Table of Contents
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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
Seeing Stars
Lists of (mostly) hardcover books which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ).
The review journal assigns the star.
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Stellar All Stars
The Fault Tree by Louise Ure
Judas Horse by April Smith
The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw
Bonk by Mary Roach
A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Starred Reviews
Fiction Stars of 2002
April 2, 2008
January - June 2002
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 book.
June
- King: Volume 2
Author: Anderson, Ho Che
Publisher: Fantagraphics $ 9.95 (graphic novel) ISBN: 1560974966 Date: 2002
PW
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novel Stars
Updated 5/9/02 - Lucky in the
Corner
Author: Anshaw, Carol
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 23 ISBN: 0395940400 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistLibrary Journal
From the award-winning author of Aquamarine comes a new novel about mothers and daughters and the surprising shape of the contemporary American family.
Booklist Top 10 Gay & Lesbian Books (June 2002)
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 6/7/02 - Anything Goes
Author: Bell, Madison Smartt
Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421254 Date: 2002Booklist
In a complete departure from his sweeping historical novels and intense urban dramas, the author of All Souls' Rising renders a bittersweet, heartfelt coming-of-age story about a young man on tour with a band called Anything Goes.
Suggested Reading: Music
Updated 4/24/02 - Oyster
Author: Biguenet, John
Publisher: Ecco $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060198362 Date: 2002Booklist
The much-anticipated novel from the O. Henry Award-winning author of The Torturer's Apprentice, set in 1957 on the Louisiana coast, spins a tale of murder and revenge in which two women and the men who desire them play out a drama as elemental and inexorable as a Greek tragedy.
Updated 6/29/02 - Nuremberg: The Reckoning
Author: Buckley, William F.
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151006792 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary Journal
With his customary authority and audacity, Buckley has taken a pivotal moment in history and shaped it into absorbing and original fiction. The result is a riveting novel of insight and deep understanding exploring the characters and issues that made history.
Suggested Reading: Legal Stars | Nuremberg
Updated 6/7/02 - The Emperor
of Ocean Park
Author: Carter, Stephen L.
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375413634 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistPW
The Emperor of Ocean Park is as brilliant in its suspense as in its acute social observation. Set in the privileged world of New York-Washington-Martha's Vineyard upper-crust African-American society and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school, it tells the story of a complex family with a single seductive and dangerous link to the shadowlands of crime.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | First Fiction | All Stars
Updated 4/18/02 - Big If
Author: Costello, Mark
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393051161 Date: 2002PW
It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense in this scary, funny novel--a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction
Updated 4/30/02 - River Thieves
Author: Crummey, Michael
Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618145311 Date: 2002Kirkus
Set at the turn of the 19th century along Newfoundland's rugged shore, River Thieves tells the tragic story of the extinction of the Beothuk Indians. The tragedy of miscommunication among colonists living in a crude, violent age prefigures the larger loss, that of an entire people.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 4/18/02 - Beautiful Bodies
Author: Cunningham, Laura Shaine
Publisher: Washington Sq Press $ 24 ISBN: 0743434013 Date: 2002Kirkus
From the celebrated memoirist comes a hilarious and insightful new novel--a comedy of manners featuring six 30-something women navigating the perilous currents of single life in New York City.
Updated 5/20/02 - Perma Red
Author: Earling, Debra Magpie
Publisher: BlueHen $ 24.95 ISBN: 039914899x Date: 2002Booklist
Louise White Elk dreams of both belonging and escape, and of discovering love and freedom on her own terms. Perma Red is a love-crossed saga about a young woman coming of age under perilous circumstances, and about the consequences of her often contradictory desires.
Updated 6/29/02 - The Sisters Mallone
Author: Ermelino, Louisa
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0743223330 Date: 2002Booklist
From the acclaimed author of The Black Madonna: A sinfully fun dark comedy about the power of sisterhood and the American dream. Through irrepressible characters, and infectious and suspenseful writing, The Sisters Mallone captures and fulfills the Italian immigrant's dream--with a twist.
Updated 6/3/02 - Meet John Trow
Author: Dyja, Tom
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670030996 Date: 2002Kirkus
Steven Armour, fighting off a mid-life crisis, joins a group of Civil War reenactors, and his life suddenly turns around. A haunting narrative of a man caught between his own life and a life he might have lived, Meet John Trow will take its place as a classic novel of history.
Suggested Reading: Virginia Stars
Updated 5/9/02 - The
Portrait of Mrs Charbuque
Author: Ford, Jeffrey
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066211263 Date: 2002PW
New York, 1893. Society portraitist Piambo receives a commission he cannot refuse. A mysterious woman offers Piambo a fortune to paint her portrait. As Piambo's masterpiece takes shape, his relationship with the woman grows more tangled and her deranged--almost certainly murderous--husband becomes bent on revenge.
Suggested Reading: Art Stars
Updated 4/12/02 - The Other Boleyn
Girl
Author: Gregory, Philippa
Publisher: Scribner $ 15 (paper) ISBN: 0743227441 Date: 2002PW
Rich in the details and color of the times, this novel weaves historical fact and the irresistible elements of sex, scandal, and thwarted love into a powerful, compulsively engaging novel about the two Boleyn sisters and their relationship with Henry VIII.
Updated 5/20/02 - Sheepshagger
Author: Griffiths, Niall
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312300735 Date: 2002Library Journal
This is the story of Ianto: the feral, inarticulate, inbred, ignoble savage. Ianto is a sheepshagger -- a yokel, a Welsh redneck. An extraordinary prose amalgam of Old Testament prophecy and demotic slang, of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, Sheepshagger is written in a language saturated--like nature--with beauty and violence.
Updated 6/7/02 - Egg Code
Author: Heppner, Mike
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375412905 Date: 2002PW
At the center of this novel is a computer, the Gloria 21169, which has taken command of the entire world network. This story, though, is not about computers but the people variously affected by this one machine, and the crisscrossing of many lives reveals how much human behavior has been altered by this quantum shift in communication.
Suggested Reading: Internet Stars
Updated 5/20/02 - Waylaid
Author: Lin, Ed
Publisher: Kaya $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 188503320 Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 1.25.03 - Five Boys
Author: Jackson, Mick
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 00601394x Date: 2002Kirkus
Evacuated from London during World War II to a remote English village filled with eccentrics, young Bobby is the victim of horrible mistreatment by five boys who accuse him of being a Nazi spy. At the center of these villagers is the enigmatic Bee King, a mysterious figure who exercises a powerful, hypnotic influence on the village and especially the boys.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars
Updated 3/28/02 - The Weather
in Berlin
Author: Just, Ward S.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618036687 Date: 2002KirkusLJ
In this astute novel of Americans abroad, Ward Just turns his keen eye toward the dark underpinnings of nationalism, fame, and artistic integrity. When a famous Hollywood director travels to post-Wall Germany to rekindle his genius, he is unexpectedly reunited with an actress who mysteriously disappeared from the set of his movie thirty years before. Masterly and atmospheric, The Weather in Berlin explores the subtleties of artistic inspiration, the nature of memory, and the pull of the past.- Publisher Marketing.
Updated 5/3/02 - Spring Flowers
Author: Kadare, Ismail
Publisher: Arcade $ 23.95 ISBN: 155970635X Date: 2002BooklistLibrary Journal
Updated 6/29/02 - The
Solace of Leaving Early
Author: Kimmel, Haven
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385499833 Date: 2002Library Journal
Told with remarkable wit and sweeping empathy, The Solace of Leaving Early is the story of finding ones better self through accepting the shortcomings of others. Wisdom is arrived at only after much laughter and many tears, and Haven Kimmel charts this course of destined souls with skill and beauty.
Updated 6/7/02 - Lady Sophia's
Lover
Author: Kleypas, Lisa
Publisher: Avon $ 7.50 (paper) ISBN: 0380811065 Date: 2002PW
Hoping to snare the unattainable Sir Ross Cannon, Lady Sophia Sydney will do anything--even ruin his reputation to cause a scandal in London. She insinuates herself into his life and even lives in his house. Her presence tempts him beyond all reason. She knows Ross in falling in love with her. But she never counts on falling in love with him.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 4/30.02 - Iceland
Author: Krusoe, Jim
Publisher: Dalkey $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1564783146 Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 6/3/02 - Malaise
Author: Lemann, Nancy
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743215486 Date: 2002Kirkus
A search for love, home, and meaning set between the blazing Southern California border town of Esperanza and the old-world haunts of New York, Malaise is a romantic comedy of manners from a novelist of incomparable style and wit.
Updated 4/18/02 - Seducing
Mr. Heywood
Author: Manning, Jo
Publisher: Five Star $ 26.95 ISBN: 0786234008 Date: 2002Booklist
Upon her husband's death, a shocked Lady Sophia learns that custody of her children has gone to a humble country vicar. Although he knows of her tarnished reputation, the clergyman believes children need their mother--and soon, he needs Lady Sophia, too.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 6/3/02 - Life of Pi
Author: Martel, Yann
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151008116 Date: 2002PWLibrary Journal
This brilliant fabulist novel combines the delight of Kipling's Just So Stories with the metaphysical adventure of Jonah and the Whale, as Pi, the son of a zookeeper, is marooned aboard a lifeboat with a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan, and a tiger.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars
Updated 6/29/02 - Ariel's Crossing
Author: Morrow, Bradford
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670030953 Date: 2002Booklist
After years of secrecy, Ariel Rankin learns that her birth father is not who she thought he was and her world is shaken to its core. Audaciously writing with magic realism, Morrow offers a rhapsodic portrait of how faith, family, and self-identity are inscribed in each and everyone.
Updated 6/3/02 - The Big Snow
Author: Park, David
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582342490 Date: 2002PW
Shaken free from the normal patterns of their lives by a catastrophic blizzard, the intimate desires of a northern Irish community are thrown into sharp relief as they experience love, death, and finally, murder.
Updated 6/3/02 - Prague
Author: Philips, Arthur
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507876 Date: 2002PW
It is 1990 and the Berlin Wall has come down. Young Westerners flood into the atmospheric decay of post-Cold War Eastern Europe seeking the legendary Paris of the 1920s. Prague follows four Americans and one Canadian, flush with irony and striving for success in a place they often fail to understand.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 4/5/02 - Midnight
Confessions
Author: Proctor, Candice
Publisher: Ivy $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0345447174 Date: 2002PW
Southern widow Emmanuelle de Saint-Colombe is devoted to the sick and injured in New Orleans, now occupied by the Union Army. When a murder puts her in the very center of investigation, Emmanuelle is put under the watchful eye of Yankee marshal Zachary Cooper. Although she despises the uniform, she finds the man who wears it impossible to resist.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 5/9/02 - Strand
of a Thousand Pearls
Author: Rabinyan, Dorit
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375508112 Date: 2002PW
For fans of Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel, the sensuous, spellbinding story of the Azizyan family: a story of love, marriage, and mischief under the shade of the guava tree--by the bestselling, award-winning Dorit Rabinyan.
Updated 3/14/02 - Martin Sloane
Author: Redhill, Michael
Publisher: Little Brown $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0316739367 Date: 2002BooklistPW
The story of a relationship across two decades, of Jolene's search for Martin Sloane when one day he disappears from their home without warning or explanation, is told in a novel that brilliantly and movingly explores the vagaries of love and friendship, the burdens of personal history, and the enigmatic power of art.
Updated 5/20/02 - In Open Spaces
Author: Rowland, Russell
Publisher: Perennial $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0060084340 Date: 2002PW
Set in the unforgiving prairie of eastern Montana, this powerful and accomplished first novel captures the compelling story of the Arbuckle family from 1916 to 1946. As the story begins with a devastating loss for the family, the author masterfully weaves a tale of psychological wars that rip the family apart and the redemption that can ultimately bring them back together.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | First Fiction
Updated 4/12/02 - The Russian
Debutante's Handbook
Author: Shteyngart, Gary
Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573222135 Date: 2002Kirkus
A picaresque novel reminiscent of Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, this story is infused with energy and brilliant use of language. Hilarious, yet true to life, it follows the adventures of Vladimir, a young Russian immigrant, whose capitalist dreams and desires for a girlfriend lead him off the straight and narrow and into uncharted territory.
Updated 3/28/02 - When Eve Was
Naked: Stories of a Life's Journey
Author: Skvorecky, Josef
Publisher: Farrar Strauss & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374149755 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 6/29/02 - The Real McCoy
Author: Strauss, Darin
Publisher: Dutton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0525946519 Date: 2002Booklist
From the author of Chang and Eng comes a story loosely based on the real life of a turn-of-the-century icon and charlatan, "Kid" McCoy--a man of many talents and faces, including championship boxer, jewel thief, scam artist, and the most married man in America.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 6/3/02 - Simple Recipes:
Stories
Author: Thien, Madeline
Publisher: Liitle Brown $ 22.95 ISBN: 0316833169 Date: 2002Kirkus
With delicate language and wisdom, Thien explores the longing of families pulled apart by conflicts between generations, cultures, and values. Each of these stories captures a deeply personal world in which characters struggle to reconcile family loyalty with individual desires.
Updated 3/28/02 - Boomeritis: A Novel That
Will Set You Free
Author: Wilber, Ken
Publisher: Shambala $ 24.95 ISBN: 1570628017 Date: 2002Booklist
Ken Wilber's latest book is a daring departure from his previous writings. Boomeritis combines brilliant scholarship with playful storytelling to convey the landmark "integral" approach to human development that Wilber expounded in his popular nonfiction work A Theory of Everything.
Updated 6/29/02 - Angel Rock
Author: Williams, Darren
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375414517 Date: 2002PW
From a young Australian writer whose first novel received the Australian/ Vogel Literary Award comes a new story about the disappearance of a four-year-old boy in the Australian Outback. Menacing and mesmerizing, dazzling in its evocation of terrain--both physical and psychological--Angel Rock is a brilliant combination of the literary and the entertaining.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5/20/02
May
- Camouflage: Stories
Author: Bail, Murray
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 18 ISBN: 0374118272 Date: 2002Kirkus
It is clear in all these remarkable stories that Murray Bail--celebrated for his novels--has also extended the manifold possibilities of short fiction. Each of his stories creates a strange and fascinating new world, and none of them is easily forgotten.
Updated 2/28/02 - Summertime
Author: Barker, Raffaella
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375503870 Date: 2002Library Journal
In this delicious romantic comedy, a charming heroine offers hilarious and touching commentary on relationships, divorce, fashion, pets, and children as she copes with her chaotic family and fractured love life in rural England.
Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars
Updated 4/1/02 - See the Child
Author: Bergen, David
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0743229258 Date: 2002Kirkus
Paul Unger has a comfortable life, but it starts to unravel when his son becomes involved with a provocative young woman, Nicole. Soon, Paul's world is overturned, Stephen is found drowned in a field, and he is left to question his own role in the death.
Updated 3/15/02 - You're an Animal,
Viskovitz
Author: Boffa, Alessandro
Publisher: Knopf $ 18 ISBN: 0375405283 Date: 2002PW
Updated 4/30.02 - No Bones
Author: Burns, Anna
Publisher: Norton $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 039332303x Date: 2002Library Journal
A shattering and blackly funny debut in the tradition of Roddy Doyle, No Bones follows a young woman growing up in a Belfast beset by the Troubles.
Suggested Reading: First Fiction | Black Humor
Updated 4/24/02 - Kiss the Bride
Author: Cabot, Patricia
Publisher: Sonnett $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0743410289 Date: 2002PW
Emma Van Court never expected to be widowed--or penniless--at a young age. Although heir to a fortune, Emma receives the money only when she remarries. Suddenly the pretty schoolteacher finds the eligible men of the Scottish village of Faires scrambling for her attentions. When the forceful Earl of Denham comes calling, he offers to be her "temporary" husband to curb the desperate suitors--but he secretly longs to make his "I do's" last a lifetime.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 4/18/02 - Sunday Jews
Author: Calisher, Hortense
Publisher: Harcourt $ 28 ISBN:0151009309 Date: 2002KirkusPWBooklist
From one of our most distinguished writers comes a tragicomedy about a fascinating clan of people trying to fit in and stand out in America. In this new novel, Calisher explores a family united in blood yet divided by ideas.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 5/3/02 - The
City of Your Final Destination
Author: Cameron, Peter
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374281971 Date: 2002PWKirkus
Omar Razaghi posts a letter on September 13, 1995, that will change the course of his life forever. A novel about the random nature of love and the ways in which we confront or avoid life's choices, The City of Your Final Destination is a touching comic fourth novel from Peter Cameron.
Updated 2/18/02 - The Sons of Heaven
Author: Cheng, Terence
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060002433 Date: 2002PW
A stunning blend of history and fiction, here is a vividly imagined epic novel of blood, terror, and bravery set against the backdrop of one of modern history's most haunting events--the massacre at Tiananmen Square.
Updated 5/3/02 - The Handywoman
Stories
Author: Coberly, Lenore M.
Publisher: Ohio Univ $ 28.95 (hardback) $16.95 (paper) ISBN: 0804010477 (hardback)0804010412 (paper) Date: 2002Kirkus
An astounding collection of Appalachian stories - Publisher marketing.
Updated 3/15/02 - The Trials of
Angela
Author: Criswell, Millie
Publisher: Ivy $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0804119937 Date: 2002Booklist
Angela DeNero's life is a mess. She's just broken up with her cheating fianc; her law practice is gasping for air; and her parents are planning to move back to Baltimore. To make matters worse, Angela finds she has to argue her biggest case against arrogant John Franco, a man she believes would send his own grandmother to jail. Instead, he sends Angela's heart soaring.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 4/9/02 - This Cold Country
Author: Davis-Goff, Annabel
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 0151008477 Date: 2002Library Journal
An inexperienced middle-class English girl is suddenly thrust into the decadent world of the Anglo Irish--a world of treasonous plots, desperate intimacies, and dangerous estrangements--from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Dower House.
Updated 3/19/02 - In the Casa Azul
Author: Delahunt, Meaghan
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN:031229106x Date: 2002Library Journal
Spreading before the reader a panorama of Russian history, revolution, and upheaval through the first half of the 20th century, this literary work finds Leon Trotsky taking refuge in Mexico City when he is pursued country to country by Stalin's agents.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Stalin
Updated 4/1/02 - Heart-Side Up
Author: Dimmick, Barbara
Publisher: Graywolf $ 24.95 ISBN: 155973620 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 3/19/02 - Woman
Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Short Stories
Author: Donoghue, Emma
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151009376 Date: 2002Kirkus
Following the triumphant publication of Slammerkin this rollicking collection of short stories depicts the strangely exhilarating sideshows of humanity lost to traditional history.
Updated 3/15/02 - Lord Baltimore
Author: Doster, Stephen
Publisher: Blair $ 22.95 ISBN: 0895872641 Date: 2002Library Journal
Partly an homage to classics ranging from Don Quixote to Huck Finn, Lord Baltimore is a novel that creates its own universe and whose characters walk the line between the real and the fantastic.
Suggested Reading: Picaresque Stars
Updated 4/24/02 - Confessing
a Murder
Author: Drayson, Nicholas
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393051293 Date: 2002Kirkus
In this debut novel by an Australian naturalist, murder, a vanished tropical island, and a thwarted love affair are all clues to the origin of Charles Darwin's famous theory.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Darwin, Naturalists and Evolution
Updated 2/28/02 - Walk
Through Darkness
Author: Durham, David Anthony
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385499256 Date: 2002PW
The second novel by the acclaimed author of Gabriel's Story is history infused by myth, the intense narrative of an escaped slave trying to reunite with his pregnant wife.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | African American Stars
Updated 3/28/02 - The Emperor's Babe
Author: Evaristo, Bernadine
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670030716 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 4/24/02 - Three Junes
Author: Glass, Julia
Publisher: Pantheon $ 25 ISBN: 0375421440 Date: 2002PW
This symphonic first novel teems with relationships and interconnected lives--about love, death, and birth in a Scottish family.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 3/21/02 - The Seal Wife
Author: Harrison, Kathryn
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375506292 Date: 2002Booklist
A novel of passion by the author of The Kiss and The Binding Chair, The Seal Wife tells the story of a young scientist in 1915 Alaska and his consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 4/9/02 - A Simple
Habana Melody: From When the World Was Good
Author: Hijuelos, Oscar
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060175699 Date: 2002KirkusLJBooklistPW
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love returns to the world of music with this gorgeously written novel about one man's passion for his art, his family, and his country.
Suggested Reading: Fiction & Music | All Stars | Latino Stars
Updated 5/20/02 - Moral Hazard
Author: Jennings, Kate
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 21.95 ISBN: 0007141084 Date: 2002PW
Jennings pens a darkly witty novel, taut as a wire, that pits love and loyalty against Wall Street.
Updated 4/5/02 - In This Mountain
Author: Karon, Jan
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670031046 Date: 2002Booklist
In her seventh novel in the bestselling Mitford Years series, Jan Karon delivers surprises of every kind, including the return of the man in the attic and an ending that no one in Mitford will ever forget.
Updated 6/3/02 - Mr. Potter
Author: Kincaid, Jamaica
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $18 ISBN: 0374214948 Date: 2002PWBooklistLibrary Journal
Jamaica Kincaid's first obsession, the island of Antigua, comes vibrantly to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate taxi chauffeur. In her most ambitious work to date, Kincaid breathes life into a figure unlike any in contemporary fiction, an individual consciousness emerging out of an unexamined life.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4//1/02 - Man Walks
Into a Room
Author: Krauss, Nicole
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385503997 Date: 2002LJ
In this shimmering debut novel of memory, identity, and love, an English professor's brain tumor eradicates his memories past the age of 12 as he mourns a life well-lived and profoundly forgotten.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Atomic Age Fiction | Amnesia
Updated 5/3/02 - Rush Home Road
Author: Lansens, Lori
Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316069027 Date: 2002 Date: 2002Library Journal
In the spirit of White Oleander and The Color Purple comes a heartbreaking and page-turning story about an 80-year-old woman who confronts and relives her life when a five-year-old girl is abandoned on her doorstep.
Updated 5/20/02 - Lost Nation
Author: Lent, Jeffrey
Publisher: Atlantic $ 25 ISBN: 0871138432 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary Journal
Bestselling author Lent retruns with Lost Nation. Set in the early 19th century, the story opens with a man known only as Blood guiding an oxcart of rum toward a land where the luckless--or outlawed--have made a fresh start.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 4/1/02 - Soy La Avon Lady
and Other Stories
Author: Lopez, Lorraine
Publisher: Curbstone $ 15.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1880684861 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 6/7/02 - True Hope
Author: Manley, Frank
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786710209 Date: 2002Kirkus
Resounding with wisdom, humor, and tragedy, this novel tells the state of an anguished man who discovers the meaning of life while plumbing the depths of despair.
Updated 3/28/02 - Hollow Ground
Author: Marion, Stephen
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN: 1565123239 Date: 2002Kirkus
Debut novelist Stephen Marion offers not only the story of a father and son getting to know each other for the first time, but also that of a small town whose mining industry has literally hollowed out the ground beneath their feet.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 2/8/02 - Trespass
Author: Mazur, Grace Dane
Publisher: Graywolf $ 14.95 (paper) ISBN: 1555973647 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 12.02.02 - The Cadence of
Grass
Author: McGuane, Thomas
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0679446745 Date: 2002PWLibrary Journal
In a masterpiece of savage comedy, the author of the bestselling Nothing But Blue Skies writes of the perverse Whitelaw patriarch, a man who exerts his control, even in death, by means of a will that binds the family fortune to a failing marriage.
Updated 5/20/02 - A Debt to Delia
Author: Metzger, Barbara
Publisher: Signet $ 4.99 (paper) ISBN: 0451205863 Date: 2002PW
While battling Napoleon, Major Lord Tyverne is wounded and trapped behind enemy lines. A fellow redcoat comes to his aid, insisting Ty ride his horse to safety. Horrified to learn of his rescuer's death, Ty vows to repay his debt of honor. Ty offers marriage to the dead man's sister, Delia Croft. But Delia longs for love--not obligation.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 3/21/02 - Esquire's
Big Book of Fiction
Author: Miller, Adrienne (ed)
Publisher: Context $ 21.95 ISBN: 1893956261 Date: 2002PW
Updated 5/20/02 - Simon Silber: Works
for Solo Piano
Author: Miller, Christopher
Publisher: Houghton $ 23 ISBN: 061814336x Date: 2002Booklist
Miller's darkly hilarious first novel takes the form of liner notes to a recording of the complete works of a prodigiously cranky composer, who haunts the borderland between genius and mediocrity.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Episolatory Stars
Updated 6/3/02 - The Beach House
Author: Monroe, Mary Alice
Publisher: Mira $ 6.50 ISBN: 1551668998 Date: 2002PW
Caretta Rutledge abandoned her Southern roots and troubled family long ago. Now, as her own life takes a turn for the worse, Caretta finds herself heading back to the beach house where she spent her childhood summers. There, Caretta renews old acquaintances and reconnects with her ailing mother, learning life's most precious lessons in the process.
Suggested Reading: Summertime Stars
Updated 4/5/02 - Step-Ball-Change
Author: Ray, Jeanne
Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 0609610031 Date: 2002Library Journal
Caroline has it all: a successful dance studio in Raleigh, a long-term marriage, and four adult children, all of whom are lawyers. All it takes, though, are two back-to-back phone calls to change everything. After her sparkling, bestselling debut, Julie and Romeo, Jeanne Ray returns with this second story of love and family in all their complicated, infuriating, mystifying splendor.
Updated 4/1/02 - Unless: A Novel
Author: Shields, Carol
Publisher: Marshall Pickering $ 24.95 ISBN: 0007141076 Date: 2002Kirkus
After 44 years, Reta Winters she is discovering the meaning of loss for the first time when her beloved eldest daughter drops out of life to sit on a street corner. A major literary event from the author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer-Prize winner, The Stone Diaries, this is a novel of love and letting go.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars
Updated 2/18/02 - God's Fool
Author: Slouka, Mark
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375402160 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary Journal
Stretching from ancient Siam to the fields of the American Civil War, Slouka's debut novel transforms the story of the first Siamese twins in recorded history into a universal tale of brotherhood.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Biographical Fiction | Twins
Updated 5/20/02 - The
True Sources of the Nile
Author: Stone, Sarah
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385503016 Date: 2002Library Journal
In this love story of an American human rights advocate in Burundi and a high-ranking, Paris-educated member of the Tutsi ruling class, Stone marries a sexy tale of passion with a meticulously rendered look at turmoil in contemporary Africa.
Updated 4/1/02 - The Sands of Pride:
A Novel of the Civil War
Author: Trotter, William R.
Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 28 ISBN:0786710136 Date: 2002PW
The Sands of Pride begins a two-part saga which brings America's most tragic conflict to life at Fort Fisher, a fortress on North Carolina's windswept coastline. From Secession to Gettysburg, acclaimed author Trotter paints a vivid portrait of the bloodstained battlefields, intimate boudoirs, and ordinary people swept into the hurricane of war.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars
Updated 4/18/02 - The Making of June
Author: Ward, Anne
Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399148906 Date: 2002Kirkus
A young woman with the perfect L.A. life moves to the Balkans, where she is forced to confront her sheltered image of the world and rethink her idealized picture of the American dream.
Updated 3/28/02 - The Leto Bundle
Author: Warner, Marina
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 26 ISBN: 03754185484 Date: 2002Booklist
This novel sweeps from prehistory to the Middle Ages, to Victorian Europe, and then to the present day, as a mysterious woman named Leto searches for her long-lost son. In The Leto Bundle, the eternal story of the refugee becomes a powerful modern novel of huge scope and imaginative force.
Updated 4/9/02 - The Stone Carvers
Author: Urquhart, Jane
Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670030449 Date: 2002PW
A major bestseller in Canada, The Stone Carvers is set against the backdrop of World War II, bringing together history and art in a story both intimate and worldly.
Updated 4/5/02 - Dirt Music
Author: Winton, Tim
Publisher: Scribner $ 26 ISBN: 0743228022 Date: 2002KirkusPW
Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, this novel by the author of The Riders is about the odds of breaking with the past, a love story about people stifled by grief and regret, and a journey across landscapes within and without.
Updated 4/18/02
April
- April Witch
Author: Axelsson, Majgull
Publisher: Villard $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375505172 Date: 2002Library Journal
Desiree lies in a hospital bed thinking, dreaming--she cannot walk or talk, but she has other capabilities. Desiree is an April witch, clairvoyant and omniscient, traveling through time and space into the world denied her.
Suggested Reading: Witches
Updated 1/29/02 - Miss America
Family
Author: Baggott, Julianna
Publisher: Pocket $ 24 ISBN: 0743422961 Date: 2002Library Journal
A soulful, mordantly funny follow-up to the bestselling Girl Talk stars a fading beauty queen and her 16-year-old son as the delightfully nimble co-chroniclers of Baggott's inspired new take on suburban dissolution.
Updated 3/19/02 - Century's Son
Author: Boswell, Robert
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375412379 Date: 2002KirkusPWBooklist
From one of America's most skilled, subtle, and critically acclaimed writers--a novel about an eccentric midwestern family, and the history of love and tragedy that holds it together and tears it apart.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3/26/02 - The
Incantation of Frida K.
Author: Braverman, Kate
Publisher: Conari $ 23.95 ISBN: 1583224696 Date: 2002Library Journal
Braverman's imagined life of Frida Kahlo begins and ends within the hallucinatory mind of the painter, at 46, on her deathbed. Reflecting on people, places, and events in her past, Frida talks of men, art, and philosophy.
Suggested Reading: Biographical Fiction | Art Stars
Updated 3/19/02 - Nothing
Makes You Free: Writings by Descendants of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
Author: Bukiet, Melvin Jules (ed)
Publisher: Norton $ 27.95 ISBN: 0393050467 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 2/28/02 - Sunstroke: Selected Stories
of Ivan Bunin
Author: Bunin, Ivan
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee $ 25 ISBN: 1566634261 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 3/28/02 - Moon of Bitter
Cold
Author: Chiaventone, Frederick J.
Publisher: Forge $ 26.95 ISBN: 0765300931 Date: 2002Kirkus
In 1866, the war in the West, with its bloody collision of cultures, is increasing in tension and danger. As the U.S. Army builds ever more forts on the Great Plains, Red Cloud, a Lakota Sioux war leader, assembles more than 3,000 warriors to drive out the white man.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Western Stars
Updated 2/1/02 - The
Bondwoman's Narrative
Author: Crafts, Hannah, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446530085 Date: 2002PW
Possibly the first novel written by a black woman slave, this work is both a historically important literary event and a gripping autobiographical story in its own right.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars
Updated 3/28/02 - Gould's Book
of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish
Author: Flanagan, Richard
Publisher: Grove $ 27.50 ISBN: 0802117112 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary JournalPWBooklist
The latest novel from internationally renowned author Flanagan. A rich tragicomic saga of art, fish, and the founding of new worlds.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Biographical Fiction
Updated 3/26/02 - Everthing
Is Illuminated
Author: Foer, Jonathan Safran
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618173870 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary JournalPWBooklist
A writer journeys to the farmlands of eastern Europe to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Passionate and marked by an indelible humanity, Everything Is Illuminated mines the black holes of history and is ultimately a story about searching for people and places that no longer exist.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Humorous Fiction | Reading Group Stars
Updated 3/14/02 - 13 Albatrosses
Author: Harington, Donald
Publisher: Holt $ 26 ISBN: 0805068554 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary Journal
For decades Donald Harington has delighted fans with his thrilling, magical tales of Stay More, a small enclave in northern Arkansas. Now Harington expands on his fictional realm with the strange, quixotic quest of Vernon Ingledew to win the governorship of Arkansas.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction
Updated 3/19/02 - Fox Girl
Author: Keller, Nora Okja
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670030732 Date: 2002PWLibrary JournalBooklist
The author of Comfort Woman returns with her latest beautifully imagined and unflinchingly honest novel. Set in the aftermath of the Korean War, Fox Girl is the story of its forgotten victims, the abandoned children of American GIs who live in a world where life is about survival.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3/26/02 - The Impressionist
Author: Kunzru, Hari
Publisher: Dutton $ 24.95 ISBN: 052594642x Date: 2002PWBooklistLibrary JournalKirkus
Sweeping from India to England to France and Africa and played out on a teeming world canvas, The Impressionist is the unforgettable riches-to-rags story of a boy who is born a lie and must adapt--or perish.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | First Fiction
Updated 1/3/02 - The Horned Man
Author: Lasdun, James
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393003361 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 4/1/02 - Death
and Nightingales
Author: McCabe, Eugene
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582342377 Date: 2002Kirkus
Through the events of a single day in the life of Elizabeth Winters--on the Irish farms of County Fermanagh in 1883--readers see decades of pain, betrayal, and resentment build to a devastating climax.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 1/3/02 - Oxygen
Author: Miller, Andrew
Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151007217 Date: 2002PW
From the celebrated author of Ingenious Pain comes an intimate, compelling meditation on loss, regret, and self-discovery.
Updated 1/24/02 - Video: Stories
Author: Nair, Meera
Publisher: Pantheon $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375421114 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 3/14/02 - Female Trouble:
Stories
Author: Nelson, Antonya
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 074321871x Date: 2002Library Journal
In her first story collection since being selected as one of The New Yorker's 20 best writers for the 21st century, Nelson presents 13 stories about the vagaries of marriage, the uncertainties of family, and the revelations of female life.
Updated 1/29/02 - The Haunting of L
Author: Norman, Howard A.
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374168253 Date: 2002PW
In 1927 Manitoba, young Peter Duvett accepts a job as assistant to elusive portraitist Vienna Linn, and helps him photograph gruesome accidents for a private collection in London. Duvett falls under the spell of Linn's brilliant wife and starts to see more and more terrifying scenes come to life in the darkroom.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 1/4/02 - The
Dive from Clausen's Pier
Author: Packer, Ann
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375412824 Date: 2002KirkusPWBooklist
A suspenseful, richly layered first novel that asks: How much do people owe the people they love? The Dive from Clausen's Pier will speak to all those who have ever thought about leaving when they knew they should stay or felt trapped, not only by circumstance, but by the strength of their own love.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts | Reading Group Stars
Updated 3/26/02 - The Last of
the Amazons
Author: Pressfield, Steven
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 038550098x Date: 2002Library Journal
The internationally bestselling author of Tides of War and Gates of Fire delivers his most gripping and imaginative novel of the ancient world yet--a stunning epic of love and war that breathes life into the grand myth of the ferocious female warrior culture of the Amazons.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction
Updated 3/19/02 - The Memory Room
Author: Rakow, Mary
Publisher: Counterpoint $ 25 ISBN: 1582431728 Date: 2002PW
The Memory Room is a poetic, debut novel-in-verse about a woman who goes to hell and back in order to understand the depth of human evil and its possible transcendence. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: First Fiction
Updated 2/21/02 - Blue Bayou
Author: Ross, JoAnn
Publisher: Pocket $ 6.99 (paperback) ISBN: 0743436822 Date: 2002Booklist
First book in a new trilogy. Danielle Dupree's passionate teen love affair with Jack Callahan, the son of her family's housekeeper, was cut short for reasons unclear to her--but not to Jack. Now, 13 years later, Dani, a widow with a son, comes home to Blue Bayou and is surprised Jack, a bestselling author, has returned home, too. Even as their passion reignites, Dani and Jack know that secrets hang in the air.
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 4/9/02 - Sea Glass
Author: Shreve, Anita
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0316780812 Date: 2002PWLibrary Journal
From the international bestselling author (The Weight of Water, Resistance) comes a moving new novel about marriage, memory, and troubled times, set in 1929 on the coast of New Hampshire.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 3/19/02 - Instances
of the Number 3
Author: Vickers, Salley
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374177023 Date: 2002PW
Popular British author Vickers brings to life a loving marriage and a love affair that exist side by side for years--and continue to reverberate after Peter Hansome dies in a car accident, on his way home from an assignation with yet another lover.
Updated 3/14/02 - A
Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga
Author: Whitty, Julia
Publisher: Mariner $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0618119809 Date: 2002Library Journal
Bringing a unique perspective and a singular voice to contemporary fiction, this collection features lush, poignant stories about the natural world. Here are characters--mammals, historical figures, everyday people--who discover the liberating properties of memory, rebellion, and knowledge in the face of captivity and loneliness.
Updated 4/1/02
March
- Shadows
of Blue and Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce
Author: Bierce, Ambrose
Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786302446 Date: 2002Kirkus
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars
Updated 2/1/02 - The Wooden Nickel
Author: Carpenter, William
Publisher: 0316134007 $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316134007 Date: 2002Kirkus
Lucky Lunt is an endangered species: a third generation lobsterman who works the same Maine waters as his ancestors. As waves of trouble turn into a flood tide, Lucky enters an epic confrontation with his enemies and a rogue whale--a battle his unreliable heart may not survive.
Suggested Reading: Sea Stories
Updated 2/18/02 - Casanova
in Bohemia
Author: Codrescu, Andre
Publisher: Free Press $ 25 ISBN: 0684868008 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary Journal
Beloved NPR commentator and popular author Codrescu makes a stunning return to historical fiction, detailing the adventurous life and erotic times of the famed illuminist Giacomo Casanova. Codrescu creates a surreal portrait of the legendary Casanova, as the old adventurer plays out his final years in a dilapidated castle in Bohemia.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Biographical Fiction
Updated 1/29/02 - The House
of Blue Mangoes
Author: Davidar, David
Publisher: HarperCollins $26.95 ISBN: 0066212545 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
The House of Blue Mangoes tells the story of the Dorai family in south India during a time of tremendous political and social upheaval. Sophisticated, filled with brilliant historical and emotional insight, enlivened by touches of humor and deeply felt tragedy that draw on the author's own family history.
Suggested Reading: Stars of India
Updated 2/24/02 - Baseball: A Literary Anthology
Author: Dawidoff, Nicholas (ed)
Publisher: Library of America $ 35 ISBN: 193108209x Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
Full of heroism and heartbreak, the most beloved of American sports is also the most poetic, and writers have been drawn to this sport as to no other. With Baseball: A Literary Anthology, The Library of America presents the story of the national adventure as revealed through the fascinating lens of the great American game.
Suggested Reading: Sports Stars
Updated 2/24/02 - Leaving
Author: Dry, Richard
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312283318 Date: 2002Booklist
Leaving begins in 1959, when newly-widowed and pregnant Ruby Washington and her half-brother, Easton, board a bus in rural South Carolina destined for California. Their lives, and the lives of Ruby's daughter Lida and her children are played out against the turbulent backdrop of the '60s and the drug-infested neighborhoods of the '80s and '90s.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 2/24/02 - The Disappearing
Body
Author: Grand, David
Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385500343 Date: 2002Kirkus
Grand, whose first novel, Louse, transformed the last days of Howard Hughes into compelling fiction, works the same dark magic in The Disappearing Body, weaving suspenseful mystery into his stunning, perversely hilarious portrait of the corruption, ambition, passion, and innocence of post-Prohibition America.
Updated 1/24/02 - The Idea of
Perfection
Author: Grenville, Katherine
Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670030805 Date: 2002Kirkus
Published to great acclaim in Britain, Grenville's fifth novel is set in the eccentric little backwater of Karakarook, Australia, and tells the unlikely love story of Douglas Cheesman, a shy, gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a large, rawboned, plain woman who is a part-time museum curator.
Updated 2/1/02 - Flotsam & Jetsam
Author: Higgins, Aidan
Publisher: Dalkey $ 15.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1564783162 Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 3/14/02 - Woman Made of
Sand
Author: Kobin, Joann
Publisher: Delphinium $ 23 ISBN: 1883285232 Date: 2002PW
Updated 1/15/02 - All I Could Get: A
Novel of Wall Street
Author: Lasser, Scott
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375413251 Date: 2002KirkusPW
Barry Schwartz has everything: a strong marriage, a life in the Colorado mountains, and a job that lets him ski a hundred days in a good year. But at 30, still paying off student loans and struggling to make the rent, he makes a harrowing journey into the heart of New York's financial world on the way to discovering what exactly is "enough."
Updated 2/21/02 - Darlington's
Fall
Author: Leithauser, Brad
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375411488 Date: 2002Booklist
The protagonist of this unexpected novel is Russel Darlington, a born naturalist and an unlikely romantic hero born in the late 1890s. Ultimately, Darlington's Fall is a love story written in verse that is vivid, accessible, and witty, and gives a luminosity to the tale and its people.
Suggested Reading: Word Play Stars
Updated 3/26/02 - Shackling Water
Author: Mansbach, Adam
Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385502052 Date: 2002LJBooklistKirkus
In the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Adam Mansbach captures the rhythms of jazz in a remarkable debut novel about a young man looking for his muse in Harlem.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | First Fiction | All Stars
Updated 2/28/02 - Notable
American Women
Author: Marcus, Ben
Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375713786 Date: 2002LJ
The acclaimed author of The Age of Wire and String writes an allegory of the power and impotence of modern women. On a farm in "Ohio," a mother and father attempt to raise a boy without feelings. He tells the only story a boy with no feelings can, until the arrival of Jane Dark, whose fierce belief in Silence brings the family to a terrible crisis.
Updated 1/15/02 - Atonement
Author: McEwan, Ian
Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385503954 Date: 2002PWBooklistKirkus
In this rich novel by the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel Amsterdam, a young girl unwittingly tells a tale that turns her family upside down. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, Atonement is at its center a profound--and profoundly moving--exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Reading Group Stars
Updated 12/6/01 - By the Lake
Author: McGahern, John
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0679419144 Date: 2002Kirkus
Widely considered to be one of the finest Irish writers of fiction at work today, McGahern now renders a novel that brings to vivid life the world and the people of a contemporary Irish village with insight, humor, and deep sympathy.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars
Updated 1/24/02 - Desirable
Daughters
Author: Mukherjee, Bharati
Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786865989 Date: 2002PW
From a respected writer of fiction comes a stirring novel of three Calcutta-born women, two continents, and a perilous journey from the old world to the new.
Suggested Reading: Stars of India | Asian American Stars
Updated 1/24/02 - In the Forest
Author: O'Brien, Edna
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618197303 Date: 2002BooklistKirkus
Taken from a true story, this psychological thriller returns to the countryside of western Ireland, the vivid backdrop of the author's Wild December. Michen O'Kane's problems go beyond early loss and abuse--the killing instinct is already kindled in him as he earns the title of Kinderschreck: someone of whom children are afraid.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars
Updated 2/1/02 - Rouse Up, O Young Men of the
New Age
Author: Oe, Kenzaburo
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN:0802117104 Date: 2002PWKirkusBooklist
A remarkable portrait of the inexpressible bond between a famous writer and his cipher of a son, this magnificent novel of startling candor is from a Nobel Prize-winning Japanese master. As the man struggles to understand his family, he must evaluate himself as he deals with parenting a disabled child.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 2/6/02 - At Swim, Two Boys
Author: O'Neill, James
Publisher: Scribner $ 27 ISBN: 0743222946 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
In the tradition of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children comes an astonishingly ambitious and resonant novel that transports readers to Dublin in the year preceding the Easter uprising--a pivotal time in Irish history and in the lives of two very young men from different backgrounds.
Booklist Top 10 Gay & Lesbian Books (June 2002)
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Irish Stars
Updated 2/6/02 - A Collection
of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity
Author: Otto, Whitney
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375505458 Date: 2002Kirkus
The bestselling author of How to Make an American Quilt spins a story of youth and yearning by brilliantly juxtaposing life in 1980s San Francisco with the exquisite pleasures of Japan's ancient Floating World.
It's been two years since the mysterious accident took Sandra Winslow's politician husband, Victor--the favorite son of a town called Paradise--and left Sandra under a cloud of suspicion. She decides to sell her beach house on the edge of town and hires Mike Malloy, who touches her lonely heart. Can she trust a man with unbreakable ties to a community she's eager to leave behind--and who is determined to unearth her
Updated 1/2/02 - The Apprentice
Lover
Author: Parini, Jay
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066210712 Date: 2002Booklist
When Alex Massolini's brother is killed in Vietnam, he drops out of school and leaves his family behind to become secretary to world famous writer Rupert Grant. Told with wry humor in an elegant prose style, The Apprentice Lover is a remarkable piece of fiction that includes appearances by such colorful literary figures as Graham Greene and W. H. Auden.
Updated 2/4/02 - Bitch Goddess
Author: Rodi, Robert
Publisher: Plume $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0452283108 Date: 2002Booklist
Told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions, this is a hilarious account of the on-again, off-again career of Viola Chute, the B-grade sex symbol who slept her way to the middle and slid downward from there.
Booklist Top 10 Gay & Lesbian Books (June 2002)
Suggested Reading: Hollywood & Film Stars | Epistolary Stars
Updated 2/24/02 - Places
to Look for Mother
Author: Stansbury, Nicole
Publisher: Caroll & Graf $ 24ISBN: 0786709782 Date: 2002Booklist
In the tradition of Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here and Larry McMurtry's Terms of Endearment, Places to Look for a Mother tells a tale of mostly maddening mother-daughter bonds. Stansbury conjures a family that proves Tolstoy right once again: All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Updated 2/24/02 - The School of Night
Author: Wall, Alan
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 031228778X Date: 2002Booklist
Sean Tallow has only two overriding desires in life. One is to step into the shoes of his glamorous friend Daniel Pagett, and the other is to establish the truth about the School of Night, a shadowy group of Elizabethans who clustered around Sir Walter Ralegh.
Tallow pursues the School of Night and its entanglement in the question of whether the man from Stratford-on-Avon could really have written the plays ascribed to William Shakespeare. If he didn't, then who did? The harder he studies, the less light is thrown on this troublesome question, and the more his interest in the School of Night becomes a grim fixation.
Just when it seems Tallow is ready to give up the quest, day becomes night and everything he once believed is turned on its head as he enters a fearful world where there are no longer any rules except survival. Like the original members of the School of Night, he finds himself treading on the wrong side of the law. - Publisher Marketing.
Suggested Reading: Shakespearean Stars
Updated 2/24/02 - Passing
Through Paradise
Author: Wiggs, Susan
Publisher: Warner $ 6.99 ISBN: 044661078x Date: 2002PW
It's been two years since the mysterious accident took Sandra Winslow's politician husband, Victor--the favorite son of a town called Paradise--and left Sandra under a cloud of suspicion. She decides to sell her beach house on the edge of town and hires Mike Malloy, who touches her lonely heart. Can she trust a man with unbreakable ties to a community she's eager to leave behind--and who is determined to unearth her deepest secrets?
Suggested Reading: Romance Stars
Updated 1/29/02 - Burden
Author: Walters, Tony
Publisher: St Martins $23.95 ISBN: 0312287054 Date: 2002Kirkus
In this lyrical and funny novel, a young man named Burden tries to get himself killed by sleeping with as many married women as possible in his home town of Walterboro, South Carolina.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 2/1/02 - Henderson's Spear
Author: Wright, Ronald
Publisher: Holt $25 ISBN: 0805069968 Date: 2002BooklistLJ
Through unforgettable characters and a mesmerizing story, Wright traces two tales of obsession, intrigue, and loss--from the 1890s and the 1990s. With a deep understanding of the landscape and culture of the South Sea Islands, Henderson's Spear explores the patterns of history and the accidents of love.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 3/5/02
February
- Servants of
the Map: Stories
Author: Barrett, Andrea
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393043487 Date: 2002KirkusLibrary JournalPW
Ranging across two centuries, and from the western Himalaya to an Adirondack village, these wonderfully imagined stories and novellas travel the territories of yearning and awakening, of loss and unexpected discovery.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1/2/02 - Achilles
Author: Cook, Elizabeth
Publisher: Picador $ 16 ISBN: 0312288840 Date: 2002PWBooklist
Born of god and king, and hidden as a girl until Odysseus discovers him, Achilles becomes the Greeks' greatest warrior at Troy. This passionate retelling of the epic tale of Achilles recreates Homer's hero in a new and vivid reality.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Ancient Greece | Mythology Stars | Trojan War
Updated 2/6/02 - Deep
in the Shade of Paradise
Author: Dufresne, John
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393020207 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
Welcome to Shiver-De-Freeze, a boot-shaped precinct deep in the Louisiana swamp, famous for its healing waters and curious fauna. With his signature tragic-comic voice and cast of unforgettable and lively characters, DuFresne explores love, death, imagination, and memory.
Updated 12/6/01 - The Broken Lands: A Novel
of Arctic Disaster
Author: Edric, Robert
Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312288891 Date: 2002Booklist
In this enthralling, richly inventive novel, Edric re-creates what may have happened to the doomed Franklin expedition which set sail in 1845. - from the jacket copy.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Artic Stars
Updated 11/20/01 - The War At Home
Author: Eisenberg, Nora
Publisher: Leapfrog $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0967952042 Date: 2002LJ
Updated 1/15/02 - A Multitude of
Sins
Author: Ford, Richard
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375412123 Date: 2002PWBooklistLibrary Journal
With this masterful new book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author evokes with unflinching candor our failures to achieve what we consider to be most important: to be faithful, patient, honest, passionate, and loving toward those we care for.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1/29/02 - Africa Speaks
Author: Goldblatt, Mark
Publisher: Permanent $ 24 ISBN: 157962037x Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 12/6/01 - The Shadow Boxer: A
Novel
Author: Heighton, Steven
Publisher: Mariner $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN: 0618139338 Date: 2002BooklistPW
Updated 2/18/02 - True Valor
Author: Henderson, Dee
Publisher: Multnomah $ 11.99 (trade paper) ISBN: 1576738876 Date: 2002Booklist
In this second book in the Uncommon Heroes series, Air Force pararescueman Bruce "Striker" Stanton must save his love, a pilot, when she crash lands in Turkey after a deadly air battle.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
Updated 1/24/02 - Wavemaker 2
Author: Hughes, Mary-Beth
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871138352 Date: 2002BooklistLibrary Journal
An exhilarating debut, Wavemaker II is a heart-stopping story of what happens when one man takes a fall for another, leaving his family in disarray. Combining poetic intensity with a gritty realism, Mary-Beth Hughes has delivered a masterpiece of page-turning suspense.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | McCarthyism
Updated 1/29/02 - Burning Marguerite
Author: Inness-Brown, Elizabeth
Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375411968 Date: 2002PW
Waking to the chill of a snow-cloaked morning, carpenter James Jack finds his 94-year-old "Tante, " Marguerite Deo, lying dead outside his cabin. As he confronts the mystery of her death, an emotionally intricate and unexpected tale unfolds in a narrative that moves from the present back to a windswept New England island at the turn of the century, and to New Orleans during the Depression and World War II.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Debuts | New Orleans
Updated 1/2/02 - Enemy Women
Author: Jiles, Paulette
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066214440 Date: 2002KirkusPWLJ
The Colley family are modest farmers in the Missouri Ozarks. The Colleys try to remain neutral, a fact ignored by the Union militia who confiscate their livestock, burn their farm, and arrest their daughter on charges of "enemy collaboration." Yet as this innocent young woman soon discovers, fate can have a double edge. In unsentimental yet elegant prose, Jiles reveals the universal horrors of war and its irreparable damage, and introduces a wonderful new character in a memorable story.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Civil War Stars | Debuts | All Stars
Updated 1/19/02 - Hester
Among the Ruins
Author: Kirshenbaum, Binnie
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393041522 Date: 2002Booklist
Born in New York in 1963, historian Hester Rosenfeld--very American and marginally Jewish--goes to Munich to research the life of Heinrich Falk and becomes his mistress. As the lovers' intimacy grows, each suspects the other of hiding something about the past. Called a "rare and remarkable writer" by Michael Cunningham (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours), Binnie Kirshenbaum has written a searing novel about history's unforgettable legacy and its continuing impact.
Updated 1/24/02 - Billie's Kiss
Author: Knox, Elizabeth
Publisher: Ballantine $ 24 ISBN: 0345450523 Date: 2002KirkusBooklist
In the tradition of Drowning Ruth and The Dress Lodger comes a beautifully written, darkly romantic mystery set in the stark landscape of the Scottish islands at the beginning of the 20th century.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 1/24/02 - Crow Lake
Author: Lawson, Mary
Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 038533611x Date: 2002KirkusPW
For the farming Pye family of northern Ontario, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur offstage. In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars
Updated 3/2/02 - The Sweetest Dream
Author: Lessing, Doris
Publisher: HarperCollins $26.95 ISBN: 0066213347 Date: 2002KirkusBooklistPW
Frances Lennox ladles out dinner every night to the motley, youthful crew assembled around her hospitable table--her sons and their friends, girlfriends, ex-friends, and fresh-off-the-street friends. Set against the backdrop of the decade that changed the world, The Sweetest Dream is a riveting look from one of the greatest writers of our time at a group of people who dared to dream--and faced the inevitable cleanup afterward.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1/24/02 - Whitegirl
Author: Manning, Kate
Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385332874 Date: 2002PW
A poignant anatomy of an interracial marriage undone by the pressure of fame and the struggle for identity, Whitegirl is the arresting debut of a significant new voice in fiction.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 1/29/02 - It's My F***ing Birthday
Author: Markoe, Merrill
Publisher: Villard $21.95 ISBN: 0375507124 Date: 2002PW
Legendary comedy writer Merrill Markoe makes her fiction debut in this scathingly funny tale of an L.A. woman's ongoing quest to find happiness.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Dating Stars
Updated 1/24/02 - Miracle at
St Anna
Author: McBride, James
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222127 Date: 2002LJ
Based on the historical incident of an unspeakable massacre at the site of St. Anna Di Stazzema, a small village in Tuscany, and on the experiences of the famed Buffalo soldiers from the 92nd Division in Italy during World War II, Miracle at St. Anna is a singular evocation of war, cruelty, passion, and heroism. It is the story of four American Negro soldiers, a band of partisans, and an Italian boy who encounter a miracle--though perhaps the true miracle lies in themselves.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | World Wars | Questions of Faith
Updated 2/19/02 - Number9Dream
Author: Mitchell, David
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN:0375507264 Date: 2002Booklist
A young dreamer from remote rural Japan, Eiji Miyake, finds himself thrust out and on his own following his sister's death and his mother's breakdown. He comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father he never knew, and promptly trips over and crosses the hidden power centers that rule this great city.
Updated 3/14/02 - The Dream Room
Author: Moring, Marcel
Publisher: Morrow $ 22.95 ISBN: 0066212405 Date: 2002Kirkus
Internationally acclaimed novelist Marcel Moring returns with a poignant, emotionally intense novel of betrayal, love, and loss. Set in the 1960s, it is the story of a family's dissolution, witnessed through the eyes of 12-year-old David.
Updated 1/2/02 - Lovers
& Murderers
Author: Paral, Vladimir
Publisher: Catbird $ 27 ISBN: 0945774524 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 1/29/02 - Gone
Author: Roper, Martin
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805067752 Date: 2002PW
In this erotic, emotional debut novel, a young Dubliner is torn between two cities, two cultures, and two women. "A marvelously nasty novel about love in our time" (Jim Harrison, author of The Beast God Forgot to Invent).
Suggested Reading: Debut
Updated 1/2/02 - Radiance
Author: Scholz, Carter
Publisher: Picador $ 24 ISBN: 0312268939 Date: 2002Booklist
Out of the desire to be safe from nuclear weapons comes a program to build a shield against them. A brilliant and detailed expose of the way in which the bright hopes and dreams of talented scientists are turned on the grindstone of political expediency until all that remains are the rough deceptions of self and nation.
Updated 12/7/01 - Claire Marvel
Author: Schwartz, John Burnham
Publisher: Doubleday $ 25 ISBN: 038550344x Date: 2002Booklist
Updated 1/24/02 - The Illuminated
Soul
Author: Stollman, Aryeh Lev
Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222011 Date: 2002LJ
Eva Laquedem, a scientist who has fled Prague at the outbreak of World War II, arrives, by accident, in Windsor, Canada, at the home of a devout widow and her two sons. Within her purse she carries the renowned Augsburg Miscellany, a magnificent 15th-century illuminated Hebrew manuscript, which gives them all a new experience of the world and its possibilities.
Updated 1/15/02 - Without a Name and
Under the Tongue
Author: Vera, Yvonne
Publisher: Farrar $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0374528160 Date: 2002Library Journal
Updated 10/8/01 - Fingersmith
Author: Waters, Sarah
Publisher: Riverhead $ 25.95 ISBN: 1573222038 Date: 2002Kirkus
From the author of the New York Times Notable Book Tipping the Velvet comes a spellbinding, twisting tale of a great swindle, of fortunes and hearts won and lost, set in Victorian London among a family of thieves.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Updated 1/2/02
January
- Fair Warning
Author: Butler, Robert Olen
Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871138336 Date: 2002Kirkus
From one of the most acclaimed authors of our time comes a stirring new novel based on the prizewinning short story of a modern woman separating love from possession in Manhattan's moneyed world of power and greed.
Updated 11/6/01 - Bread
for the Baker's Child
Author: Caldwell, Joseph
Publisher: Saranabande $ 21.95 ISBN: 1889330655 Date: 2002Kirkus
Updated 11/6/01