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Fiction Stars 2001
2001: July - December
Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically
by author. Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted. A 
indicates an Overbooked Jump for Joy Biased Best Bet book.
December
- The Phoenix
Author: Boetius, Henning
Publisher: Talese $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385501838 Date: 2001
PW
Boetius, the author of several novels and literary mysteries--and himself the son of the only living survivor of the Hindenburg's crew--has combined a love story, an exploration of the science of the dirigible, and a frightening re-creation of one of the most memorable events in recent history.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 10/5/01 - From the Place in the Valley Deep in the Forest
Author: Cullen, Mitch
Publisher: Dufour $ 14.95 (trade paper)ISBN: 0802313361 Date: 2001Booklist
Updated 12/3/01 - The Way of the
Coyote
Author: Kelton, Elmer
Publisher: Forge $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312873182 Date: 2001Publishers WeeklyBooklist
The Civil War has ended and Union soldiers and federal officials have taken control of Texas as Rusty Shannon rides to his home on the Colorado River. This is the third novel in Elmer Kelton's brilliant series about the Texas Rangers, and in Rusty Shelton, he has created one of the most memorable characters in modern western fiction.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars
Updated 11/21/01 - Blue Skies
Falling
Author: Knight, Arthur Winfield
Publisher: Forge $ 22.95 ISBN: 031287779x Date: 2001Kirkus
Sam Bonner is on a journey. He and his wife are traveling through the Southwest, visiting the sights he immortalized as one of Hollywood's premier directors of a genre of film that captured a generation of viewers: the western. Blue Skies Falling chronicles an America that fights to be remembered. As poetic as the Southwest Trail itself, this novel captures the end of an era and the death of and art from. By the author of Johnnie D. Adapted from the jacket copy.
Updated 9/7/01 - Three to
See the King
Author: Mills, Magnus
Publisher: Picador $ 20 ISBN: 0312283555 Date: 2001Kirkus
A novel rich in comic menace is offered by the author of the international bestseller The Restraint of Beasts. As a man leaves his isolated home made of tin, he joins a pilgrimage of others seeking the messiah of a new building material.
Updated 10/23/01 - Night Games: And Other
Stories and Novellas
Author: Schnitzler, Arthur
Publisher: Ivan Dee $28.50 ISBN: 1566633869 Date: 2001Kirkus
Updated 11/6/01 - Dreams
of a Robot Dancing Bee
Author: Tate, James
Publisher: Verse $ 23 ISBN: 0970367253 Date: 2001PW
Updated 12/13/01 - Downriver
Author: Wheeler, Richard S.
Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312878451 Date: 2001PW
At the trapper's rendezvous in Wyoming in 1838, Barnaby Skye, seaman-deserter from the Royal Navy, is offered an opportunity to become a post trader in his Crow Indian wife's homeland. He begins the journey to St. Louis to present himself as a candidate for the job and undergoes a lesson in survival on a Missouri River steamboat.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars
Updated 10/5/01
November
- Portrait in Sepia
Author: Allende, Isabel
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0066211611 Date: 2001PW
Completing the trilogy that includes her bestselling novels Daughter of Fortune and The House of the Spirits, Portrait in Sepia is a stunning novel about memory and family secrets. Set at the end of the 19th century, it is the richly imagined saga of a woman who is forced to recognize her betrayal by the man she loves and to explore the mystery of her past.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Latino/Latina Stars
Updated 7/16/01 - The Complete Works of Isaac
Babel
Author: Babel, Isaac
Publisher: Norton $ 39.95 ISBN: 0393048462 Date: 2001BooklistLJKirkusPublisher Weekly
Often revolving around the tortured dilemmas faced by Jews within the ruthless Soviet state, Babel's terse, violent fiction has left its mark on generations of readers and writers. This single-volume edition of all his work will stand as Babel's final, most enduring legacy.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 10/25/01 - Coming Soon!!!
Author: Barth, John
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 26 ISBN: 0618131655 Date: 2001Library Journal
In a novelistic romp that is by turns hilarious and brilliant, the dean of postmodern fiction spoofs his own place in the pantheon of contemporary fiction and the experimental writers who have followed on the path of his literary trailblazing.
Updated 9/17/01 - Collected Fiction
Author: Bellow, Saul
Publisher: Viking $ 30 ISBN: 067084869 Date: 2001KirkusPublishers Weekly
This collection of short fiction is both a handsome anthology Bellow's avid readers will treasure and a superb introduction to those unacquainted with his genius.
Updated 10/17/01 - Bridal Season
Author: Brockway, Connie
Publisher: Dell $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0440236711 Date: 2001Booklist
In Victorian England, beautiful Letty Potts, a struggling music hall performer, decides to go straight. A case of mistaken identity suddenly has her planning a society wedding. No one suspects her secret--except the sensual Sir Elliot March, a war hero who has forsworn love. He senses something amiss about Letty, and soon both are caught up a scandal.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 9/21/01 - Edinburgh
Author: Chee, Alexander
Publisher: Welcome Rain $ 24 ISBN: 1566492254 Date: 2001KirkusPW
A molested boy grows to be a troubled man and must face down his old demons when he meets up with the son of the man who took away his innocence so many years ago.
Suggested Reading: Scottish Stars
Updated 10/16/01 - Lydia Cassatt Reading
the Morning Paper
Author: Chessman, Harriet Scott
Publisher: Seven Stories $ 24 ISBN: 15832222723 Date: 2001Kirkus
Set in the Parisian art world of the 1880s, this novel imagines a poignant time in the lives of the American impressionist Mary Cassatt and her sister, Lydia. Fatally ill and conscious of impending death, Lydia contemplates her narrowing world.
Suggested Reading: Paris Stars | Art Stars
Updated 10/8/01 - The Officers' Ward
Author: Dugain, Marc
Publisher: Soho $ 21 ISBN: 1569472653 Date: 2001Kirkus
Updated 11/21/01 - Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressivley Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable
Author: Dunn, Mark
Publisher: Macadam Cage $ 22 ISBN: 0967370167 Date: 2001LJ
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop, South Carolina. Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet in this love letter to language.
Suggested Reading: Epistolary Stars
Updated 2.14.06 - The
Royal Physician's Visit
Author: Enquist, Per Olov
Publisher: Overlook $ 26.95 ISBN: 1585671967 Date: 2001KirkusBooklist
Set in Denmark in the 1760s, The Royal Physician's Visit magnificently recasts the dramatic era of Danish history when Johann Friedrich Struensee, a German doctor from Altona, student of Enlightenment philosophers Diderot and Voltaire, and court physician to mad young King Christian, stepped through the aperture history had opened for him and became for two years the holder of absolute power in Denmark.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 11/6/01 - The Lantern Bearers
Author: Frame, Ronald
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 24 ISBN: 1582431558 Date: 2001Library Journal
Suggested Reading: Scottish Stars
Updated 10/23/01 - The King of Limbo: Stories
Author: Harum, Adrianne
Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585671932 Date: 2001Kirkus
Updated 9/21/01 - Hotel of the
Saints: Stories
Author: Hegi, Ursula
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684843102 Date: 2001Library Journal
The bestselling and acclaimed author of Stones from the River and The Vision of Emma Blau renews her reputation as an extraordinary writer of short stories with this first major collection in more than a decade.
Updated 9/17/01 - Dolce Agonia
Author: Huston, Nancy
Publisher: Steerforth $ 23 ISBN: 1586420283 Date: 2001Library Journal
Updated 7/5/01 - Red On a Rose
Author: Jones, Patricia
Publisher: Avon $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN: 0380817306 Date: 2001PW
In her second captivating novel, Jones addresses issues that hit at the heart of the African-American community while, at the same time, rendering them universally provocative.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 10/11/01 - The Feast of the
Goat
Author: Llosa, Mario Vargas
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374154767 Date: 2001PWBooklistKirkusLibrary Journal
A tyrant's last days are the focus of this magisterial, long-awaited novel, as Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime in the Dominican Republic and the terrible birth of a democracy.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Latino/Latina Stars
Updated 9/17/01 - The Rock: A Seventh-Century Tale of
Jerusalem
Author: Makuya, Kanan
Publisher: Pantheon $ 26 ISBN: 0375400877 Date: 2001Booklist
A brilliantly imagined, historically based account of the building of the Dome of the Rock and of the convergence of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam that occurred during its creation. Illustrations throughout.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 11/6/01 - Love to Love
You Baby
Author: Michaels, Kasey
Publisher: Zebra $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0812768441 Date: 2001Publishers Weekly
With his major league baseball career prematurely curtailed, Jack figures he's hit rock bottom--until he finds a basket on his porch with a baby inside. When interior designer Keely McBride enters the picture, Jack quickly recruits her as a nanny. But when he pitches her a curveball straight from the heart, it's a whole new ballgame.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 9/21/01 - Hateship, Friendship, Courtship,
Loveship, Marriage: Stories
Author: Munro, Alice
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375413006 Date: 2001KirkusPW
A superb new collection from a best-loved writer includes nine stories drawing readers into situations and events that illuminate entire lives.
Updated 10/5/01 - All Soul's Day
Author: Nooteboom, Cees
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151005664 Date: 2001Library JournalBooklist
Updated 11/6/01 - For Ruenna
Author: Nunez, Sigrid
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 22 ISBN: 0374254303 Date: 2001PW
In this haunting novel, a friendship springs up between a writer and a retired army nurse who seeks her out decades after their childhood in the same housing project. For Rouenna is an unforgettable work about truth, memory, and unexpected heroism by one of the most gifted writers of her generation.
Updated 10/5/01 - Esther Stories
Author: Orner, Peter
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0618128735 Date: 2001Publishers Weekly
Covering considerable geographic ground--from Nova Scotia to Mississippi--the stories in this debut collection explore the impact of life's essential moments. Winner of the 2000 James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9/21/01 - The
Girl From the Golden Horn
Author: Said, Kurban
Publisher: Overlook $ 25.95 ISBN: 1585671738 Date: 2001PWLibrary Journal
Updated 12/18/01
October
- The Stories
of Paul Bowles
Author: Bowles, Paul
Publisher: Ecco $ 39.95 ISBN: 0066212731 Date: 2001KirkusPW
From "The Delicate Prey" to "Too Far from Home", this definitive collection celebrates Bowles's masterful artistry in short fiction.
Updated 10/2/01 - A
False Sense of Wellbeing
Author: Braselton, Jeanne
Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 034544311x Date: 2001Library Journal
Braselton pens a funny, poignant debut about loneliness in marriage, secrets and the power of confession, and the sometimes desperate things women do to inject passion and meaning into their lives.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9/17/01 - Falling Angels
Author: Chevalier, Tracy
Publisher: Dutton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0525945814 Date: 2001Library Journal
Time" magazine crowned Girl with a Pearl Earring "a portrait of radiance . . . a jewel."" In her "New York Times" bestselling follow-up, Chevalier once again paints a distant age with a rich and provocative palette of characters. Told through a variety of shifting perspectives Falling Angels follows the fortunes of two families in the emerging years of the 20th century.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 10/23/01 - The Archer's Tale
Author: Cornwell, Bernard
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0066210844 Date: 2001KirkusLibrary Journal
Written by the author of the Richard Sharpe series, this is the spellbinding tale of a brave, young archer who sets out to avenge his family's honor--and begins the quest for the Holy Grail.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 9/17/01 - The Devil's Larder:
Stories
Author: Crace, Jim
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 20 ISBN: 0374138591 Date: 2001Kirkus
Winner of the 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Being Dead, Crace is known for his finely honed style. Here he gets to work really close to the bone, producing 60 brief flights of fantasy on appetite, food and objects of desire.
Suggested Reading: Cooked Books
Updated 8/23/01 - Deep Water
Author: Date, S.V.
Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399148159 Date: 2001Kirkus
Before he passed away, Waldo Whipple hoped his Florida theme park, called WhippleWorld, would be home to a suburban Utopia on park grounds. But the make-believe town of Serenity must face real problems. When a reporter begins to dig up the dirt on America's Hometown, he quickly discovers Waldo's successors have a decidedly different vision for the town's future.
Suggested Reading: If You Like Carl Hiaasen | Amusement & Theme Parks
Updated 8/23/01 - Samuel
Johnson is Indignant
Author: Davis, Lydia
Publisher: McSweeney's $ 16 ISBN: 0970335598 Date: 2001PW
Updated 10/2/01 - Notes on
Extinction
Author: Deaner, Janice
Publisher: Dutton $ 24.95 ISBN: 052594415x Date: 2001Booklist
In an exotic, atmospheric novel that exquisitely depicts the passions and conflicts of an American woman abroad, Viv Tagore travels to Assam, India, to take over her dying husband's plantation. There, a visit by her friend Stella sets off an irrevocable chain of events that will alter their lives.
Updated 10/12/01 - Ella Minnow Pea:
A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable
Author: Dunn, Mark
Publisher: Macadam Cage $ 22 ISBN: 0963770167 Date: 2001Library Journal
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop, South Carolina. Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet in this love letter to language.
Updated 10/8/01 - The Crusader
Author: Eisner, Michael Alexander
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385502818 Date: 2001Booklist
Set in 1275 Spain, this work is a rousing historical novel about Francisco Montcada, a Crusader with a heavy heart. Eisner makes history come to life as he writes of knights, torture, romance, religious fervor, vows, quests, sieges and villainy.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Debuts
Updated 8/27/01 - Erasure
Author: Everett, Percival L.
Publisher: Univ Press of New England $ 24.95 ISBN: 1584650907 Date: 2001PW
In this novel of family, race, and publishing in America, an African-American novelist finds money, fame and success when he writes a fierce parody of exploitative ghetto literature.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 8/10/01 - Clouds Above
Author: Greig, Andrew
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743206401 Date: 2001KirkusLibrary Journal
In a novel reminiscent of The English Patient, a prize-winning British poet and writer pens a moving and exciting elegy to love, the summer of 1940, and the Battle of Britain.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World War Stars
Updated 9/24/01 - Bombingham
Author: Grooms, Anthony
Publisher: Free Press $ 24 ISBN: 0743205588 Date: 2001Publishers Weekly
In the 1960s, unsolved racially motivated bombings in Birmingham, Alabama gave the town the nickname of Bombingham. This is the backdrop for Grooms story as a young African-American boy and his family strive for peace and understanding through the decade.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 9/21/01 - The
Drink and Dream Teahouse
Author: Hill, Justin
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316824003 Date: 2001Kirkus
From a spellbinding storyteller comes a luscious novel set in contemporary rural China that explores the tumult of life post-Tiananmen Square.
Updated 8/23/01 - Last Year's River
Author: Jones, Allen Morris
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618131612 Date: 2001Library Journal
Sharing nothing but loneliness and a certain watchfulness of soul, the lovers in Last Year's River are a privileged New York debutante, pregnant from a rape, and a World War I veteran, exhausted from combat in the trenches.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 10/8/01 - The Cheese Monkeys:
A Novel in Two Semesters
Author: Kidd, Chip
Publisher: Scriber $ 24 ISBN: 0743214927 Date: 2001Booklist
A witty debut novel that could only be described as a portrait of the designer as a young man.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9/17/01 - The Sword Maiden
Author: King, Susan
Publisher: Signet $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0451204336 Date: 2001PW
The final book in the Maiden trilogy follows Eva McArthur, who leaves her Scottish clan and is desperate to be rid of her betrothed and reclaim her fortress. Eva must turn to the only man she ever loved for help. Blacksmith Lachlann MacKerron possesses the Sword of Light, and has sworn to never craft another weapon or give his heart to a woman. But, once again, he is aroused by Eva's spell.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 9/17/01 - Embers
Author: Marai, Sandor
Publisher: Knopf $ 21 ISBN: 0375407561 Date: 2001PWKirkus
Already an international bestseller, Embers--first published in Budapest in 1942--finds an aristocrat and his friend fighting a duel of words over the now-dead chatelaine of the castle.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars
Updated 8/20/01 - The World Below
Author: Miller, Sue
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375410945 Date: 2001PW
From the author of While I Was Gone, a magnificent new novel that exposes the nerves that lie hidden in marriages, families, and the lives of women. Catherine Hubbard takes up residence in her grandmother's old house and stumbles upon the true story of her grandmother's life and the misunderstanding upon which she built a lifelong love.
Updated 7/16/01 - Half a Life
Author: Naipaul, V.S.
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375407375 Date: 2001KirkusBooklistPWLibrary Journal
Willie Chandran's flight from the travails of his mixed birth takes him from India to London, where in the shabby haunts of immigrants and literary bohemians he affects a new identity. When he returns with his lover to her home in Africa during the last doomed days of colonialism, he lives yet another life not his own.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Stars of India
Updated 10/8/01 - Treason
Author: Nevin, David
Publisher: Forge $ 27.95 ISBN: 0312855125 Date: 2001KirkusBooklist
From the bestselling author of Dream West : Three powerful men--James Madison, Aaron Burr, and General James Wilkinson--collide in a tale of treason that puts the future of the nation and its democracy at stake.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | 1776 Stars
Updated 9/21/01 - In the Shape
of a Boar
Author: Norfolk, Lawrence
Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 0802117015 Date: 2001Library JournalPWKirkus
From prehistoric Greek hunters to an S.S. officer on the run, this mesmerizing epic by the author of Lempriere's Dictionary and The Pope's Rhinoceros explores ancient myths and modern horrors.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 9/7/01 - Falstaff
Author: Nye, Robert
Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559705914 Date: 2001PW
In this raucous, rollicking romp, the most beloved comic figure in English literature tells his own unbuttoned story to set the record straight.
Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
Updated 9/17/01 - The Same Sea: A Novel in Verse
Author: Oz, Amos
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN:0151005729 Date: 2001Library Journal
From the internationally acclaimed Israeli author comes a heartbreaking and sensuous novel in verse that involves a widowed father, a prodigal son, and the son's enticing young girlfriend.
Updated 8/24/01 - Leaving Disneyland
Author: Parsons, Alexander
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312278551 Date: 2001Kirkus
Doc Kane is sixteen years into a twenty-year murder sentence. Days away from a parole hearing, he means to get out and start a new life as a Square John-a law-abiding citizen. Within the predatory confines of Tyburn Penitentiary, however, he has debts to pay. To start, Doc has his duties as a "heavy" in the D.C. Blacks, a gang that has protected him. Then there is his new cellmate, a young dealer doing life without parole whose ignorance of the prison's code threatens them both. Finally, there are the guards: Sergeant Grippe, who is bent on "rehabilitating" Doc, and Raven, whose intentions are veiled but no less menacing.
Beyond these dangers, Doc faces a deeper dilemma, one embodied by Dead Earl, a thumbless junkie and reminder of a past Doc would deny. The experience of sixteen years surviving in a violent prison has shaped Doc as profoundly as a river does its course. And if character is fate, Doc's chances for a life on the straight-and-narrow are slim unless he can reshape himself. This, he discovers, is the real struggle. If he's to have any hope for his future, he must first confront his past. - Publisher Marketing.
Updated 7/27/01 - The Rag and Bone
Shop
Author: Rackham, Jeff
Publisher: Zoland $ 25 ISBN: 1581951051 Date: 2001PW
Rackham pens a novel of Charles Dickens's very real, but little known, excursion outside the bounds of Victorian morality; an engrossing tale that illuminates the warring demands of public property and private libertinism.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 8/24/01 - Flights of Love:
Stories
Author: Schlink, Bernhard
Publisher: Pantheon $ 23 ISBN: 0375420908 Date: 2001PWKirkus
From the internationally bestselling author of The Reader comes a collection of stories that weave around the idea of love in all its many forms.
Updated 9/21/01 - Austerlitz
Author: Sebald, W.G.
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375504834 Date: 2001PWKirkus
In this story of an orphan's quest for his heritage after World War II, Sebald embodies in Austerlitz the universal human search for identity, the struggle to impose coherence on memory, and a struggle complicated by the mind's defenses against trauma.
Updated 8/23/01 - The Savage Girl
Author: Shakar, Alex
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0066209870 Date: 2001Booklist
A magical, mysterious first novel explores the effects of consumerism on individuals and society as a whole. Ursula Van Urden arrives in the volcano-shadowed metropolis of Middle City in the wake of her fashion model sister and attempts to "find the future".
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9/17/01 - Tale of Genji
Author: Shikibu, Murasaki
Publisher: Viking $ 60 ISBN: 0670030201 Date: 2001KirkusLibrary JournalPW
Information about the book and Lady Murasaki
Screens and Scrolls - Japanese Painting from the Ackland Museum of Art - includes an eighteenth-century Tale of Genji scroll
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 10/2/01 - City of Dreams: A Novel
of Early Manhattan
Author: Swerling, Beverly
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 27.50 ISBN: 0684871726 Date: 2001PW
City of Dreams follows the stories of the Turners and De Vreys against the backdrop of a new city. Set against the panorama of a young country's struggle for freedom, rich in history and medical detail, this is an enthralling tale told by a master storyteller.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 10/2/01 - Sharkman Six
Author: West, Owen
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743205421 Date: 2001Publishers Weekly
A gripping debut novel of modern war written by a former marine captain who has experienced it all firsthand.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 9/21/01 - Halfway to Heaven
Author: Wiggs, Susan
Publisher: Mira $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 1551668378 Date: 2001PW
Bestselling USA Today author Wiggs pens a tale of Abigail Cabot, a gifted astronomer whose passion for the stars has left her lacking in social graces.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 8/30/01 - Argall
Author: Vollmann, William T.
Publisher: Viking $ 40 ISBN: 0670910309 Date: 2001BooklistPWLibrary Journal
In the newest novel in his Seven Dreams series, Vollmann alternates between extravagant Elizabethan language and gritty realism in an attempt to dig beneath the legend surrounding Pocahontas, John Smith, and the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia--as well as the betrayals, disappointments, and atrocities behind it.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Virginia Stars
Updated 9/17/01
September
- Mona and Other Tales
Author: Arenas, Reinaldo
Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375727302 Date: 2001Library Journal
Updated 10/8/01 - The Holy Road
Author: Blake, Michael
Publisher: Villard $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679448667 Date: 2001Kirkus
The sequel to the bestselling Dances With Wolves is the tragically heroic story of the Comanches' war to save their sacred lands. Lt. John Dunbar and his wife, Stands With a Fist, find their peaceful lives interrupted when the railroad--the white man's Holy Road--leads to violent confrontations with the Army.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars
Updated 6/20/01 - The Ash Garden
Author: Bock, Dennis
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375413022 Date: 2001Kirkus
Triangulating the fates of three separate people, this debut novel reveals the true costs of the August 1945 nightmare unleashed in a blinding flash by the Enola Gay.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Stars | Debuts | Atomic Age Stars
Updated 8/14/01 - The Altar of the
Body
Author: Brenna, Duff
Publisher: Picador $ 24 ISBN: 0312268653 Date: 2001Kirkus
When George McLeod's bodybuilding cousin Buck returns to Minnesota with his sexy girlfriend Joy and her mother Livia, George, for the first time, understands the rage to live life to the fullest. This rage has already consumed Joy, Buck, and Livia, and brings them and George to a cataclysmic moment of truth that tests their compassion and capacity of love.
Updated 7/2/01 - After the Plague:
And Other Stories
Author: Boyle, T. C.
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670030058 Date: 2001BooklistPW
Updated 8/3/01 - Jeremy Thrane
Author: Christensen, Kate
Publisher: Broadway $ 23.95 ISBN: 0767908015 Date: 2001Library Journal
The author of the highly acclaimed In the Drink pens a smart and sexy exploration of New York and its quirky customs as seen through the eyes of a disillusioned, yet secretly hopeful, gay man.
Updated 8/24/01 - Fred & Edie
Author: Dawson, Jill
Publisher: Welcome Rain $ 25 ISBN: 156649222x Date: 2001KirkusPWLibrary Journal
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.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars | Roman - Livre a clef Stars
Updated 8/24/01 - The Evidence
Against Her
Author: Dew, Robb Forman
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316890197 Date: 2001PWKirkus
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.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 8/14/01 - Look at Me
Author: Egan, Jennifer
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385502761 Date: 2001Booklist
In a satiric send-up of image culture in America, Look at Me follows the lives of two women named Charlotte: one, a stunning fashion model disfigured in an accident, and the other, the plain-looking adolescent daughter of an estranged friend from her youth.
Updated 8/1/01 - Peace Like a
River
Author: Enger, Leif
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 24 ISBN: 087113795x Date: 2001BooklistPW
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.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Reading Group Stars
Updated 7/16/01 - 4 Corners
Author: Freund, Diane
Publisher: Macadam Cage $ 25 ISBN: 0967370183 Date: 2001Kirkus
It's August 1953 in Four Corners, New York, when Rainey's mother is hospitalized for mental instability--or, as Rainey's father puts it, when the doctors say she needs a good long rest. This starts a summer of enlightenment for Rainey when she learns about the realities of life through the eyes of innocence.
Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars
Updated 8/14/01 - Tie-Fast Country
Author: Flynn, Robert
Publisher: Texas Christian U $ 24.50 ISBN: 0875652441 Date: 2001Kirkus
Updated 6/20/01 - The Corrections
Author: Franzen, Jonathan
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374129983 Date: 2001KirkusPWBooklistLibrary Journal
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.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 9/17/01 - Carter
Beats the Devil
Author: Gold, Glen David
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786867345 Date: 2001BooklistPW
Filled with historical references that evoke the excesses and enthusiasm of postwar, pre-Depression America, Carter Beats the Devil is the complex and illuminating story of one man's journey through a magical, and sometimes dangerous world.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Debuts | Alternative History Stars
Updated 8/30/01 - The Pickup
Author: Gordimer, Nadine
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374232105 Date: 2001KirkusPWBooklist
The Nobel Laureate's penetrating story follows a love affair that begins as a casual encounter between a rich South African and an illegal alien.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 8/1/01 - The Parrot's Theorem
Author: Guedj, Denis
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312280556 Date: 2001Kirkus
Both a novel and a history of mathematics, this unusual story follows a young boy and his talkative parrot as they pursue the knowledge--and the secrets--in a trove of math books left to them by a friend.
Updated 7/2/01 - The Practical Heart:
Four Novellas
Author: Gurganus, Allan
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0679437630 Date: 2001KirkusLibrary Journal
Already a major award winner, these novellas reveal Gurganus's range as a storyteller whose work surges with the force of history and human personality.
Updated 11/6/01 - The Professional
Author: Heinz, W.C.
Publisher: Da Capo $ 15 (trade paper) ISBN: 0306810581 Date: 2001Library Journal
Originally published in 1958, The Professional is the story of boxer Eddie Brown's quest for the middleweight championship of the world. "The only good novel about a fighter I've ever read".--Ernest Hemingway.
Updated 10/8/01 - How to Be Good
Author: Hornby, Nick
Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573221937 Date: 2001KirkusPW Library JournalBooklist
In a humorous yet uncompromising look at what it takes to have the courage of one's convictions, Hornby reinvents himself as Katie--the consummate liberal, urban mom--whose world is being turned on its ear by the outrageous spiritual transformation of her husband, David.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Humorous Fiction
Updated 8/1/01 - The Grand
Complication
Author: Kurzweil, Allen
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786866039 Date: 2001KirkusPWBooklist
The anticipated new novel from the author of A Case of Curiosities, Kurzweil returns with another work narrated by Alexander Short, a reference librarian who takes on an unusual research assignment when he feels his passions--both professional and personal--waning.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Humorous Fiction
Updated 8/1/01 - On the Night
Plain
Author: Lennon, J. Robert
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805067221 Date: 2001Library Journal
A brave, beautifully written story follows a man who reluctantly accepts his birthright in a hard-luck Montana sheep ranching family, from the critically acclaimed author of The Light of Falling Stars.
Updated 7/5/01 - Hippolyte's
Island
Author: Hodgson, Barbara
Publisher: Chronicle $ 24.95 ISBN: 0811828921 Date: 2001Booklist
In search of a new adventure, Hippolyte Webb, quixotic spirit, modern-day explorer, and natural historian, sets his sights on the Auroras, a group of tiny islands in the middle of the South Atlantic. His destination wouldn't be so unusual, except that these islands were last spotted almost two hundred years ago. Equipped with a centuries-old map, an inadequate sailboat, and an advance payment for a book about his quest, Hippolyte embarks on an unforgettable voyage, not just through unfamiliar seas but through the uncharted territory of his own mind and heart. This new novel by the author of The Sensualist and The Tattooed Map--lavishly illustrated with over forty illustrations and a fold-out map--is an enigmatic tale bridging the space that lies between what we believe and what we know. - Publisher marketing.
Updated 9/21/01 - Aztec Blood
Author: Jennings, Gary
Publisher: Forge $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312862512 Date: 2001PW
The Aztec people have been conquered and a bloody revolt of the Indians put down. In this colorful and exciting era of swords and cloaks, upheaval and revolution, a young beggar boy, with blood of both Spanish and Aztec royalty, must claim his birthright as a vanished culture is brought to life.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Aztec Stars
Updated 8/20/01 - Haussmann, or the Distinction
Author: LaFarge, Paul
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374168334 Date: 2001PW
In this stunning, imaginative novel, LaFarge explores a secret in the life of Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann, the great architect who demolished and rebuilt Paris in the middle of the 19th century.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 8/24/01 - The Marble Quilt
Author: Leavitt, David
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 25 ISBN: 0395902444 Date: 2001PW
Nine masterly stories about the politics of family, community, and history are offered by the author of Family Dancing, "a wizard at blending levity and pathos" (Chicago Tribune).
Updated 7/27/01 - Sap Rising
Author: Lincoln, Christine
Publisher: Pantheon $ 20 ISBN: 0375421408 Date: 2001Library Journal
A powerful debut collection of wise and assured stories includes tales of bedeviled and struggling young African Americans whose lives unfold in rural settings as distinctive as the characters themselves.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | Debuts
Updated 7/5/01 - Eva
Moves the Furniture
Author: Livesey, Margot
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805068015 Date: 2001KirkusPW
From a highly acclaimed author comes the enchanting story of a motherless young woman torn between real life and the otherworldly companions only she can see.
Suggested Reading: Ghosts
Updated 7/27/01 - Requiem
for a Lost Empire
Author: Makine, Andrei
Publisher: Arcade $ 24.95 ISBN: 155970571x Date: 2001PWBooklist
An ambitious complex epic that spans three generations of a family from Czarist times in Russia to the fall of Communism. A Graham Green-style thriller that opens up like a sinister Russian doll.
Updated 8/1/01 - Personal Velocity
Author: Miller, Rebecca
Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN: 080211699x Date: 2001Library Journal
In a powerful debut, Miller's collection of edgy, modern stories explores the multifaceted lives of women in seven arresting portraits. These women of different classes and ages struggle with sexuality, fate, motherhood, infidelity, desperation, and an overriding will to survive.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 7/5/01 - The Appointment
Author: Muller, Herta
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 23 ISBN: 080506012x Date: 2001PW
From the winner of the IMPAC Award comes a fierce novel about a young Romanian woman's discovery of betrayal in the most intimate reaches of her life.
Updated 8/3/01 - Middle Age: A Romance
Author: Oates, Joyce Carol
Publisher: Ecco $ 28 ISBN: 0066209463 Date: 2001PW
Bestselling author Oates follows Blonde with a tenderly comic, irresistible love story about middle-age women who reinvent themselves romantically when their illusion of youth finally fades.
Updated 8/10/01 - West of Rehoboth
Author: Pate, Alexs D.
Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 038097679x Date: 2001KirkusBooklist
Set in the early 1960s, West of Rehoboth is the moving story of twelve-year-old Edward Massey. Each summer, to escape the heat of Philadelphia, Edward's family moves to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The "coloreds only" side of a pristine resort on Rehoboth Beach offers work for his mother and a sandy playground for his sister. But for Edward -- an imaginative, inquisitive boy -- it offers the chance to understand his reclusive, curmudgeonly Uncle Rufus, a man caught in a swirl of hard luck and bad choices. Forging a tenuous bond, their relationship will take Edward on a harrowing journey through Rufus's past, facing the violence, disappointment, and frustration that shaped his destiny. Award-winning author Alexs Pate tells a mesmerizing story -- of family, of coming of age, of reconciliation -- revealing the extraordinary compassion and healing power of one unforgettable boy. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 9/17/01 - Novels 1944 - 1962
Author: Powell, Dawn
Publisher: Library of America $ 35 ISBN: 1931082022 Date: 2001Library Journal
My Home is Far Away; The Locusts Have No King; The Wicked Pavilion; The Golden Spur Updated 9/24/01 - Novels 1930 - 1942
Author: Powell, Dawn
Publisher: Library of America $ 35 ISBN: 1931082014 Date: 2001Library Journal
Dance Night; Come Back to Sorrento; Turn, Magic Wheel; Angels on Toast; A Time to Be Born Updated 9/24/01 - Still She Haunts
Me
Author: Roiphe, Katie
Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 038533527x Date: 2001Booklist
One of America's most provocative young writers takes a dazzling turn in this richly imagined literary tour de force inspired by the relationship between Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the girl who was his muse.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 9/17/01 - Speed of Light
Author: Rosner, Elizabeth
Publisher: Ballantine $ 23.95 ISBN: 0345442245 Date: 2001Booklist
From a prize-winning poet, The Speed of Light is a compelling novel of remembrance in which the sorrows of the past inspire a love story for the present.
Updated 8/29/01 - Fury
Author: Rushdie, Salman
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 067946333x Date: 2001BooklistPW
From one of the world's truly great writers comes a wickedly brilliant and pitch-black comedy about a middle-aged professor who flees his own anger by escaping from New York City to London. Rushdie lays bare, with spectacular insight and much glee, the darkest side of human nature.
Updated 7/16/01 - A Secret for Julia
Author: Sagastizabal, Patricia
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN:0393050440 Date: 2001Library Journal
A haunting, prize-winning Latin American novel, in the tradition of Isabel Allende, is set in 1990s London and explores the lives of a guilt-wracked Argentinean mother and her inquisitive daughter.
Updated 8/24/01 - Ester's Child
Author: Sasson, Jean
Publisher: Windsor Brooke $ 24.95 ISBN: 0967673739 Date: 2001Booklist
The lives of three families are altered forever on the day that the new state of Israel is declared.
Updated 8/27/01 - Darling
Author: Schmidt, Heidi Jon
Publisher: Picador $ 23 ISBN: 0312281781 Date: 2001PW
Updated 10/16/01 - Aria
Author: Segal, Susan
Publisher: Bridge Works $ 23.95 ISBN: 1882593456 Date: 2001PW
A woman's tragedy, unwanted celebrity and an opera star benefactor with less than noble motives all figure into this unusual tale of chance, fate and operatic lives.
Suggested Reading: Music Stars
Updated 8/30/01 - Balzac
and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Author: Sijie, Dai
Publisher: Knopf $ 20 ISBN: 037541309x Date: 2001PWLibrary Journal
From the hopelessness and terror of Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are forever transformed when they discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translations. Even their friend, the Little Seamstress, will never be the same.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars
Updated 9/24/01 - Highwire Moon
Author: Straight, Susan
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618056149 Date: 2001Library JournalBooklist
In this powerful story, Straight shows how little has changed since the Joad family harvested the grapes of wrath. When Serafina, a young Mexican Indian girl, is forcibly separated from her child and deported, young Elvia is thrust into foster care. Eventually reclaimed by her feckless truck-driving father, she gets pregnant at 15 and enters the world of migrant farm labor as she searches for her mother.
Updated 8/1/01 - Our Lady
of the Circus
Author: Toscana, David
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312271166 Date: 2001Kirkus
The latest offering by acclaimed Mexican writer David Toscana is a whimsical and dark tale about a group of circus performers who, disillusioned with their lives as traveling entertainers, are seduced by the idea of settling down and living like ordinary people. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Circus Stars
Updated 7/27/01 - The Heart of
the Beast
Author: Weatherford, Joyce
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743211790 Date: 2001Kirkus
To save her family ranch, 28-year-old Iris Steele must delve into her family history, unearthing not only her own ancestry, but also the tangled relationships between generations of homesteaders and Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. A debut novel inspired by the author's family history.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 7/27/01 - Lost Soldiers
Author: Webb, James H.
Publisher: Bantam $ 25 ISBN: 0553802143 Date: 2001Library Journal
Webb's new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future but haunted by the ghosts of its war-torn past. A novel of revenge and redemption that tells where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.
Updated 8/24/01 - The Wolf Pit
Author: Youmans, Marly
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374291950 Date: 2001PW
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: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars | Virginia Stars
Updated 7/19/01
August
- Too Many Men
Author: Brett, Lily
Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0688177557 Date: 2001PW
Ruth Rothwax had no trouble composing letters for others, but is at a loss for words when she attempts to confront her parents horrific past--and her own possible future.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 7/27/01 - Year of Wonders:
A Novel of the Plague
Author: Brooks, Geraldine
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 067091021x Date: 2001PW
A young woman comes of age during an extraordinary year of love and death as she and her community are tested by one of the greatest catastrophes ever to befall England. This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the "Plague Village", in the rugged mountain spine of England in 1666.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Medical Fiction | Reading Group Stars
Updated 6/21/01 - Prize Stories:
The O. Henry Awards
Author: Dark, Larry (ed)
Publisher: Anchor $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0385498780 Date: 2001PW
This superb collection of 17 inventive, full-bodied stories represents the very best in North American fiction.
Updated 8/10/01 - Moon Women
Author: Duncan, Pamela
Publisher: Dell $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385335180 Date: 2001Library Journal
From debut novelist Duncan comes a mesmerizing tale of family and love, revelation and forgiveness--a portrait of three generations of women, separated by a secret only one of them can tell.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 7/5/01 - A Man
and a Woman and a Man
Author: Liebrecht, Savyon
Publisher: Persea $ 24.95 ISBN: 0892552662 Date: 2001Kirkus
Intertwining mourning and passion, this critically acclaimed bestseller from Israel follows a married woman who has an affair with a stranger she meets in the nursing home where her mother and his father are dying.
Updated 6/20/01 - An Affair of Honor
Author: Marius, Richard
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375412395 Date: 2001PW
Updated 8/20/01 - Niagara
Falls All Over Again
Author: McCracken, Elizabeth
Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385318375 Date: 2001PWKirkusLibrary Journal
Two young men, Carter & Sharp, become the most famous comedy team of their era, conquering vaudeville, the movies, radio and television. Their 30 year partnership prevails--until Carter commits one desperate act of betrayal.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
Updated 8/24/01 - The Hunters
Author: Messud, Claire
Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 0151005885 Date: 2001PW
The widely acclaimed author of The Last Life offers two extraordinary short novels about isolation: A Simple Tale, about a Ukrainian woman relocated as a displaced person to Canada, and The Hunters, following a London scholar who becomes obsessed by the neighbors downstairs.
Updated 6/21/01 - King of the City
Author: Moorcock, Michael
Publisher: Morrow $ 26 ISBN: 0380975890 Date: 2001Kirkus
The epic follow up to the critically acclaimed Mother London, this tale finds out of work paparazzo Dennis Dover dreaming of his rebel days, while painting a razor-sharp portrait of modern day London.
Updated 6/20/01 - The Bathhouse
Author: Moshiri, Farnoosh
Publisher: Black Heron $ 21.95 ISBN: 0930773624 Date: 2001Booklist
Updated 8/29/01 - Days of Awe
Author: Obejas, Achy
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 034543921x Date: 2001Library JournalBooklist
In knowing prose, Achy Obejas opens up the tempestuous history of Cuba and a fascinating world of exotic word play, rich history, and vibrant emotions of what it is to be Cuban and American, Catholic and Jewish.
Updated 6/20/01 - Bucking the Tiger
Author: Olds, Bruce
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374117276 Date: 2001KirkusLibrary Journal
Evoking Doc Holliday's checkered careers as a frontier dentist, itinerant saloon gambler, professional faro dealer, and occasional shootist (including his involvement in the fabled gunfight at the OK Corral), Bucking the Tiger displaces the popular image of the Latin-spouting serial killer with the reality of a self-afflicted human being.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars | Take a Gamble | Biographical Fiction
Updated 8/24/01 - My Name is Red
Author: Pamuk, Orhan
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375406956 Date: 2001PWKirkus
In Istanbul, in the 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book, but any work of art--an affront to Islam--is dangerous. My Name is Red is a murder mystery played amidst the perils of religious repression.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 8/14/01 - Landor's Tower
Author: Sinclair, Iain
Publisher: Granta $ 24.95 ISBN:1862070180 Date: 2001PW
Intrigue, conspiracy, and haunting memories beset the narrator of Iain Sinclair's first novel in eight years as a London writer grows increasingly obsessed with a Welsh estate and the suicides that happened there.
Updated 8/30/01 - The Southern Woman
Author: Spencer, Elizabeth
Publisher: Modern Library $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679642188 Date: 2001KirkusPW
In her first collection in almost 15 years, Spencer features more than ten new stories, including The Light in the Piazza. This book celebrates a six-decade career devoted to the art of the story and the novella--a literary event for the lover of short fiction.
Updated 7/18/01 - Lightning Field
Author: Spiotta, Dana
Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743212614 Date: 2001PW
Mina's chosen way of slowing down, of sifting through the rubble of her complex life, is to do the thing that is unthinkable in L.A.: walk. Exploring the fetishes that hold the City of Angels in their grip--movies, restaurants, self-image, sex--Spiotta delves into the language, humor, and beauty of obsession, and into the varied ways in which women cope, or don't, with their particular relationship to contemporary culture.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 8/10/01 - The Huntsman
Author: Terrell, Whitney
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670894656 Date: 2001KirkusPW
When a young debutant's body washes up in the Missouri River, her death--and the ensuing investigation--forces the Kansas City's inhabitants to examine their own buried history. This debut novel is authored by a writer-in-residence at Rockhurst University.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 6/8/01
July
- According
to Queeney
Author: Bainbridge, Beryl
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 22 ISBN: 0786707739 Date: 2001Kirkus
Taking her inspiration from eighteenth-century English history and literature, Bainbridge transforms meticulous research into a brilliantly imaginative portrayal of the complex relationship that the renowned literary giant Dr. Samuel Johnson enjoyed with his benefactress, Mrs. Thrale. - Publisher marketing.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Biographical Fiction
Updated 6/20/01 - The Salt Letters
Author: Balint, Christine
Publisher: Norton $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0393321606 Date: 2001Kirkus
This beautifully crafted debut novel is the sensuous evocation of a young woman's sea journey in 1854 from refined England to the wilds of Australia.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Debuts
Updated 5/4/01 - Among the Missing
Author: Chaon, Dan
Publisher: Ballantine $ 22 ISBN: 0345441621 Date: 2001KirkusBooklist
In this haunting, bracing new collection, Chaon shares stories of down-and-out people who live outside the American Dream, while wondering which decision, path, or accident brought them to this place.
Updated 8/1/01 - Mirabilis
Author: Cokal, Susann
Publisher: Blue Hen $ 25.95 ISBN: 0399147535 Date: 2001Library Journal
Villeneuve, France, Anno Domini 1372. The village is under siege and people are starving when Bonne Mirabilis, wet nurse to the wealthiest and most enigmatic woman in town, realizes that she alone has the bounty with which to feed the hungry. With a masterly sense of history and the visceral spirit of The Decameron, newcomer Susan Cokal combines the outrageous and wondrous story of Bonne, a woman born God's bastard, on her way to sainthood with a troop of ascetics, mystics, lovers and jesters who keep her milk flowing. - From the book jacket.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 6/25/01 - Second Thyme
Around
Author: Fforde, Katie
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312273045 Date: 2001Library Journal
British bestseller Fford serves up a delicious romantic comedy about cherished friends, despised ex-husbands and life's greatest joys--sex and cooking.
Suggested Reading: Chicklit Stars
Updated 6/13/01 - Plantation: A Low Country
Tale
Author: Frank, Dorothea Benton
Publisher: Jove $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0515131083 Date: 2001PW
Caroline Wembly Levine always swore she'd never go home again. But she's returned to South Carolina at her brother's behest to see about their mother. Miss Lavinia is as maddenly eccentric as ever, and absolutely will not suffer the questionable advice of her children. Caroline soon discovers that this trip home is different.
Updated 5/29/01 - True Confessions
Author: Gibson, Rachel
Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0380814382 Date: 2001PW
L.A.-based tabloid reporter Hope Spencer arrives in Gospel, Idaho, hoping for inspiration, but discovers truth is stranger than fiction--even tabloid fiction--in the small town. Then there is local sheriff Dylan Taber. He's no made-up character from one of her stories--Dylan is all too real, and soon Hope faces the awful truth she's been without a man for too long.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 6/8/01 - Juno and Juliet
Author: Gough, Julian
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385501722 Date: 2001PWLibrary JournalBooklist
Written by the fresh, new Irish voice of Julian Gough, Juno & Juliet is an intelligent and lighthearted tale of two beautiful sisters who experience university life in Galway and the radiance of newfound love.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts | Twins | Irish Stars
Updated 5/17/01 - Green
River Daydreams
Author: Heng, Liu
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN:0802116906 Date: 2001Library Journal
From an acclaimed Chinese novelist comes this story of love and duty narrated by the slave of a wealthy family of the Qing empire of the early 1900s who acts as the silent "ears" in this portrayal of a corrupt family.
Updated 6/25/01 - Blue Diary
Author: Hoffman, Alice
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399148027 Date: 2001KirkusPW
The courage to face the unthinkable is at the core of this magnificent new novel. How do we manage to confront the truths in our lives and find forgiveness in the most unforgiving of circumstances? How do we love truly and deeply in a world that is as brutal as it is beautiful? When Ethan Ford fails to show up for work on a brilliant summer morning, none of his neighbors would guess that for more than thirteen years, he has been running from his past. His true nature has been locked away, as hidden as his real identity. But sometimes locks spring open, and the devastating truths of Ethan Ford's history shatter the small-town peace of Monroe, affecting family and friends alike.
Updated 6/4/01 - Confessions
of a Pagan Nun
Author: Horsley, Kate
Publisher: Shambhala $ 19.95 ISBN: 1570627193 Date: 2001Library Journal
In this moving and subtle tale, an Irish woman struggles between the old Druid ways and the rising tide of Christianity.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars | Questions of Faith
Updated 8/24/01 - Emigre Journeys
Author: Hussein, Abdullah
Publisher: Serpents Tail $15 (trade paper) ISBN: 1852426381 Date: 2001Kirkus
Updated 7/2/01 - The Fourth Hand
Author: Irving, John
Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375506276 Date: 2001PW
While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. What happens next is the subject of Irving's tenth novel, which offers a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change.
Updated 6/21/01 - Everything
You Need
Author: Kennedy, A.L.
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 037540791x Date: 2001PW
Appalled by his life, Nathan Staples is sustained only by his passionate devotion to his estranged wife, Maura, and their teenage daughter, Mary, who thinks he's dead. When Nathan contrives to bring Mary to the island where he lives in retreat, he sets in motion the possibility of telling her he is her father and becoming whole, complete, and alive again. Updated 6/8/01 - Up in the Air
Author: Kirn, Walter
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385497105 Date: 2001Library Journal
Ryan Bingham has a simple goal: to accumulate one million miles in his frequent flyer account. This story follows his life in the transient realm he calls "Airworld" as he wings his way to his goal.
Updated 7/5/01 - Spectacular
Happiness
Author: Kramer, Peter D.
Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0684864304 Date: 2001PW
From "possibly the most famous psychiatrist in America" (The New York Times) and the author of Listening to Prozac comes a novel of ideas about a man driven to topple the wealth- and status-obsessed culture around him.
Updated 6/21/01 - Edgewater Angels
Author: Meallet, Sandro
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 038550151x Date: 2001Library Journal
For Sunny Toomer, growing up in the projects of San Pedro, California, is not easy. In Toomer's uninhibited, often amusing first-person narrative, Meallet conveys the authentic voices of the street in lush, uniquely poetic prose.
Updated 7/5/01 - A Theory
of Relativity
Author: Mitchard, Jacquelyn
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0066210232 Date: 2001PWLibrary Journal
In this striking novel by the author of The Deep End of the Ocean, Mitchard tells the story of an ordinary family pushed to the edge over the guardianship of a baby girl. The legal tug-of-war ultimately becomes a crucible in which the limitations of family love will be repeatedly tested and the frontiers of the human heart pushed to unimagined limits.
Updated 5/10/01 - The Procedure
Author: Mulisch, Harry
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670910244 Date: 2001Kirkus
Updated 5/4/01 - Azarel
Author: Pap, Karoly
Publisher: Steerforth $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN: 1586420194 Date: 2001KirkusBooklist
Updated 8/29/01 - The Music
of the Spheres
Author: Redfern, Elizabeth
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399147632 Date: 2001Kirkus
In the London of 1795, intrigue and death walk the dark streets. England is at war with its neighbor and nemesis, France, and espionage is rampant. It is the job of Jonathan Absey at the Home Office to catch the spies, but his mind is elsewhere, his dreams haunted by the unsolved murder of his fifteen-year-old daughter in these same streets. - From the book jacket.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 6/29/01 - Rise to Rebellion
Author: Shaara, Jeff
Publisher: Ballantine $ 26.95 ISBN: 034542753x Date: 2001PW
More than a powerful portrait of the people and purpose of the American Revolution, Rise to Rebellion is a fictionalized account of history's most pivotal events: The Boston Tea Party, the battle of Concord, and of Bunker Hill. The author of the bestselling Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure reveals with new immediacy how philosophers became fighters and how a scattered group of colonies became the United States of America.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | 1776 Stars
Updated 5/17/01 - On the Water
Author: Van Den Brink, H. M.
Publisher: Grove $ 21 ISBN: 0802116922 Date: 2001Kirkus
A highly acclaimed Dutch work published in seven countries. Anton stands on the banks of the river in Amsterdam in 1944 and remembers the majestic summer he spent on the water with David. The story is told with the past and present flipping back and forth like oars, from the golden, prewar summer in 1939 to the same city five years later, stripped of life by the war.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Stars
Updated 5/4/01 - The Catsitters
Author: Wolcott, James
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060194146 Date: 2001Library Journal
Renowned for his barbed wire wit, Vanity Fair literary critic Wolcott turns his wicked eye on the vagaries of romance in this viciously funny debut novel about the ways men and women communicate--and don't--in the never-ending search for a soulmate.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5/23/01