
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994.

Featured
Titles 2002
Page Modified:
April 2, 2008
New titles - selected
on the basis of good reviews. Nonfiction, fiction and mystery titles
are included on the lists.
March 2002
Nonfiction
- Trouser People
Author: Marshall,
Andrew
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 26 ISBN: 1582431205
Kirkus
Part travelogue, part history, part reportage, The Trouser
People is an enormously appealing and vivid account of Sir
George Scott, the unsung Victorian adventurer who hacked, bullied,
and charmed his way through uncharted jungle to help establish
British colonial rule in Burma.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
- Midnight to the North
Author: Nickerson, Sheila
Publisher: Tarcher $ 24.95 ISBN: 1585421332
Kirkus
The true story of what happened on the ill-fated Polaris expedition,
from the perspective of the Inuit woman whose skills enabled
all 19 members to survivethe longest ice drift in history.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
- Bad Blood: A Memoir
Author: Sage,
Lorna
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066214432
LJ
PW
In this extraordinary personal history, the late author and
influential literary critic Lorna Sage tells the searing tale
of her escape from a claustrophic childhood in post-World War
II Britain--a phenomenal story of courage, humor, and pain that
brings to life the nature of family life, memory, and marriage
through three generations.
- The House of Blue Mangoes

Author: Davidar,
David
Publisher: HarperCollins $26.95 ISBN: 0066212545
Kirkus
Booklist
The House of Blue Mangoes tells the story of the Dorai
family in south India during a time of tremendous political
and social upheaval. Sophisticated, filled with brilliant historical
and emotional insight, enlivened by touches of humor and deeply
felt tragedy that draw on the author's own family history.
Suggested Reading: Stars of India
- The Disappearing Body

Author: Grand,
David
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385500343
Kirkus
Grand, whose first novel, Louse, transformed the last
days of Howard Hughes into compelling fiction, works the same
dark magic in The Disappearing Body, weaving suspenseful
mystery into his stunning, perversely hilarious portrait of
the corruption, ambition, passion, and innocence of post-Prohibition
America.
- Shackling Water

Author: Mansbach, Adam
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385502052
LJ
Booklist
Kirkus
In the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Adam Mansbach
captures the rhythms of jazz in a remarkable debut novel about
a young man looking for his muse in Harlem.
Suggested Reading: Musical Fiction
- At Swim, Two Boys

Author: O'Neill, James
Publisher: Scribner $ 27 ISBN: 0743222946
Kirkus
Booklist
In the tradition of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children
comes an astonishingly ambitious and resonant novel that transports
readers to Dublin in the year preceding the Easter uprising--a
pivotal time in Irish history and in the lives of two very young
men from different backgrounds.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction
Stars
- The Apprentice Lover

Author: Parini, Jay
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066210712
Booklist
When Alex Massolini's brother is killed in Vietnam, he drops
out of school and leaves his family behind to become secretary
to world famous writer Rupert Grant. Told with wry humor in
an elegant prose style, The Apprentice Lover is a remarkable
piece of fiction that includes appearances by such colorful
literary figures as Graham Greene and W. H. Auden.
- Burden
Author: Walters, Tony
Publisher: St Martins $23.95 ISBN: 0312287054
Kirkus
In this lyrical and funny novel, a young man named Burden tries
to get himself killed by sleeping with as many married women
as possible in his home town of Walterboro, South Carolina.
- Henderson's Spear

Author: Wright, Ronald
Publisher: Holt $25 ISBN: 0805069968
Booklist
LJ
Through unforgettable characters and a mesmerizing story, Wright
traces two tales of obsession, intrigue, and loss--from the
1890s and the 1990s. With a deep understanding of the landscape
and culture of the South Sea Islands, Henderson's Spear
explores the patterns of history and the accidents of love.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction
Stars
- A Murder of Promise

Author: Andrews, Robert
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399148329
PW
When legendary Washington Post reporter Mary Keegan is
found murdered, homicide detectives Frank Kearney and Jose Phelps
find that the killer is one step ahead of them. In a climactic
nightmare chase, Kearney races to save the person dearest to
him as he faces off against a cunning homicidal maniac.
- Evans to Betsy

Author: Bowen, Rhys
Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312286457
A missing spiritualist and a would-be psychic detective baffle
the Welsh village of Llanfair's beloved Constable Evan Evans.
- Justice Hall

Author: King, Laurie R.
Publisher: Bantam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553111132
PW
The sixth episode in King's novels that celebrates and reinvents
Mary Russell and her famous spouse Sherlock Holmes.
- Company: A Novel of the CIA 1951-1991
Author:
Littell, Robert
Publisher: Overlook $ 27.95 ISBN: 1585671975
Library Journal
Kirkus
Booklist
The magnum opus of acclaimed espionage novelist Littell is a
mesmerizing, dazzlingly plotted epic that tells the life and
death struggle of two generations of CIA operatives during a
long Cold War.
- In the Bleak Midwinter

Author: Spencer-Fleming,
Julia
Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312288476
PW
It's a cold, snowy December in the upstate New York town of
Millers Kill. When a newborn baby is abandoned and a young mother
is brutally murdered, newly-ordained Clare Fergusson has to
pick her way through the secrets and silence that shadow the
town like the ever-present Adirondack mountains.
- The School of Night

Author: Wall, Alan
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 031228778X
Booklist
A strange, secret Elizabethan society becomes one man's obsession
in this dark, skillful novel.
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