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Hotlists 2008
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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 these lists. Books for kids and teens (fiction and nonfiction) are also listed.
August 2003
Nonfiction
- Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark
Author: Hurd, Barbara
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $23 ISBN: 0618191380
LJ
Hurd begins her foray into the increasingly popular pursuit of caving with a panic attack. Nevertheless, as her hunger to understand caves and caving increases, she lures the reader in deeper as well, to the extraordinary fascination of these dark interiors.
Updated 7.30.03 - Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers
Author: Lederer, Katy
Publisher: Crown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0609608983PW
Lederer's two siblings would go on to become world class gamblers and her father a bestselling author, but her childhood was far from glamorous. In Poker Face, she renders the strange and at times funny story of her family's and her own trajectory through the world.
Updated 6.25.03 - Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Author: Satrapi, Marjane
Publisher: Pantheon $ 17.95 ISBN: 0375422307PWLJ
An intelligent and outspoken only child, Satrapi--the daughter of radical Marxists and the great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor--bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. A graphic novel.
Updated 7.8.03
Fiction
- What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal
Author: Heller, Zoe
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805073337LJ
A lonely schoolteacher reveals more than she intends when she records the story of her best friend's affair with a pupil in this sly, insightful novel. "Heller writes with a precision that stirs the blood and an uncommon insight into the darker sides of love."--Nuala O'Faolain.
Updated 7.1.03 - The Mammoth Cheese
Author: Holman, Sheri
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871139006LJPWKirkus
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 - Diary
Author: Palahniuk, Chuck
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385509472KirkusPW
The bestselling author of Fight Club, Choke and Lullaby continues his 21st-century reinvention of the horror novel in this alarming and profound look at the quest for fame and immortality.
Updated 7.7.03 - And Now You
Can Go
Author: Vida, Vendela
Publisher: Knopf $ 19.95 ISBN: 1400040272LJPW
A sharply humorous and fast-paced debut novel about the effects--some predictable, some wildly unexpected--that an encounter at gunpoint have on a (previously) assured young woman.
Updated 5.19.03 - Blind Lake
Author: Wilson, Robert Charles
Publisher: Tor $ 24.95 ISBN: 0765302624KirkusPW
At Blind Lake, a federal research installation in Minnesota, scientists are using a technology they barely understand to watch everyday life in a city of lobster-like aliens on a distant planet. Wilson tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a haunted but hopeful universe.
Updated 6.29.03
Mystery & Suspense
- Murder
in the Museum
Author: Brett, Simon
Publisher: Prime Crime $ 22.95 ISBN: 0425190439Booklist
When a human skeleton is found buried on the grounds of the famed Bracketts House--the historic home of the author Esmond Chadleigh--Carole Seddon and Jude must determine whether the beloved writer's sword was mightier than his pen . . . and whether the snobbish, squabbling trustees of Bracketts House have something to hide.
Updated 5.14.03 - Out
Author: Kirino, Natsuo
Publisher: Kodansha $ 22.95 ISBN: 4770029055LJ
A shocking thriller from one of Japan's most lauded female mystery writers. Nothing in the sometimes hazy history of Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino's award-winning mystery Out, a work that took the Japanese literary scene by storm and continues to haunt the popular consciousness as a recently released major motion picture submitted for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.19.03 - Last Lessons of Summer
Author: Maron, Margaret
Publisher: Penzler $ 23.95 ISBN: 0892967803KirkusPW
In this dark and suspenseful departure from her critically acclaimed Deborah Knott series, award-winning author Maron follows a young publisher's search for answers to old murders.
Updated 7.7.03 - Quantico Rules
Author: Riehl, Gene
Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 031231051xBooklist
In this auspicious debut, an FBI agent and his partner are pulled into a vast conspiracy that threatens to consume them--if they don't destroy themselves first.
Updated 5.14.03 - Black Maps
Author: Spiegelman, Peter
Publisher: Knopf $ 22.95 ISBN: 1400040752PW
John March, a former cop now working as a PI in Manhattan, takes the case of Rick Pierro, a self-made man who has almost everything until he falls victim to a serial extortionist adept at psychological and physical intimidation.
Updated 7.28.03
Books for Kids, Teens & Readers of All Ages
Age and grade designations are approximate, parental judgement should be used.- Colibri
Author: Cameron, Ann
Publisher: Frances Foster $ 17 ISBN: 0374315191KirkusPW
The story of a young Mayan girl, who at the age of four is kidnapped from her parents on a crowded bus in Guatemala City, and the eight years that pass as she longs for the family she was stolen from.
Grades: 4-6 Category: Fiction
Updated 7.30.03 - The Tears of the Salamander
Author: Dickinson, Peter
Publisher: Wendy Lamb $ 16.95 ISBN: 0385730985Kirkus
Alfredo, a choir boy in 18th century Italy, loses his family in a fire, and his mysterious Uncle Giorgio spirits him away to their ancestral home below a volcano. There he leans that Uncle Giorgio is the Master of the Mountain; he can control the volcano.
Grades: 5-9 Category: Fiction/Science Fiction, Fantasy & Magic
Updated 7.30.03 - The Wolves in the Walls
Author: Gaiman, Neil
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 16.99 ISBN: 038097827xKirkusPW
Lucy is sure there are wolves living in her walls--and everyone says if the wolves make their way out it is all over for her and her family. A wonderfully strange adventure from the New York Times bestseller of Coraline.
Grades: 3-6 Category: Fiction/Science Fiction, Fantasy & Magic
Updated 7.30.03 - Olive's Ocean
Author: Henkes, Kevin
Publisher: Greewillow $ 15.99 ISBN: 0060535431
Kirkus
This exquisite coming-of-age story from a bestselling author is about a girl who is haunted by her deceased friend Olive and has just a hint of young romance.
Grades: 5th + Category: Fiction
Updated 7.30.03
Hotlists
Crime Fiction - embedded
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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
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Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
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