, they stumble into an evil darker than any nightmare.
Updated 4.9.03
The Clarninet Polka
Author: Maillard, Keith
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312308892
Kirkus Booklist LJ PW
This hard-edged, sweet-souled story of a heart's homecoming is deeply and authentically rooted in Polish-American culture. A remarkable novel from an important writer.
Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction
Updated 1.3.03
As Meat Loves Salt
Author: McCann, Maria
Publisher: Harvest $ 15 (paper) ISBN: 015601226x
PW Kirkus LJ
A darkly erotic tale of passion and obsession, As Meat Loves Salt is a gripping portrait of 17th-century England beset by war. It is also a moving portrait of a man on the brink of madness. Hailed as a masterpiece, this is a first novel by an original new voice in fiction.
Updated 11.05.02
The Pleasure of My Company: A Novella
Author: Martin, Steve
Publisher: Hyperion $ 19.95 ISBN: 0786869216
Kirkus LJ Booklist PW
From the bestselling author of Shopgirl comes a tender novella of a troubled man who finds love, and life in the most unexpected place.
Updated 9.22.03
The King in the Tree: Three Novellas
Author: Millhauser, Steven
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375415408
Kirkus Booklist PW
From the author of Edwin Mullhouse and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressier come three dazzling novellas about the many shapes of love.
Updated 1.20.03
Love
Author: Morrison, Toni
Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375409440
Kirkus Booklist PW
From the internationally acclaimed Nobel laureate comes a richly conceived novel that illuminates the full spectrum of desire. More than the wealthy owner of the famous Cosey Hotel and Resort, Bill Cosey shapes the yearnings of six women for father, husband, lover, guardian, friend--yearnings that dominate their lives long after his death.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 9.08.03
All Over Creation
Author: Ozeki, Ruth L.
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670030910
Kirkus PW Booklist
From the author of My Year of Meats comes the story of a Japanese-American prodigal daughter just trying to make sense of it all as the unceasing cycle of all creation continues around her.
Updated 2.20.03
The Time of Our Singing
Author: Powers, Richard
Publisher: Farrar $ 28 ISBN: 0374277826
Kirkus Booklist LJ
A magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted--and divided--family, set against the backdrop of postwar America. The Time of Our Singing is a story of self-invention, allegiance, race, cultural ownership, the compromised power of music, and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all belonging.
Updated 11.05.02
Good Faith
Author: Smiley, Jane
Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 0375412174
Kirkus Booklist PW
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes a masterly novel about some very American seductions: money, sex, and real estate. Good Faith is an extraordinary story about ordinary people caught up in the exotic 1980s version of the American Dream, as greed and financial game-playing explode on Main Street.
Updated 2.20.03
Bay of Souls
Author: Stone, Robert
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 25 ISBN: 0395963494
Kirkus PW LJ
Stone's fever dream of possession is a remarkable new psychological thriller of razor-sharp intensity: mysterious, erotic, and deeply readable. When a college professor pursues Lara Purcell to her native island of St. Trinity, he is caught unawares in a high-stakes smuggling scheme as his world becomes an ever-shifting phantasmagoria.
Updated 3.13.02
The Force of the Past
Author: Veronesi, Sandro
Publisher: Ecco $ 23.95 ISBN: 0066212456
Kirkus LJ Booklist
A bizarre stranger enters the life of one Gianni Orzan, then promptly rewrites his entire past in this award-winning Italian novel.
Updated 2.28.03
Fanny: A Fiction
Author: White, Edmund
Publisher: Ecco $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060004843
Kirkus PW LJ Booklist
This highly anticipated work is a brilliant novel based on the life of Fanny Wright--Scottish gentlewoman, early abolitionist, plantation owner, and newspaper publisher.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 10.2.03

2008

Hotlists

Fiction | Zoho DB

Crime Fiction | Zoho DB

Nonfiction Notables

African American Fiction | Christian Fiction

2008 Excel Files: (download - print, sort, etc.)

Crime Fiction | Fiction | African American Fiction | Christian Fiction | Nonfiction Notables

Stars

Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec

Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA

Summer Reading

2009

2009 Hotlists

Fiction - excel file more coming soon...

Crime Fiction - excel file more coming soon...

Overbooked is a volunteer project undertaken by Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.

Overbooked is not an official Chesterfield County Public Library service. Overbooked.org is a nonprofit web site hosted by CVCO - Central Virginia's Community Online. Overbooked.com is a nonprofit web site in experimental mode. Overbooked does not endorse any commercial providers (or their products and services) linked to from this web site.

Please join the conversation(s) at Overbookers - a rather quiet social space for the chronically overbooked.

Join the Overbooked List - A quiet list for readers to share recent reads, keep up to date with details about new books, discuss favorite authors/titles, etc.

Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): overbooked1@verizon.net or ann@overbooked.com

I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents. Special thanks to those folks who regularly help keep me on track - you know who you are....

www.overbooked.org | readersadvisory.org | www.overbooked.com (testing)

Table of Contents

Most Popular . . .

More . . .

Hotlists 2008

Seeing Stars

Stars: Table of Contents

Out and About. . .

Stellar All Stars