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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 1997
April 2, 2008
July - December
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless otherwise noted.
Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alpha by author.
A 
indicates a Overbooked Jump for Joy book.
- What Looks Crazy On An Ordinary Day
Author: Cleage, Pearl
Publisher: Avon List Price: $ 20 ISBN: 038097584x Date: 1997
PWKirkus
After more than a decade of living the high life, Ava Johnson returns to the sleepy little community in Northern Michigan where she grew up. But what Ava perceives as an end is only the beginning, because there is too much happening in her small hometown to ignore. A highly readable debut in the tradition of Terry McMillan and Connie Briscoe.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | Debuts - Witches' Ring
Author: Ekman, Kristin
Publisher: Norvik (Dufour, dist) List Price: $ 16.95 (trade paperback) ISBN: 1870041364 Date: 1997PW - The Pure Product
Kessel, John
Publisher: Tor List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312861176 Date: 1997PW
As one of the most highly acclaimed sci-fi writers of the past 15 years, John Kessel's mordant wit and warm insight into the human condition comes to full flower in his short fiction. The Pure Product presents a collection of 16 of his short stories, two poems and an award-winning play. - With a Hammer for My Heart
Lyon, George Ella
Publisher: DK Ink List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0789424606 Date: 1997Booklist
"With her poet's pen, George Ella Lyon has fashioned as fine and moving a story as you'll ever read, just about as strange and wonderful as life itself. Filled with passion, pain, and redemption, this novel is a classic" - Lee Smith, bestselling author of Family Linen and Fair and Tender Ladies. - The Visitation
Reidy, Sue
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 12 (trade paperback) ISBN: 0684839547 Date: 1997Booklist
A surprise hit in England that's bound to enchant readers on this side of the Atlantic, The Visitation tells the story of the Flynn girls - who, considering the perpetually pregnant state of their mother, are all a little curious about where their siblings come from. Blessed enlightenment occurs, however, when the Virgin Mary appears and asks them to buy her suitable clothes for her earthly mission - a campaign for birth control. - To Say Nothing of the Dog
Willis, Connie
Publisher: Bantam Spectra List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553099957 Date: 1997PWBooklist
PW Best Books of '97
In the grand tradition of her bestselling Doomsday Book, Connie Willis once again takes on the subject of time travel, this time to Victorian England, with a sweeping tale of romance, history, and misadventure that combines everything Willis's readers have come to know and love.
Suggested Reading: Time Travel Stars
November
- Wet Places at Noon
Abbott, Lee K.
Publisher: Univ of Iowa Pr List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0877456054 Date: 1997Kirkus
NYTBR Notable - The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness
Bass, Rick
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 03957117582 Date: 1997BooklistPWKirkus
PW Best Books '97
Magical, passionate, lyrical and gritty, the three short novels in this collection are perhaps the finest yet by the acclaimed author of Winter, The Lost Grizzlies, In the Loyal Mountains and The Book of Yaak. Sharing the central theme of land, these deeply original stories will amaze and delight readers.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin
Brennan, Maeve
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0395870461 Date: 1997PWLJ
These masterly stories trace the patterns of love in three middle-class Dublin families, patterns as intricate and various as Irish lace. "Extraordinarily good and moving".--"Washington Post". - Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band: A Love Story with Rock'n'Roll
Brizzi, Enrico
Publisher: Grove List Price: $ 12 (trade paperback) ISBN: 0802135218 Date: 1997LJ
A tender story of first love, this dazzling debut novel follows Alex D., a young man consumed by a restless, unanswered longing that rebels against jumping through the hoops of school, through his friendships with drug-addicted delinquents and his decision to spend a year in America at the end of the summer.
Suggested Reading: Music and Fiction - The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories
Byatt, A.S.
Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 19 ISBN: 0679420088 Date: 1997Kirkus
NYTBR NOTABLE
A handful of brilliantly imaginative historical and contemporary fairy tales for grown-ups by the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession. Packaged in a beautiful little illustrated edition similar to Byatt's extremely successful collection, The Matisse Stories, this collection will make a lovely, affordably priced gift that will introduce her magical writing to many new readers.
Suggested Reading: Fairy and Folk Tales - Computer One
Collins, Warwick
Publisher: Marion Boyars List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0714530336 Date: 1997Booklist
As Professor Enzo Yakuda prepares to retire, he is plagued by a nightmare about the anhilation of the entire human race - by Computer One, the international civil computer network. - Night Letters
Dessaix, Robert
Publisher: St Martin's List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312169507 Date: 1997PWKirkus
Stricken with an incurable disease, an Australian man writes a series of letters from Italy to a friend back home. Museums, churches, cafes, and railway stations come under his cool gaze as he digs beneath the elegant veneer of European literature, uncovering centuries of sensuality and debauchery while pondering eternity. An instant #1 bestseller in Australia.
Suggested Reading: Epistolary Stars - Perfect Agreement
Downing, Michael
Publisher: Counterpoint List Price: $ 22 ISBN: Date: 1997PW
From the Advance Reading Copy: " In this generous, inventive novel, Michael Downing flawlessly interweaves Mark Sternum's travails in academe with a Shaker mystery, a mystery that as it unfolds helps Mark realize what is missing in his own life - surprising him with unexpected answers". - The Edge of Heaven
Golden, Marita
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ ISBN: 0385415079 Date: 1997LJ
The author of And Do Remember Me has fashioned a deceptively simple story of a family whose lives have been shattered by a single moment of angry carelessness. As Teresa Singletary, a 20-year-old college student, comes to terms with the complexities of adult life, her inner strength and maturity assures readers of her bright future. - Plays Well With Others
Gurganus, Allan
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0394589149 Date: 1997PWBooklistLJ
NYTBR Notable
Booklist Editor's Choice
The author of the acclaimed and bestselling The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All brings his comic brio and historical acumen to a new civil war: the Manhattan of entry-level artists, before and after AIDS. Written with erotic candor, wild comic energy, and an emotional acuity readers expect of Gurgenus, Plays Well With Others is quite simply an essential Fable of Our Time.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Lucky You
Hiaasen, Carl
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0679454446 Date: 1997PWKirkusLJ
NYTBR Notable
The newest - and funniest- novel yet by the bestselling author of Strip Tease and Stormy Weather. When JoLayne Lucks, the most recent winner of the Florida state lottery, has her ticket stolen by two would be "domestic terrorists", she enlists the help of Tom Krome- a journalist stretched thin by divorce, lite news, and a fool of a managing editor- in a chase that leads them to a deliriously righteous outcome - the inspired hallmark of Carl Hiaasen.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Humorous Fiction | If You Like Carl Hiaasen - The Wonder Worker
Howatch, Susan
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375401024 Date: 1997PWKirkus
In her spellbinding new novel, the bestselling author of Absolute Truths once again chooses to write about the ecclesiastical life, this time shifting the focus for the theological to the temporal and from the spiritual to the corporeal. A needy young woman stumbles into the life of a dissatisfied clergyman, upsetting his stable orbit and plunging him into a long spin out of control. - Under the Red Flag
Jin, Ha
Publisher: University of Georgia List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0820319392 Date: 1997BooklistKirkus
Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction, Under the Red Flag features twelve stories which take place during China's Cultural Revolution - stories which display the earnestness and grandeur of human folly and, in a larger sense, form a moral history of a time and a place.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars - Wobegon Boy
Keillor, Garrison
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670878073 Date: 1997PW 
Kirkus
In his trademark warm and satiric style, Garrison Keillor, host of the ever-popular A Prairie Companion and author of such bestselling books as The Book of Guys and Lake Wobegon Days, returns to enchant readers with his first new Lake Wobegon novel in ten years - a combination of Wobegon saga and a passionate romance for the 90's. - Silver City
Li, Rui
Publisher: Holt/Metropolitan List Price: $25 ISBN: 0805048952 Date: 1997PW
In his first novel to appear in English, China's acclaimed author Li Rui breathes life into China's monumental history through the vibrant saga of the Li and Bai clans--their romances, betrayals, intrigues, and power struggles. Set in a provincial saltmining town, the story follows the two families from the pre-Communist 1920s--a courtly era of sedan chairs and tea houses--to the explosive cultural revolution and beyond. - The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria
Publisher: Oxford Univ List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0195101693 Date: 1997LJ
By turns flippant and profound, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is the story of an unheroic man with half-hearted political ambitions, a harebrained idea for curing the world of melancholy, and a thousand quixotic theories unleashed from beyond the grave. - Lost Man's River
Matthiessen, Peter
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 26.95 ISBN: 0679403779 Date: 1997PW
PW Best Books '97
NYTBR Notable
From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes a dazzling new novel to follow his highly acclaimed and bestselling Killing Mr. Watson. A story of epic scope and ambition, Lost Man's River confronts the primal relationship between father and son and looks at ways it can shape a man's identity. ACT note: This is the second in a projected trilogy dealing with the death of Mr. Watson and the environment and people of the Lost Man's River area in southern Florida.
Suggested Reading: Florida Fiction - Comanche Moon
McMurtry, Larry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 28.50 ISBN: 0684807548 Date: 1997LJ
At last - in this huge and magnificent addition to one of the epic masterpieces of our time - Larry McMurtry takes readers from the end of Dead Man's Walk to the beginning of Lonesome Dove, filling in the most fascinating years of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call's lives, when the Rangers fought and won the Comanche wars.
Suggested Reading: Western Stars - Night Watch
Stewart, Sean
Publisher: Ace List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0441004458 Date: 1997PW
In The Night Watch, Sean Stewart returns us to the world he created in Resurrection Man (A New York Times Notable Book of the Year). It is a world where the horrors of modem warfare have given rise to magic. And magic has given rise to horrors never dreamed of... - Publisher Marketing. - Tales from the Blue Archives
Thornton, Lawrence
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 22.95 21.95 ISBN: 0385480105 Date: 1997Kirkus
Continuing the story begun in Lawrence Thornton's acclaimed, award-winning novels Imagining Argentina and Naming the Spirits, this novel has at its core a battle for custody and devotion that is universal and timeless and that parallels a country's effort to reclaim its soul. - The Polish Lover
Author: Weller, Anthony
Publisher: Marlowe List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 1569247382 Date: 1997LJ
The Polish Lover is an erotic novel of a love affair gone wrong. A young jazz clarinet player from Manhattan encounters an expatriate Polish beauty while on tour in New Zealand. The novel is about jazz as well as about loving someone who turns out to be dangerous and deceptive--and about the risks involved in playing music and falling in love. By the author of The Garden of the Peacocks. - South of Resurrection
Agee, Jonis
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670858099 Date: 1997Kirkus
A novel of love, family drama, and social conflict in the Ozarks - written by a "gifted poet of that dark lushness in the heart of the American landscape" (The New York Times Book Review). - War of the Gods
Anderson, Poul
Publisher: Tor List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312863152 Date: 1997PW
The epic saga of the legendary Viking king and warrior, Hadding, is a masterpiece of historical fantasy. Acclaimed science fiction and fantasy writer Poul Anderson has extensively researched the legend to piece together as much authentic material as possible. In re-creating the tale of the Danish king come compare to Arthur, Anderson also gives us a taste of life as it was really lived in the Viking era. - Bob the Gambler
Barthelme, Frederick
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0395809770 Date: 1997PWBooklistKirkus
NYTBR Notable
Entertaining and refreshing story of a "junk culture" couple's adventures in the Paradise casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. The tale abounds with curious happenings and lots of just plain fun characters.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Take a Gamble - Driving Blind
Bradbury, Ray
Publisher: Avon List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0380973812 Date: 1997PW
LJ Best Genre Fiction
A stunning new collection of short fiction by the beloved Dean of American storytellers, Driving Blind takes readers on unforgettable excursions to the fantastic, glorious grand tours through time and memory--interspersed with strange, unexpected side trips to the disturbing and the eerie - The World is the Home of Love and Death: Stories
Brodky, Harold
Publisher: Holt List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0805055134 Date: 1997PWLJ
The third and final volume of short stories from one of America's greatest fiction writers. Brodky returns here to the themes he has treated so memorably in the past - the conformity and stupefying monotony of suburbia, the malevolence of cocktail-party conversation, the subtle dynamics of sexual power - bringing to them new refinement and compression. - Pfitz
Crumey, Andrew
Publisher: Picardy List Price: $20 ISBN: 0312169647 Date: 1997Kirkus
In a surprisingly affecting novel, an 18th-century prince who seeks his own immortality devotes his entire wealth and the energy of his subjects to the creation of a fantastic city - that exists only on paper and in the mind of its creators. This exploration of the rich territory between reality and imagination recalls the philosophical tales of Diderot and Voltaire. - A God Strollling in the Cool of Evening
De Carvalho
Publisher: Louisiana State Univ List Price: $ 26.95 ISBN: 0807122351 Date: 1997LJ
Mario de Carvalho, winner of the 1996 Pegasus Prize for Literature, presents a fascinating tale of political rivalries, war, religion, philosophy, and social unrest in the twilight of the Roman Empire. It is a timeless tale of a good man struggling to maintain sense and order in his public and private lives and to uphold justice as he understands it. - Underworld
Delillo, Don
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 27 ISBN: 068484269 Date: 1997PWBooklistKirkus
National Book Award Finalist
PW Best Books '97
National Book Critics Circle Nominee
LJ Best Book
NYTBR Notable
Booklist Editors' Choice
The bestselling author of White Noise and Libra has written a gloriously fused work of fiction, based on the history of the past 50 years, that offers a key to understanding American culture - our preoccupations and obsessions, our fears, our hopes, our lives - and a chance to reexperience it.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - The Red Tent
Diamant, Anita
Publisher: St Martin's List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312169787 Date: 1997LJBooklist
The dazzling story of Dinah, Jacob's only daughter in the Book of Genesis, The Red Tent is a beautiful, thought-provoking novel as important to our time as The Women's Room was in the Seventies.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars - The Word "Desire"
Ducornet, Rikki
Publisher: Holt List Price: $19 ISBN: 0805051732 Date: 1997PWBooklist
Twelve startling original stories about erotic desire. Each story focuses on a pivotal erotic moment in the lives of men and women who narrate them. Only a few are overtly sexual in content, but each explored the many strange reverberations that occur when desire is present, whether acted upon or kept inside. - A Floating Life: The Adventures of Li Po
Elegant, Simon
Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0880015594 Date: 1997LJ
History and legend brilliantly combine in this bawdy "autobiographical" account of the life of famed rabble-rousing Chinese verse maker Li Po. Nearly 1,300 years after the fact, Simon Elegant's scrupulously researched novel captures the essence of the eccentric bard of spontaneous verse in full splendor and bravado. - One of Us
Freeman, David
Publisher: Carroll & Graf List Price: $23 ISBN: 078640490x Date: 1997Kirkus
NYTBR Notable
The British High Commissioner has brought his young wife out to Cairo. There she meets the Egyptian Prince, who is young, handsome, and ardent in his pursuit of her. Soon war and circumstance create a triangle that is as turbulently political as it is erotic. A beautifully crafted historical romance.
Suggested Reading: Egyptian Stars - The Crystal Frontier
Fuentes, Carlos
Publisher: Farrar List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374132771 Date: 1997LJ
NYTBR Notable
This exuberant collection of nine stories contains and alludes to journalism, politics, economics, famous tall tales, and picaresque adventures, all united by the "vitality, variety, and narrative force that Fuentes always gives his work" (La Joranda).
Suggested Reading: Latino Stars - Memoirs of a Geisha
Golden, Arthur
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0375400117 Date: 1997LJPWBooklist
NYTBR Notable
Booklist Editors' Choice
An alluring tour-de-force: a stunningly original novel told as the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Taking readers behind the rice-paper screens to a world of beauty and cruelty - where appearances are paramount, where men feud over the price of a girl's virginity - Memoirs of a Geisha is an epic on an intimate scale.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Reading Group Stars - Furnace
Gray, Muriel
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385480024 Date: 1997PW
When trucker Josh Spiller witnesses a baby's violent death in Furnace, Virginia, he can't convince the sheriff that the well dressed woman he saw leaving the scene is responsible. Something unnatural is happening, but will Josh be around long enough to unravel the town's secrets? - Forever Peace
Haldeman, Joe
Publisher: Ace List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0441004067 Date: 1997PWBooklist
PW Best Books '97
Washington Post Book World
LJ Best Genre Fiction
2043: The Ngumi War has raged for eight years. Julian Class is a "soldier boy", and for him war is indeed hell. For Julian it might be worth dying just to stop living. But he and his lover have made a terrifying scientific discovery that could literally put the universe back to square one. - Matters of Chance
Heim, Jeanette
Publisher: HarperCollins List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 06060170034 Date: 1997PW
From the bestselling author of The All of It comes a glorious, captivating novel about love fidelity, and honor as seen through the lens of a happy marriage. Unable to have children of their own, Maud and Morgan Shurtiff adopt twin girls and settle in their beautiful house in the country. When World War II encroaches on their happy home life, and Morgan is called to serve, Maud must summon all her courage to raise the girls alone. - The Pushcart Prize XXII: Best of the Small Presses
Henderson, Bill editor (with the Pushcart Prize editors)
Publisher: Pushcart List Price: $29.50 ISBN: 1888889012 Date: 1997PW - Hotel Sarajevo
Kersh, Jack
Publisher: Turtle Point List Price: $ 13.95 (paperback) ISBN: 1885983212 Date: 1997PW
Fourteen-year-old Alma is a daydreamer who has taken up residence with a group if teenage war orphans in the abandoned Hotel Sarajevo. She is at once a child playing with her rag doll, a sexually precocious teenager, and a young woman with highly developed self-analytical and survival skills. The text portrays adolescence in a city ravaged by war.
Suggested Reading: Former Yugoslavia - Pretending the Bed is a Raft: Stories
Kincaid, Nanci
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 17.95 ISBN: 1565121775 Date: 1997PW
Here in her second book of fiction, Nanci Kincaid, author of Crossing Blood, zeros in on the give-and-take between certain exuberantly feminine females and the helplessly macho males they attract. Why the bed seems like a raft is her singular insight - and what drives these eight irresistible stories. "Nanci Kincaid comes at you all Southern, rough and sturdy as a long piece of hand-cut wood" - Mirabella. - The Devil's Chimney
Landsman, Anne
Publisher: Soho List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 1569471010 Date: 1997PW
In Oudtshoorn, South Africa, Connie Lambrecht is haunted by two ancient mysteries - thedisappearance of a native servant girl and the misfortunes of an upper-class Englishwoman. In recounting the stories of these two women, Connie finally discovers the deepest secret of her own life. An unforgettable tale of the fragile relationship between the races in South Africa. - The Tetherballs of Bougainville
Leyer, Mark
Publisher: Crown/Harmony List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0517701014 Date: 1997BooklistPW
The author of My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist and Et Tu, Babe delivers the day-in-the-life saga of a 13-year-old boy named Mark Leyner, the failed execution of the boy's father by lethal injection, and the resentencing of the father to the New Jersey State Discretionary Execution - Dancing at the Harvest Moon
McKinnon, K.C.
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 16.95 ISBN: 0385489935 Date: 1997Booklist
When her marriage ends, 46-year-old Maggie McIntyre returns to the beautiful Canadian town were she first fell in love one long-ago summer. But when love finds her again in a most unexpected way, Maggie is not sure she's ready to face it. - A Dry Spell
Moloney, Susie
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385318294 Date: 1997PW
Featuring unforgettable characters, tautly woven human dramas, and a harrowing portrait of the power of nature, A Dry Spell weaves a spell all its own - one that stays with readers long after the last page is turned. - The Gift
O'Leary, Patrick
Publisher: Tor List Price: $22.95 ISBN: 0312864027 Date: 1997PW
PW Best Books '97
Patrick O'Leary's first novel, Door Number Three, was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. His second novel is fantasy with all the wit and charm of the first. It is the story of a boy and a king and their quest to confront the Usher of the Night and rid their land of old near-forgotten magic perverted by long misuse.
Suggested Reading: Magic & Magicians - Panther in the Basement
Oz, Amos
Publisher: Harcourt List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 01510028788 Date: 1997LJKirkus
In this winsome novel, Amos Oz returns to the Jerusalem of his youth during the wanting days of the British mandate to tell the story of Proffi, a 12-year-old who dreams of dying in battle. But when his comrades accuse him of treason for his friendship with Sergeant Dunlop - a fat, good-natured British soldier - Proffi must ponder the meaning of loyalty. - The Magician's Assistant
Patchett, Ann
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151002630 Date: 1997PWKirkus
Welcome to the magic show, where love defies logic, family are people you've never met, and commitments last more than a lifetime. What is to become of a magician's assistant without her magician? She begins a journey of a lifetime as she finds newfound strength and may at last find the kind of love she's always been denied.
Suggested Reading: Magic & Magicians - Perfidia
Rossner, Judith
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $23.95 ISBN: 0385484275 Date: 1997Kirkus
NYTBR Notable
In her strongest novel in years, the author of Looking for Mr Goodbar reveals the complex and intense undercurrents of hostility and competition that flow beneath every mother-daughter relationship. - A Blessing on the Moon
Skibell, Joseph
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 1565121791 Date: 1997PWLJKirkus
PW Best Books '97
A fabulous tour de force in the tradition of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird and the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer, A Blessing on the Moon tells of the after-death journey of Chaim Skibelski, a businessman who was shot and killed along with a group of other Jews from his small Polish farm during the Holocaust.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Man of the Century
Thayer, James
Publisher: Fine List Price:$ 23.95 ISBN: 1556115121 Date: 1997Kirkus
The acclaimed author of such suspenseful novels as White Star and Pursuit now turns to his real love - a grand novel of a man awash in history who has done almost everything and been almost everywhere. The rollicking tale of 105-year-old Woodrow Lowe is filled with romance and lust, intrigue and creative violence - al against a background of impeccable historical accuracy. - How Few Remain
Turtledove, Harry
Publisher: DelRey List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0345416619 Date: 1997PW
North and South clash in a second Civil War in this dazzling new speculative novel by "one of alternate history's authentic modern masters" (Booklist) - the acclaimed author of Guns of the South and the Worldwar series. - Toward the End of Time
Updike, John
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0375400060 Date: 1997PW
PW Best Books '97
NYTBR Editors' Choice
Lyrical, thoughtful, disturbing, and audacious, Updike's 18th novel is yet one more revelation of the richness of this extraordinary writer's mind. Set in the year 2020 A.D., Toward the End of Time tells the story of Ben Turnbull, a 66-year-old retired investment counselor, as he attempts to understand his own confusing, mortal existence. - The Underpainter
Urquhart, Jane
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0670877263 Date: 1997PWKirkusBooklist
A masterful novel by the highly praised author of Away, The Underpainter tells the story of a 75-year-old American minimalist painter who creates a new series of paintings as he remembers the details of his life and the lives of those individuals who have affected him.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Art Stars - The Atonement and other Stories
Auchincloss, Louis
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0395868262 Date: 1997PW
No one else writes about the moral life of America's moneyed class with anything approaching Louis Auchincloss's understanding, sympathy, irony, and humor. Here is the eastern seaboard's WASP establishment--sometimes in its glory, more often in its decline, and always with its values, assumptions, and increasingly fragile sense of self held up for our scrutiny by a master, the most subtle critic of American manners since Edith Wharton. - Flamingo Rising
Baker, Larry
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375400508 Date: 1997PW
Set in Jacksonville, Florida, in the 1950s and 60s, this dazzling debut tells the story of the Lee family, living in the shadow of their beloved enterprise: the Flamingo, America's largest drive-in movie theater. Turner West wants to put a cementery on the land adjacent ot the Flamingo. Hubert Lee stands in his way. So, when Hubert's son, Abe, develops his first teenage crush, it could only be on Turner's daughter, Grace.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Florida Fiction - Boondocking: A Novel
Bauer, Tricia
Publisher: Bridge Works List Price: $ ? ISBN: 1882593197 Date: 1997Kirkus
The author of Working Women and Other Stories creates a genuinely American story of setting out for parts unknown. Nearing retirement age, Sylvia and Clayton Vaeth abandon life in working class Maryland suburbs for a life on the road. - Bitter Grounds
Benitez, Sandra
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0786861576 Date: 1997PW
From the author of A Place Where the Sea Remembers comes a powerful saga chronicling three generations of Salvadoran women who are connected by a scorching secret. When finally a letter comes to light that has remained unopened for 26 years, its impact resounds in uneexpected ways. Epic in scope, richly steeped in history, as well as bringing to life the emotions and experiences of those who lived through these cataclysmic times, Benitez's poetic yet unsentimental novel will move and astonish its readers.
Suggested Reading: Latino/Latina Stars | El Salvador - Running with the Demon
Brooks, Terry
Publisher: Del Rey List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0345379624 Date: 1997PW
Twenty years ago, Terry Brooks turned fantasy its head with The Sword of Shannara--the first fantasy novel to make the mainstream bestseller list. With Running with th Demon, Brooks does nothing less than revitalize fantasy fiction again, inventing the complex and powerful new mythos of the World and the void, good versus evil still, but played out in the theater-in-the-round of the "real world" of our present. - Byrne
Burgess, Anthony
Publisher: Caroll & Graf List Price: $ 20 ISBN:078670456x Date: 1997PWKirkus
NYTBR Notable
Washington Post Book World
The author of such powerful works as A Clockwork Orange and A Dead Man in Deptford left, at his death in 1993, his last, poetic take on life and art. In the early years of the century, an Irish artist debases his talents as a composer and painter, eventually ending up within Hitler's Third Reich. - Flesh Wounds
Cochrane, Mick
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385486618 Date: 1997PW
A debut novel in the tradition of Anne Tyler, Flesh Wounds grips the readers and does not let go until its genuinely uplifting climax of hard-earned reconcilement. When Hal Lamm, a salesman in Minneapolis, is arrested for abusing his 13-year-old granddaughter, a family is forced to come to terms with the past - or let the future rip them apart.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - Four Dreamers and Emily
Davies, Stevie
Publisher: St Martin's List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312168446 Date: 1997Booklist
This U.S. debut of an acclaimed British novelist is a sharply observed, hilarious, and bittersweet send-up of academic pretentiousness and literary obsession set at a conference on Emily Bronte. "An acknowledged expert on the life of Emily Bronte, Davies sends herself up to perfection in this tongue-in-cheek comedy. . . . A lovely book".--"Good Housekeeping" (UK). - The Witch of Exmoor
Drabble, Margaret
Publisher: Harcourt List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151003637 Date: 1997BooklistPW
ALA RUSA Notable
In a "profoundly moving, intellectually acute" novel (Philadelphia Inquirer) that is "as meticulous as Jane Austen, as deadly as Evelyn Waugh" (Los Angeles Times), Margaret Drabble conjures up a retired writer besieged by her three grasping children in this dazzling, wickedly gothic tale. - Days of Cain
Dunn, J.R.
Publisher: Avon List Price: $23 ISBN: 0380974339 Date: 1997Kirkus
Gaspar James is a "monitor" whose job is to guard the historical integrity of the 24th century. As the story traces its path across millennia, Gaspar is faced with a heartbreaking moral dilemma. An intriguing time travel novel that plunges the reader into a riveting tale of love, life, and the awesome responsiblity of choice. - Where Trouble Sleeps
Edgerton, Clyde
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 18.95 ISBN: 1565120612 Date: 1997
PW
NYTBR Notable
For his seventh novel, Clyde Edgerton returns to the setting of his own childhood - rural North Carolina at mid twentieth century. This beguiling novel tells the story of a tight-knit crossroads community and what happens when a stranger decides to stop there for a while. No one exposes the secrets of self-righteousness more cheerfully than Edgerton, "an American treasure" (San Diego Union Tribune). - All Around Atlantis
Eisenberg, Deborah
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0374270872 Date: 1997PWKirkus
NYTBR Notable
In this collection of seven new stories, Deborah Eisenberg, via lyrical and gleaming prose, pries open daily life to explore the hidden mechanisms of human behavior. Her deeply etched and mysterious stories focus on individuals grappling with the dislocations, ironies, and compromises levied by ordinary reality and the vivid, troubling worlds her characters inhabit. - The Bookshop
Fitzgerald, Penelope
Publisher: Houghton List Price: $ 10 (paperback) ISBN: 0395869463 Date: 1997LJ
NYTBR Notable
From the author of The Blue Flower comes a comic study of stiff upper lip in the face of small-town nastiness - "a perfect little gem" (BBC Kaleidoscope). "A marvelously piercing fiction" - Times Literary Supplement. - The Mirror
Freedman, Lynn
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0517703203 Date: 1997PWKirkus
NYTBR Notable
A young woman, Agnes La Grange emigrates to South Africa after the Great War to find her future. Agnes is a beautiful woman who uses her beauty to get what she wants, though not in the way of the traditional heroine. She thinks and, in many respects, lives like a man - investing in one hotel and then another, all of which she runs with cool, instinctual savvy. Agnes' story shows what is takes for a woman to survive, and how little that cost has changes throughout history. - The Long Rain
Gadol, Peter
Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0312155719 Date: 1997PWKirkus
San Francisco lawyer Jason Dark returns to his late father's land and vines in the California Wine region to get his life back on track. But in an instant his hard-won peace is put in jeopardy. Jason cannot rid himself of one habit which bespeaks a reckless urge. And one rainy night, driving recklessly on what should have been an abandoned road, he hits and kills a teenaged boy. The decision he makes changes the course of Jason's life forever. - At the Owl Woman Saloon
Gallagher, Tess
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0684826933 Date: 1997PWBooklist
NYTBR Notable
The characters in these 16 stories run the gamut from slow sizzle to high sass. Set mostly in the Pacific Northwest, these plainspoken parables are infused with the raw sepia inflections of the Old West, but still speak to contemporary life. Reminiscent of great short story writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Gallagher's immensely skilled prose animates the no-nonsense alcoves of love and sometimes irresolvable loss, of human pain and healing. - An Irish Eye
Hawkes, John
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670875910 Date: 1997LJ
From the author of The Blood Oranges, soon to be a major motion picture, the inimitable John Hawkes has written an Irish comedy like no other. An Irish Eye is part myth, part tall tale, part children's story intended only for adults, a rare achievement. It is a magical comedy on religion, girlhood, and the Irish spirit - funny, lyrical, and a radical departure from his previous work that nonetheless could only have been written by Hawkes. - All American Dream Dolls
Haynes, David
Publisher: Milkweed List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0571310150 Date: 1997PW
What's an attractive, successful, all-around-together girl to do when she's dumped at 65 miles per hour on the way to a romatic getaway? If you're Deneen Wilkerson, you retreat to your mother's suburban home in St. Louis for a solitary orgy of snacks, talk shows and mental hygiene. Deneen's crash--and her wildly funny, improbable rebirth--is the basis of this new novel by the acclaimed author of Somebody Else's Mama and Live at Five. - Big League Dreams
Hoffman, Allen
Publisher: Abbeville List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0789201917 Date: 1997PWKirkus
A luminous new novel by the author of Small Worlds, the series that relates the ambitious loves and unbounded dreams of the Polish Jewish villagers of Krimsk, now thriving in America. In the summer of 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri, Matti Sternweiss, once the ungainly wonder child of Krimsk, now catcher for the St. Louis Browns, schemes to fix Saturday's game against the Detroit Tigers. - The River Where Blood Is Born
Jackson-Opoku, Sandra
Publisher: One World - Ballantine List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 034539514x Date: 1997LJ
BCALA Winner
In the beloved tradition of Gloria Naylor and Isabel Allende comes a powerful and mystical first novel that chronicles the generations of one African family's remarkable women. For women everywhere, their journey is a reminder of the price we all pay for forgetting and for remembering.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars - California's Over
Jones, Louis B.
Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0679123346 Date: 1997PWBooklist
NYTBR Notable
LA Times Book Award Finalist
The dazzling new novel from the author of Ordinary Money is the funny, vividly evocative portrait of a moment (the 1960's), a place (California), and a cultural epoch. It's 1973 and 17-year-old Baelthon is hired to clean out a condemned house where a poet shot himself years earlier. It's the poet's family history that he finds himself sorting through - comedy, misery, and cruelty piled too deeply to fathom. - Try To Remember
Kotker, Zane
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0679440429 Date: 1997LJ
A richly detailed, intelligent and harrowing novel about the heart of an American family - and how good intentions can threaten to destroy so much. When a young woman in her twenties uncovers, with the help of her therapist, what she believes are childhood memories of her father- an inappropriate touch her, a look there, then more - a family is in danger of splitting apart completely. - The Complete Stories
Malamud, Bernard
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux List Price: $30 ISBN: 0374126399 Date: 1997KirkusPW
PW Best Books '97
NYTBR Notable
With an Introduction by Robert Giroux, The Complete Stories of Bernard Malamud is "an essential American book," Richard Stern declared in the "Chicago Tribune when the collection was published. It is a varied and generous collection of great examples of the modern short story, which Malamud perfected, and an ideal introduction to the work of this great American writer. - Publisher Marketing - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories
McCrumb, Sharyn
Publisher: Ballantine List Price: $ 22.50 ISBN: 0345414934 Date: 1997Booklist
This first-ever collection of New York Times bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb's short fiction is a literary quilting of old and new, humorous and heartfelt. Chilling tales of suspense alternate with evocative character portraits and compelling narratives that embrace the southern Appalachian locales and themes of McCrumb's acclaimed Ballad Novels. - The Moon and the Sun
McIntyre, Vonda N.
Publisher: Pocket List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0671567659 Date: 1997PW
PW Best Books '97
In 17th-century France, King Louis XIV manages to obtain a sea monster. The king considers the shrieking creature to be the key to immortality, but for Marie-Josephe de la Croix, it is something much more. Marie-Josephe plans on studying the mysterious sea animal, yet its haunting cries foretell a different future - one in which Marie-Josephe will find herself challenging her most fundamental loyalties.
Suggested Reading: Immortalism | Time Travel Stars - The Villa Marini
Montero, Gloria
Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0880015772 Date: 1997LJ
Booklist Editors' Choice
Marini Grau battles prejudice, a loveless marriage, and Australia's harsh natural elements to maintain her family's plantation, mold a life for her son, and fulfill her late father's Hispanic dreams. Author Gloria Montero grew up in Australia in a family of Spanish immigrants. In a narrative of exotic imagery, she draws an unforgettable picture of a period and place of overpowering richness and beauty. - The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi
Park, Jacqueline
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684816032 Date: 1997PWKirkus
Set in the time of the Italian Renaissance, this magnificent debut novel introduces the most appealing heroine in years: Grazia dei Rossi, a woman torn between duty and forbidden romance, between two men and two worlds. Unfolding her legacy to her son in the form of a secret diary, The Secret Book of Grazia die Rossi recounts a story of love set during a time of religious intolerance, war, and papal maneuvers. - Beneath the Gated Sky
Reed, Robert
Publisher: Tor List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312862695 Date: 1997Kirkus
This sequel to Beyond the Veil of Stars will intrigue and entertain all the way to its riveting end. Porsche and Cornell fall in love as they infiltrate an alien world for the sake of humanity. Having survived their harrowing ordeal, the return to Earth, only to discovery a conspiracy so profound that it casts doubt on those they've trusted with their very lives. - A Gracious Plenty
Reynolds, Sheri
Publisher: Harmony List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 060960225x Date: 1997PW
After being badly disfigured in a household accident when she was a child, a courageous woman inherits her father's job as custodian of the town's isolated cemetery - where she begins to hear faint voices in a remarkable chorus of regrets, explanations, and enlightenments. - Great Apes
Self, Will
Publisher: Grove List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0802116175 Date: 1997PWBooklist
NYTBR Notable
Booklist Editors' Choice
Imagine Planet of the Apes written by Jonathan Swift - a book poised to become a modern-day classic. Will Self's comic genius has won him the praise of critics and a growing circle of devoted readers. In Great Apes, he turns his wicked gift of satire on a favorite victim - his fellow man. - Larry's Party
Shields, Carol
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0670873926 Date: 1997KirkusLJPW
PW Best Books '97
NYTBR Notable
Carol Shields marked a new phase in a literary career already ablaze with achievement when she penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Stone Diaries - "a universal study of what makes women tick" (The San Diego Tribune). Now she does the same for the male condition in Larry's Party, the story of an ordinary guy, born in 1950, as he journeys toward the millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - News of the Spirit
Smith, Lee
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399142819 Date: 1997PW
NYTBR Notable
ALA RUSA Notable
The author of Me and My Baby View the Eclipse and Cakewalk now offers a collection of short stories about imagination and longing and despair - about love in all its strange and shifting forms. - Miss Ophelia
Smith, Mary Burnett
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688152341 Date: 1997LJ
Set in rural Virginia during 1948, Miss Ophelia is a remarkable debut novel that explores the issues of abortion, illegitmacy, adultry, and skin color. Belly Anderson, now in the autumn of her life, reminisces about the last summer of her childhood, a time when she learns a terrible secret about a close friend - a secret that forces Belly to grow up and learn what it really means to be an adult.
Suggested Reading: Virginia Stars | Debuts - The Far Euphrates
Stollman, Aryeh Lev
Publisher: Riverhead List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 1573220752 Date: 1997PWKirkus
ALA RUSA Notable
The Far Euphrates is the story of a lonely boy, the son of a rabbi, whose small world is touched by an unlikely range of people in a post-Holocaust world. The recipient of secrets he can't bear to know, Alexander engages himself in the accumulation of knowledge. "To read this wonderful book, with its prayer-like rhythms...holds a reward for the reader: we have just met a great writer". - Jamaica Kincaid. - Jack Faust
Swanwick, Michael
Publisher: Avon List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0380974444 Date: 1997Booklist
Washington Post Book World
A bold re-imaging of a classic tale with astonishing resonance for today. Dr. Faust is burning his books. The alchemist is in deep despair, for even his vast learning is powerless against the ignorance and superstition of his fellow man. Then, in his darkest moment, a voice whispers, "Faust". It is Mephistopheles who promises Faust absolute knowledge- far beyond anything ever imagined. - Terrestrials: A Novel of Aviation
West, Paul
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0684800322 Date: 1997PW
When their plane is shot down over Africa, two American pilots endure encounters with bushmen, scorpions, heat and thirst. But their greatest challenge comes after they return to civilian in the U.S., as they attempt to cope with psychological and physical aftershock. Usingflight motifs as metaphors for everything from the end of the Cold War to the volatile friendships between men, Terrestrials is vintage Paul West. - The Farewell Symphony
White, Edmund
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0679434771 Date: 1997PW
NYTBR Notable
A literary event : the long- awaited final passage of Edmund White's ground breaking autobiographical trilogy. In this successor to A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room is Empty, White provides a stunning narrative of one man's struggle to succeed as a writer and to discover what it means for a man to be gay. - The Eagle's Brood
Whyte, Jack
Publisher: Tor List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312852894 Date: 1997Booklist
The Eagle's Brood is the saga of the colony known as Camulod and the relationship between Merlyn and Uther Pendragon, the man who will father the legendary Arthur. "From the building blocks of history and the mortar of reality, Jack Whyte has built Arthur's world and showed us the bone beneath the flesh of the legend".--Diana Gabaldon, author of Drums of Autumn. - Four Letters of Love
Williams, Niall
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374158177 Date: 1997PWLJKirkus
PW Best Books '97
NYTBR Notable
In an unforgettable first novel, Williams interweaves two stories, each apparently as random and uncertain as the other. A man who believes God has commanded him to paint leaves his wife and son to pursue his mission in Ireland. At the same time, a boy gifted in music falls lame and mute while playing with his sister. Four Letters of Love brings these two characters together in a lyrical infusion of bracing freshness and power.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts - Eureka Street
Wilson, Robert McLiam
Publisher: Arcade List Price: $23.95 ISBN: 1559703962 Date: 1997Kirkus
An irreverent and bighearted story of two friends--Protestant Chuckie and Catholic Jake--set in Belfast before and after the latest ceasefire. Framed by a land of violence and life-giving wit, explosive passion and inherited hatreds, this is a bravura performance that will surprise, delight, and keep readers glued to every page. - The Mercy Street
Askew, Rilla
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670874671 Date: 1997PWKirkus
The ochre Oklahoma dust blows through an 1880s Cain and Abel story as piercing and remorseless as the frontier itself. Askew shares Faulkner's understanding of the inescapable pull of family and violence, and Cormac McCarthy's feel for the stark beauty of the West. - Finity's End
Cherryh, C.J
Publisher: Warner List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0446570721 Date: 1997PW
PW Best Books '97
The New York Times bestselling author of Cyteen and Rider at the Gate tells the story of the oldest Mercanter ship of all, Finity's End. In an era of spies and uneasy alliances, the Company Wars are over and the ship is coming home to reclaim its trade routes. The crew members, bred and trained for war, must face their most critical battle of all-survival in a time of lasting peace. - Play For A Kingdom
Dyja, Tom
Publisher: 0151002673 List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0151002673 Date: 1997PWKirkus
An extraordinary novel of our nation in the cauldron of the Civil War, Play for a Kingdom vividly recreates America in the counterpoint of the bloody battle of Spotsylvania, and a series of baseball games played between two companies on opposite sides of the war.
Suggested Reading: Civil War Stars - Traces
Fink, Ida
Publisher: Metropolitan List Price: $23 ISBN: 0805045570 Date: 1997PW
NYTBR Notable
Ida Fink's first collection of short stories, A Scrap of Time, was hailed universally as a masterpiece. In Traces, she continues her portrait of life in Nazi-occupied Poland, telling the tales of men and women otherwise buried in the anonymous statistics of war and genocide. - Unravelling
Graver, Elizabeth
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0786862815 Date: 1997PW
NYTBR Notable
This wise, enchanting first novel explores the powerful bonds that connect - and separate - a mother and daughter. When young Aimee Slater - against the wishes of her mother - leaves her family's small Vermont farm and goes off to work in the factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts - she opens a rift between herself and her mother that feels, in her own words, like "an impossible distance". - Here On Earth
Hoffman, Alice
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399143130 Date: 1997LJ
The author of such bestselling novels as Seventh Heaven and Practical Magic creates her most glorious fictional world to date in a spellbinding tale of love and obsession. After nearly 20 years of living in California, March Murray and her daughter Gwen return to March's small Massachusetts hometown. Thrust into the world of her past, March slowly comes to realize the complexity of the choices made by those around her, including Hollis, the boy she loved--now the man she can't seem to stay away from. - Aztec Autumn
Jennings, Gary
Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0812539486 Date: 1997PW
This sequel to Jenning's #1 New York Times Bestselling novel Aztec takes readers to the New World one generation following the Conquest, when the magnificent Aztec empire has fallen beneath the brutal heel of the invading Spaniards. Here a proud, young Aztec called Tenamatli refuses to bow to the foreign conquerors - and secretly begins to recruit, from his people's suffering survivors, an army of insurrection.
Suggested Reading: Aztec Stars - Think Like a Dinosaur
Kelly, James Patrick
Publisher: Golden Gryphon List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0965590194 Date: 1997Booklist
This first major retrospective collects Kelly's finest short fiction from a 20-year career and includes a dazzling array of work from hard science fiction, to Twilight Zone-ish fantasies, to stark, futuristic horror. These stories all show the frightening power of science to transform our lives while asking deep and searching questions about the future of humanity. - Publisher Marketing. - Montenegro
Lawrence, Starling
Publisher: Farrar List Price: $23 ISBN: 0374214077 Date: 1997LJPW
A compelling - and powerfully relevant - first novel about individual lives in an age-old conflict. In the forbidden beauty of the mountains near Montenegro, with World War I already a dark prophecy on the horizon, an English traveler with a keen interest in the tangled politics of the Balkans happens on a remote village. Soon he is caught up in events the set the stage for a memorable drama. - The Light of Falling Stars
Lennon, J. Robert
Publisher: Putnam/Riverhead List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 1573220663 Date: 1997Booklist
With compassion and knowningness, J. Robert Lennon depicts the lives of the residents of Marshall, Montana, in the weeks following a devastating plane crash. As they struggle to recover the normality in their lives and imagine a changed future, each undergoes a tranformation - some for better, some for worse. - The Rendezvous
Levy, Justine
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0684825791 Date: 1997LJ
A bestseller in France, The Rendezvous is the wise and witty story of a young Parisian woman dealing with the fallout of her parents' decadent and antic life during the 1960s. Levy offers a finely wrought portrait of a love strong enough to surmount countless disappointments and sophisticated enough to recognize the true reasons behind each one. - Voyages by Starlight
MacLeod, Ian
Publisher: Arkham List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0870541714 Date: 1997PW
The 10 stories included here combine elements of horror, fantasy, SF and realistic fiction as expressed by an assured literary voice. Includes the following stories: "Ellen O'Hara, " "Green, " "Starship Day, " "The Giving Mouth, " "The Perfect Stranger, " "Tirkiluk, " "Papa, " "1/72nd Scale, " "Marnie, " "Grownups." - Publisher Marketing. - Merry-Making in Old Russia: And Other Stories
Popov, Evgeny
Publisher: Northwestern List Price: $ 49.95 (hdback) $15.95 (pbk) ISBN: 0810113260 (hdback) 0810113279 (pbk) Date: 1997PW
- MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror
Alten, Steve
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $22.95 ISBN: 0385489056 Date: 1997Kirkus
Seven miles beneath the Pacific Ocean, a prehistoric predator survives in the black depths: Megalodon--the 100-million-year-old, sixty-foot-long, twenty-ton progenitor of today's great white shark. When one of these monsters accidentally reaches the tropical heat of the ocean's warm surface, only paleontologist Jonas Taylor has the knowledge and expertise to keep it from destroying everything in its path. - Slant
Bear, Greg
Publisher: Tor List Price: $24.95 ISBN: 0312855176 Date: 1997PW
LJ Best Genre Fiction
The author of the Nebula Award-winning Moving Mars comes back to earth in Slant, a provocative sequel to Queen of Angels. In 2050 A.D., the miraculous microscopic machines of nanotechnology have built a clean, prosperous America. But while space probes send back news of distant worlds, some humans are probing more deeply into their internal landscapes, and finding that nothing in the country of the mind is simple. - Monkey Bridge
Cao, Lan
Publisher: Viking List Price: $23.95 ISBN: 0670873675 Date: 1997PWBooklist
Monkey Bridge tells two parallel, interlocked stories: one left in a secret journal by a Vietnamese mother who cannot make the transition between the land whose ghosts still haunt her and her home in the United States; the other is told by her teenaged daughter, who is caught in her own right of passage, coming of age in America after leaving Saigon in 1975.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars - The Misconceiver
Ferriss, Lucy
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $22.95 ISBN: 0684800926 Date: 1997PW
A provocative, dystopian novel in the tradition of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Caught in the social and political crossfire after Roe v. Wade is overturned in 2011, Phoebe performs illegal "misconceptions" in her basement, restoring to desperate women some control over their own bodies.
Suggested Reading: Dystopian Stars - Wild Designs
Fforde, Katie
Publisher: St Martin's List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312156936 Date: 1997Booklist
A modern comedy of manners by one of England's most promising young novelists. Attempting to alleviate her financial woes, 38-year-old Althea decides to turn her passion for gardening into a business of her own. In the process, she unearths not only the roots of a new career but the distinct possibility of a new man in her life.
Suggested Reading: Chicklit Stars - Life Before Death
Frucht, Abby
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 068483507x Date: 1997PWKirkus
NYTBR Notable
The acclaimed, prize-winning author of Snap, Licorice, and Are You Mine? Has created one of her smartest, most beguiling characters yet, in a novel that is by turns comic and tragic, but always redemptive. From the moment when Isobel Albright finds the tiny, sharp pebble of a lump in her breast, events begin to take place that confirm her sense that the natural order in undergoing an irrevocable transformation.
Suggested Reading: Breast Cancer - Neverwhere
Gaiman, Neil
Publisher: Avon List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 038973634 Date: 1997Kirkus
A masterful work of dark, haunting power by the author of the bestselling graphic novel The Sandman. The day after Richard Mayhew rescues a young girl he finds bleeding on the sidewalk, his life is radically changed. He finds himself living in an subterranean labyrinth beneath London. - Counting Coup
Gearino, G.D.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0684837269 Date: 1997PW
Tad Beckman is a newspaper columnist who specializes in making his readers get mad about an injustice or glad about a wrong being righted. He's been ding this far too long, and when one of his reader's calls him for help, Beckman is unable to respond with anything other than indifference. When the reader dies, Beckman begins an odyssey of redemption that teaches him just how treacherous and unpredictable an second chance can be. - Kaddish for a Child Not Born
Kertesz, Imre
Publisher: Hydra List Price: $22.95 ISBN: 0810111764 Date: 1997LJ
Imre Kertesz's mesmerizing novel is a tale of identity and memory - the story of a middle-aged man taking stock of his life in the ever-present shadow of the Holocaust. The story unfolds at a writers retreat as the narrator, a survivor of the Holocaust, explains to a friend that he cannot bring a child into a world where the Holocaust occurred and could occur again. In an intricate narrative, we learn of the narrator's myriad disappointments: his unsuccessful literary career, his failed marriage, his ex-wife's new family and children - children that could have been his own. "Kaddish for a Child Not Born" is a deeply introspective, poetic yet unsentimental work - Dreams of My Russian Summers
Makine, Andrei
Publisher: Arcade List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 1559703830 Date: 1997PW
PW Best Books '97
National Critics Circle Nominee
NYTBR Notable
LJ Best Books
The most acclaimed novel to come out of Europe in recent years, Dreams of My Siberian Summers is a work in the grand Russian literary tradition. In the 1960's, Andrei, a Soviet schoolboy, leaves Moscow each summer to visit his grandmother in a remote Siberian village. There Andrei is mesmerized by his grandmother's stories, magical tales of another time, another world. - The Hunger Moon
Matson, Suzanne
Publisher: Norton List Price: $23 ISBN: 0393040992 Date: 1997PW
A moving first novel about the power of friendship to change lives - reminiscent of the works of Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman - The Hunger Moon tells the story of three women, of different ages and from very different social backgrounds, whose lives become unexpectedly linked during the course of an emergency. - A Plan for Women
Naumoff, Lawrence
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151002312 Date: 1997PW
Walter adores Louise because she is not yet sad or bizarre, confused or defeated, depressed or enraged or crazy. Never will Louise be like her stay-at-home mother who has given her husband the gift of submission, or like Walter's sister who numbs the disappointment of her failed relationships with alcohol. In this provocative novel about the high cost of being female, Naumoff exposes the expectations and illusions that men and women bring to their fragile unions.
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