Featured Titles 2001 New titles - selected on the basis of good reviews. Nonfiction, fiction and mystery titles are included on the lists.

September 2001

Nonfiction

• American Exorcism
  by Cuneo, Michael W.
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385501765
  LJ PW
  The foremost authority on exorcism in America gives a guided tour of this burgeoning business and of the darker side of religion.
• Savage Beauty: A Biography of Edna St Vincent Millay
  by Milford, Nancy
  Publisher: Random $ 29.95 ISBN: 039457589X
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  Thirty years after the smashing success of Zelda, Milford returns with a stunning second act. Savage Beauty is the portrait of Edna St. Vincent Millay, a passionate, fearless woman who obsessed America even as she tormented herself.
  
• Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret
  by Wilson, Duff
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0060193697
  Booklist Kirkus
  This riveting expose is developed from a series of articles Wilson wrote for the Seattle Times which revealed the shocking details of manufacturing industries that pass off dumped toxic waste as fertilizer.

Fiction

• Fred & Edie
  Author: Dawson, Jill
  Publisher: Welcome Rain $ 25 ISBN: 156649222x
  KirkusPWLJ
  Based on a true story of a love triangle that turned deadly, this is a novel of passion, murder and a spectacular public trial at a time of momentous change for women.
  
  
• The Evidence Against Her
  Author: Dew, Robb Forman
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316890197
  PWKirkus
  The author of the National Book Award winner Dale Loves Sophie to Death delivers a classic work of literary Americana set in an imaginary Ohio town at the turn of the century.
• Peace Like a River
  Author: Enger, Leif
  Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 087113795x
  BooklistPW
  Through the voice of 11-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy obsessed with cowboys living in 1960s Minnesota, the story is told of the Land family's cross-country search for Reuben's outlaw older brother, who has been charged with murder.
  
• The Corrections
  Author: Franzen, Jonathan
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374129983
  KirkusPWBooklistLJ
  A comic, tragic masterpiece of an American family breaking down in an age of easy fixes, Franzen's third novel brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty into wild collision with the era of home surveillance and New Economy speculation.
  
  
• The Wolf Pit
  Author: Youmans, Marly
  Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374291950
  PW
  The Wolf Pit offers a gripping portrait of two young Virginians forever altered by violence and civil war: Robin, a Confederate soldier, enduring life at the Elmira prison camp, and Agate, the daughter of a hired-out slave, who struggles to survive loss and degradation and to pit knowledge and truth against evil.
  Suggested Reading: Civil War Fiction Stars
  
  
• The Absence of Nectar
  Author: Hepinstall, Kathy
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399148019
  An evocative and unsettling novel of mystery and suspense that further demonstrates Kathy Hepinstall's "promising literary talent" (Library Journal).
  
  Alice is a precocious girl growing up in East Texas with one wish on her mind: Get rid of Simon Jester. Simon is the man who saved her mother from drowning . . . and her new husband. Alice and her brother become convinced that Simon intends to harm them. Their mother tells them they have wild imaginations. Until she comes to kiss them one night, and instead of her usual endearments, whispers a single word: Run.
  
  Absence of Nectar is a finely wrought and suspenseful coming of age novel that confirms the promise of Hepinstall's highly praised debut, The House of Gentle Men. - from the advance reading copy.
  

Mystery & Suspense

• Catskill
  Author: Hayes, John R.
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312281536
  Kirkus
  On the eve of World War II, a small Catskill mountain town is rocked by the death of a local woman when a dilapidated farmhouse packed with refugee Jews is fired upon by three young men with rifles. Former politician Martin Collins investigates, and finds violent tensions seething below the surface of the entire town.
  
• Long Time No See
  Author: Isaacs, Susan
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0060195703
  Kirkus
  She's back! After more than two decades, Judith Singer, the heroine of Compromising Positions, returns in a rollicking new novel. Singer's life has changed and she finds herself surrounded by crime and chaos when a prominent Long Island housewife vanishes into thin air.
  
• In a Strange City
  Author: Lippman, Laura
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 0380978180
  PW
  Lippman's Tess Monaghan novel is an homage to the city of Baltimore. The plot hinges on literary history involving an anonymous figure who places brandy and a rose on Edgar Allan Poe's grave every January on the writer's birthday--until one year the mystery man is murdered.
  
• The Bride's Kimono
  by Massey, Sujata
  ISBN: 0060199334 $ 25
  An antiques business owner finds herself involved with stolen artifacts, a wacky group of Japanese tourists and one very dead body when she transports a set of priceless kimonos.
  
  
• Cold
  Author: Smolens, John
  Publisher: Random $ 22 ISBN: 0609607944
  LJ
  Cold is unstoppable, unforgettable, and elegantly crafted fiction from acclaimed writer Smolens, whom Andre Dubus called "a wise and seasoned voice". In a style reminiscent of Jack London, it is the tale of an escaped prisoner in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
  

---

More information about current notable books:

More Featured Titles ~ Fiction Stars ~ Mystery Stars ~ Speculative Fiction Stars

Selected Nonfiction Stars ~ New Book Listings