Overbooked Book Lists

Summer Reading 2004

Page Modified: June 19, 2009

Updated as time allows...

Selected titles for summer reading pleasure. Also, check out the previous lists - many of the titles on those lists are now available in paperback.

All Stars List - Fiction & Nonfiction Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction

Try something new - First Novels & Short Story Debuts

Genre Fiction Lists:Romance/Romantic Suspense | Speculative | Inspirational | Mystery & Suspense | General/Historical

Don't Miss Out (great reads from 2003) Book a Trip - Travel Tales List

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All Star Fiction (all genres) - titles with 3 or more stars from the following review sources: Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly

• Natasha: And Other Stories
  Author: Bezmozgis, David
  Publisher: FSG $ 18 ISBN: 0374281416
  LJKirkusPW
  The stories in this collection capture the immigrant experience with serious wit, while evoking boyhood and youth, and the battle for selfhood in a passionately loving Jewish family.
  Updated 4.19.04
• The Lady and the Unicorn
  Author: Chevalier, Tracy
  Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525947671
  BooklistKirkusPW
  An extraordinary story exquisitely told, Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn weaves history and fiction into a beautiful, timeless, and intriguing literary tapestry that rivals in grace and grandeur the masterpiece that inspired it.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 12.8.03
• The Enemy: A Jack Reacher Novel
  Author: Child, Lee
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 25 ISBN: 0385336675 Date: 2004
  LJKirkusPWBooklist
  Jack Reacher. Hero. Loner. Soldier. Soldier's son. An elite military cop, he was one of the army's brightest stars. But in every soldier's life, there is a turning point. One case that can shatter a career or turn a lawman into a renegade. And make him question words like honor, valor, and duty. For Jack Reacher, this is that case....
  Updated 3.22.04
• Plain Heathen Mischief
  Author: Clark, Martin
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400040965
  KirkusPWLJ
  Of Martin Clark's spectacular first novel, the New York Times Book Review wrote, Like Nick Hornby in High Fidelity and Thomas McGuane in Nothing but Blue Skies, Clark has produced an oddly stirring portrait of a man in existential disarray." Which--wrote Malcolm Jones in Newsweek--made me laugh so hard I fell off the sofa." Plain Heathen Mischief ups the ante in existential hilarity; as Joel King (a defrocked Baptist minister) finds life even more bedeviling once he's served six months for a highly implausible crime. Now he's being sued for a cool $5 million, his wife wants divorce, the refuge provided by his sister turns as vicious as his parole officer, and a fresh start in Montana offers no hope for ex-cons of any religious persuasion. On the upside, a kindly former parishioner soon involves the hapless Joel in a flock of con men, crooked lawyers, conniving youth, and authorities bent on prosecution and harassment. In a bravura feat of storytelling Clark ranges from the cross to the double cross from Virginia to Las Vegas, from jail cells to trout streams, as he follows his Job-like hero to a redemption that no reader could possibly predict. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor
  Updated 5.4.04
• Dew Breaker
  Author: Danticat, Edwidge
  Publisher: Knopf $ 22 ISBN: 1400041147
  LJKirkusBooklist
  From the acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory comes a powerful story of a man known as a "dew breaker," a Haitian torturer, whose past crimes lie beneath his new American reality.
  Updated 2.23.04
• Sweet Land Stories
  Author: Doctorow, E.L.
  Publisher: Random $ 22.95 ISBN: 1400062047
  KirkusBooklistLJPW
  In these magnificent portraits of people living life in American today,the bestselling author brilliantly ranges over the American continent, from Alaska to Washington D.C., in fiction that illuminates the heart of modern life.
  Updated 3.22.04
• Confessions of Max Tivoli
  Author: Greer, Andrew Sean
  Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374128715
  PWLJBooklist
  A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which people live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Immortalism Fiction Stars
  Updated 2.5.04
• With
  Author: Harington, Donald
  Publisher: Toby $ 19.95 ISBN: 1592640508
  KirkusPWBooklist
  The newest novel from the master of Stay More, Harington's mythical village in the Arkansas Ozarks, in which a peaceable kingdom is created in isolation from a most bizarre abduction gone wrong.
  Updated 3.22.04
• The Hundredth Man
  Author: Kerley, Jack
  Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 052594821x Date: 2004
  BooklistKirkusLJ
  Recalling Michael Connelly's taut storytelling and James Patterson's searing narrative twists, Kerley creates a world where heroes can't succeed without madmen, and the dead are the most dangerous of all.
  Suggested Reading: Psycho Killers | Serial Killers | Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 4.20.04
• Dating Dead Men
  Author: Kozak, Harley Jane
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385510187 Date: 2004
  LJKirkusPW
  Kozak's debut novel is a smart, funny, fast-paced mystery in the tradition of Janet Evanovich featuring greeting card artist and small business owner Wollie Shelley, a woman who's looking for love--and job satisfaction--in all the wrong places when she literally stumbles across a murder that irrevocably changes her life (in some ways, for the better).
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 12.8.03
• The Dead Sit Round in a Ring
  Author: Lawrence, David
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312327102 Date: 2004
  KirkusPWBooklist
  "Four people sitting in a ring. Two men and two women. All of them dead." Thus begins a case that will take DS Stella Mooney from the fabulous flats of Notting Hill to the decidedly tougher side of town. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Debuts
  Updated 5.7.04
• Aloft
  Author: Lee, Chang-Rae
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573222631
  KirkusBooklistPW
  Lee burst on the scene with Native Speaker, which won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award. Now, with Aloft, Lee has expanded his range and proves himself a master storyteller, able to observe his characters' flaws and weaknesses and, at the same time, celebrate their humanity.
  Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars
  Updated 3.1.04
• Old Boys
  Author: McCarry, Charles
  Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585675458 Date: 2004
  LJKirkusBooklist
  When crack intelligence agent Paul Christopher disappears, his ex-agent cousin enlists the support of four other retired colleagues to find him. Harassed by American intelligence and hunted by terrorists, they travel the globe in search of the unspeakably dangerous truth.
  Suggested Reading: Espionage
  Updated 5.7.04
• The Madonna of Excelsior
  Author: Mda, Zakes
  Publisher: FSG $ 23 ISBN: 0374200084
  KirkusLJPW
  A new novel by a towering presence in contemporary South African literature. By turns earthy, witty, and tragic, The Madonna of Excelsior is a brilliant depiction of life in South Africa and of the dramatic changes between the 1970s and the present.
  Updated 3.15.04
• Waterborne
  Author: Murkoff, Bruce
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 1400040388
  LJPWBooklist
  A panorama of human desire and enterprise, this debut novel is exceptional for its ambition, generosity, characters and grasp of history.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 2.5.04
• The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters
  Author: Robinson, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316735027
  KirkusPWBooklist
  The bestselling status (and subsequent blockbuster film adaptations) of Bridget Jones's Diary and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is proof of the enduring strength of this category. Although the novel is invented, Robinson is a successful Hollywood producer whose credits include Braveheart and Last Orders.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 11.12.03
• Judgement of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome
  Author: Saylor, Steven
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312271190 Date: 2004
  KirkusBooklistPW
  In the late days of the Roman civil war, Gordianus the Finder is caught in Egypt in the midst of the last struggle between Pompeii and Julius Caesar, and between Ptolemy and Cleopatra while he searches for his missing wife.
  Updated 5.10.04
• The Confession
  Author: Steinhauer, Olen
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312303289 Date: 2004
  KirkusPWLJBooklist
  Eastern Europe 1956: Comrade Inpector Ferenc Kolyeszar, homicide detective and aspiring writer, is watching his life unravel. Estranged from his wife, frustrated by writer's block and tracking a murderer through the shadowy capital. By the author of Bridge of Sighs.
  Suggested Reading: European Crime Fiction
  Updated 1.10.04
• The Confusion
  Author: Stephenson, Neal
  Publisher: Morrow $ 27.95 ISBN: 0060523867
  KirkusBooklistPWLJ
  In this profoundly compelling adventure, Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in the late 1600s on the high seas. It is a time of breathtaking genius and discovery for men and women whose exploits define an age known as Baroque.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 4.5.04
• The Master
  Author: Toibin, Colm
  Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743250400
  KirkusBooklistPWLJ
  "A deep, lovely, and enthralling book that engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life: splendidly conceived and composed by a writer who is himself a master of his art."--Shirley Hazzard (The Great Fire).
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Biographical Fiction | Author Author
  Updated 5.4.04
• The Last Crossing
  Author: Vanderhaeghe, Guy
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 087113912x
  KirkusBooklistPW
  A #1 bestseller in Canada, The Last Crossing is a sweeping tale of breathtaking quests, adventurous detours and hard-won redemption which takes us on a journey from Oxford to the dusty whiskey trading posts of the 19th century American and Canadian west. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction | Western Stars
  Updated 1.5.04

More Fiction All Stars

All Star Nonfiction - titles with 3 or more stars from the following review sources: Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly

• Blue Blood
  Author: Conlon, Edward
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 26.95 ISBN: 1573222666
  KirkusBooklistPW
  With brio and a thrilling literary style, Conlon depicts his life on the force--from his first days walking a beat in the South Bronx to his ascent to detective. The pace is relentless, the stories hypnotic, the scope nothing less than grand.
  Updated 3.29.04
• The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus
  Author: Gingerich, Owen
  Publisher: Walker $ 25 ISBN: 0802714153
  PWBooklistLJ
  Part biography of Nicolaus Copernicus, part scientific exploration, part bibliographic quest, Gingerich's book will offer new appreciation of the history of science and cosmology.
  Updated 3.15.04
• Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
  Author: Patchett, Ann
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060572140
  KirkusBooklistLibrary Journal
  Tender but brutal, this portrait of unwavering commitment shines light on the little explored world of women's friendships through the author's relationship with critically acclaimed and recently deceased author, Lucy Grealy.
  Updated 5.20.04
• Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants
  Author: Sullivan, Robert
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582343853
  KirkusPWLJ
  Behold the rat, dirty and disgusting. The author of A Whale Hunt now turns the lowly rat into the star of the most perversely intriguing, remarkable, and unexpectedly elegant book of the season.
  Suggested Reading: Nature
  Updated 2.2.04
• Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir
  Author: Tucker, Neely
  Publisher: Crown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0609609769
  KirkusBooklistPWLJ
  In the heart of conflict-torn Zimbabwe, an American couple fights to save the life of--and ultimately adopt--an infant girl who had been abandoned beneath an acacia tree on the day she was born.
  Updated 1.15.04

Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction

• Acquainted With the Night: An Intimate Journey Through the World After Dark
  Author: Dewdney, Christopher
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582343969
  KirkusPW
  Dewdney takes readers on a fascinating, hour-by-hour journey through the nocturnal realm, covering bedtime stories, festivals of the night, fireworks, nightclubs, astronomy, sleep and dreams, the graveyard shift, ladies of the night, the art of night, and more.
  Updated 4.26.04
• Skeletons on the Zahara
  Author: King, Dean
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316835145
  KirkusPW
  While there have been numerous historical adventure narratives published, this is the first major work to take place in the greatest desert of all. King retraced parts of Captain James Riley's three-month trek through the desert, going for days consuming only camel urine and locusts. The book is rich with the sort of detail one could only get from being on the scene, in the heart of the desert.
  Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
  Updated 11.17.03
• Do You Remember Me: A Father, a Daughter, and a Search for the Self
  Author: Levine, Judith
  Publisher: Free Pr $ 26 ISBN: 074322230x
  KirkusPW
  Unsentimental yet moving, dead serious yet darkly funny--this incisively written memoir recounts Levine's struggle to care for her aging father while offering an unflinching critique of our culture's attitude toward the old and disabled.
  Updated 4.19.04
• The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan
  Author: Macintyre, Ben
  Publisher: FSG $ 24 ISBN: 0374201781
  KirkusPW
  In the year 1838, a young adventurer raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush in the wilds of Afghanistan. Macintyre tells the astonishing true story of Josiah Harlan, the first American ever to enter Afghanistan, the man who would be the first and last American king.
  Updated 2.10.04
• Name All the Animals: A Memoir
  Author: Smith, Alison
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743255224
  KirkusLJ
  A story of grief and secret love, of a family holding on to the memory of a lost child, Name all the Animals is an extraordinary memoir about a girl who learns to define herself beyond the death of her brother.
  Updated 3.1.04
• Blood Done Sign My Name: A Memoir
  Author: Tyson, Timothy B.
  Publisher: Crown $ 24 ISBN: 0609610589
  KirkusPW
  Tyson sheds a new light on the struggle for racial justice as he weaves together childhood memories with the realities of present-day Oxford, NC--his hometown--where a young black man was killed in the town square by a Klansmen in 1970 and acquitted by an all-white jury.
  Updated 4.19.04

More Nonfiction Stars First Novels Mystery, Suspense, Crime Fiction:

• Walking Money
  Author: Born, James O.
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399151699 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Filled with a rich array of characters, a constantly twisting plot, and an astonishing authenticity, this novel is indeed proof that "Jim Born is the real thing" (Elmore Leonard).
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor
  Updated 5.7.04
• The Rule of Four
  Author: Caldwell, Ian & Dustin Thomason
  Publisher: Dial $ 24 ISBN: 0385337116 Date: 2004
  KirkusPW
  When a long-lost diary surfaces, it seems Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris have found the key to a secret labyrinth. However, when a fellow researcher is murdered only hours after their find, the friends suddenly realize that they are caught in a web of great danger.
  Links: Rule of Four web site | Overbooked Author Connections
  Suggested Reading: If You Liked the Da Vinci Code
  Updated 3.15.04
• 37th Hour
  Author: Compton, Jodi
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385337132 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  With a bold assurance that is especially striking in a debut novel, Compton introduces Detective Sarah Pribek, a successful missing persons specialist facing the most disturbing case of her career when her husband, another officer, simply vanishes into thin air.
  Updated 10.8.03
• The Grenadillo Box
  Author: Gleeson, Janet
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743246861 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  The debut novel from the bestselling author of The Arcanum transports readers to 18th century Georgian England for an intricate, romantic tale of murder and intrigue.
  Updated 11.25.03
• Caught Stealing
  Author: Huston, Charlie
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 21.95 ISBN: 034546477x Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Huston's debut novel is "Tarantino meets Hitchcock meets Westlake meets Bukowski in a wild, relentlessly entertaining ride." -- Wallace Strobe, author of The Barbed-Wire Kiss.
  Updated 4.6.04
• I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason: A Cece Caruso Mystery
  Author: Kandel, Susan
  Publisher: Morrow $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060581050 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Susan Kandel has written an adventurous, humorous debut novel that takes us on a well-researched romp through California's past and present, complete with turn-of-the-century robber barons and the haute couture of the '40s."--Barbara Seranella (Unpaid Dues and Unwilling Accomplice).
  Updated 3.25.04
Fiction
• The Cloud Atlas
  Author: Callahan, Liam
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385336942
  KirkusLJ
  In a richly inspired debut reminiscent of Snow Falling on Cedars and The English Patient, this stirring novel, set against a magnificent Alaskan backdrop, reveals one of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II in a tale that is both a heart-quickening mystery and a unique love story.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World War Stars
  Updated 3.1.04
• You Remind Me of Me
  Author: Chaon, Dan
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345441419
  PWLJ
  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.
  Updated 5.4.04
• Crofton's Fire
  Author: Coplin, Keith
  Publisher: Putnam $ 21.95 ISBN: 0399151125
  KirkusBooklist
  A highly original first novel, in which a green second lieutenant barely escapes Little Bighorn - only to find that his life's adventures have just begun.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction | Western Stars
  Updated 11.25.03
• Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You
  Author: Drummond, Laurie Lynn
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060561629
  KirkusLJ
  Women cops are the focus of this riveting debut collection of short fiction by a former policewoman.
  Updated 11.18.03
• The Anxiety of Everyday Objects
  Author: Sheehan, Aurelie
  Publisher: Penguin $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 0142003700
  KirkusLJ
  An original, witty, compulsively readable tale for any woman who has struggled with creative yearning and duty to the daily grind. In her absorbing debut novel, Sheehan's depiction of the working girl's life in the big city is as charming as it is inspiring.
  Updated 2.13.04

More Fiction Debuts Romance & Romantic Suspense

• Bet Me
  Author: Crusie, Jennifer
  Publisher: St Martins $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312303467
  Kirkus
  The biggest gamble of all is true love in this story about long shots, risk management, and great shoes--the best novel yet from the author of Faking It.
  Updated 12.10.03
• Dirty Little Lies
  Author: Lane, Connie
  Publisher: Dell $ 6.50 (paper) ISBN: 0440237475
  Booklist
  In this hilarious, action-packed tale, a sophisticated FBI agent is assigned to protect a Midwestern beauty queen from a stalker with ties to her past.
  Updated 2.23.04
• Playing James
  Author: Mason, Sarah
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0345469550
  LJ
  A hilarious and charming debut novel, Playing James follows an adorable rookie crime reporter as she takes on love, loot, and a certain boy in blue.
  Updated 4.5.04
• Late Bloomer
  Author: Pritchard, Melissa
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385503040
  PW
  After one failed marriage and numerous dating disasters, Prudence True Parker begins a journey for salvation. In a hilarious conclusion, the pieces of Parker's life fall into place at the annual Romance Writers convention in Texas. Smartly written, this is a high-spirited tale of romance, captivity, and savage love women of all ages will relish.
  Updated 2.23.04
• The Paid Companion
  Author: Quick, Amanda
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399151745
  KirkusBooklist
  His intentions are purely practical. The Earl of St. Merryn seeks a woman to pose as his finace for a few weeks to keep the husband-hunters at bay while he goes about his business. The plan never included falling in love.
  Updated 4.6.04

Speculative Fiction

• The Darkness That Comes Before
  Author: Bakker, R. Scott
  Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585675598
  LJ
  Strikingly original in its conception, ambitious in scope, with characters engrossingly and vividly drawn, the first book in Bakker's Prince of Nothing series creates the kind of all-embracing universe Tolkien and Herbert created in The Lord of the Rings and Dune.
  Updated 4.20.04
• Dead Lines
  Author: Bear, Greg
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345448375 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  This gripping ghost story for fans of Dean Koontz and Stephen King is the most mainstream novel yet from an author who knows how to mix scientific ideas with gripping narrative.
  Updated 3.25.04
• The Ordinary
  Author: Grimsley, Jim
  Publisher: Tor $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765305283
  Booklist
  Science and magic collide in this story of two realms marching inevitably towards war, as a young linguist finds herself at the center of events that will challenge everything she has ever believed about the world--and herself.
  Updated 4.21.04
• Firethorn
  Author: Micklem, Sarah
  Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743247949
  PW
  A fantasy in the tradition of The Mists of Avalon, Firethorn is an extraordinary tale--at once magical and violent, beautiful and frightening--about a bold young woman and her journey to the brink of war.
  Updated 4.5.04
• The Knight: Book One of the Wizard Knight
  Author: Wolfe, Gene
  Publisher: Tor $ 25.95 ISBN: 0765309890
  PW
  This is Wolfe's first book in a two-volume epic fantasy, written in the Tolkien tradition, that is an original and morally complex heroic fantasy.
  Updated 12.1.03

More Speculative Fiction Stars

Inspirational Fiction

• A Delirious Summer
  Author: Blackston, Ray
  Publisher: Fleming Revell $ 12.99 ISBN: 0800759583 Date: 2004
  To Neil Rucker, seven months, one week, and a day is too long to wait in between dates. But life as a Spanish language teacher to missionaries in Ecuador affords little opportunity for romance. When his worst student, Jay Jarvis, suggests a respite in Greenville, South Carolina, so begins Neil's delirious summer.
  Updated 5.20.04
• Dandelions in a Jelly Jar
  Author: Depree, Traci
  Publisher: Waterbrook $ 12.99 ISBN: 1578567297 Date: 2004
  Snapshots of the citizens of Lake Emily, first introduced in A Can of Peas, are sprinkled throughout this new novel, giving readers grace-filled insight into what makes small towns strong.
  Updated 5.20.04
• Life Goes On: A Harmony Novel
  Author: Gulley, Philip
  Publisher: Harper SF $ 17.95 ISBN: 0060006358 Date: 2004
  Readers are invited to return to small town Harmony in another delightful novel about Pastor Sam Gardner and his quirky but lovable flock.
  Updated 5.20.04
• The Sacrifice
  Author: Lewis, Beverly
  Publisher: Bethany House $ 12.99 ISBN: 0764228722 Date: 2004
  The powerful family saga featuring four Amish sisters growing up in 1940s Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, continues with this third installment.
  Updated 5.20.04
• A Tapestry of Hope
  Author: Peterson, Tracie and Judith Miller
  Publisher: Bethany House $ 12.99 ISBN:0764228943 Date: 2004
  The sheltered daughter of a Mississippi cotton plantation owner who is practically sold into marriage to a businessman by her father in a cotton deal, and a young Irish woman, the businessman's indentured servant, both suffer in the home of this unloving husband and merciless master. Will God somehow bring hope to their lives?
  Updated 5.20.04
• Soul Journey
  Author: Thomas, Jacquelin
  Publisher: Bet $ 24 ISBN: 1583144501 Date: 2004
  Ever since she was a little girl, Journee Carter wanted to be a preacher, just like her father. And when she grows up, that's exactly what she sets out to do. Journee knows there is opposition to women in the pulpit--especially single young women. Yet she never expects her own father to be one of her biggest obstacles.
  Updated 5.20.04

Also: A Sundog Moment by Sharon Baldacci, Bad Ground by Dale Cramer, Legacy Lane by Robin Lee Hatcher, Reunion by Karen Kingsbury and Gary Smalley (June), Silenced by Jerry Jenkins (July). Mystery & Suspense

• Don't Look Back: Inspector Sejer
  Author: Fossum, Karin
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 0151010323 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Meet Inspector Sejer: smart and enigmatic, tough but fair. Critically acclaimed across Europe, Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable. They evoke a world that is at once profoundly disturbing and terrifyingly familiar.
  Suggested Reading: European Crime Fiction
  Updated 12.29.03
• Broken Dishes
  Author: Fowler, Earlene
  Publisher: Berkeley $ 23.95 ISBN: 042519597x Date: 2004
  PW
  In the latest installment of the "breezy and¨ humorous" (Chicago Sun-Times) series, Benni Harper uncovers the remains of a murdered man buried in a shallow grave at a friend's struggling dude ranch. Now, she must keep the guests safe and happy while unearthing the truth behind the terrible crime.
  Updated 4.12.04
• Ghost Writer
  Author: Harwood, John
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151010749 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Harwood's tantalizing tale of suspense and family secrets weaves Victorian ghost stories into the present where they start to come true. This astonishing, assured debut shows just how dangerous family skeletons--and stories--can be.
  Updated 4.26.04
• Retribution
  Author: Hoffman, Jiliane P.
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399151273 Date: 2004
  LJ
  An elite prosecutor faces the most lethal predator she's ever encountered, in this debut novel inspired by the author's own experiences as an Assistant State Attorney in Florida.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Legal Stars
  Updated 3.15.04
• Shadow Men: Max Freeman
  Author: King, Jonathon
  Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525948074 Date: 2004
  BooklistPW
  It begins with an 80-year-old mystery. Three men--a father and his two sons--vanished while working as laborers on a dangerous project to build the first road through the Florida Everglades. Now, years later, a series of letters are unexpectedly discovered by a descendant of these men.
  Suggested Reading: Cold Cases | Priviate Investigators
  Updated 2.23.04
• Earthquake Weather
  Author: Lankford, Terrill Lee
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345467779 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Mark Hayes goes from aspiring movie producer to murder suspect in the blink of an eye in veteran filmmaker Lankford's sizzling Hollywood noir.
  Suggested Reading: Film Fiction
  Updated 3.11.04
• Weeping: A Fritillary Quilter Mystery
  Author: Reuben, Shelly
  Publisher: Justin Charles/Kate's Mystery Books $ 13.99 (paper) ISBN: 1932112200 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Tilly Quilter, a sassy, opinionated New York fire investigator, knows that something's amiss when a victim's family doesn't seem at all interested in helping get to the bottom of a fatal fire.
  Updated 5.7.04
• Unwilling Accomplice: Munch Mancini
  Author: Seranella, Barbara
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 074324558x Date: 2004
  PWBooklist
  Bestselling author Seranella pits her charismatic heroine against a puzzling organized crime ring involving exploited children, burglary and murder in this seventh installment of the Munch Mancini series.
  Updated 3.22.04
• A Death in Vienna
  Author: Silva, Daniel
  Publisher: Putnam $ 25.95 ISBN: 0399151435 Date: 2004
  PW
  The sins of the past reverberate into the present, in an extraordinary novel by the new master of international suspense. Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about a photograph that has turned his world upside down.
  Suggested Reading: Espionage
  Updated 1.5.04
• She Smiled Sweetly: Poppy Rice
  Author: Smith, Mary-Ann Tirone
  Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 0805072241 Date: 2004
  PW
  When intrepid FBI agent Poppy Rice is asked to solve two cases--separated by thirty years, but connected by DNA--she finds herself snared in a web of political deceit, family intrigue, and out-and-out bad guys.
  Updated 5.17.04
• Loaded Dice
  Author: Swain, James
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 22.95 ISBN: 0345463269 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  When his son goes missing in Las Vegas, ex-cop Tony Valentine jets after him and lands inside a treacherous game with higher stakes than he has ever encountered before.
  Suggested Reading: Take a Gamble
  Updated 4.8.04

Paperback Best Bets

• Cold Case
  Author: Burcell, Robin
  Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 ISBN: 0061053775 Date: 2004
  This fourth installment of Burcell's award-winning series finds San Francisco homicide detective Kate Gillespie plunged back into a murder case that nearly got her killed during the first investigation.
  Updated 5.20.04
• Fugitive Truth
  Author: Cameron, Dana
  Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 ISBN: 0060554622 Date: 2004
  An elusive killer tracks archaeologist Emma Fielding to a fellowship in Western Massachusetts in this intelligent and thrilling fourth mystery from real-life archaeologist Cameron.
  Updated 5.20.04
• Blue Blood
  Author: McBride, Susan
  Publisher: Avon $ 6.50 ISBN:0060563896 Date: 2004
  This new mystery series introduces reluctant Dallas socialite Andy Kendricks. "Suspense, humor, friendship, snobbery, and televangelists . . . Blue Blood is positively gripping."--Sarah Stohmeyer (Bubbles Ablaze).
  Updated 5.20.04
• Murder of a Pink Elephant: Scumble River
  Author: Swanson, Denise
  Publisher: Signet $ 5.99 ISBN: 045121210x Date: 2004
  When the brother of school psychologist Skye Denison forms a rock band called Pink Elephant, the whole town of Scumble River goes wild--and things get very weird. But when one of the band members is murdered, Skye must clear her brother's name.
  Updated 5.20.04
• Fall in Death
  Author: Toll, Emily
  Publisher: Prime Crime $ 6.50 ISBN: 0425196941 Date: 2004
  In New Hampshire to take a look at her mother's latest venture, a bed and breakfast, Lynne Montgomery soon finds out that B&B stands for "Buried & Bodies" when she discovered two skeletons under the basement floor.
  Updated 5.20.04

More Mystery & Suspense Stars

General & Historical Fiction

• Birth of Venus
  Author: Dunant, Sarah
  Publisher: Knopf $ 21.95 ISBN: 1400060737
  LJ
  The Birth of Venus is a tour de force from one of Britain's most innovative thriller writers. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a remarkable heroine with the same vibrancy as her beloved city.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Updated 12.29.03
• The Jane Austen Book Club
  Author: Fowler, Karen Joy
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399151613
  KirkusBooklist
  Nothing ever moves in a straight line in Fowler's fiction, and in her latest, the complex dance of modern love has never been so devious or so much fun. In this newest work, six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens.
  Updated 3.22.04
• Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys
  Author: Garcia, Eric
  Publisher: ReganBooks $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060730315 Date: 2004
  Sex and the City meets Misery in this shockingly funny, original, dead-on satire of the dating scene in Los Angeles.
  Suggested Reading: Chicklit | Funny Fiction
  Updated 6.14.04
• Caramba: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card
  Author: Martinez, Nina Marie
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375413758
  LJBooklist
  This fast-paced, feisty tale of female friendship is the debut of a fresh and enchanting new literary voice. By turns a soap opera and a honky tonk spiritual guide, Caramba! combines romance with adventure and rolls them into one big hot tamale.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Latino/Latina Stars
  Updated 3.11.04
• Little Children
  Author: Perrotta, Tom
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312315716
  KirkusLJ
  "Tom Perrotta . . . is like an American Nick Hornby: companionable and humane, lighthearted and surprisingly touching."--Newsweek. "An absorbing, fleshed-out portrait of an American male edging toward adulthood by crossing seemingly rigid social boundaries. . . An overwhelmingly pleasing book."--The New York Times.
  Updated 2.13.04
• My Sister's Keeper
  Author: Picoult, Jodi
  Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743454529
  Booklist
  Written with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity, this novel is about a teen who was conceived as a bone marrow match for her sister Kate, and what happens when she begins to question who she really is.
  Updated 1.10.04
• Shout Down the Moon
  Author: Tucker, Lisa
  Publisher: Downtown $ 13 ISBN:074346446x Date: 2004
  Her acclaimed debut, The Song Reader, won her praise as a "brilliant new literary talent" (The Albuquerque Tribune). Now, Lisa Tucker returns with a starkly lyrical novel of page-turning intensity and rare emotional power.
  Updated 5.20.04

Don't Miss Out - Great Reads from 2003

Crime Fiction

• Eye of the Abyss
  Author: Browne, Marshall
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312311567 Date: 2003
  KirkusPWBooklist
  The author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-nominated mystery, The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders, now delivers an atmospheric and powerful thriller set during the rise of the Nazi party.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | World War Stars
  Updated 9.22.03
• Avenger
  Author: Forsyth, Frederick
  Publisher: St Martins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0312319517 Date: 2003
  BooklistPWLJ
  In this heart-stopping thriller of murder, intrigue, deception, and revenge, attorney Calvin Dexter is called upon to settle an old score. But the game is changing, and this time CIA agent Kevin McBride must find a way to stop Dexter before his quest for vengeance throws the world into chaos.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 9.08.03
• Pompeii
  Author: Harris, Robert
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679428895 Date: 2003
  KirkusBooklist
  Ancient Rome is the setting for the superb new novel from Robert Harris, author of the number one bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Archangel. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Mystery Stars
  Updated 10.23.03
• Letter From Home
  Author: Hart, Carolyn
  Publisher: Prime Crime $ 22.95 ISBN: 0425191796 Date: 2003
  PW
  In the summer of 1944, Gretchen Gilman was working as a reporter at the local newspaper. Her assignments weren't very exciting--until Faye Tatum was found dead in her own living room.
  Updated 9.08.03
• Havana: An Earl Swagger Novel
  Author: Hunter, Stephen
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743238087 Date: 2003
  KirkusPWBooklist
  It is 1953 and Cuba is at its lush, tropical, and glamorous best. Only one small problem threatens this situation--the rise of a daring revolutionary named Fidel Castro. Now, legendary sniper Earl Swagger has been called in by the CIA to take him out.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Historical Mystery Stars
  Updated 8.13.03
• The Footprints of God
  Author: Iles, Greg
  Publisher: Scribner $ 25.95 ISBN: 0743234693 Date: 2003
  PWLJ
  From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a dazzling new thriller, rich with imagination and vision--an Andromeda Strain for the new millennium.
  Updated 8.14.03
• Every Secret Thing
  Author: Lippman, Laura
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060506679 Date: 2003
  LJ
  The acclaimed author's first stand-alone novel is a shocking tale of lost innocence, murder, and betrayal.
  Updated 7.1.03
• Dead I Well May Be
  Author: McKinty, Adrian
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 07743246993 Date: 2003
  KirkusBooklist
  This New York Irish bad-boy thriller--brimming with violence, greed, and sexual betrayal--brings a gripping new voice to the literary turf of Michael Connelly, Chuck Palahniuk, and Dennis Lehane.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 9.22.03
• Maisie Dobbs
  Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
  Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569473307 Date: 2003
  Library JournalPW
  "Meet Maisie Dobbs, who in 1929 launches her career as a private investigator and finds herself drawn back to the Great War she thought she'd long since put behind her: an unexpected beginning for Maisie--and a rare treat for mystery fans."--Charles Todd, A Fearsome Doubt.
  Suggested Reading: World War Stars
  Updated 6.19.03

Fiction

• Brick Lane
  Author: Ali, Monica
  Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743243307
  KirkusLJPW
  A stunningly accomplished debut and already an international sensation--the story of one outsider's quest to find her voice. What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This principle ruled her life.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 6.25.03
• My Life As a Fake
  Author: Carey, Peter
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375414983
  KirkusPWLJ
  Using as a springboard a real literary hoax that transfixed Australia in his boyhood, Peter Carey wickedly and ruefully explores how a phantom poet taunts, haunts and otherwise destroys his maker, pursuing him from Melbourne to a seedy, sweaty, bitter ending in the tropical chaos of Kuala Lumpur.
  Updated 10.30.03
• Great Fire
  Author: Hazzard, Shirley
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374166447
  KirkusPWBooklistLJ
  This is Hazzard's first novel since The Transit of Venus, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The conflagration of her title is the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars
  Updated 10.7.03
• The Mammoth Cheese
  Author: Holman, Sheri
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871139006
  LJPWKirkus
  On publication of her last novel, The Dress Lodger, The New York Times declared Holman an author with "an outstanding, generous, and fertile imagination." Now Holman delivers a sharp, contemporary story steeped in history that will captivate a new audience while gratifying readers of her earlier work.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 6.19.03
• Rope Eater
  Author: Jones, Ben
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24 ISBN: 0385509774
  PWBooklistLJ
  A voyage of Arctic exploration during the American Civil War becomes an epic of madness and survival, in a stunning first novel animated by the spirits of Poe, Crane, Conrad, and Melville.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Fiction & Mystery Debuts | Historical Fiction Stars | Sea Stories
  Updated 12.29.03
• The Known World
  Author: Jones, Edward P.
  Publisher: Amistad $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060557540
  KirkusLJBooklist
  Henry Townsend, a black bootmaker and former slave in antebellum Virginia, becomes a proprietor of his own plantation--as well as his own slaves. This modern masterpiece explores what happens when he dies and "the known world" unravels.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | African American Stars | All Stars
  Updated 10.2.03
• The Time Traveler's Wife
  Author: Niffenegger, Audrey
  Publisher: MacAdam/Cage $ 25 ISBN: 193156146x
  PWLJ
  The love story of Henry and Claire whose lives are punctuated by Henry's disappearance to different points in time--sometimes even back to visit Claire as a young woman. When Henry meets Claire, he is twenty-eight, and she is twenty. He's a hip, handsome librarian; she is an art student with Botticelli hair. Henry has never met Claire before; Claire has known Henry since she was six...
  Suggested Reading: Time Travel Stars | Immortalism Stars
  Updated 8.14.03

Book a Trip - Travel Tales

• A Thousand Sighs, a Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan
  Author: Bird, Christiane
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 25.95 ISBN: 0345468929
  Kirkus
  Celebrated journalist Bird offers a fascinating, illuminating and very personal glimpse into an exotic land and people of increasing global significance: Kurdistan.
  Updated 3.11.04
• Scribbling the Cat: Travels With an African Soldier
  Author: Fuller, Alexandra
  Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 1594200165
  KirkusBooklist
  With the same fiercely beautiful prose that won her acclaim for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller describes her trip home to Zambia, where she comes away with a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of men who have killed, mutilated, tortured and scrambled to survive during wartime, and who now live with their past.
  Updated 4.22.04
• The Dark Heart of Italy
  Author: Jones, Tobias
  Publisher: North Point $ 24 ISBN: 0865477000
  PW
  Jones recounts his four-year voyage across the Italian peninsula where, instead of the pastoral bliss he expected, he discovers unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia.
  Updated 4.19.04
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
  Author: Troost, J. Maarten
  Publisher: Broadway $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0767915305
  KirkusPW
  After racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs, author Troost decided the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the Earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better. This is his hilarious story.
  Updated 6.1.04
• The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
  Author: Whitaker, Robert
  Publisher: Basic $ 25 ISBN: 0738208086
  KirkusBooklist
  In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. This is the story of Isabel Grames, who became stranded in the Amazon--an epic love story that unfolds against the backdrop of the greatest expedition the world has ever known.
  Updated 4.21.04

More Travel Tales