9/11 Stars

Fiction and Nonfiction related to 9/11 Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

Fiction

  • Dear Zoe
    Author: Beard, Philiip
    Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670034010 Date: 2005
    star Booklist
    Beard's stunning debut is an epistolary novel written from 15-year-old Tess DeNunzio to her little sister Zoe. After Zoe's accidental death on September 11, 2001--a day so many others died--Tess's family is numbed by their personal tragedy. Not sinceThe Lovely Bones has there been a study of grief, adolescence, and healing that rings as true asDear Zoe.
    Updated 2.15.05
  • Windows on the World
    Author: Beigbeder, Frederic
    Publisher: Miramax $ 24.95 ISBN: 1401352235 Date: 2005
    star PW
    Weaving together philosophy, myth, world politics, and humor, this stunning work of literary daring is a fearless, moving, and unsettling novel set against the events of September 11.
    Updated 1.29.05
  • Falling Man
    Author: DeLillo, Don
    Publisher: Scribner $ 26 ISBN: 9781416546023 Date: 2007
    starPWstarKirkusstarBooklist
    In this essential work of fiction, DeLillo traces the way the events of September 11 kindled or rekindled relationships and reconfigured Americas perceptions of the world in a novel that is beautiful, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, redemptive.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 5.1.07
  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    Author: Foer, Jonathan Safran
    Publisher: Houghton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0618329706 Date: 2005
    star Kirkusstar PWstar LJ
    Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 3.10.05
  • The Whole World Over
    Author: Glass, Julia
    Publisher: Pantheon $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375422749 Date: 2006
    star PW star LJ star Kirkus
    In this new work by the bestselling author of Three Junes, Greenie Duquette, the fiery proprietor of her own Greenwich Village pastry business, becomes the personal chef for the governor of New Mexico, setting in motion a period of adventure and upheaval that culminates in the tragedy of 9/11.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 3.20.06
  • The Good Life
    Author: McInerney, Jay
    Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375411402 Date: 2006
    star Booklist
    Rich with characters and events both comic and harrowing, this novel reveals a time and place, and the lives impacted by the events that occurred on 9/11 in New York--people battered by memory, regret, and unimaginable shock and yet determined to discover what the good life truly is.
    Updated 12.5.05
  • L'America
    Author: McPhee, Martha
    Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151011710 Date: 2006
    star LJ star Booklist
    The events of September 11th serve as a catalyst for the unfolding story of Beth, an American, and Cesare, an Italian, who meet on a small Aegean island and begin a transformative love affair that spans two continents, two decades, and two lifetimes.
    Updated 3.6.06
  • Absent Friends
    Author: Rozan, S.J.
    Publisher: Delacorte $ 24 ISBN: 0385338031 Date: 2004
    star PW star Bookliststar LJ
    The secrets of a group of childhood friends unravel in this haunting thriller by Edgar Award winner S.J. Rozan. Set in New York in the unforgettable aftermath of September 11, Absent Friends brilliantly captures a time and place unlike any other.
    Suggested Reading: All Stars
    Updated 9.22.04
  • A Day at the Beach
    Author: Schulman, Helen
    Publisher: Hougton $ 24 ISBN: 9780618746545 Date: 2007
    starLJ
    Taking place over a manic 24 hours, this is a fast-paced, razor-sharp story whose personal tragedy contains sparks of dark humor about American life pre- and post-9/11. It is a story that speaks to memories.
    Suggested Reading: Time
    Updated 3.2.07
  • The Writing on the Wall
    Author: Schwartz, Lynne Sharon
    Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582432996 Date: 2005
    star LJ
    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
    Updated 4.7.05
  • The Submission
    Author: Waldeman, Amy
    $ 27 ISBN: 9780374271565 Date: 2011
    starPW star Booklist star LJ
    Cool, eloquent, raising two fatherless children, Claire has emerged as the most visible of the widows who became a potent political force in the aftermath of the catastrophe. She longs for her husband, but she has found her mission: she sits on a jury charged with selecting a fitting memorial for the victims of the attack.
    Updated 7.25.11

Nonfiction

  • Wake-Up Call
    Author: Breitweiser, Kristen
    Publisher: Warner $ 24.99 ISBN: 0446579327 Date: 2006
    star Kirkus
    This is the eye-opening, moving, and politically explosive story of a woman who was catapulted from a quiet suburban family life into a courageous battle for justice after her husband was killed in the Trade Center attacks.
    Updated 7.11.06
  • 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight To Survive Inside the Twin Towers
    Author: Dwyer, Jim & Kevin Flynn
    Publisher: Times $ 26 ISBN: 0805076824 Date: 2005
    star Kirkusstar Booklist
    Of the millions of words written about September 11, 2001, most were told from the outside looking in. "New York Times" reporters Dwyer and Flynn have taken the opposite and far more revealing-approach, capturing the little-known stories of the nearly 12,000 ordinary people who took extraordinary steps to save themselves and others.
    Updated 11.29.04
  • A Widow's Walk
    Author: Fontana, Marian
    Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743246241 Date: 2005
    star Kirkusstar
    Fontana, president of the 9/11 Widows and Victim's Family Association, pens a moving, lyrical, and profoundly funny memoir of a year in the life of a firefighter wife widowed in the 9/11 attacks.
    Updated 6.29.05
  • Watching the World Change
    Author: Friend, David
    Publisher: FSG $ 30 ISBN: 0374299331 Date: 2006
    star Kirkus star PW
    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.
    Updated 7.11.06
  • Firehouse
    Author: Halberstam, David
    Publisher: Hyperion $ 22.95 ISBN: 1401300057 Date: 2006
    star Kirkus star LJ
    A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist offers an intimate portrait of Engine 40, Ladder 35 on the Upper West Side of New York City, which lost 12 men in the World Trade Center attack. Halberstam tells a story that is about the individuals themselves, as well as the effect this cataclysmic event has had on the victims' families, their surviving colleagues, and their community.
    Updated 8.16.06
  • The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
    Author: Jacobson, Sid/Ernie Colon
    Publisher: Hill & Wang $ 30/16.95 ISBN: 0809057387/0809057395   Date: 2006
    star Kirkus
    This accessible version of the 9/11 Commission's official report on the terrorist attacks, released in 2005, puts at every American's fingertips the most defining event of the century. Jacobson's text faithfully captures the report's investigative thoroughness, while Colon's stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original.
    Updated 7.11.06
  • American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center
    Author: Langewiesche, William
    Publisher: North Point $ 22 ISBN: 0865475822 Date: 2002
    star PW
    With the "knowledge and passion as well as . . . careful eloquence for which his reportage is known" ("The New York Times Book Review"), Langewiesche anatomizes the physical details of the collapse and deconstruction, capturing in the process the contests of politics and personality that were its aftershock.
    Updated 8.16.06
  • Unmeasured Strenght
    Author: Manning, Lauren
    $ 25 ISBN: 9780805094633 Date: 2011
    starBooklist
    She had a Wall Street job, a loving husband and infant son, and a confidence born of intelligence and beauty. But on 9/11, good fortune was no match for catastrophe. When a wall of flame burned more than 80 percent of her body, Manning began a 10-year journey of survival and rebirth that tested her almost beyond human endurance.
    Updated 8.16.11
  • The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It
    Author: Miller, John, Michael Stone and Chris Mitchell
    Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786869003 Date: 2003
    star Kirkus
    Written by ABC News journalist John Miller and co-writer Michael Stone, a blow by blow investigation into the terrorist cells involved in the September 11 attacks, using information gleaned from sources within the FBI and CIA, and from reporting Miller has gathered during his many years as a reporter covering the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, through the present.
    Updated 7.3.02
  • Manhattan to Baghdad: Dispatches from the Frontline of the War on Terrorism
    Author: McGeough, Paul
    Publisher: Allen & Unwin $ 17.95 (paper) ISBN: 1741140994 Date: 2003
    star Kirkus
    A foreign correspondent's analysis of the international repercussions from the events of September 11.
    Updated 5.9.03
  • 11-Sept: An Oral History
    Author: Murphy, Dean
    Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385507682 Date: 2003
    star Kirkus
    Published in commemoration of the tragic events on September 11, 2001, this moving collection of 40 first-person accounts captures the courage and compassion exhibited at that time by people of all walks of life.
    Updated 7.3.02
  • Sixteen Acres: Conflict, Vanity, and the Future of Ground Zero
    Author: Nobel, Philiip
    Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 0805074945 Date: 2005
    star Kirkus
    Tracing the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site from graveyard to playground for high design, insurgent critic Nobel strips away the hyperbole to reveal the secret life--including a tally of deceptions and betrayals--of the century's most charged building project.
    Updated 11.9.04
  • In The Shadow of No Towers
    Author: Spiegelman, Art
    Publisher: Pantheon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0375423079 Date: 2004
    star PW star Booklist
    In his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, Art Spiegelman offers a deeply personal, politically charged, graphically and emotionally stunning account of the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001--a no-holds-barred political statement and a revelation of the cultural reach of cartooning.
    Updated 10.4.04
  • The Looming Tower: Al Queda and the Road to 9/11
    Author: Wright, Lawrence
    Publisher: Knopf $ 27.95 ISBN: 037541486x Date: 2006
    star Kirkus star PW star 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: All Stars
    Updated 8.16.06