Featured Titles 2005 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.

October 2005

Nonfiction

• The City of Falling Angels
  Author: Berendt, John
  Publisher: Penguin $ 25.95 ISBN: 1594200580 Date: 2005
  KirkusLJ
  The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns after a decade to offer, in his inimitable style, an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants.
  Suggested Reading: Travel Tales | Venice
  Updated 10.4.05
• The Year of Magical Thinking
  Author: Didion, Joan
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 140004314x Date: 2005
  PWBooklistLJ
  "The author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and 11 other works chronicles the year following the death of her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, while the couple's only daughter, Quintana, lay unconscious in a nearby hospital suffering from pneumonia and septic shock."--"Publishers Weekly."
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 9.17.05
• Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke
  Author: Gurlanick, Peter
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 27.95 ISBN: 0316377945Date: 2005
  KirkusPWBooklist
  The author of Careless Love and Last Train to Memphis returns with his most powerful book ever--a revealing portrait of one of America's greatest musical artists, Sam Cooke.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Music - Nonfiction Stars
  Updated 9.17.05
• Spook
  Author: Roach, Mary
  Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393059626 Date: 2005
  PW
  In an attempt to find out what happens when people die, the author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that there is an afterlife.
  Updated 9.26.05
• A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
  Author: Shapiro, James
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060088737 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  One of the most admired lecturers at Columbia University takes a single year of Shakespeare's life and interweaves history, biography, and literary criticism in a way that has never been done before.
  Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
  Updated 8.24.05

Fiction

• Fledgling
  Author: Butler, Octavia E.
  Publisher: Seven Stories $ 24.95 ISBN: 1583226907 Date: 2005
  KirkusBooklist
  Butler's first new novel in seven years is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars | Vampires
  Updated 10.24.05
• The Darwin Conspiracy
  Author: Darnton, John
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400041376 Date: 2005
  LJ
  Fact and fiction become intertwined in this novel that explores the mysteries attached to the life and work of Charles Darwin. The narrative unfolds through Darwin's view, that of his youngest daughter, Lizzie, and two scholars.
  Suggested Reading: Darwin & Naturalists
  Updated 9.17.05
• Twins
  Author: Dermansky, Marcy
  Publisher: Morrow $ 21.95 ISBN: 006075978x Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Told in alternating voices, Twins is the heartfelt and unsettlingly honest story of identical twin sisters trying to make it to 18.
  Suggested Reading: Twins
  Updated 6.9.05
• Veronica
  Author: Gaitskill, Mary
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 23 ISBN: 0375421459 Date: 2005
  KirkusPWBooklistLJ
  The long-awaited novel from the acclaimed author of Bad Behavior is a dark fairy tale set in Paris and Manhattan in the 1980s--a story about beauty, narcissism and appetite, transience, aging and mortality.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 10.24.05
• Wickett's Remedy
  Author: Goldberg, Myla
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385513240 Date: 2005
  KirkusLJ
  The triumphant follow-up to the bestselling Bee Season, is a novel about the dream of progress--personal, scientific, commercial, and cultural--featuring a charming heroine whose desire for a better life comes up against the sweep of history.
  Suggested Reading: Flu | Historical Fiction
  Updated 7.12.05
• Seven Lies
  Author: Lasdun, James
  Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393057542 Date: 2005
  LJ
  A young East German yearns for love, glory, and freedom--in America. By a series of blackly comic and increasingly dangerous maneuvers, he finds himself in the country of his dreams, married to the woman he idolizes. And then the world begins to fall apart.
  Updated 8.24.05
• Son of a Witch
  Author: Maguire, Gregory
  Publisher: Regan $ 26.95 ISBN: 0060548932 Date: 2005
  KirkusPW
  Ten years after the publication of Wicked, the author returns to the land of Oz to follow the story of Liir, the adolescent boy left hiding in the shadows of the castle when Dorothy killed the Witch.
  Suggested Reading: Oz Stars
  Updated 7.7.05
• The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear
  Author: Moers, Walter
  Publisher: Overlook $ 26.95 ISBN: 1585677248 Date: 2005
  PWLJ
  Captain Bluebear tells the story of his first 13-1/2 lives spent on the mysterious continent of Zamonia, where intelligence is an infectious disease, water flows uphill, and dangers lie in wait for him around every corner.
  Suggested Reading: If You Like Douglas Adams
  Updated 8.24.05
• Exposure
  Author: Stevenson, Talitha
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151011621 Date: 2005
  PWLJ
  A deftly plotted, suspenseful morality tale explores the dangerous pleasure of offering charity, the effects of deceit and shame on a rigidly complacent family, and the nature of love among family and friends.
  Updated 8.24.05
• PopCo
  Author: Thomas, Scarlett
  Publisher: Harvest $ 14 (paper) ISBN: 015603137x Date: 2005
  KirkusLJ
  PopCo tells the story of Alice Butler--a subversively smart girl in the commercial-soaked world who grows from recluse orphan to burgeoning vigilante, buttressed by mystery, codes, math, and the sense her grandparents gave her that she could change the world.
  Updated 8.24.05

Mystery & Suspense

• Flashback
  Author: Braver, Gary
  Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 0765302519 Date: 2005
  PW
  In this medical thriller from the author of Gray Matter and Elixer, Jack Koryan is attacked by a school of rare jellyfish, whose toxic stings put him in a three-year coma. When he awakens, he finds that the jellyfish toxin has left him with flashbacks, some of which leave him quaking in horror.
  Suggested Reading: Medical Fiction | Medical Thrillers
  Updated 7.25.05
• The Color of Law
  Author: Gimenez, Mark
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385516738 Date: 2005
  LJBooklist
  Clark McCall, ne'er-do-well son of a Texas millionaire presidential hopeful, puts a major crimp in his father's election plans when he winds up murdered--apparently by a heroin-addicted hooker. With echoes of To Kill a Mockingbird as well as early John Grisham, The Color of Law is a provocative page-turner and marks the stunning debut of a major new talent.
  Suggested Reading: Legal Stars | Debuts
  Updated 8.15.05
• The Stranger House
  Author: Hill, Reginald
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060820810 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  The "sorcerer of style" ("New York Times Book Review") delivers a stunning stand-alone novel full of suspense, romance, history, sex, and miracles--an exploration of the sometimes twisted side of the human psyche.
  Updated 9.17.05
• Half Broken Things
  Author: Joss, Morag
  Publisher: Delta $ 22 ISBN: 0385339402 Date: 2005
  PWBooklist
  When a mixture of deceit, good luck, and misfortune draws three strangers--an aging house-sitter, a struggling con man, and a pregnant young woman--together at Walden Manor, each sees one final chance to start over.
  Suggested Reading: Psychological Suspense Stars
  Updated 8.15.05
• How to Seduce a Ghost
  Author: McIntyre, Hope
  Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0892960132 Date: 2005
  BooklistLJ
  A young ghost writer must track down a deadly arsonist in the first of an exciting new mystery series.
  Updated 9.17.05
• Dying in Style: Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper
  Author: Viets, Elaine
  Publisher: Signet $ 6.99 ISBN: 0451216792 Date: 2005
  Mystery shopper Josie Marcus's report about Danessa Celedine's exclusive store is less than stellar, and it may cost the fashion diva fifty million dollars. But Danessa's financial future becomes moot when she's found murdered, strangled with one of her own thousand-dollar snakeskin belts--and Josie is accused of the crime.
  Suggested Reading: Shopping
  Updated 9.23.05

Books for Kids, Teens & Readers of All Ages

Age and grade designations are approximate, parental judgement should be used.

• Bad Kitty
  Author: Bruel, Nick
  Publisher: Roaring Brook $ 15.95 ISBN: 1596430699 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  In this riotous picture book about a cat gone berserk, Kitty is not happy when she's told her favorite foods are gone, and all that's left are unappealing vegetables. She stops misbehaving when tastier things arrive.
  Grades: Preschool - 3 Category: Picture Book
• Code Orange
  Author: Cooney, Caroline
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 15.95 ISBN: 0385732597 Date: 2005
  Booklist PW
  With a school report due, Mitty Blake considers it good luck when he finds some old medical books in his family's weekend house. However, when he discovers an old envelope in one of the books, the report is no longer about the grade--it's about life and death.
  Grades: 7-12 Category: Fiction | Suspense
• Mr. Chickee's Funny Money
  Author: Curtis, Christopher Paul
  Publisher: Wendy Lamb $ 15.95 ISBN: 0385327722 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Mr. Chickee, the genial blind man in the neighborhood, gives young Steven a mysterious bill with 15 zeros on it and the image of a familiar but startling face. Agent Fondoo of the U.S. Treasury Department and his team of agents are determined to get that bill back.
  Grades: 3-7 Category: Fiction
• Lies and Other Tall Tales
  Author: Hurston, Zora Neale & Meyers, Christopher (Ilt)
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 15.99 ISBN: 0060006552 Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW
  While traveling in the Gulf States in the 1930s, Hurston collected and recorded some real whoppers. Young readers can enjoy these far-fetched fibs enhanced with bold, expressive collages.
  Grades: 1-4 Category: Folklore
• Twilight
  Author: Meyer, Stephanie
  Publisher: Megan Tingley $ 17.99 ISBN: 0316160172 Date: 2005
  PW
  Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. When she meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen--a vampire--her life takes a thrilling and terrifying romantic turn.
  Grades: 9-12 Category: Speculative Fiction | Horror