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Literary Fiction
Not all books on this list are suitable for all readers, parental guidance should be used.
Fiction
Literary Fiction
Adult Books for Teens Booklist
Literary Fiction for ages 12+
Not all books on this list are suitable for all readers, parental guidance should be used.
A list of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sourAugust 4, 2007, Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on this list. Titles are listed alphabetically by author.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.Fiction
- Love and Country
Author: Adam, Christina
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0613765000 Date: 2003
Kirkus
The author of Any Small Thing Can Save You, a collection of stories, now pens a moving and lyrically written debut novel of love and rodeo in the American West.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 7.8.03 - Human Capital
Author: Amidon, Stephen
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374173508 Date: 2004KirkusPWBooklist
As the fortunes of two crumbling families become perilously interwoven, a terrible accident leads one of the patriarchs to begin speculating with human lives instead of money. The unforeseen consequences bring the novel to a devastating climax.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 9.7.04 - Finding Caruso
Author: Barnes, Kim
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399149678 Date: 2003Booklist
The work of an award-winning memoirist and poet, Finding Caruso is an unsentimental and unforgettable novel about two brothers trying to find their place in the world.
Updated 2.28.03 - Special
Author: Bathurst, Bella
Publisher: Mariner $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 0618263276 Date: 2003Library Journal
A group of schoolgirls goes off on a field trip to the English countryside in a story that will remind readers of Lord of the Flies. Put up at a manor house that has seen better days, they discover that the nearby town offers alcohol, drugs, and sex--grown up downfalls that are at once tempting and terrifying.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 3.13.03 - Saul and Patsy
Author: Baxter, Charles
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375410295 Date: 2003KirkusBooklist
From the acclaimed author of The Feast of Love--nominated for a National Book Award--comes a new novel about the arcs and pitches of event and emotion that shape the lives of a young married couple.
Updated 8.13.03 - Willful Creatures: Stories
Author: Bender, Aimee
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385501137 Date: 2005PWBooklist
The author of the critically acclaimed story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt returns with more sublime, beguiling, and breathtakingly original stories of love, sex, heartbreak, and potato babies.
Updated 7.11.05 - The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green
Author: Braff, Joshua
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN:1565124200 Date: 2004Booklist
A hilarious and heartbreaking novel about the unreasonable expectations a narcissistic father places on his less-than-perfect son.
Updated 7.6.04 - Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards
Author: Butler, Robert Olen
Publisher: $ ISBN: Date:BooklistKirkus
In his dazzling new book of stories, Butler explores America by finding artistic inspiration in an unlikely and fascinating place--the backs of postcards from the early 20th century.
Updated 6.1.04 - 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 - Bruiser
Author: Choaro, Ian
Publisher: Atria $ 24 ISBN: 0743437756 Date: 2003Booklist
In an accomplished first novel, Choro captures all the beauty, violence, and wonder of life as perceived by a ten-year-old boy in search of relief from the chaos of a shattered home.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 2.28.03 - Specimen Days
Author: Cunningham, Michael
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374299625 Date: 2005BooklistLJ
The same group of characters, a young boy, an older man, and a young woman, are present in each historical period of this genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in New York. The novel provides a meditation on the direction and meaning of America's destiny.
Updated 5.18.05 - The Darwin Conspiracy
Author: Darnton, John
Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400041376 Date: 2005LJ
Fact and fiction become intertwined in this novel that explores the mysteries attached to the life and work of Charles Darwin. The narrative unfolds through Darwin's view, that of his youngest daughter, Lizzie, and two scholars.
Suggested Reading: Darwin | Naturalists | Evolution
Updated 9.17.05 - A Seahorse Year
Author: D'Erasmo, Stacey
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618439234 Date: 2004Booklist
D'Erasmo's novel is about love at the very edge, about the things people do out of love, the unexpected risks of intimacy, and how families shatter and re-form under duress.
Updated 6.10.04 - I Sailed
With Magellan
Author: Dybek, Stuart
Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 0374174075 Date: 2003KirkusBooklist
From the prizewinning writer comes a superb new work: a novel-in-stories, 11 masterful tales set in Chicago's south side and told by a single voice with remarkable narrative power.
Updated 10.23.03 - San Remo Drive: A Novel
from Memory
Author: Epstein, Leslie
Publisher: Handsel $ 24 ISBN: 1590510666 Date: 2003Booklist
San Remo Drive is a novel of many dimensions. It explores the glamorous life of Hollywood and evokes the landscape of Southern California both as it is no and as it appears before the migration to it of millions. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Hollywood & Film Stars
Updated 5.29.03 - 26A
Author: Evans, Diana
Publisher: Morrow $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060820918 Date: 2005PWBooklist
A hauntingly beautiful, wickedly funny and devastatingly moving novel of innocence and dreams that announces the arrival of a major new talent to the literary scene. The attic room at 26a Waifer Avenue in the lower-middle-class London neighborhood of Neasden is a sanctuary for identical twins Georgia and Bessi Hunter. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Twins
Updated 8.15.05 - White Ghost Girls
Author: Greenaway, Alice
Publisher: Grove $ 13 ISBN: 0802170188 Date: 2006KirkusBooklist
In her astonishing literary debut, Greenway tells a tale of sacrifice and solidarity between two American sisters who tumble into their teenage years in 1967 Hong Kong, against an extraordinary backdrop that is both sensuous and dangerous.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Historical Fiction
Updated 11.14.05 - Someone to
Run With
Author: Grossman, David
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374266573 Date: 2004Kirkus
Someone to Run With is the most popular work to date from "a writer who has been, for nearly two decades, one of the most original and talented . . . anywhere" (The New York Times Book Review) The bestseller is hailed by the Israeli press for its mixture of fairy-tale magic, emotional sensitivity, and gritty realism.
Updated 10.8.03 - Forever
Author: Hamill, Pete
Publisher: Little, Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316341118 Date: 2003PW
Cormac O'Connor, who arrives in New York City from Ireland in 1741, has been given the gift of immortality--but only on the condition that he never leave the island of Manhattan. Through his eyes, this magical epic follows the city's transformation from a burgeoning settlement to the thriving metropolis of the present day. But this is also Cormac's story as he explores the mysteries of time and immortality, death and loss, sex and love.
Suggested Reading: Immortalism | Time Travel Stars
Updated 12.23.02 - 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 - The English Teacher
Author: King, Lily
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871138972 Date: 2005PWLJ
When Vida Belou suddenly marries a kindly widower and moves in to stepmother his three children, the prescribed life she had constructed for herself and son collapses. As her known world vanishes, her son takes control and moves them both to a place where they can begin again.
Updated 6.29.05 - The Midwife's Tale
Author: Laskas, Gretchen Moran
Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385335512 Date: 2003Library Journal
Incorporating the whimsical mountain lore of Appalachia's past, Laskas has crafted a story true to its time, and a cast of characters as poignant as they are original. Elizabeth and her Mama know intimately the histories of every family that comes knocking on their door, each love, loss, and shadowy secret. Few, however, know their own.
Updated 3.13.03 - Prospero's Daughter
Author: Nunez, Elizabeth
Publisher: One World $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345455355 Date: 2006KirkusBooklistLJ
Loosely based on Shakespeare's play The Tempest, this new novel by American Book Award- winning author Nunez tackles the issues of race, class, science, and passion- and interweaves the English, African, and Caribbean influences Nunez is known for.
Sugggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars | All Stars
Updated 2.28.06 - The Last of Her Kind
Author: Nunez, Sigrid
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374183813 Date: 2006PW
Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which she was born. A decade later, Ann is convicted of murder, and Georgette finds more complicated and mysterious forces at work.
Updated 10.11.05 - The Night Country:
Or, the Darkness on the Edge of Town
Author: O'Nan, Stewart
Publisher: FSG $ 22 ISBN: 0374222150 Date: 2003LJ
A strange and unsettling ghost story in the tradition of Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson, The Night Country creeps through the streets of one bedroom community, reaching into the connected yet isolated lives of three people changed forever by a car accident.
Suggested Reading: Ghosts
Updated 8.14.03 - Heir
to the Glimmering World
Author: Ozick, Cynthia
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618470492 Date: 2004KirkusBooklistOW
Ozick pays homage to the most beloved writers of the 19th century--Charles Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot--in a story set on the outskirts of the Bronx in the 1930s.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 8.9.04 - Our
Father Who Art in a Tree
Author: Pascoe, Judy
Publisher: Random $ 19.95 ISBN: 037550799x Date: 2003Library Journal
Introducing a superb new talent--a former Australian acrobat who is now a standup comedienne in England--this richly written novel explores how a family deals with the loss of a parent in an imaginative and original way.
Updated 1.16.03 - Changed Man
Author: Prose, Francine
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060196742 Date: 2005BooklistPWKirkus
Masterfully plotted, darkly comic, A Changed Man illuminates the everyday transactions in lives, exposing what remains invisible in plain sight in America's drug-addicted and media-driven culture.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1.5.05 - 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 Plot Against America
Author: Roth, Philip
Publisher: Houghton $ 26 ISBN: 0618509283 Date: 2004KirkusPWBooklistLJ
In this alternate history, Pulitzer Prize-winner Roth considers what it would be like for his Newark family--and for a million such families all over the country--during the menacing years of a Charles Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews would have every reason to expect the worst.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Alternative History
Updated 9.22.04 - Set This House
In Order: A Romance of Souls
Author: Ruff, Matt
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060195622 Date: 2003PW
Andrew Gage, 28, is trying to live a normal, stable life as a multiple personality. One day Andrew meets Penny Driver, who is also multiple, but doesn't know it yet. When a couple of Penny's other personalities try to enlist Andrew's aid, they set in motion a chain of events that threatens to bring Andrew's "house" crashing down.
Updated 1.28.03 - The Writing on the Wall
Author: Schwartz, Lynne Sharon
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582432996 Date: 2005LJBooklist
Thirty-four and decidedly independent, Renata has been known to keep her involvement with people--men in particular--to a minimum. Then Jack, patient, solid, and sexy, enters her life. One bright September morning, as Renata walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to work, the sky bursts open and change comes without warning. The Writing on the Wall is a profoundly engaging novel about how one woman saw--and we all continue to ponder--the defining event of our times. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: 9/11 Stars
Updated 5.9.05 - Love and Hydrogen:
New and Selected Stories
Author: Shepard, Jim
Publisher: Vintage $ 13 (paper) ISBN: 1400033497 Date: 2004Booklist
From a writer long hailed by his peers, adored by the critics, and worshiped by readers everywhere comes a hard-hitting collection of both familiar and new fiction.
Updated 1.15.04 - Project X
Author: Shepard, Jim
Publisher: Knopf $ 20 ISBN: 140004071x Date: 2004KirkusBooklist
Hanratty and Flake, two junior high school students, feel powerless against their situation at school until they gradually begin flirting with the most horrible revenge of all.
Updated 1.15.04 - Gentlemen of Space
Author: Sher, Ira
Publisher: Free Pr $ 23 ISBN: 0743242181 Date: 2003Booklist
Magnolia Court is not the most magical place in Florida, but to young Georgie Finch, this outsized housing project is the center of the universe. In this superbly crafted and imaginative novel, Georgie tells the story of when his father, Jerry, won a competition in 1976 to become the first civilian man on the moon.
Suggested Reading: Space Age Stars
Updated 3.31.03 - Wedding in December
Author: Shreve, Anita
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316738999 Date: 2005LJ
The author of the "New York Times" bestseller Light on Snow returns with a powerful new novel about old friends, a wedding, and a gathering that will change their lives.
Updated 9.17.05 - The Accidental
Author: Smith, Ali
Publisher: Pantheon $ 22.95 ISBN: 0375422250 Date: 2006PW
From the author of Hotel World--shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize--comes an inventive and thought-provoking novel about a chance encounter that irrevocably changes a family's understanding of itself.
Updated 10.31.05 - On Beauty
Author: Smith, Zadie
Publisher: Penguin $ 25.95 ISBN: 1594200637 Date: 2005KirkusPWLJ
Smith's third novel is an analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, and an honest look at people's deceptions. An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that forces everyone to examine the assumptions which underpin their lives.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 8.24.05 - Saving Fish From Drowning
Author: Tan, Amy
Publisher: Putnam $ 26.95 ISBN: 0399153012 Date: 2005Booklist
On an ill-fated art expedition into Burma, 11 Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas-morning tour--and disappear. Through twists of fate, they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of a leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages of the Myanmar military regime.On an ill-fated art expedition into Burma, 11 Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas-morning tour--and disappear. Through twists of fate, they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of a leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages of the Myanmar military regime.
Suggested Reading: Burma
Updated 9.17.05 - Guru of Love
Author: Upadhyay, Samrat
Publisher: Houghton $ 23 ISBN: 0618247270 Date: 2003Booklist
Upadhyay's first novel showcases his finest writing and his signature themes. The Guru of Love is a moving and important story--important for what it illuminates about the human need to love as well as lust, and for the light it shines on the political situation in Nepal and elsewhere.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 11.05.02 - Outside Valentine
Author: Ward, Liza
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805075984 Date: 2004PWBooklistLJ
Debut novelist Ward interweaves a trio of voices--haunting, dangerous, and full of longing--mysteriously linked by a shocking crime and the search to heal the past.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | All Stars
Updated 9.20.04 - Dancing
With Einstein
Author: Wenner, Kate
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743251644 Date: 2004Booklist
From acclaimed author Kate Wenner comes a highly original new novel that explores the lasting effects of the fear of nuclear war on a woman whose father helped develop the atomic bomb.
Suggested Reading: Atomic Age Stars
Updated 3.11.04 - Broken As Things Are
Author: Witt, Martha
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 080507595x Date: 2004Kirkus
"A sensitive Southern tale of weirdly imaginative children and hapless adults. Ms. Witt has staked out a territory somewhere between Harper Lee and Flannery O'Connor." - E. L. Doctorow. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 6.10.04 - 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.
Updated 1.29.05
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