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. . .
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Stellar All Stars
The Fault Tree by Louise Ure
Judas Horse by April Smith
The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw
Bonk by Mary Roach
A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
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 2007
June 18, 2008
July - December
Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically by author. Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.
December
- Sticklebacks and Snow Globes
Author: Goodjohn, B.A.
Publisher: Permanent $ 26 ISBN: 9781579621551 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Updated 8.7.07
- Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black: And Other Stories
Author: Gordimer, Nadine
Publisher: FSG $ 20 ISBN: 9780374109820 Date: 2007
PW LJ
In this collection of new stories, Gordimer crosses the frontiers of politics, memory, sexuality, and love with the fearless insight that is the hallmark of her writing.
Updated 10.2.07
- Siege of Heaven
Author: Harper, Tom
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312338725 Date: 2007
PW
A powerful novel of intrigue, sacrifice, savagery and holy war---the apocalyptic ending of the First Crusade trilogy. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 10.23.07
- Someone Knows My Name
Author: Hill, Lawrence
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780393065787 Date: 2007
PW
Abducted from Africa as a child and enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom--and of the knowledge she needs to get home. This captivating story of one womans remarkable experience spans six decades and three continents and brings to life a crucial chapter in world history
Updated 9.10.07
- An Affair Before Christmas
Author: James, Eloisa
Publisher: Avon $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780061245541 Date: 2007
PW
This second installment of the Desperate Duchess series from the "New York Times" bestselling author offers a sensual, seasonal tale of an English duke who is determined to win back his beguiling brides delectable affections.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.2.07
- The Living
Author: Kramer, Pascale
Publisher: Univ of Nebraska $ 45 ISBN: 9780803227743 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 9.24.07
- Splitting Harriet
Author: Leigh, Tamara
Publisher: Multnomah $ 12.99 ISBN: 9781590529287 Date: 2007
LJ
Preachers kid and prodigal Harriet Bisset returned to her church and her family, free of her tattoos and nose ring. Nothing could tempt Harri to return to her old ways. Nothing but a 1298cc, liquid-cooled, 16-valve, inline four-cylinder motorcycle--and the church consultant riding it.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 11.6.07
- Antony and Cleopatra
Author: McCullough, Colleen
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26.95 ISBN: 9781416552949 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Acclaimed novelist McCullough presents her eagerly awaited seventh novel in her popular Roman series. Packed with battles on land and sea, politics, conspiracy, love affairs, murders, and a dazzling array of historical personages, this is historical fiction at its very best.
Updated 10.23.07
- One With the Shadows
Author: Squires, Susan
Publisher: St Martins $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780312941031 Date: 2007
PW
The "New York Times" bestselling author of One with the Night takes readers into the shadowy world of seduction and betrayal, vengeance and desire. Squires writes a darkly compelling vampire romance.--"Affaire de Coeur."
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.23.07
November
- Air We Breathe
Author: Barrett, Andrea
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780393061086 Date: 2007
Kirkus
The National Book Award-winning author of Ship Fever delivers her eagerly anticipated new novel, set in 1916, in an isolated town in the Adirondacks, far from the war raging in Europe.
Updated 8.27.07
- Crimson Eve
Author: Collins, Brandilyn
Publisher: Zondervan $ 13.99 ISBN: 9780310252252 Date: 2007
LJ
In book three of the Kanner Lake Series, the secluded beauty of northern Idaho offers no permanent hiding place from the past for Carla Radling. The secret from her teenage years has caught up with her--and now Carla's life and the nations future hinge on a lethal game of hide-and-seek.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 9.24.07
- Last Call: Stories
Author: Cook, Kevin L.
Publisher: Univ of Nebraska $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780803215405 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Updated 10.23.07
- The Courtesan's Daughter
Author: Dain, Claudia
Publisher: Berkley $ 14 ISBN: 9780425217207 Date: 2007
Booklist
Award-winning author Dain tells a tale of impropriety and independence, and of a mother and daughter determined to bend the rules of society in their favor.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.2.07
- Tipperary
Author: Delaney, Frank
Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 9781400065233 Date: 2007
LJ
The "New York Times" bestselling author of Ireland returns to the saga of his strife-torn nation with an authentic story of love and legacy as sweeping and dramatic as the land itself.
Updated 8.20.07 - Garcia's Heart
Author: Durcan, Liam
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780312367084 Date: 2007
Booklist
" Like a cross between John le Carre and Ian McEwan -- Garcia's Heart, treads the line between an elegant, elegiac novel of ideas and a sophisticated political thriller. It was exciting, intellectually compelling, and beautifully written. It was also that rarest of books: A literary work with an intensely humanistic core. I am so happy to have discovered Liam Durcan; he will be a major writer for years to come." -- Pauls Toutonghi
Updated 9.24.07
- Bitter Sweets
Author: Farooki, Roopa
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312360528 Date: 2007
Booklist
With this spellbinding first novel about the destructive lies three immigrant generations of a Pakistani/Bangladeshi family tell each other, Farooki has crafted an intelligent, engrossing, and emotionally powerful Indian family saga.
Updated 8.20.07
- Zero-G
Author: Gansky, Alton
Publisher: Zondervan $ 12.99 ISBN: 9780310272113 Date: 2007
LJ
Veteran astronaut Benjamin ?Tuck? Tucker is slated to pilot the first commercial space flight. But ruthless enemies are about to jeopardize the enterprise. With a recent tragedy still haunting his memory, Tuck must turn to a God he no longer trusts as he fights for his life and the lives of all aboard.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 11.6.07
- The Hearts of Horses
Author: Glass, Molly
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 9780618799909 Date: 2007
LJ
With an elegant sweetness and a pitch-perfect sense of western life reminiscent of Annie Dillard, Gloss's breakout novel is a remarkable story about the connections between people and animals and how they touch one another in the most unexpected and profound ways.
Updated 10.2.07
- Down and Dirty
Author: Hill, Sandra
Publisher: Berkley $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780425217931 Date: 2008
Booklist
Punished for an indiscretion, Navy SEAL and all-around tough guy Zachary Floyd is forced to head a new SEAL-like program for women. There he meets an alluring Norsewoman, whos escaped a nunnery, her evil father--and the whole bloody 11th century altogether.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.31.07
- The Quiet Girl
Author: Hoeg, Peter
Publisher: FSG $ 26 ISBN: 9780374263690 Date: 2007
LJ
Set in Denmark in the here and now, Hoegs masterful, inventive novel centers around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt.
Updated 9.24.07
- Orpheus Lost
Author: Hospital, Janette Turner
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780393065527 Date: 2007
Booklist
In an enthralling novel as passionate as it is true to life, Hospital reveals an American underworld of suspicion and despair, and shows how fear and paranoia have worked their way into our daily lives
Updated 9.24.07
- A Free Life
Author: Jin, Ha
Publisher: Pantheon $ 26 ISBN: 9780375424656 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash comes a new novel that eloquently re-imagines the American immigrant saga. Jin tells the story of the Wu family, that sets out on a journey through contemporary America in search of a sense of belonging.
Updated 9.10.07
- The Rebels: Sons of Texas
Author: Kelton, Elmer
Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780765315267 Date: 2007
PW
Against the heroic, bloody backdrop of the Texas War of Independence, this novel follows the Lewis brothers and their families as they join such rebels as Jim Bowie and David Crockett in wresting Texas from Mexican rule.
Updated 8.20.07
- Ghost
Author: Lightman, Alan
Publisher: Pantheon $ 23 ISBN: 9780375421693 Date: 2007
Booklist
From the acclaimed author of the national bestseller Einstein's Dreams and The Diagnosis comes this stunning and disturbing new novel about one mans encounter with the unfathomable.
Updated 9.24.07
- Them
Author: McCall, Nathan
Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 9781416549154 Date: 2007
PW
The author of the bestselling memoir Makes Me Wanna Holler presents a profound debut novel that captures the dynamics of class and race in todays urban communities.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 9.24.07
- Signed, Mata Hari
Author: Murphy, Yannick
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.99 ISBN: 9780316112642 Date: 2007
PW
In the cold October of 1917 Margaretha Zelle, better known as Mata Hari, sits in a prison cell in Paris awaiting trial on charges of espionage. The penalty is death by firing squad. As she waits, burdened by a secret guilt, Mata Hari tells stories, Scheherazade-like, to buy back her life from her interrogators.
From a bleak childhood in the Netherlands, through a loveless marriage to a Dutch naval officer, Margaretha is transported to the forbidden sensual pleasures of Indonesia. In the chill of her prison cell she spins tales of rosewater baths, native lovers, and Javanese jungles, evoking the magical world that sustained her even as her family crumbled. And then, in flight from her husband, Margaretha reinvents herself: she becomes an artist's model, circus rider, and finally the temple dancer Mata Hari, dressed in veils, admired by Diaghilev, performing for the crowned heads of Europe. Through all her transformations, her life's fatal questions---"was "she a traitor, and if so, why?---burns ever brighter. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.1.07 - Christmas Lights
Author: Nama, Christine Pisera
Publisher: Doubleday $ 14.95 ISBN: 9780385522458 Date: 2007
LJ
In Caterpillar Kisses, Naman shares the small but inspiring lessons she learned from her students as a kindergarten teacher. Now, in her first work of fiction, Naman evokes that same warmth and tenderness in stories set during the holiday season and centered on the lives of ordinary women.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 10.23.07
- Lost Paradise
Author: Nooteboom, Cees
Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 9780802118554 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Cees Nooteboom, hailed by A. S. Byatt as "one of the greatest modern novelists," is one of Holland's most important authors. In Lost Paradise, Nooteboom's most ambitious book yet, he sets out to uncover the connections between two seemingly unrelated travelers: a beautiful stranger aboard a Berlin-bound flight and a haggard-looking man on a Holland train platform. With his fleeting impressions of these encounters, Nooteboom builds a complex, haunting story of longing, regret, and rebirth in the dawn of the new millennium. Lost Paradise is an affirmation of our underlying humanity in an increasingly fragmented age, a deeply resonant tale of cosmically thwarted love. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.20.07
- Last Night at the Lobster
Author: O'Nan, Stewart
Publisher: Viking $ 19.95 ISBN: 9780670018277 Date: 2007
LJ
O'Nan has crafted a frank and funny yet emotionally resonant tale set within a vivid workaday world seldom seen in contemporary fiction. This work presents a poignant yet redemptive look at what a man does when he discovers that his best might not be good enough
Updated 10.2.07
- Unforseen
Author: Oster, Christian
Publisher: Other $ 13.95 ISBN: 9781590512654 Date: 2007
Kirkus
From the author of A Cleaning Woman, made into a film by Claude Berri, comes Oster's new novel of perfect, erudite, and sometimes laughable sadness. Oster's perceptive gaze, and the changing rhythm of his sentences, guide his reader through the psychological realism of obsession and desire. The honesty of emotion in The Unforeseen is matched only by its subversive intent. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.27.07
- Foreigners
Author: Phillips, Caryl
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400043972 Date: 2007
Booklist
A brilliant hybrid of reportage, fiction, and historical facts, this novel tells the stories of three black men whose lives speak resoundingly to the place and role of the foreigner in English society.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 9.24.07
- Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story
Author: Powers, Kim
Publisher: Da Capo $ 25 ISBN: 9780786720330 Date: 2007
LJ
They were children growing up next door to each other--she, a tomboy in overalls; he, a summer visitor from New Orleans, always dressed in immaculate white linen. Twenty-five years later he had taken New York's literary world by storm, while she struggled to put pen to paper and sweat out the story of her childhood. He was Truman Capote; she was Harper Lee. They would reunite in the desolate plains of Kansas to create In Cold Blood. And they would start talk of an even greater, unspoken mystery and crime: What happened between them--and who really wrote To Kill a Mockingbrid? How did two innocents from a backwoods Southern town go on to such fame, and why did they stop speaking to each other shortly after? Kim Powers has conjured a sort of death-bed confession from Capote, in which he picks up the phone to Harper Lee one last time to tell her he is being haunted--a tale she doesn't believe, until she is forced to. What do the ghosts of the Clutters want, as they appear one by one to confess their secrets and their anger to the most unlikely mediums of Capote and Lee? Capote in Kansas is an unforgettable "what might have been"--a fantasia of ghosts seeking resolve and revenge, murder in the heart (and the heartlands), and memories and regret for a past that was, that will never be again. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 10.23.07
- On Strike for Christmas
Author: Roberts, Sheila
Publisher: Griffin $ 13.95 ISBN: 9780312370220 Date: 2007
At Christmastime, it seems as though a woman's job is never done. This year, Joy and Laura and the rest of their knitting group decides to go on strike. But as Christmas Day approaches, each couple confronts larger issues in their marriage, and discovers that a little holiday magic is exactly what they need to come together.
LJ
Updated 10.23.07
- Crawfish Mountain
Author: Wells, Ken
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780375508769 Date: 2007
PW LJ
From the acclaimed author of Meely LaBauve, Juniors Leg, and Logan's Storm comes a rollicking, hilarious tale of corporate corruption and political shenanigans set in Louisianas embattled wetlands.
Updated 10.2.07
October
- Secrets of a Proper Lady
Author: Alexander, Victoria
Publisher: Avon $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780060882648 Date: 2007
LJ
Four society gentlemen make a pact--the last man left unwed will win a prize. Two have fallen--who will be next? "New York Times" bestselling author Victoria Alexander continues her delicious series with this third installment.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.23.07
- Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work: Stories
Author: Brown, Jason
Publisher: Open City $ 14 ISBN: 9781890447472 Date: 2007
PW
Everything Natalie said seemed, to herself, to have been said better by him. He was less fond of speaking, however, than he was of hitting people in the face, which seemed a more likely source of her love to those of us who knew him," begins Jason Brown's linked collection of beautifully haunted, violent, and wry stories set in the densely forested lands of northern New England. In these tales of forbidden love, runaway children, patrimony, alcohol, class, inheritance, and survival, Brown's elegant prose emits both quiet despair and a poignant sense of hope and redemption. These vivid accounts of troubled lives combine the powerful family drama of Andre Dubus and Russell Banks, the dark wit of Denis Johnson, the lost souls of Charles D'Ambrosio, and the New England gothic of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Jason Brown's exquisitely crafted second collection will establish him as one of the most important voices in American short fiction. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.7.07
- The Gum Thief
Author: Coupland, Douglas
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781596911062 Date: 2007
PW
Couplands ingenious new novel--sort of a Clerks meets Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf--reveals the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life, in the first and only story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply superstore.
Updated 6.27.07 - The Courtesan's Daughter
Author: Dain, Claudia
Publisher: Berkley $ 14 ISBN: 9780425217207 Date: 2007
Booklist
Award-winning author Dain tells a tale of impropriety and independence, and of a mother and daughter determined to bend the rules of society in their favor.
Suggested Reading: Romance
Updated 9.24.07
- The Farther Shore
Author: Eck, Matthew
Publisher: Milkweed $ 22 ISBN: 9781571310576 Date: 2007
Booklist
In coastal Africa, a small unit of U.S. Army soldiers is separated from its command and left for dead. Josh and his battle buddies are forced to keep moving to escape the marauding gangs that rule the area, and after a series of terrifying, violent encounters, only a few of them survive. In this haunting, adrenaline-filled war novel, both natives and invaders are almost inhuman, reflecting the horror and strangeness of postmodern military engagements.
Updated 9.24.07
- The Cry of the Dove
Author: Faqir, Fadia
Publisher: Grove $ 14 ISBN: 9780802170408 Date: 2007
LJ
The new novel from Jordanian-British writer and human rights activist Fadia Faqir is a gripping tale of forbidden love, violated honor, and exile. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.7.07 - World Without End
Author: Follett, Ken
Publisher: Dutton $ 35 ISBN: 9780525950073 Date: 2007
Kirkus LJ
In 1989, Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in 12th-century England that centered on the building of a cathedral and the hundreds of lives it affected. This sequel takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries later.
Updated 10.2.07
- Servant: The Awakening
Author: Foster, L.L.
Publisher: Berkely $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780425218747 Date: 2007
Booklist
Gabrielle Cody has the ability to see the demons as they really are--and she has the responsibility to destroy them. She can't allow anyone to get in her way, even the magnetic Detective Luther Cross. This first novel of a new urban paranormal series is by "New York Times" bestselling author Lori Foster, written under the pen name L.L. Foster.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.2.07
- The Italian Love
Author: Hellenga, Robert
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.99 ISBN: 9780316117630 Date: 2007
Booklist
The author of The Sixteen Pleasures returns with this exhilarating novel ofromance, art, and food in Florence.
Updated 10.2.07
- Season of Gene
Author: Hudgens, Dallas
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 9781416541486 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Hudgens delivers intimate regional color and characters who just wont quit, in this surefire follow-up to his acclaimed novel, Drive Like Hell.
Updated 8.7.07
- Doesn't She Look Natural
Author: Hunt, Angela Elwell
Publisher: Tyndale $ 13.99 ISBN: 9781414311692 Date: 2007
LJ
Jennifer Graham, a no-nonsense chief of staff for a senator, is suddenly a divorced, unemployed single mom. She never dreamed that inheriting a funeral home would lead her to a rewarding career that teaches her far more about life than death.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 9.24.07
- Till Morning is Nigh: Wortham Family Christmas Novella
Author: Kelly, Leisha
Publisher: Revell $ 14.99 ISBN: 9780800718879 Date: 2007
LJ
Fans of Julia's Hope and Emma's Gift will delight in this touching tale of a Wortham family Christmas, set in the 1930s.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 11.6.07
- The Best American Short Stories, 2007
Author: King, Stephen (edt)
Publisher:Houghton Mifflin $ 28 ISBN: 9780618713479 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Updated 8.27.07
- Not Yet Drown'd
Author: Kingman, Peg
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780393065466 Date: 2007
LJ
A mysterious package propels a young Scottish widow on a journey that takes her around the world. On her perilous quest, she discovers unsuspected truths about the brother she thought had died, in this luminous and accomplished debut novel.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9.24.07
- Chasing Midnight
Author: Krinard, Susan
Publisher: Hqn $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780373772186 Date: 2007
Booklist
Amid the glitz and unrestrained morals of society in the Jazz Age of the 1920s, even a vampire can fall prey to the temptations of the flesh. One look into the golden eyes of Griffin Durant and Allegra Chance knows shes not dealing with just a man.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.2.07
- Eureka
Author: Lehrer, Jim
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400064878 Date: 2007
Booklist
Lehrer, respected news anchor and the author of The Franklin Affair, pens a whimsical tale about a bored insurance executives escape into the dreams of his childhood.
Updated 9.24.07
- The Parting
Author: Lewis, Beverly
Publisher: Bethany House $ 19.99 ISBN: 9780764204371 Date: 2007
LJ
In The Courtship of Nellie Fisher, Beverly Lewis returns to Lancaster County for a powerful new series based on actual historical events--a heated debate over salvation...and tractors--that causes a group of Amish families to break away from the Old Order. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 9.24.07
- Big Girl's Don't Cry
Author: Linz, Cathie
Publisher: Berkley $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780425218310 Date: 2007
Booklist
After her plus-size modeling career tanks, Leena Riley becomes a receptionist in her hometown veterinarians office. Too bad the vet is Cole Flannigan, a boy who taunted her all through school. Good thing Leena has grown into her curves, because Cole is about to grow very fond of her, in this new novel from the author of Bad Girls Don't.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.2.07
- Fire in the Blood
Author: Nemirovsky, Irene
Publisher: Knopf $ 22 ISBN: 9780307267481 Date: 2007
LJ
Updated 10.2.07
- Redemption Falls
Author: O'Connor, Joseph
Publisher: Free $ 25 ISBN: 9781416553168 Date: 2007
Booklist
From the author of the international bestseller Star of the Sea comes this epic novel and unforgettable love story. "This book took my breath away . . . [it] is a brave book and only a brave heart could have written it."--Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes.
Updated 9.24.07
- The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Author: O'Farrell, Maggie
Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 9780151014118 Date: 2007PW
This haunting, multi-generational tale of the horrors that have been done to women under the guise of mental health is the creepy Victorian tale of two elderly sisters who reveal more than a few family secrets after a lifetime of forced seclusion.
Updated 6.4.07 - Strange As This Weather Has Been
Author: Pancake, Ann
Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard $ 15.95 ISBN: 9781593761660 Date: 2007
Booklist
Set in present day West Virginia, Ann Pancake's debut novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, tells the story of a coal mining family--a couple and their four children--living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their mountain life. As the mine turns the mountains to slag and wastewater, workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9.24.07
- Run
Author: Patchett, Ann
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780061340635 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
The highly anticipated new novel from the bestselling author of Bel Canto is an engrossing story of a fateful night and day that will change everything for one Boston family. At its center, Run is about what defines family and the lengths to which we will go to protect our children.
Updated 8.7.07
- The Abstinence Teacher
Author: Perrotta, Tom
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312358334 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Perrotta's topical novel illuminates the powerful emotions that run beneath the placid surface of modern family life, and explores the complicated spiritual and sexual lives of ordinary people.
Updated 6.27.07 - Exit Ghost
Author: Roth, Philip
Publisher: Houghton $ 26 ISBN: 9780618915477 Date: 2007
Booklist
Nathan Zuckerman, the indomitable literary adventurer of Roth's nine Zuckerman books, finds himself involved--as he never wanted or intended to be--with love, mourning, desire, and animosity.
Updated 7.11.07
- Bridge of Sighs
Author: Russo, Richard
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780375414954 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus
Updated 9.24.07
- The Almost Moon
Author: Sebold, Alice
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316677462 Date: 2007
LJ
When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable new novel by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky.
Updated 9.24.07
- A Pigeon and a Boy
Author: Shalev, Meir
Publisher: Schocken $ 25 ISBN: 9780805242515 Date: 2007
PW
This mesmerizing novel, set both in contemporary Israel and during the 1948 War of Independence, intertwines two stories of love that are separated by half a century but connected by one magical act of devotion.
Updated 8.7.07
- Custer's Brother's Horse
Author: Shrake, Edwin
Publisher: John M Hardy $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780971766785 Date: 2007
Booklist
Updated 10.2.07
- A Crooked Path: An Eden Plain Novel
Author: Smith, Annette
Publisher: Navpress $ 12.99 ISBN: 9781576839966 Date: 2007
LJ
A Mexican immigrant and his cranky, prejudiced boss forge a relationship over time that mirrors a father and son. But their friendship is strained by the arrival of Owens daughter. As She and Manny fall in love, their relationship reveals Owens deeply hidden issues involving race and class.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 9.24.07
- The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas
Author: Theroux, Paul
Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 9780618943326 Date: 2007
Kirkus
A master of the travel narrative weaves three intertwined novellas of Westerners transformed by their sojourns in India, in this startling and satisfying book.
Updated 7.11.07 - Cheating at Canasta
Author: Trevor, William
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780670018376 Date: 2007
PW Booklist LJ Kirkus
The publication of a new book by William Trevor is a great literary event. Trevor's precise and unflinching insights into the hearts and lives of ordinary people are evidenced once again in this stunning new collection. From a chance encounter between two childhood friends to the memories of a newly widowed man to a family grappling with the sale of their ancestral land, Trevor examines with grace and skill the tenuous bonds of our relationships, the strengths that hold us together, and the truths that threaten to separate us. Subtle yet powerful, his stories linger with the reader long after the words have been put away. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 8.27.07 - The Bad Girl
Author: Vargas Llosa, Mario
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 9780374182434 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager in Lima in 1950, and next in Paris, where she appears as the enchanting Comrade Arlette. In Llosa's beguiling new novel, the strange bedfellows of good and bad turn out not to be what they appear.
Updated 9.24.07
September
- Song for Night
Author: Abani, Chris
Publisher: Akashic $ 12.95 ISBN: 9781933354316 Date: 2007
PW
This harrowing novel by Nigerian poet and award-winning novelist Abani tells the story of a West African boy soldiers lyrical, terrifying, yet beautiful journey through the nightmare landscape of a brutal war in search of his lost platoon.
Updated 6.27.07 - Garden Spells
Author: Allen, Sarah Addison
Publisher: Bantam $ 20 ISBN: 9780553805482 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
Debut author Allen delivers an enchanting novel that casts a spell called sisterhood on a small town and on every reader who encounters it.
Updated 8.7.07
- The Theory of Clouds
Author: Audeguy, Stephane
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 9780151014286 Date: 2007
Booklist
Akira Kumo, miraculous survivor of Hiroshima, reinvented himself as someone twenty years younger. Now an eccentric couturier and collector of all literature having to do with clouds and meteorology, he hires Virginie, a young librarian, to catalog his library. While she works, he tells her stories of those who have devoted their lives to clouds: the Quaker Luke Howard, contemporary of Napoleon and Goethe, who first classified clouds; the painter Carmichael (based on John Constable), who spent a year painting clouds; and the mysterious Abercrombie, a photographer who cataloged clouds around the world. Virginie's trip to London in search of the suppressed Abercrombie protocol becomes a quest no less wondrous and strange than Kumo's own. Sensual, hypnotic, and filled with stories both true and fanciful, The Theory of Clouds is a masterful first novel.
- Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 8.20.07
- Intimate Relations with Strangers
Author: Bernard, David Valentine
Publisher: Strebor $ 23 ISBN: 9781416540366 Date: 2007
PW
Set in a future where the threat of terrorism has seeped into everything, an American soldier finds himself at the vanguard of America's latest war. Intimate Relations with Strangers is at once a twisted puzzle and a brutally honest exploration of the nature of reality, war, and love. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 7.9.07 - Grub
Author: Blackwell, Elise
Publisher: Toby $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781592641994 Date: 2007
LJ
Compassionate and pointedly funny, Grub reveals what the publishing industry does to writers--and what writers do to themselves and each other--for art's sake and in pursuit of celebrity. The Devil Wears Prada meets publishing!
Updated 9.24.07
- Biting the Apple
Author: Bledsoe, Lucy Jane
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 14.99 ISBN: 9780786719273 Date: 2007PW
Biting the Apple is the story of Eve Glass, once an Olympic sprinter and now a motivational speaker. The problem is, her own endurance is waning and her confidence in her expertise on grace is paling. Even worse, her kleptomaniac tendencies are intensifying, and a friend from her childhood has begun stalking her. Biting the Apple pokes fun at some of our dearest-held postmodern ideas about the existence of a true self and humanity as product.
Updated 6.4.07 - Away
Author: Bloom, Amy
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400063567 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
In this brilliant new novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable, Bloom pens the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, who after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land.
Updated 6.27.07 - Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band is Playing & Leviathan '99
Author: Bradbury, Ray
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780061131561 Date: 2007
PW
Two never-before-published works of short fiction by one of Americas finest writers are included in a single volume: "Somewhere a Band Is Playing" is classic Bradbury fantasy and "Leviathan 99" presents a science-fictional homage to Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
Updated 8.7.07
- Total Control
Author: Britton, Pamela
Publisher: HQN $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780373772421 Date: 2007
Booklist
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.2.07
- Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin
Author: Bunin, Ivan
Publisher: Ivan R Dee $ 19.95 ISBN: 9781566637589 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Updated 6.27.07 - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
Author: Clarke, Brock
Publisher: Algonquin $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781565125513 Date: 2007KirkusPW
This is a sad, funny, absurd, and incredibly moving novel. Its comic mournfulness, its rigorous, breakneck narrative, delight. . . . Clarke [has] given us a wonderful book about life, literature, and the anxieties of their influence.
Updated 5.11.07 - The Brief Wonderous LIfe of Oscar Wao
Author: Diaz, Junot
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781594489587 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
The long-awaited--and thrillingly satisfying, genuinely original--first novel from the unmistakable voice behind the story collection Drown.
Updated 7.11.07 - The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon
Author: Dumas, Alexander
Publisher: Pegasus $ 32 ISBN: 9781933648316 Date: 2007
PW
The last novel of Alexandre Dumas--lost for 125 years in the archives of the National Library in Paris--completes the oeuvre that Dumas imagined at the outset of his literary career.
Updated 9.24.07
- The Gathering
Author: Enright, Anne
Publisher: Grove $ 14 ISBN: 9780802170392 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist
A dazzling writer of international stature, Anne Enright is one of Ireland's most singular voices. Now she delivers The Gathering, a return to an intimate canvas and moving, evocative portrait of a large Irish family haunted by the past. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him--something that happened in their grandmother's house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations, she shows how memories warp and secrets fester. The Gathering is a family epic, clarified through Anne Enright's unblinking eye. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about how fate is written in the body, not in the stars. The Gathering sends fresh blood through the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. As in all of Anne Enright's work, this is a book of draing, wit, and insight, her distinctive intelligence twisting the world a fraction and giving it back to us in a new and unforgettable light. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.20.07 - Engleby
Author: Faulks, Sebastian
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780385524056 Date: 2007
PW
Bestselling British author Faulks reinvents the unreliable narrator with his singular, haunting creation Mike Engleby, who leads the reader down an unclear and often darkly humorous path where one is never completely comfortable or confident about what is true.
Suggested Reading: Unreliable Narrators
Updated 7.16.07 - The Water Cure
Author: Everett, Percival L.
Publisher: Grawolf $ 22 ISBN: 9781555974763 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Everett's lacerating novel follows the gruesome reasoning and execution of revenge in a society that has lost a common moral ground, where rules are meaningless. A master storyteller, the author creates a terrifying story of loss, anger, and helplessness in the modern world.
Updated 7.11.07 - If His Kiss Is WIcked
Author: Goodman, Jo
Publisher: Zebra $ 6.99ISBN: 9780821777770 Date: 2007
LJ
A "USA Today" bestselling author delivers the unforgettable story of a beautiful young woman who believes someone wants to kill her. Only one man can reveal if she's truly in peril--or if shes going mad--but his forbidden kiss may lead to a dangerous seduction.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 8.20.07 - The Contractor
Author: Holdefer, Charles
Publisher: Permanent $ 26 ISBN: 9781579621735 Date: 2007
Booklist
George Young is a U.S. government interrogator at a secret holding facility for suspected terrorists when a detainee unexpectedly dies after repeatedly asking, Who are you? The words send George on a painful journey of self-interrogation.
Updated 9.24.07
- Tree of Smoke
Author: Johnson, Denis
Publisher: FSG $ 27.50 ISBN: 9780374279127 Date: 2007
PW Booklist LJ
This book chronicles the story of Skip Sands--spy-in-training, whos engaged in psychological operations against the Vietcong--and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
8.20.07 - Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
Author: Lam, Vincent
Publisher: Weinstein $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781602860001 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
Following four young medical students and physicians, this debut collection of 12 interwoven short stories from 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Lam is a riveting, eye-opening account of what it means to be a doctor.
Updated 8.7.07
- The Indian Clerk
Author: Leavitt, David
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781596910409 Date: 2007LJ
Based on the remarkable true story of the strange and ultimately tragic relationship between an esteemed British mathematician and an unknown mathematical genius, this brilliant new novel transforms this bit of history into an emotional and spell-binding story.
Updated 5.1.07 - The Whale Road
Author: Low, Robert
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312361945 Date: 2007
LJ
A band of brothers, committed only to each other, rides the waves, fighting for the highest bidder, treading the whale road in search of legendary relics.
Robert Low has written a stunning epic, a remarkable debut novel. Not only a compelling narrative, The Whale Road also brings a new Viking landscape stretching from Scotland through the Baltic and on to Istanbul. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.7.07
- Our American King
Author: Martin, David Lozell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 25 $ ISBN: 9780743267311 Date: 2007
LJ PW
In this conflict between forms of government, in a people's fight for survival, Our American King unearths massive forces and powerful truths and challenges readers with provocative questions: If a calamity destroyed the American government, who among us would survive? Who would die from weakness and fear? What kind of leaders would emerge? - Publisher Marketing
Updated 10.2.07
- Trespass
Author: Martin, Valerie
Publisher: Talese $ 25 ISBN: 9780385515450 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Rich with menace, this novel unfolds in a world where darkness intrudes into bright and pleasant places, a world with betrayal at its heart. In shimmering prose Martin raises the question, Who shall inherit America?
Updated 7.11.07 - Cion
Author: Mda, Zakes
Publisher: Picador $ 14 ISBN: 9780312427061 Date: 2007
Kirkus
The hero of Mda's Ways of Dying, Toloki, settles down with a family in middle America and uncovers the story of the runaway slaves who had been their ancestors. Their stories alternate with Tolokis, and the two narratives cast new light on an undiscovered legacy of the Underground Railroad.
Updated 8.7.07
- Hartsburg, USA
Author: Mizner, David
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781596913264 Date: 2007Kirkus
Hartsburg, Ohio, is a vintage rust-belt town on the wane; the factories and foundries are closed. And as the local cineplex gives way to yet another fundamentalist church, an ideological turf war has begun. Hartsburg,USA is at once absurd and utterly believable, a portrait of people on both sides of the American political divide, their stark differences and common humanity. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.21.07 - Caspian Rain
Author: Nahai, Gina Barkhordar
Publisher: Macadam Cage $ 25 ISBN: 9781596922518 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ
From the bestselling author of Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith comes a stirring, lyrical tale that offers American readers a unique insight into the inner workings of Iranian society, and takes them into the tragic and fascinating world of a brave young girl struggling against impossible odds.
Updated 8.20.07
- The Garden of Lost and Found
Author: Peck, Dale
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780786718214 Date: 2007
Booklist
On the death of the mother he never knew, twenty-one-year-old James Ramsay inherits a brownstone in New York City. For the past two years he's lived on his own in Kansas, where he has had bimonthly liaisons with Trucker, a fifty-five-year-old traveling salesman. Just before James learns of his mother's death, Trucker tells him that he has infected him with HIV. Confused and shaken, James takes up residence in the five-story brownstone with an elderly woman, Nellydean. The building's lot is worth millions, but the estate is cash poor, and James is faced with a choice: sell the property--and turn Nellydean out of the only home she's known for the past forty years--or attempt to stave off the mounting tide of taxes that will cause him to forfeit his only connection to a mother he never knew. The a chance encounter lands James on the cover of the New York Post, which in turn brings two new people into his life: Knute Lingon, a forty-year-old former ad exec moonlighting as a reporter, and Claudia MacTeer, Nellydean's niece, who is looking for a new home for herself and her unborn child. The strange threesome become entangled in a web of sexual, familial, and financial complications. - Publisher Marketing
cancelled?
Updated 7.11.07
- The End of the Alphabet
Author: Richardson, C.S.
Publisher: Doubleday $ 16.95 ISBN: 9780385522557 Date: 2007Kirkus
In a tender, intimate novel of an ordinary life defined by an extraordinary love, Richardson tells the story of a 50-year-old man who learns that he has one month to live. Reeling from the news, he and and beloved wife embark on a whirlwind expedition to the places he has most loved or has always longed to visit. The result is a timeless, resonant exploration of the nature of love, loss, and life.
Updated 5.21.07 - Braindead Megaphone
Author: Saunders, George
Publisher: Riverhead $ 14 ISBN: 9781594482564 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Saunders' first foray into nonfiction is comprised of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are his travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the Buddha Boy of Nepal.
Updated 6.27.07 - The Septembers of Shiraz
Author: Sofer, Dalia
Publisher: Ecco $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780061130403 Date: 2007LJ
Set in Tehran during the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, this understated, beautifully told literary debut follows the Amin family as they cope with their fathers false imprisonment for spying.
Updated 5.1.07 - By George
Author: Stace, Wesley
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316830324 Date: 2007
Booklist
By George unveils the fascinating Fisher family--its weak men, its dominant women, its disgruntled boys, and its shocking and dramatic secrets. At once bitingly funny and exquisitely tender, Staces novel is the unforgettable journey of two boys separated by years but driven by the desire to find a voice.
Updated 6.4.07
- Tomorrow
Author: Swift, Graham
Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780307266903 Date: 2007
Kirkus
In his first novel since The Light of Day, the Booker Prize-winning author pens a luminous tale about the closest of human bonds. Brilliantly distilling 50 years into one suspenseful night, this novel is an exploration of couples, parenthood, and a unique meditation on the mystery of happiness
Updated 7.11.07 - Smart Girls Like Me
Author: Vadino, Diane
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780312374754 Date: 2007
PW
This is a story about what happens when you are twenty-four years old and it is 1999 and you are quite certain that everyone on the planet has been invited to super-fun New Year’ s Eve orgies, except you, because you were too busy making plans for the end of the world---courtesy of God or militiamen or your best friend and her ridiculous wedding in the middle of the South Pacific. This is a story about what happens when you think and truly mean things like “ I don’ t care if the world ends, as long as it ends before this stupid wedding.” - Publisher Marketing
Updated 8.7.07
- The Assassin's Song
Author: Vassanji, M.G.
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 9781400042173 Date: 2007
Booklist
The magnificent new novel from the award-winning author of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall stunningly evokes the intricate personal drama of a man caught between filial obligation and personal yearning.
Updated 8.20.07
- Bride for a Knight
Author: Welfonder, Sue-Ellen
Publisher: Forever $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780446617307 Date: 2007
Booklist
The author of the "USA Today" bestseller Wedding for a Knight delivers another sensual tale of romance in medieval Scotland, as a knight is asked to seal a peace alliance with an enemy by marrying a woman he doesnt love--yet.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 10.2.07
August
- Rahsi's Daughters, Book 2: Miriam
Author: Anton, Maggie
Publisher: Plume $ 15 ISBN: 9780452288638 Date: 2007LJ
The engrossing historical series of three sisters living in 11th-century France continues with the tale of Miriam, the lively and daring middle child of a great Talmudic authority. Anton brings both time and place to vivid life, and captures the struggles and triumphs of strong Jewish women.
Updated 6.4.07 - Disturbance-Loving Species
Author: Chilson, Peter
Publisher: Houghton $ 13.95 ISBN: 9780618858705 Date: 2007
PW
Chilson's fiction debut delivers a fascinating, heart-wrenching view of modern African culture, filtered through the lens of the West. This collection of stories explores the experiences of Americans struggling to cope with life in Africa, and of Africans acclimating to life in the United States
Updated 6.27.07 - The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter
Author: Dennis, Mary Ellen
Publisher: Five Star $ 26.95 ISBN: 9781594145759 Date: 2007
Booklist
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 7.11.07
- The Empress of Weehawken
Author: Dische, Irene
Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 9780374299125 Date: 2007LJ
A curiously touching love letter to the difficult but sustaining love of mothers and daughters, The Empress of Weehawken presents a masterpiece of comedy with an unexpected lilt of redemption at its close.
Updated 6.4.07 - Twice the Temptation
Author: Enoch, Suzanne
Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780061231476 Date: 2007PW
An exquisite but supposedly cursed diamond connects these two novellas. Beginning with a stunning romance sent in Regency England, the book then catapults readers to contemporary times, where a billionaire and a reformed jewel thief are brought together by the jewel.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 6.4.07 - New Bedlam
Author: Flanagan, William
Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781594200502 Date: 2007
Kirkus
From the acclaimed writer, MTV creative leader, and author of A&R comes a wise, wicked, and hilarious novel about the business of television and the business of families, from an author who has richly earned his insights into both.
Updated 6.27.07 - Oystercatchers
Author: Fletcher, Susan
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780393060034 Date: 2007
Booklist
From the Whitbread Award-winning author of Eve Green comes this lyrical novel that probes two sisters struggle with envy, loneliness, and love--an emotion they crave and simultaneously fear, but ultimately recognize it as the greatest force of all.
Updated 7.11.07
- Spook Country
Author: Gibson, William
Publisher: Putnam $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780399154300 Date: 2007
PW LJ
Gibsons first new book in four years is, like the bestselling and critically acclaimed Pattern Recognition, a contemporary novel with international implications.
Updated 8.7/07 - Mad Dash
Author: Gaffney, Patricia
Publisher: Crown $ 23 ISBN: 9780307382115 Date: 2007LJ
From the author of The Saving Graces comes this poignant yet hilarious novel about the funny ways love has of catching up to people despite their most irrational efforts to leave it behind.
Updated 6.4.07 - De Niro's Game
Author: Hage, Rawi
Publisher: Steerforth $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781581952230 Date: 2007PWBooklist
De Niro’ s Game plunges readers into the timely story of two young men caught in Lebanon’ s civil war. Bassam and George, best friends in childhood, have grown to adulthood in war-torn Beirut. Now they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and consolidate power through crime, or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known. Told in a distinctive, captivating voice that fuses vivid cinematic imagery and page-turning plot with the measured strength and beauty of Arabic poetry, De Niro’ s Game is an explosive portrait of life in a war zone, and a powerful meditation on what comes after.
Updated 5.21.07 - Bearing the Body
Author: Havazelet, Ehud
Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 9780374299729 Date: 2007
PW
Havazelet's poignant novel is a story about history and memory, family and loss. Most of all, it is a book about the past, which, far from receding quietly, weighs ever more heavily on those who hope to leave it behind.
Updated 8.7.07
- Coming Through: Three Novellas
Author: Helwig, David
Publisher: Bunim & Bannigan $ 22 ISBN: 9781933480169 Date: 2007
PW
Updated 7.16.07 - My Mother's Lovers
Author: Hope, Christopher
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 9780802118509 Date: 2007
LJ
The author of Serenity House and Kruger's Alp, winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, returns with a lyrical and taut novel about the past 50 years of white presence in South Africa, as seen through the eyes of Kathleen Healey, a superbly authentic female character.
Updated 8.7.07 - Loving Frank
Author: Horan, Nancy
Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780345494993 Date: 2007
LJ
Fact and fiction are brilliantly blended in this compelling novel about the relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, the wife of a couple whose home Wright built in 1904.
Updated 8.7.07
- What You Call Winter: Stories
Author: Jones, Nalini
Publisher: Knopf $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781400042760 Date: 2007
Kirkus
This collection of interconnected stories takes place in an India that is unfamiliar to most American readers. But the tales of the characters relationships, ambitions, and concerns are altogether universal, capturing the expectations, joys, and losses experienced by families everywhere.
Updated 6.27.07 - Mr. Pip
Author: Jones, Lloyd
Publisher: Dial $ 20 ISBN: 9780385341066 Date: 2007
Booklist
On a tropical island shattered by war, only one teacher chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Great Expectations. So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide.
Updated 6.4.07
- The Perfect Bride
Author: Joyce, Brenda
Publisher: HQN $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780373772445 Date: 2007
PW
The victim of a childhood tragedy, Lady Blanche Harrington desires to feel genuine emotion. Now its time for her to marry, but there is one man she has not seen--the reclusive Rex de Warenne. When fate intervenes to bring these two lost souls together, can they overcome their wounds to create a future?
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 6.27.07 - On the Wing
Author: Kraft, Eric
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780312363741 Date: 2007Kirkus
In Taking Off, the first installment of Eric Kraft’ s beguiling trilogy, Peter Leroy built an aerocycle in his parents’ garage, working from designs he found in "Impractical Craftsman" magazine. Cheered on by the gathered residents of his small Long Island beach community, Peter readied his contraption for the adventure of a lifetime: a solo cross-country flight to New Mexico and back.On the Wing is a playful but profound novel about an Icarus who does not crash and burn, but grows older, wiser, and productively forgetful as he reimagines his boyhood to create the story of his life. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.11.07 - Dead Boys: Stories
Author: Lange, Richard
Publisher: Little Brown $ 21.99 ISBN: 9780316017367 Date: 2007
Kirkus
These hard-hitting, deeply felt stories follow straight arrows and outlaws, have-it-alls and outcasts, as they take stock of their lives and missteps and struggle to rise above their turbulent pasts.
Updated 6.27.07 - A Peculiar Grace
Author: Lent, Jeffrey
Publisher: Atlantic $ 25 ISBN: 9780871139658 Date: 2007
PW Booklist
The critically-acclaimed author of In the Fall delivers this insightful, revealing portrait of family secrets, in a book marked by an unforgettable cast of characters who have learned to survive by giving shape to their losses.
Updated 7.11.07 - A Hatred of Tulips
Author: Lourie, Richard
Publisher: St Martins $22.95 ISBN: 9780312349332 Date: 2007
LJ
Just as he did in the internationally acclaimed The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin, here Richard Lourie takes us into not only a person’ s mind, a time, and a place, but into the treacherous currents of history that sweep lives away. This gripping fictionalized account of the man who betrayed Anne Frank will not soon beforgotten.
Suggested Reading: WWII
Updated 6.4.07 - Night Birds
Author: Maltman, Thomas
Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 9781569474624 Date: 2007
PW
Prefigured by the twin ravens Hunin and Munin--Memory and Understanding--14-year-old Asa Senger learns that the past is as close as his own heartbeat. Without understanding that past he can neither know who he is, nor who he may become.
Updated 6.27.07 - Letter from Point Clear
Author: McFarland, Dennis
Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 9780805077667 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
Siblings return to their Southern hometown to rescue their younger sister from her marriage to an evangelical preacher, only to find their expectations turned completely upside down in this novel that reveals the common ground shared by these flawed yet captivating characters.
Updated 6.27.07 - Red Rover
Author: McNamer, Deidre
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780670063505 Date: 2007PWKirkus
From the acclaimed author of Rima in the Weeds and My Russian comes this stirring novel about idealism laid waste and the haunting, redemptive bonds of friendship.
Suggested Reading: WWII
Updated 5.31.07 - The Office of Desire
Author: Moody, Martha
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781594489495 Date: 2007Kirkus
From the author of the bestselling novel Best Friends comes this smart, touching tale about the intimate yet fragile relationships among five very different people, thrown together in a small medical office, and how each life affects the others.
Updated 5.21.07 - The Words of Every Song
Author: Moore, Liz
Publisher: Broadway $ 12.95 ISBN: 9780767926423 Date: 2007Kirkus
The Words of Every Song is a literate and original debut novel in the form of fourteen linked episodes, each centered on a character involved with the music industry in some fashion. The Words of Every Song offers an authenticity drawn from Liz Moore’ s own experience and brings an insider’ s touch to its depiction of the music industry and its denizens. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction | Debuts | Love is a Mix Tape
Updated 5.11.07 - The Rest of Her Life
Author: Moriarty, Laura
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781401302719
Kirkus
From the critically acclaimed author of The Center of Everything comes this luminous, provocative, and ultimately redemptive look at how even mothers and daughters with the best intentions can be blind to the harm they do to each other.
Updated 6.27.07 - Consumption
Author: Patterson, Kevin
Publisher: Talese $ 25 ISBN: 9780385520744 Date: 2007
PWLJ Kirkus
A penetrating portrait of generational divisions and cultural dissonance, this novel illuminates how the tenuous bonds of friendship, love, and family fly apart--and the unexpectedly tender ways in which survivors carry on.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 6.27.07
July
- The RIver Wife
Author: Agee, Jonis
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400065967 Date: 2007PW
Agees stunning novel tells the story of Jacques Ducharme, a frontier river pirate, and the five women whose lives he touches.
Updated 3.15.07 - The Headmaster Ritual
Author: Antrim, Taylor
Publisher: Houghton $ 13.95 ISBN: 9780618756827 Date: 2007Booklist
Journalist Antrims debut offers a clear-eyed examination of hidden worlds whose complexities and rules can only be understood from inside: the insular ecosystem of boarding school, the thorny dynamics of fathers and sons, and the self-deluding excesses of blind ideological commitment.
Updated 5.11.07 - The Song Before It Is Sung
Author: Cartwright, Justin
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781596912687 Date: 2007Booklist
Wonderfully written— and based on true events— The Song Before It Is Sung is a novel of profound and sensitive insight into the human condition, spanning Oxford in the 1930s, prewar Prussia, and contemporary Britain and surpassing all of Cartwright's previous works in its scope and ambition. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.11.07 - The Guardians
Author: Castillo, Ana
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400065004 Date: 2007Booklist
From American Book Award-winning author Ana Castillo comes a suspenseful, moving new novel about a sensuous, smart, and fiercely independent woman. Ana Castillo brilliantly evokes the beautiful, stark desert landscape and creates vivid characters with strong voices and resilient hearts. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 5.11.07 - God is Dead
Author: Currie, Ron, Jr.
Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 9780670038671 Date: 2007
Kirkus
Updated 6.27.07 - Our Fomer Lives in Art: Stories
Author: Davis, Jennifer S.
Publisher: Random $ 13.95 ISBN: 9780812973525 Date: 2007Booklist
Award-winning author Davis presents an arresting and fantastically imagined collection of stories set against the backdrop of the deep American South. These nine haunting stories explore big themes in a way that redeems the act of living and the value of human relationships.
Updated 5.1.07 - Mary Modern
Author: Deangelis, Camille
Publisher: Shaye Areheart $ 24 ISBN: 9780307352583 Date: 2007Booklist
A remarkable debut novel, Mary Modern weaves modern science with an old-fashioned love story, and turns an unflinching eye on the joyous, heartbreaking, and utterly unexpected consequences of human desires.
Updated 5.11.07 - My Summer of Southern Discontent
Author: Gayle, Stephanie
Publisher: Morrow $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780061236297 Date: 2007LJ
This irresistible debut novel introduces one of the quirkiest, most memorable heroines ever to head south in search of adventure.
Updated 6.4.07 - My Mother's Lovers
Author: Hope, Christoper
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 9780802118509 Date: 2007LJ
The author of Serenity House and Krugers Alp, winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, returns with a lyrical and taut novel about the past 50 years of white presence in South Africa, as seen through the eyes of Kathleen Healey, a superbly authentic female character.
Updated 3.2.07 - The Exception
Author: Jungersen, Christian
Publisher: Talese $ 26 ISBN: 9780385516297 Date: 2007LJPW
A bestseller throughout Europe, this unique and intelligent thriller delivers a gripping dissection of the nature of evil and of the paranoia and obsessions that drive ordinary people to commit unthinkable acts.
Suggested Reading: Unreliable Narrator
Updated 5.11.07 - Celluloid Memories
Author: Kitt, Sandra
Publisher: Bet $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780373830152 Date: 2007
LJ
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | Romance
Updated 6.4.07 - Soul Song
Author: Liu, Marjorie M.
Publisher: Leisure $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780843957662 Date: 2007
Booklist
M'cal, a merman, has a voice with the immense power to uplift or destroy, but only the love of the beautiful Kitala Belle can release him from his enslavement at the hands of a witch using him for evil.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 7.11.07
- The Chess Machine
Author: Lorh, Robert
Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781594201264 Date: 2007Kirkus
Based on a true story, this breathtaking historical adventure describes a legendary invention that astounded all who crossed its path. In 1770 Vienna, an unbeatable chess-playing automaton is unveiled. Hailed as a great invention, it is really nothing more than a brilliant illusion.
Updated 5.21.07 - Tempting
Author: Mallery, Susan
Publisher: Hqn $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780373772100 Date: 2007
Booklist
After three romantic flame-outs in a year and a restaurant career going nowhere, Dani Buchanan needs a fresh start. She goes looking for her biological father, but never expects to find a senator running for president. As his long-lost 'love child, ' Dani could seriously derail the election— something his handsome campaign manager Alex Canfield isn't going to let happen. Dani isn't about to let Alex run her life, no matter how tempting she finds him— and Alex isn't going to allow Dani to melt his cynicism, no matter how close he has to get. The last thing either of them wants is love, especially with scandals brewing and family trouble on the way. But Dani and Alex are forced to trust each other, and when trust turns to passion, the potential for disaster is only a tabloid scandal away. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 7.11.07
- The Complete Stories
Author: Malouf, David
Publisher: Pantheon $ 27.50 ISBN: 9780375424977 Date: 2007KirkusPW
This single volume gathers together all of internationally acclaimed writer Malouf's previously published short stories with a brilliant new collection of his short fiction.
Updated 5.1.07 - Wired
Author: Maverick, Liz
Publisher: Shomi $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780505527240 Date: 2007PW
When a young woman learns that whole time lines and identites can be changed by the two mortal enemies who accost her on the street, she must decide who and what she wants to beand which man to trust and love.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 5.31.07 - Channeling Mark Twain
Author: Muske-Dukes, Carol
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780375509278 Date: 2007Booklist
From National Book Award finalist and much lauded author Muske-Dukes comes an explosive and lyrical novel set in a womens prison, which explores the worlds of poetry, politics, and sex in 1970s New York City.
Updated 5.21.07 - The Opposite House
Author: Oyeyemi, Helen
Publisher: Talese $ 23.95 ISBN 9780385513845 Date: 2007LJ
In a dazzling follow-up to The Icarus Girl, Oyeyemi explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of two young women and their search for the truth about faith and identity.
Updated 5.1.07 - Salt
Author: Page, Jeremy
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780670038688 Date: 2007PW
A haunting, evocative portrait of three generations of a family, this debut novel explores the relationship between people and the landscape in which they live.
Updated 5.31.07 - Lets Misbehave
Author: Plumley, Lisa
Publisher: Zebra $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780821780527 Date: 2007Booklist
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 5.21.07 - Peony in Love
Author: See, Lisa
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400064663 Date: 2007PW
Immersed in the richness and magic of the Chinese vision of the afterlife, transcending even death, Sees novel beautifully explores the many manifestations of love and addresses the age-old desire of women to be heard.
Updated 5.1.07 - Adieu, My Love
Author: Turner, Lynn M.
Publisher: Avalon $ 21.95 ISBN: 9780803498365 Date: 2007Booklist
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 5.21.07
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