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April

• Ravelstein
  Author: Bellow, Saul
  Publisher: Viking $ 22.50 ISBN: 067084134x Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist Library Journal
  When Abe Ravelstein, a brilliant professor, suggests that his friend write a memoir or life of him, the two share a celebratory trip to Paris where they explore thoughts on mortality, philosophy, history, old suits, and friends old and new. The mood of this journey turns more somber once they have returned to the Midwest and Ravelstein succumbs to AIDS in this elegy to friendship and lives well (or badly) lived.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | AIDS
• Like Normal People
  Author: Bender, Karen E.
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0395945151 Date: 2000
  PW Booklist
  An acclaimed debut already excerpted in The New Yorker, this novel follows Lena, a 45-year-old, child-like woman, and her day-long escape from her residential home with her troubled 11-year-old niece.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 4/3/00.
• The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living
  Author: Clark, Martin
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375407251 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  Undistracted by children, hobbies, or a rewarding marriage, Evers Wheeling, a semi-dissolute judge from Norton, North Carolina, is moving quickly down the road to nowhere - until the morning he is confronted by a young woman whose dim-witted brother is up on drug charges.
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor
• Being Dead
  Author: Crace, Jim
  Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374110131 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  A haunting new novel about love, death and the afterlife by the award-winning author of Quarantine. Baritone Bay, mid-afternoon: A couple, naked, married almost 30 years, lies murdered in the dunes.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | After Life Stars
  Updated 4/17/00.
• Pillars of Gold
  Author: Ellis, Alice Thomas
  Publisher: Moyer Bell $ 22.95 ISBN: 1559212845 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  
• Ladysmith
  Author: Foden, Giles
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375409203 Date: 2000
  Library Journal
  From the author of the Whitbread Award-winning The Last King of Scotland comes a tale of a town under siege in colonial Africa during the Boer War, and a young woman who finds love and freedom in the midst of the horror and deprivation of war.
  Updated 4/13/00.
• American Skin
  Author: de Grazia, Don
  Publisher: Scribner $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0684862220 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  A timeless story about a young man's need to find comfort and a sense of belonging, as well as a stunning portrait of the class and racial tensions that pervade our society, American Skin is the American story American literature is not complete without. . . . Full of images and humor and action and questions" (Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine.
• Requiem Shark
  Author: Griffin, Nicholas
  Publisher: Villard $ 23 ISBN: 0375503366 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  Set in the 18th century's golden age of piracy, this literary debut is the tale of a young recruit, William Williams, and his forced apprenticeship to Captain Roberts, slaver-turned-pirate captain.
  Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Historical Fiction Stars | Pirate Stars
• More Than You Know
  Author: Gutcheon, Beth
  Publisher: Morrow $ 23 ISBN: 0688174035 Date: 2000
  Library Journal PW
  This haunting novel bridges two centuries, two mother-daughter relationships, and two tragic love stories in a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine.
• Keeneland
  Author: Hagy, Alyson
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684855038 Date: 2000
  PW Library Journal
  A compelling novel set at Kentucky's Keeneland race track. When her estranged husband becomes indebted to impatient loan sharks, Kerry Connolly learns that liking a horse doesn't make it faster and loving one means genuine risk.
  Suggested Reading: Horse Tales
• Never Love a Cowboy
  Author: Heath, Lorraine
  Publisher: Avon $ 6.50 (mass market paper) ISBN: 0380803305 Date: 2000
  PW
  An award-winning author returns with an exuberant romance featuring the wayward son of an English earl who falls in love against his will with a sassy Texas saloon keeper's daughter.
  Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
  Updated 3/24/00.
• Blue Bedspread
  Author: Jha, Raj Kamal
  Publisher: Random $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375503129 Date: 2000
  Library Journal
  Described by John Fowles as "remarkable, almost a coming of age of the Indian novel, " this powerful, penetrating debut work by a young Calcutta journalist is about the love and hope that can survive in the midst of family violence.
  Suggested Reading: Stars of India
  Updated 4/3/00.
• Le Mariage
  Author: Johnson, Diane
  Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525945180 Date: 2000
  PW Library Journal
  In her sparkling, new comedy of manners, the bestselling author of Le Divorce puts a contemporary twist on this venerable form with her keen-eye portraits of modern-day Americans living in Paris.
  Suggested Reading: Paris Stars
  Updated 3/13/00.
• Traveling Light
  Author: Kittle, Katrina
  Publisher: Warner $ 18.95 ISBN: 04465248085 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  A dancer-turned-school teacher encounters a string of bad luck in the form of a career-ending injury and the slow death of her brother but slowly to come to terms with life and relationships and discovers how fortunate she really is.
  Suggested Reading: AIDS
  Updated 4/17/00.
• English Passengers
  Author: Kneale, Matthew
  Publisher: Doubleday/Talese $ 25 ISBN: 0385497431 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  When a band of smugglers sails for Tasmania, believed to be the Garden of Eden, they find the British "civilization" of the aboriginal tribes is in full force. Each character has a voice in the narration in this bravura performance, which sets new standards for historical and nautical adventure writing.
  Suggested Reading: Sea Stories | Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars |
  Also, Kalimantaan by C.S. Godshalk.
• Shopping
  Author: Kramer, Gavin
  Publisher: Soho $ 22 ISBN: 159471894 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Suggested Reading: Shopping
  Updated 4/3/00.
• Mr. Phillips
  Author: Lanchester, John
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399146040 Date: 2000
  Kirkus Booklist
  With his eye for the telling detail, his ear for the commonplaces of speech that make us who we are, his sympathy for the very ordinariness that sets us each apart, the author of Debt of Pleasure has created another jewel of a novel.
• In the Fall
  Author: Lent, Jeffrey
  Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 25 ISBN: 0871137658 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  "An extraordinary first novel that bears no resemblance to a first novel" (Jim Harrison), In the Fall tells the heartrending story of three generations of an interracial American family, from the end of the Civil War to the Great Depression.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Fiction | All Stars | Debuts
• Madame
  Author: Libera, Antoni
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374200068 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  Madame is an unexpected gem: a first novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity - and the comic "sentimental education" of a schoolboy who falls in love with his French teacher.
• Krupp's Lulu: Stories
  Author: Lish, Gordon
  Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows $ 22 ISBN: 1568581548 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  Updated 4/19/00.
• No Great Mischief
  Author: MacLeod, Alistair
  Publisher: W.W. Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393049701 Date: 2000
  PW Library Journal
  This novel weaves together the story of a Scottish man who sets sail with his wife and 12 children for Cape Breton in 1779 and the tale of his descendant, who struggles with family loyalty 200 years later on the same bleak landscape.
  Updated 6/6/00.
• Summer Gone
  Author: Macfarlane, David
  Publisher: Crown $ 23 ISBN: 0517702622 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW
  This haunting novel about love experienced and love remembered is also an unforgettable celebration and evocation of the brief beauty of a northern summer.
  Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars
  Updated 3/21/00.
• Shadow Baby
  Author: McGhee, Alison
  Publisher: Harmony $ 23 ISBN: 0609606328 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  Shadow Baby is eleven-year-old Clara Winters' story. Clara, who lives with her no-frills mother Tara in the foothills of the Adirondacks, is obsessed by a need for family - or at the very least the knowledge of one. She learns that she had a twin sister who died at birth; she knows she must have a father somewhere; she knows little bits and pieces about her mother's father, whom she's never met; and that's all she has. In her search for information and attention, Clara meets an elderly immigrant who lives in a trailer park on the outskirts of her town. Their relationship, along with Clara's overactive fantasy life, finally brings her to learn the truth about her history and to gain some knowledge about what it means to be a grown-up. - Publisher marketing.
• Tulip Fever
  Author: Moggach, Deborah
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385334893 Date: 2000
  PW
  With critical raves from Britain and film rights already sold to Steven Spielberg, Tulip Fever is a tour de force set in 1630s Amsterdam - a tale about a smoldering passion that develops between a married woman and the artist painting her portrait.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• In Babylon
  Author: Moring, Marcel
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 0688176453 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Published in Europe to critical acclaim, this richly imagined international bestseller weaves a gloriously inventive and very human story about man's constant drive from the Old World to the New - and his desire, despite everything, for home and homeland.
  Updated 3/16/00.
• Blonde
  Author: Oates, Joyce Carol
  Publisher: Ecco $ 27.50 ISBN: 0060196076 Date: 2000
  PW
  In her most ambitious work to date one of America's most celebrated writers examines the inner, spiritual life of the woman who became Hollywood's most enduring legend--Marilyn Monroe--as seen through her own eyes. "Grimly compelling".--Wall Street Journal.
  Suggested Reading: Hollywood & Film Stars
  Updated 8.2.04
• Wild Decembers
  Author: O'Brien, Edna
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618045678 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  O'Brien's latest novel charts the quick and critical demise of relations between "the warring sons of warring sons" fighting over inherited land in the countryside of western Ireland.
  Suggested Reading: Irish Stars
• Blue Angel
  Author: Prose, Francine
  Publisher: Harpercollins $ 25 ISBN: 006019541x Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW
  Deliciously risque, this new work by the author of Guided Tours of Hell offers a withering take on modern academic mores, a scathing tale of colliding cultures that vividly shows just what can happen when academic politics crash head-on with political correctness.
• Horse Heaven
  Author: Smiley, Jane
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26 ISBN: 037540600x Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist Library Journal
  The universe of horse racing - passionate, cold-hearted, pure, corrupt - is revealed in Smiley's new novel that combines the intense feeling of her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres with the wit, pace, and brightness of Moo.
  Suggested Reading: Horse Tales | All Stars | Humorous Fiction
  Updated 4/12/00
• Music and Silence
  Author: Tremain, Rose
  Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374199892 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  In the year 1629, a young English lute player named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish court where he must find the path that will realize his hopes and save his soul. Short-listed for the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Music and Fiction | All Stars
  Updated 4/17/00.
• Ray in Reverse
  Author: Wallace, Daniel
  Publisher: Algonquin $ 21.95 ISBN: 1565122607 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  In this follow-up to Big Fish, Ray Williams, now sitting in heaven, reflects back on his difficult life - including his adulterous marriage, moments of sexual confusion, his worst deed, and his one good one.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Humorous Fiction
• The Republic of Wine
  Author: Yan, Mo
  Publisher: Arcade $ 26.95 ISBN: 1559705310 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  Updated 4/6/00.

March

• Despair
  Author: Alexis, Andre
  Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805059792 Date: 2000
  PW
• Kitty and Virgil
  Author: Bailey, Paul
  Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585670103 Date: 2000
  PW
  Kitty Crozier wakes up in the hospital and sees the fleeting image of Virgil Florescu, a dissident poet who swam across the Danube to escape Ceausescu's Romania. A subsequent vision of Virgil signals the beginning of the most important relationship of Kitty's life - one in which previous lives will be oddly connected.
• Banyan Tree
  Author: Nolan, Christopher
  Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559705116 Date: 2000
  PW
• Prozac Highway
  Author: Blackbridge, Persimmon
  Publisher: Marion Boyers $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 071453059x Date: 2000
  Library Journal
• Fay
  Author: Brown, Larry
  Publisher: 1565121686 $ 24.95 ISBN: 1565121686 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  
• Making Love to the Minor Poets of Chicago
  Author: Conrad, James
  Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312204728 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  In a novel of love, ambition, poetry, and nuclear waste, Conrad imagines an influential poetry professor who insists that a nuclear storage project also include an epic poem.
  Suggested Reading: Poets
• Welcome to Temptation
  Author: Crusie, Jennifer
  Publisher: St. Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312252943 Date: 2000
  PW
  Sophie Dempsey wants to help her sister film a video and then get out of Temptation, Ohio. Mayor Phin Tucker wants to play pool with the police chief and keep things peaceful. But when Sophie and Phin meet, they both get more than they want.
  Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
• The Sound of One Hand Clapping
  Author: Flannagan, Richard
  Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 0871138026 Date: 2000
  PW
  Winner of the Australian Bookseller's Book of the Year Award, The Sound of One Hand Clapping is a dazzling novel of war, family, migration, and the search for new beginnings.
  
• Place Last Seen
  Author: Freeman, Charlotte
  Publisher: Picador $ 23 ISBN: 0312242271 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  The unforgettable story of a family crisis, Place Last Seen is written in the tradition of Ordinary People and The Deep End of the Ocean.
• The Gates of the Alamo
  Author: Harrigan, Stephen
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0679447172 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus LJ
  This full-scale novel about the siege and fall of the Alamo weaves in a love story between an American naturalist and a widow innkeeper who, along with her 16-year-old son, get swept up in the harrowing events of the heroic battle.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars | All Stars
• Gambler's Rose
  Author: Hawkes, G.W.
  Publisher: MacMurray & Beck $ 24.95 ISBN: 187844896x Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  
• American By Blood
  Author: Huebner, Andrew
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684857707 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Three U.S. Army scouts leading an infantry column arrive a day late to the battle of Little Bighorn to find the bloody ruins of Custer's troops. Their mission to clear the land of the Indian tribes then becomes one of vengeance, forever changing their sense of manhood, honor, and country.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars
• Conspiracy of Paper
  Author: Liss, David
  Publisher: Random $ 25 ISBN: 0375502920 Date: 2000
  Kirkus PW Booklist Library Journal
  "In A Conspiracy of Paper, David Liss has woven a tale of 18th-century finance, murder, and religion that is a remarkable debut and a thoroughly satisfying novel." - Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars | Debuts
• The Barbarians Are Coming
  Author: Long, David Wong
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399146032 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus LJ
  In a tale that alternates between black comedy and out-and-out slapstick, Louie explores the painful alienation between a Chinese-American man and his immigrant father - a conflict that is deepened by the son's decision to become a chef instead of a doctor.
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor Reading List | Asian American Stars | All Stars
• Vacant Possession
  Author: Mantel, Hilary
  Publisher: Owl $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0805062718 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  Ten years after Muriel does her mother in, she gets out of the mental asylum ready for vengeance in a macabre, terrible twist. Through disguises, she's able to torment those who sent her to the asylum.
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor Reading List
• Mondo Desperado: A Serial Novel
  Author: McCabe, Patrick
  Publisher: HarperColllins $ 24 ISBN: 0060194618 Date: 2000
  Library Journal
  With his trademark blistering wit and macabre genius, McCabe presents a series of connected narratives that interweave the surreal lives of dementedly funny inhabitants of the insular Irish town of Barntrosna.
  Suggested Reading: Irish Stars
• Every Thing in This Country: A Novella & Two Stories
  Author: McCann, Colum
  Publisher: Metropolitan $ 21 ISBN: 0805063986 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  In his fourth book, McCann, a "bold and mesmerizing" writer, turns to the Troubles and reveals, as only fiction writers can, the reverberations of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of men and women, parents and children.
  Suggested Reading: Irish Stars
• Water, Carry Me
  Author: Moran, Thomas
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573221384 Date: 2000
  Booklist Library Journal
  The author who made an impressive literary debut with The Man in the Box pens this breathtaking love story of a young woman's journey from innocence to betrayal, across the vivid brightness and darkness that is the heartbreaking landscape of her beloved Ireland.
• A Trip to the Stars
  Author: Nicholas, Christopher
  Publisher: Dial $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385318049 Date: 2000
  PW
  Christopher draws powerfully on his singular gifts to craft an epic tale about a young boy and his adopted aunt who are separated when he is kidnapped while in her care.
• Exile
  Author: O'Conaire, Padraic
  Publisher: Clo Iar-Chonnachta Teo $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1874700621 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Updated 4/3/00.
• Bodega Dreams
  Author: Quinonez, Ernesto
  Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375705899 Date: 2000
  PW
• Carolina Moon
  Author: Roberts, Nora
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399145923 Date: 2000
  PW
  Returning as an adult to her hometown of Progress, South Carolina, Tory Bodeen plans to put the past behind her and open a stylish home-design shop. Following her friend, Hope's, brutal murder - unsolved to this day - she is determined to find a measure of peace and free herself from the haunting visions of that terrible night. But her return will be more difficult and frightening than she ever expected because Hope's killer is nearby as well.
  Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
• In America
  Author: Sontag, Susan
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374175403 Date: 2000
  PW Booklist Library Journal
  In a glorious, sweeping new novel by the bestselling author of The Volcano Lover, Sontag once again bases her work on a real story. In 1876, a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalewska, Poland's greatest actress, travels to California to found a "utopian" commune. In America is a big, juicy, surprising book about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the fate of idealism, and about the world of the theater.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
  Updated 3/13/00.
• Gertrude and Claudius
  Author: Updike, John
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375409084 Date: 2000
  PW
  Updike's 19th novel brings to life the story of Gertrude and Claudius, King and Queen of Denmark, before the action of Shakespeare's Hamlet begins.
  Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars | Legendary Characters

February

• The Plato Papers
  Author: Ackroyd, Peter
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385497687 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  The Plato Papers treads a thin line between fantasy and biography as London's greatest orator lectures at the turn of the 38th century. Perfectly timed for the year 2000 as we imagine millennia beyond our own, "this masterpiece of contemporary writing will entertain readers for years to come" (Jay Parini, author of The Last Station).
• The Verificationist
  Author: Antrim, Donald
  Publisher: Knopf $ 21 ISBN: 0375408223 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  A gathering of psychoanalysts and a narrator with a dissociated personality whose vantage point is the ceiling of a pancake house - these are the basic elements of this deadly serious, desperately playful, off-the-wall and perfectly on-target new novel.
• The Natural Order of Things
  Author: Antunes, Antonio Lobo
  Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 0802116582 Date: 2000
  PW
  Antonio Lobo Antunes has been described by Paris Vogue as "the greatest living Portuguese writer.... He has been compared to Celine ... (but) he owes as much to Proust in the complexity of his style. One could also invoke Malcolm Lowry or Cormac McCarthy for the visionary power, the buried violence."
  The Natural Order of Things is a tale of two families and the secrets that bind them; the history of Portugal as family history. The voices and memories of his characters -- an army officer being tortured in prison on charges of conspiracy; an elderly man, once a miner in Mozambique, now reduced to dreams of "flying underground"; a diabetic teenage girl and the middle-aged husband she despises; the officer's illegitimate sister, locked away to haunt the house, like Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre -- create a portrait of a disintegrating society that attains the brilliant surreality of Elias Canetti and Nikolai Gogol. - Publisher Marketing.
• Rose Garden and Other Stories
  Author: Brennan, Maeve
  Publisher: Counterpoint $ 23 ISBN: 1582430500 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  From the author of The Springs of Affection comes a second collection of 20 masterly short stories written during the glory days of The New Yorker.
• The Suburbs of Heaven
  Author: Brown, Merle
  Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569471827 Date: 2000
  PW
  
• Mr. Spaceman
  Author: Butler, Robert Olen
  Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 0802166604 Date: 2000
  PW LJ
  A humorous and touching novel about an alien being's arrival at the turn of the millennium - by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.
• City of God
  Author: Doctorow, E.L.
  Publisher: Random $ 25 ISBN: 0679447830 Date: 2000
  PW Library Journal
  Beginning in mystery - the theft of a large brass cross from St. Timothy's Episcopal Church and its reappearance on the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism - this mordantly funny masterwork by the author of Billy Bathgate and The Waterworks emerges as a narrative of the 20th century written for the 21st. "Doctorow is a master of atmosphere . . . he knows the art of storytelling inside and out."-- Newsweek.
  Updated 3/13/00.
• The Fifth Season
  Author: Downs, Robert
  Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582430489 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
• S: A Novel from the Balkans
  Author: Drakulic, Slavenka
  Publisher: Viking $ 22.95 ISBN: 0670890979 Date: 2000
  LJ
  Set in 1992, during the height of the Bosnian war, S. reveals one of the most gruesome aspects of war - the rape and torture of civilian women by occupying forces. Through a series of flashbacks, S., a Bosnian woman, relives the unspeakable crimes she has endured and in telling her story, depicts the blackest side of human nature during wartime.
  Suggested Reading: Former Yugoslavia
• With Your Crooked Heart
  Author: Dunmore, Helen
  Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 0871137739 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  Bestselling British author Helen Dunmore delivers a dark, twisting tale of betrayal and fierce love - the story of Louise, a tough and introspective Londoner trapped in a subtle battle between two brothers.
• The Danish Girl
  Author: Ebershoff, David
  Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670888087 Date: 2000
  PW
  Inspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener and his California-born wife, this tender portrait of a marriage asks "What do you do when someone you love wants to change?"
• Moth Smoke
  Author: Hamid, Mohsin
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374213542 Date: 2000
  Kirkus Library Journal
  When Daru loses his job as a banker in Lahore, he begins a long fall from grace. Too clever for his own good, he descends into drug dealing and heroin addiction, and he rapidly spirals downward in a society increasingly polarized between decadent haves and discontented have-nots.
• Delirium of the Brave
  Author: Harris, William C.
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312254954 Date: 2000
  LJ
  Two friends -- one white, one black -- die in each other's arms during a Civil War battle. Follow their families from the Civil War to the present as four generations of soldiers, aristocrats, and hardball politicians confront new challenges and celebrate new triumphs, while trying to uncover the secret the two men left behind. Surrender to this tale of murder, intrigue, love, war, and friendship set against the backdrop of Savannah's powerful Irish-Catholic aristocracy and the South's most sensuous locale. - Publisher marketing.
• The Vision of Emma Blau
  Author: Hegi, Ursula
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0681829975 Date: 2000
  PW LJ
  From one of our century's most distinctive literary voices comes the eagerly anticipated companion novel to the bestselling Stones from the River. Hegi creates a fascinating picture of immigrants in America: their dreams and disappointments, the challenges of assimilation, the love that bonds generations, and the cultural wedges that drive them apart.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• Slab Rat
  Author: Heller, Ted
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0684864967 Date: 2000
  Kirkus Booklist
  In the pitch-perfect tradition of Nick Hornsby, Christopher Buckley, and Martin Amis comes Ted Heller with a razor-sharp, highly comic novel of ambition, deception and lethal office politics.
  Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction | Office Stars
• Pay It Forward
  Author: Hyde, Catherine
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684862719 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  Already optioned for film, this poignant novel of a young boy's unfailing belief in an individual's power to change the world and the ultimate goodness of the human spirit is destined to become a classic. Demonstrating the same universal appeal as Forrest Gump, Hyde's story is a down-to-earth look at the virtue of innocence and of faith - not in a deity, but in humankind.
  
• Test Pattern
  Author: Klein, Marjorie
  Publisher: William Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0688172849 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Brilliantly recreating the innocence and energy of the '50s, Test Pattern is a tour de force of imagination showing how a new TV set forever changes the lives of the Palmer family in 1954.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• Storm Riders
  Author: Leslie, Craig
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24 ISBN: 0312245548 Date: 2000
  PW Kirkus
  Storm Riders follows the challenges and tragedies of Clark Woods, a single father who is raising a troubled adopted Native American son - a psychological page-turner from the award-winning author of Winterkill and The Sky Fisherman.
• Two Moons
  Author: Mallon, Thomas
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375400257 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  Astronomy, politics, and romance join forces in this post-Civil War novel from the writer John Updike has called "one of the most interesting American novelists at work."
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• Among Prisoners: Short Stories
  Author: Manley, Frank
  Publisher: Coffeehouse Press $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1566890896 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  In this searing new collection after his successful novel, The Cockfighter, Frank Manley continues his deft exploration of the underside of the American experience. In the tradition of Flannery O'Connor, Manley presents a cultural snapshot that is poignant, grotesque, ironic, and ultimately fascinating. Manley's contemporary characters are prisoners of their own view of the world and their own beliefs and prejudices about those who are different from them. - Publisher Marketing.
• Handyman
  Author: Nichols, Linda
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 20 ISBN: 0385334370 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  An accidental therapy session is the catalyst for change in this winsome, witty debut novel - a love story about two people who don't realize they're made for each other until it's almost too late.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
• Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker
  Author: Remnick, David with Susan Choi (editors)
  Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 0-375-50356-0 Date: 2000
  PW
  Published for The New Yorker's 75th anniversary, this anthology of works of and about the city features such authors as John O'Hara, Harold Brodkey, Wendy Wasserstein, John Updike, Jamaica Kincaid, John Cheever, and Julie Hecht - the list reads like a literary pantheon.
• Reap
  Author: Ricstad, Eric
  Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670885177 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  A bold debut novel weaves a coming-of-age story into the gritty lives and desolate beauty of Vermont's northeast kingdom.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
• Scandalmonger
  Author: Safire, William
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 27 ISBN: 0684867192 Date: 2000
  Library Journal
  Exploding any notion that political sex scandal is a recent phenomenon, our press-hounded Founding Fathers star in an outrageous - and fact-based - novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. Safire demonstrates how media intrusiveness into private lives and politicians' manipulation of the press are as old as the Constitution in this entertaining and thought-provoking historical novel.
  Suggested Reading: 1776 Stars
• Make Believe
  Author: Scott, Joanna
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316776165 Date: 2000
  PW
  When four-year-old Bo is orphaned in the car accident that kills his mother, he becomes the focus of a fierce custody struggle between his two sets of very different grandparents. As the grownups play out their secret desires, hidden resentments, and stubborn self-righteousness, Bo finds himself at the mercy of a fallible adult world. With a child's perfect but partial understanding, he flees into himself - away from the sea of strangers - where he inhabits an eerie inner landscape filled with the dreamlike intensity unique to the imagination of a child. - Publisher marketing.
• The Lion Next Door
  Author: Simonds, Merilyn
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399145915 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  The author of The Convict Lover offers a debut collection of stories that follows one woman's journey from child to adult through spectacular and enchanting landscapes and through the darker, more mysterious terrain of the human heart.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
• Abe
  Author: Slotkin, Richard
  Publisher: Holt $ 27.50 ISBN: 0805041230 Date: 2000
  PW
  In a brilliant work of historical imagination, award-winning historian Slotkin recreates the childhood of Abe Lincoln, including a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans.
  Suggested Reading: Biographical Fiction | Lincoln
• Fly-Truffler
  Author: Sobin, Gustaf
  Publisher: Norton $ 19.95 ISBN: 0393048322 Date: 2000
  Kirkus Library Journal
  Through his whole life, Philippe Cabassac has fly-truffled - stalking the flies that lay their eggs directly over the tasty truffles. But after his wife's death, the truffles represent more than a delicacy; they open up a dream world where Philippe often visits his deceased spouse.
  Suggested Reading: After Life Stars
• Book of Revelation
  Author: Thompson, Rupert
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375409270 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  
• Harbor Lights
  Author: Weesner, Theodore
  Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 23 ISBN: 0871137666 Date: 2000
  Kirkus
  When a Maine lobster fisherman is diagnosed with a rapidly developing cancer, he finds himself driven to make peace with his family and is forced to confront the compromises of his past.
• When Mountains Walked
  Author: Wheeler, Kate
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 23 ISBN: 0395859913 Date: 2000
  PW Booklist
  In her much-anticipated first novel, the award-winning writer Kate Wheeler weaves a romantic, multi-generational story that travels from South America to India to New England. It tells of two parallel love affairs, years apart, in places remote and exotic.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
• Some Things That Stay
  Author: Willis, Sarah
  Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374105804 Date: 2000
  PW
  For the first time in her nomadic-style life, 15-year-old Tamara Anderson is happy. But once again, Tamara's life is shaken when she learns her mother has tuberculosis, which leaves the teenager in charge of two younger siblings and an artistic - and near lunatic - father.