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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
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Featured Titles 2003
Page Modified: April 2, 2008
New titles - selected on the basis of good reviews. Nonfiction, fiction and mystery titles are included on the lists.
June 2003
Nonfiction
- Ghetto Celebrity: Searching for the Delbert in Me: A Memoir
Author: Alexander, Donnell
Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 1400046025
Library Journal
Vivid, stylish, at times outrageous, Ghetto Celebrity traces author Alexander's rollercoaster journey out of small-town obscurity and drug abuse through self-reinvention as a writer, and his rise to underground fame in the West Coast alternative press scene.
Updated 4.29.03 - Stolen Figs, and Other Adventures
in Calabria
Author: Rotella, Mark
Publisher: North Point $ 25 ISBN: 0865476276PWKirkus
Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into tourist redoubts. This is a model travelogue--at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy sense of life that characterizes Calabria and its people.
Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
Updated 5.9.03
Fiction
- Long For This World
Author: Byers, Michael
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 039589171xPWLJKirkus
Byers' award-winning debut collection, The Coast of Good Intentions, won universal praise for its mature wisdom and deeply affecting characters. Now his exhilarating first novel showcases his extraordinary gifts in the suspenseful story of a geneticist grappling with an astonishing discovery.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 4.8.03 - The Curious Incident
of The Dog in the Night-Time
Author: Haddon, Mark
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385509456PWKirkus
Narrated by a 15-year-old autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, this dazzling novel weaves together an old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary coming-of-age story, and a fascinating excursion into a mind incapable of processing emotions.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 4.8.03 - The Kite Runner
Author: Hosseini, Khaled
Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573222453Library JournalKirkusPW
An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, takes readers from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present. As emotionally gripping as it is tender, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful debut.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 5.12.03 - The Facts of Life
Author: Joyce, Graham
Publisher: Atria $ 24 ISBN: 0743463420Kirkus
A dramatic departure for the prize-winning author of Indigo--an exquisitely written, multifaceted wartime saga of identity, connection, and emotional endurance centering on an unforgettable English family during and after the Second World War.
Updated 5.9.03 - The Pursuit
of Alice Thrift
Author: Lipman, Elinor
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679463135Library JournalPW
Poor Alice Thrift is book-smart but people-hopeless. When Ray Russo, social-climbing purveyor of carnival fudge, decides to pursue her romantically, Alice reluctantly follows. The Pursuit of Alice Thrift brings the socially tone-deaf Alice out from under the burden of her clueless and beautiful mind.
Updated 3.13.03 - 1929
Author: Turner, Frederick W.
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 25 ISBN: 1582432651KirkusBooklist
In a briefly affluent and deeply disenchanted postwar America, the Jazz Age erupts in gaudy glory. It and one of its most colorful icons, Bix Beiderbecke, are celebrated in this first novel by an acclaimed nonfiction writer.
Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction | Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 4.7.03
Mystery & Suspense
- Bangkok 8
Author: Burdett, John
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 1400040442PW
Burdett's thriller is razor-edged, darkly comic, crowded with astonishing characters, and thick with the authentic--hallucinogenic--atmosphere of Bangkok. Smart, skeptical, worldly and open-eyed, literary and wildly readable-- Bangkok 8 is one of a kind.
Updated 5.12.03 - Spiral
Author: Geary, Joseph
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375422234PWBooklist
Somewhere along the road, writer Nick Greer lost himself in the life and rumored painting of his subject, artist Frank Spira. Moving briskly between London, New York, and Tangier, intricately plotted and deeply atmospheric, Spiral is relentlessly suspenseful from first to last.
Updated 5.14.03 - Blood is the Sky: Alex
McKnight
Author: Hamilton, Steve
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312301154Kirkus
When a longtime friend asks Alex McKnight for help in finding his brother, a hunting guide to rich clients who has vanished in northern Ontario with a group of hunters, they begin the long drive north. Soon, Alex and his friend are stranded in the heart of the Canadian wilderness with no food, no weapons--and no way out.
Updated 3.27.03 - The Business of Dying
Author: Kernick, Simon
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312314019PW
A remarkable first novel from an exciting new British talent-- "the crime debut of the year." ( The Independent on Sunday, UK) Cynical and jaded, Detective Sergeant Dennis Milne earns money on the side by doing what he does best: punishing the bad guys. But this time he's been duped.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 5.6.03 - The House Sitter
Author: Lovesey, Peter
Publisher: Soho $ 25 ISBN: 1569473269PWBooklist
When a a top psychological profiler for the National Crime Faculty is found strangled to death on a beach, Detective Peter Diamond is called in. He must coordinate his efforts with the original investigating officer, and the cocky young officer charged with investigating the bizarre murder that the victim had been working on.
Updated 4.28.03 - O' Artful Death
Author: Taylor, Sarah Stewart
Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312307640
When an art historian who specializes in gravestones looks into the 100-year-old death of a young girl at a Vermont art colony, she ignites the wrath of a present-day killer. Newcomer Taylor delivers a wonderfully atmospheric cozy and academic mystery featuring Sweeney St. George, a Boston art historian.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
Updated 5.24.03
Hotlists
Crime Fiction - embedded
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA
Hotlists
Hotlists: Fiction | Crime Fiction
Genre Hotlists: Christian Fiction | African American Fiction
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
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