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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
All Stars 2006 - Nonfiction
September 9, 2008
Nonfiction titles which received three or more starred reviews (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist (BL), Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ).
- The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God and World Affairs
Author: Albright, Madeline with Bob Woodward
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060892579 Date: 2006
LJ PW Booklist
The former secretary of state offers a provocative and very personal look at the role of religion in America's foreign policy. She argues that understanding the place and power of religion--and knowing how best to respond to it--is essential if America is to lead successfully around the world.
Updated 5.15.06 - Let Me Finish
Author: Angell, Roger
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151013500 Date: 2006
PW Kirkus Booklist
Intimate, funny, and moving portraits form this book's centerpiece as Angell remembers his eccentric relatives, his childhood love of baseball in the time of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio, and his vivid colleagues during his long career as a "New Yorker" writer and editor.
Suggested Reading: Sports Stars
Updated 3.6.06 - The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Or Religious Traditions
Author: Armstrong, Karen
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 0375413170 Date: 2006
Booklist PW LJ
From one of the world's leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling A History of God comes a major new work: a chronicle of the ninth century BCE, when the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day.
Updated 4.3.06 - Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Author: Bechdel, Alison
Publisher: Houghton $ 19.95 ISBN: 0618477942 Date: 2006
PW
Kirkus Booklist
This breakout book by Alison Bechdel takes its place alongside the
unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten
Burroughs and Mary Karr. It"s a father-daughter tale pitch-perfectly
illustrated with Bechdel"s sweetly gothic drawings and--like Marjane
Satrapi"s Persepolis--a story exhilaratingly suited to the graphic
memoir form. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novels & Comic Stars
Updated 3.16.06 - Flaubert: A Biography
Author: Brown, Frederick
Publisher: Little Brown $ 35 ISBN: 0316118788 Date: 2006
LJ Kirkus PW Booklist
From the highly acclaimed author of Zola: A Life comes the definitive biography of Gustave Flaubert on the 150th anniversary of Madame Bovary's publication.
Suggested Reading: Authors
Updated 3.17.06 - Orson Welles: Hello Americans
Author: Callow, Simon
Publisher: Viking $ 32.95 ISBN: 0670872563 Date: 2006
PW Booklist Kirkus LJ
In this volume of his masterful, highly acclaimed biography, Callow captures the genius of Orson Welles, revealing a life even more extraordinary than the myths that have surrounded it.
Suggested Reading: Authors
Updated 7.17.06 - House of War: The Pentagon, a History of Unbridled Power
Author: Carroll, James
Publisher: Houghton $ 30 ISBN: 0618187804 Date: 2006
Kirkus LJ PW
This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the Pentagon, the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. Carroll proves a controversial thesis: the Pentagon is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more.
Updated 4.10.06 - Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change
Author: Flannery, Tim
Publisher: Atlantic $ 25 ISBN: 0871139359 Date: 2006
Kirkus
PW LJ
Both an urgent warning and a call to arms, The Weather Makers outlines the history of climate change, how it will unfold over the next century, and what people can do to prevent a cataclysmic future.
Suggested Reading: Weather
Updated 11.23.05 - Watching the World Change
Author: Friend, David
Publisher: FSG $ 30 ISBN: 0374299331 Date: 2006
Kirkus PW LJ
In this collection, Friend tells the unforgettable stories behind the haunting yet defining images of the September 11th terrorist attacks and shows how advances in television, digital photography, and the Internet produced an effect whereby more than two billion people saw that day's terrible events as they happened.
Suggested Reading: 9/11
Updated 7.11.06 - Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Author: Gilbert, Elizabeth
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670034711 Date: 2006
PW
LJ Booklist
A celebrated writer pens an irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life.
Updated 1.21.06 - The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise
Author: Grunwald, Michael
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 0743251059 Date: 2006
PW Booklist Kirkus
A prize-winning "Washington Post" reporter tells the story of the Florida Everglades, from its beginnings as 4,500 off-putting square miles of natural liquid wasteland to the ecological mess it has become.
Suggested Reading: Nature
Updated 2.8.06 - Death in Belmont
Author: Junger, Sebastian
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393059804 Date: 2006
PW
Kirkus LJ
In the spring of 1963, the quiet suburb of Belmont, Massachusetts, is rocked by a shocking sex murder that exactly fits the pattern of the Boston Strangler. This spare, powerful narrative chronicles three lives that collide--and ultimately are destroyed--in the vortex of one of the first and most controversial serial murder cases in America.
Suggested Reading: True Crime
Updated 4.3.06 - The Big Oyster: New York on the Half Shell
Author: Kurlansky, Mark
Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 0345476387 Date: 2006
PW
Kirkus LJ
From the bestselling author of Salt and Cod comes the fascinating history of the oyster's influence on four centuries of cultural, economic, and culinary trends--with recipes throughout.
Suggested Reading: Cooked Books
Updated 1.31.06 - Thunderstruck
Author: Larson, Erik
Publisher: Crown $ 25.95 ISBN: 1400080665 Date: 2006
LJ Booklist PW
The bestselling author of The Devil in the White City tells the amazing, interwoven stories of two men--Hawley Crippen, a doctor and an unlikely murderer, and Gugliemo Marconi, the obsessive genius who invented the wireless--whose stories converge during the greatest criminal chase of all time.
Updated 8.10.06 - Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
Author: Lewis, Michael
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 039306123x Date: 2006
Booklist PW LJ
The bestselling author of Coach, Moneyball and Liar's Poker delivers a multidimensional story that traces the upbringing of a young boy through to young adulthood, all through the lens of sports and his community of support.
Updated 10.16.06 - Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero
Author: Maraniss, David
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 0743217810 Date: 2006
PW LJ Kirkus
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of When Pride Still Mattered comes a book destined to become a modern classic--a full-scale biography of great baseball player and humanitarian Roberto Clemente, who lived, played, and died with enduring passion and grace.
Suggested Reading: Sports Stars
Updated 3.8.06 - All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone
Author: MacPherson, Myra
Publisher: Scribner $ 35 ISBN: 0684807130 Date: 2006
Kirkus LJ PW Booklist
Boasting equal parts scholarship and style, this is a groundbreaking and timely portrait of I.F. Stone, one of the 20th century's most independent and revered American journalists.
Updated 9.18.06 - My Battle of Algiers
Author: Morgan, Ted
Publisher: Harper $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060852240 Date: 2006
PW
Kirkus LJ
An eminent historian and Pulitzer Prize winner describes his experience as a young officer in the savage Algerian War. The author, a Yale graduate who grew up in France and America, was drafted into the French Army and served in Algeria from 1956-57.
Updated 1.18.06 - Mayflower: An American Beginning
Author: Philbrick, Nathaniel
Publisher: Viking $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670037605 Date: 2006
PW Booklist
LJ Kirkus
The startling story of the Plymouth Colony--from the flight to religious freedom to the war that ravaged New England--is told by the bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award.
Updated 4.24.06 - The Shakespeare Wars: The Battle to Explain the Bard
Author: Rosenbaum, Ron
Publisher: Random $ 35 ISBN: 0375503390 Date: 2006
Kirkus PW
Booklist
Rosenbaum's provocative and illuminating encounters with scholars and directors gives readers new ways of thinking about Shakespeare.
Suggested Reading: Shakespeare
Updated 9.18.06 - James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
Author: Phillips, Julie
Publisher: St Martins $ 27.95 ISBN: 0312203853 Date: 2006
Kirkus
Booklist PW
Tiptree burst onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with a series of hard-edged, provocative short stories. Then the cover was blown: the author was actually a 61-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon--world traveler, debutante, chicken farmer, CIA agent, and experimental psychologist. This fascinating biography is based on full access to her papers.
Suggested Reading: Authors
Updated 7.11.06 - Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis
Author: Stargardt, Nicholas
Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 1400040884 Date: 2006
Kirkus PW Booklist
This text breaks new ground in its exploration of the lives and fate of the children of all nationalities under the Nazi regime.
Suggested Reading: Nazis
Updated 11.14.05 - The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
Author: Tolan, Sandy
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582343438 Date: 2006
Kirkus PW Booklist LJ
Based on a 43-minute radio documentary that Tolan produced for "Fresh Air," this volume pursues the story into the homes and histories of the two families at its center through the present day. Their stories form a personal microcosm of the last 70 years of Israeli-Palestinian history.
Updated 5.4.06 - Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir
Author: Trussoni, Danielle
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805077324 Date: 2006
Kirkus Booklist LJ
Danielle Trussoni unflinchingly explores a daughter's love for her flawed father and confronts the demons that haunt them both. Falling Through the Earth is tender and tough, harrowing and triumphant. - Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle.
Suggested Reading: Memoirs
Updated 1.26.06 - The Looming Tower: Al Queda and the Road to 9/11
Author: Wright, Lawrence
Publisher: Knopf $ 27.95 ISBN: 037541486x Date: 2006
Kirkus PW Booklist
This sweeping narrative history of 9/11 includes important new information about the people, ideas, events, and intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks, told for the first time from both the American and Arab sides of the story.
Suggested Reading: 9/11
Updated 8.16.06
Hotlists
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
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