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All Stars 1999

Fiction titles which received three or more starred reviews from major review sources: Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

• Dreamland
  Author: Baker, Kevin
  Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 26 ISBN: 0060193093
  Publishers Weekly Booklist Library Journal
  A literary tour de force in the tradition of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime that delivers both a masterful, sweeping chronicle of an era of American history and an intimate portrait of a city, depicting it in all its garish, squalid, exuberant, frightening magnificence.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• Big Trouble
  Author: Barry, Dave
  Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399145672
  Publishers Weekly Kirkus Library Journal
  The humorous Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist makes his fiction debut with a ferociously funny novel about love and mayhem in south Florida, and the the life-changing events that rumble through a odd-ball family after two hit men pull up to their door.
• The Return of Little Big Man
  Author: Berger, Thomas
  Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0316098442
  Publishers Weekly Booklist Library Journal
  In the long-awaited sequel to the bestselling classic Little Big Man, the foremost chronicler of the American West, Jack Crabb, continues his fabulous adventures.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• At the Full and Change of the Moon
  Author: Brand, Dionne
  Publisher: Grove List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0802116493
  Booklist Library Journal Publishers Weekly
  From acclaimed and award-winning poet and novelist Dionne Brand comes a saga of magnificent scope, spanning six generations of Africans in the Americas and beyond. Starting with a mass suicide of slaves on Trinidad in 1824, the epic follows a family over the years into the confusion, estrangement and violence of the late 20th century.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• The Country Life
  Author: Cusk, Rachel
  Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ ? ISBN: 0312198485
  Library Journal Publishers Weekly Kirkus
  "Clamamity Jane Eyre" arrives at Cold Comfort Farm in this brilliant comedy of manners and identity by a Whitbread-winning young author. "A novel that makes you laugh out loud and that you put down with regret." - London Literary Review.
• Feeding the Ghosts
  Author: D'Aguiar, Fred
  Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 088001623x
  Publishers Weekly Library Journal Kirkus
  A suspenseful, poetic novel, based on an actual incident about a disease-ridden slave ship, a female captive, and a shocking court case.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• A Star Called Henry
  Author: Doyle, Roddy
  Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670887579
  Booklist Publishers Weekly Kirkus
  Doyle's new novel introduces Henry Smart, adventurer, IRA assassin, and lover, as he tells the story of his life and of the part he played in Irish history.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• House of Sand and Fog
  Author: Dubus, Andre
  Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393046974
  Publishers Weekly Kirkus Booklist
  House of Sand and Fog is a narrative triumph in which a traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story are turned upside down with brutal, heartrending consequences. It is an American tragedy, and a shockingly true picture of the county we live in today.
• For the Relief of Unbearable Urges: Stories
  Author: Englander, Nathan
  Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0375404929
  Publishers Weekly Library Journal Kirkus Booklist
  A work of stunning authority and imagination, Englander's debut contains ten energized, irreverent stories rooted in the weight of Jewish history and the customs of Orthodox life.
• Carter Clay
  Author: Evans, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0060192658
  Publishers Weekly Kirkus Library Journal
  Acclaimed for her stunning debut, The Blue Hour, Elizabeth Evans returns with an explosive tale of a drunken driver's quest for salvation . . . and the family whose lives he has irrevocably changed.
• Evensong
  Author: Godwin, Gail
  Publisher: Ballantine List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0345372441
  Kirkus Library Journal Publishers Weekly
  Into the well-ordered life of a young female pastor come three strangers, whose explosive personalities will ignite a conflagration in her marriage . . . and in the depths of her very soul.
• East of the Mountains
  Author: Guterson, David
  Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0151002290
  Publishers Weekly Booklist Library Journal
  From the author of the prize-winning Snow Falling on Cedars comes a novel of America. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, a recently widowed, retired heart surgeon, accompanied by his two dogs, sets out on a journey through the West - sage deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, and vast orchards - on his last hunt.
• Remember Me
  Author: Hendrie, Laura
  Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0805062181
  Publishers Weekly Library Journal Booklist Kirkus
  Rose, who lives in the tiny town of Queduro, New Mexico, where she makes her living by selling embroidery, must face down her ghosts - and her hometown - to find belonging, identity, and love.
• The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
  Author: Johnston, Wayne
  Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385495420
  Publishers Weekly Library Journal Kirkus
  Newfoundland is the setting for this story of how fate brings together a witty school boy who pursues socialist dreams and a popular newspaper columnist who writes about the history of the continent.
• Mosquito
  Author: Jones, Gayl
  Publisher: Beacon List Price: $ 29 ISBN: 0807083461
  Publishers Weekly Library Journal Kirkus
  In Gayl Jones' new novel, once again "the command of language is spectacular, as is the breadth of knowledge and allusions" (Jill Nelson, The Nation), but the territory is brand new - the U.S. - Mexican border, along with a new cast of Chicano characters.
• A Dangerous Friend
  Author: Just, Ward
  Publisher: Houghton List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0395856981
  Publishers Weekly Library Journal Booklist
  A major novel by the author of Echo House, set in Indochina is 1965. Sydney Parade, a trained political scientist, runs away to Saigon in an effort to become something larger than himself - and begins - but only begins - to understand something of the complexities of Western survival in the Third World.
  Read-alike suggestions: Historical Fiction Stars reading list
• Hearts in Atlantis
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 28 ISBN: 0684853515
  Kirkus Booklist Library Journal
  In his strongest collection since Different Seasons, Stephen King confirms the power of his storytelling with four brilliant, disturbing tales of an America shadowed by Vietnam: "Low Men in Yellow Coats, " "Hearts in Atlantis, " "Blind Willie, " and "Why We're in Vietnam."
• A Gesture Life
  Author: Lee, Chang-Rae
  Publisher: Riverhead List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573221465
  Booklist Library Journal Publishers Weekly Kirkus
  From the acclaimed author of Native Speaker comes his second novel about a Japanese World War II veteran who becomes a proper man and upstanding citizen in New York.
  Read-alike suggestions: Historical Fiction Stars reading list.
• Breath and Shadows
  Author: Leffland, Ella
  Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688142710
  Publishers Weekly Kirkus Booklist
  Ella Leffland brilliantly explores the perils of ordinary life that threaten the well-being, even the sanity, of one member of each of three generations of a Danish family in Europe and America -- people who are daring enough to believe that goodness and truth are possible in worlds they cannot control.
• Shadow-Box
  Author: Logue, Antonia
  Publisher: Grove List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0802116477
  Kirkus Publishers Weekly Booklist
  Based on one of the greatest and most unusual love stories of the 20th century, this literary novel explores the life of Arthur Cravan - semi-professional boxer, influential art critic, legendary bon vivant, and nephew of Oscar Wilde.
  Read-alike suggestions: Historical Fiction Stars reading list.
• Bone by Bone
  Author: Matthiessen, Peter
  Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375501029
  Booklist Kirkus Library Journal Publishers Weekly
  Although it stands alone, Bone by Bone is the conclusion and capstone of the Watson trilogy as well as a true tour de force. Matthiessen brings his anti-hero to life with a complexity of character and profound humanity that establishes the novel as a modern classic.
  Read-alike suggestions: Historical Fiction Stars reading list.
• Ahab's Wife or the Star-Gazer
  Author: Naslund, Sena Jeter
  Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 28 ISBN: 0688171877
  Publishers Weekly Booklist Library Journal Kirkus
  "Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last." An epic-scale, brilliant and compelling saga, inspired by a brief passage in Moby Dick, chronicles the life of Capt. Ahab's wife.
  Read-alike suggestions: Historical Fiction Stars reading list.
• The River Midnight
  Author: Nattel, Lilian
  Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684853035
  Publishers Weekly Kirkus Booklist
  In a novel that explores the tensions between men and women, and celebrates the wordless and kinetic bond of friendship, Nattel, whose family came from Poland, weaves a story that brings to mind such diverse writers as Isabel Allende, E.L. Doctorow, and Isaac Singer.
• Broke Heart Blues
  Author: Oates, Joyce Carol
  Publisher: Dutton List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0525944516
  Kirkus Booklist Publishers Weekly
  
• A Prayer for the Dying
  Author: O'Nan, Stewart
  Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0805061479
  Publishers Weekly Booklist Library Journal
  Dark, poetic, and chilling, A Prayer for the Dying asks if it is possible to be a good man in a time of madness as members of the town succumb to a fatal epidemic.
  Read-alike suggestions: Historical Fiction Stars reading list.
• Thunder on the Mountain
  Author: Poyer, David
  Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312864949
  Publishers Weekly Library Journal Booklist
  An ambitious novel of heroism and violence in the western Pennsylvania oil country at the nadir of the great Depression, in the tradition of Jack London and John Steinbeck.
  Read-alike suggestions: Historical Fiction Stars reading list.
• Close Range: Wyoming Stories
  Author: Proulx, Annie
  Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684852217
  Kirkus Publishers Weekly Library Journal
  From one of the great writers of our time comes a collection of award-winning stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. Accompanied by watercolor illustrations by William Matthews, the pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's - work by an author writing at the peak of her craft.
• The Ground Beneath Her Feet
  Author: Rushdie, Salman
  Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 27.50 ISBN: 0805053085
  Booklist Library Journal Kirkus
  Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction
• Amy and Isabelle
  Author: Strout, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0375501347
  Publishers Weekly Booklist Kirkus
  In a novel about emotional exile, Elizabeth Strout explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter.
• Losing Nelson
  Author: Unsworth, Barry
  Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385486529
  Publishers Weekly Kirkus Library Journal
  A novel of obsession, this is the story of a man unable to see himself separately from the hero he mistakenly idolizes - Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain's greatest admiral.
• Girl in Hyacinth Blue
  Author: Vreeland, Susan
  Publisher: McMurray & Beck List Price: $ 17.50 ISBN: 1878448900
  Publishers Weekly Kirkus Booklist
  Suggested Reading: Vermeer Fiction Reading List
• The Emperor's General
  Author: Webb, James H.
  Publisher: Broadway List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0767900766
  Library Journal Publishers Weekly Kirkus
  Did the Japanese really lose World War II? The bestselling author of Fields of Fire brilliantly portrays the epic battle of wills between MacArthur, America's greatest general, and a country with a genius for self-preservation. In the superbly imagined portrait of the days just following World War II, Webb has crafted an extraordinary saga from a spellbinding chapter in American history.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Fiction reading list.

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