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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 1998
April 2, 2008
July - December 1998 Fiction Stars
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.
A 
indicates an Overbooked Jump for Joy book.
December
- Self-Portrait with Ghosts
Author: Dwyer, Kelly
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0399144404 Date: 1998
Booklist
In a follow-up to The Tracks of Angels, Dwyer tells the story of the life and death of a man who grows tired of living, but whose suicide profoundly affects and changes the family he leaves behind. - The Sin Eater
Author: Ellis, Alice Thomas
Publisher: Moyer Bell List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 1559212578 Date: 1998Kirkus
A family patriarch lies on his deathbed surrounded by his bickering children in this clever tale of wit and malice written by the acclaimed author of Fairy Tale and The Inn at the Other Side of the World. - The Vintner's Luck
Author: Knox, Elizabeth
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374283923 Date: 1998LJKirkus
A novel of angels, wine and love without boundaries set in 19th-century Burgundy. Compelling and erotic, The Vintner's Luck explores a decidely unorthodox love story as a man comes to love and be loved by both a male angel and the young Countess de Valday, his friend and employer at the neighboring chateau. - Seize the Night
Author: Koontz, Dean
Publisher: Bantam List Price: $ 26.95 ISBN: 0553106651 Date: 1998Kirkus
Christopher Snow, the protagonist of the international best seller Fear Nothing, returns and is on the trail of missing children in Koontz's newest thriller. Snow believes the children are still alive and that their disappearances have something to do with clandestine scientific experiments at a nearby abandoned military base. - All-Night Visitors
Author: Major, Clarence
Publisher: Northeastern Univ List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 1555533671 Date: 1998LJ - The Travelling Horn Player
Author: Trapido, Barbara
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670883573 Date: 1998PWKirkus
From the delightful and quirky literary world of Barbara Trapido comes a bittersweet tale of love, marriage, family, and other absurdities of the human comedy.
November
- Conversion
Author: Appelfeld, Aron
Publisher: Schocken List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0805241531 Date: 1998PWKirkus
From the internationally acclaimed author of Badenheim 1939 and The Iron Tracks comes a haunting love story set in turn-of-the-century Austria.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Master Georgie
Author: Bainbridge, Beryl
Publisher: Carroll & Graf List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0786705639 Date: 1998PWKirkus
Booker Prize short list title.
The magnificent new novel by the acclaimed author of The Birthday Boys and Every Man for Himself goes back to the mid-19th century to accompany the travels of a group of Liverpool characters to the Crimea, bringing the horrors of a significant battle shockingly to life.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Photography - Men on Men 7: Best New Gay Fiction
Author: Bergman, David (ed)
Publisher: Plume List Price: $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0452277345 Date: 1998PW
Culled from the talents of established authors such as Andrew Halleran, Felice Picano, and Allen Ellenzwaig, as well as from the work of new young writers, this seventh edition in the series features a diverse group of story themes. - Red Grass River: A Legend
Author: Blake, James Carlos
Publisher: Avon List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0380974932 Date: 1998PWLJ
James Carlos Blake's remarkable award-winning novel provides a save and unforgettable vision of the old American West that explodes the idealized myths. Separate journeys of twin brothers ultimately lead to a disputed Texas and to a family bond tested by war and conscience.
Suggested Reading: Western Stars - TC Boyle Stories
Author: Boyle, T. C.
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 29.95 ISBN: 0670789606 Date: 1998PWKirkus
A quarter century of stories, including new gems, from the author of the national bestseller Riven Rock. - The Storm
Author: Buechner, Frederick
Publisher: Harper List Price: $ 18 ISBN: 006011448 Date: 1998KirkusBooklist
This haunting novel, enriched by echoes of Shakespeare's The Tempest, interweaves the themes of love, betrayal, and redemption as two estranged brothers confront each other after many years.
Suggested Reading: The Fisherman's Son by Michael Koepf . - Parable of the Talents
Author: Butler, Octavia E.
Publisher: Seven Stories List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 1888363819 Date: 1998LJ
In this long-awaited novel, Butler revisits familiar themes of a society in 2032 whose very fabric has been torn, and where the basic physical and emotional needs of people seem almost impossible to meet.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars - The Essential Tales of Chekhov
Author: Chekhov, Anton
Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 27.50 ISBN:? Date: 1998LJ - Jungle Wedding: Stories
Author: Clark, Joseph
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0393045269 Date: 1998PW
An electrifying debut collection by an ultra-contemporary and startling talented new writer. Joseph Clark has published works in Story, GQ, Playboy, and Zoetrope.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - Gates of Eden: Stories
Author: Coen, Ethan
Publisher: Rob Weisbach List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688159141 Date: 1998LJ
From brilliantly funny and darkly surreal pastiche to wry explorations of angst-ridden adolescence, Ethan Coen brings three stories together to show characters grappling with their place in the world and trying to comprehend what fate has placed before them. - The Hours
Author: Cunningham, Michael
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0374172897 Date: 1998PWKirkusBooklist
The author of At Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars | Reading Group Stars - The Last King of Scotland
Author: Foden, Giles
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0375403604 Date:
1998KirkusLJ
A look at Uganda's Idi Amin, as seen through the eyes of his Scottish doctor. "The best novel to come out of Africa since Wole Soyinka's Ake" , says Redmond O'Hanlon. The Times Literary Supplement says that The Last King of Scotland "moves effortlessly through every register from farce to gruesome tragedy with energy and panache". (ACT note) - Pushcart Prize XXIII: Best of the Small Presses (No. 23)
Author: Henderson, Bill (ed)
Publisher: Pushcart List Price: $ 29.50 ISBN: 1888889098 Date: 1998PW - How the Dead Live
Author: Greenberg, Alvin
Publisher: Graywolf List Price: $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN: 1555972810 Date: 1998Booklist - In the Pond
Author: Jin, Ha
Publisher: Zoland List Price: $ 20 ISBN: 0944072925 Date: 1998PWKirkus
An arresting debut novel, In the Pond is a darkly funny portrait of Shoe Bin, an amateur calligrapher who wields his delicate artist's brush as a weapon against the party bureaucrats who rule his provincial Chinese town.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Kingsolver, Barbara
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 27.50 ISBN: 0060175400 Date: 1998PWLJBooklistKirkus
In her first novel since Pigs in Heaven, Kingsolver offers a compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption. The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of an American Family that travels to the Congo in 1959, a time of tremendous political and social upheaval.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars | All Stars - The Jewels of Tessa Kent
Author: Krantz, Judith
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 06090603094 Date: 1998Booklist
Never before has Judith Krantz told a story as rich in heart and emotion as in this, her tenth novel, the story of two amazing women and the men they love, a tale of family love and loss, and a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of an auction house. - Belong to Me: Stories
Author: Maristed, Kai
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679444106 Date: 1998PW
A powerful collection of stories centering on people of the horse world. It opens with the most harrowing account of an abducted young woman since John Fowles The Collector.
Suggested Reading: Horse Tales - Canone Inverso
Author: Maurensig, Paolo
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 080505538x Date: 1998PWLJKirkusBooklist
A strangely carved violin that has accompanied two generations of artists throughout Europe mysteriously reappears in an auction in Christie's in present-day London, as imortality, history and an all-consuming passion intertwine in a magical fugue.
Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction | All Stars
Also - Maurensig's Lunenberg Variations. - Santa and Pete: A Novel of Christmas Present and Past
Author: Moore, Christopher/Pamela Johnson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 14.95 ISBN: 0684854953 Date: 1998PW - Love of a Good Woman: Stories
Author: Munro, Alice
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375403957 Date: 1998PWLJBooklist
In eight new stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes: the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Fredy Neptune
Author: Murray, Les A.
Publisher: Soho List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0374158541 Date: 1998PW - The End of a Family Story
Author: Nadas, Peter
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374148325 Date: 1998Kirkus
Written before his celebrated A Book of Memories, Nada's unforgettable first novel beautifully synthesizes myth, history, and political realities for one family living in 1950's Hungary. - A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories
Author: Pelevin, Victor
Publisher: New Directions List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0811213943 Date: 1998Kirkus
Victor Pelevin has been called one of Europe's "Best Young Novelists" by The New Yorker, and "the only young Russian novelist to have made in impression in the West" (Village Voice). The writers to whom he is frequently compared -- Kafka, Bulgakov, Philip K. Dick, and Joseph Heller -- are all deft, dark-comic fabulists, who find fuel for their lives in society's deafening protocol. - Publisher Marketing. - Selene of the Sprits
Author: Pritchard, Melissa
Publisher: Ontario Review List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0865380945 Date: 1998Kirkus - Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Author: Pressfield, Steven
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385492510 Date: 1998PWLJKirkus
With an epic vision and a dynamic cast of characters, this literary page-turner, set in 480 B.C. , brings the Homeric tradition into the 21st century with the tale of the historic battle between the Greeks and the two-million-man strong Persian army.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars | Ancient Greece - The Tale of the 1002nd Night
Author: Roth, Joseph
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312193416 Date: 1998KirkusBooklist
This allegorical story of seduction and betrayal, appears here in English for the first time. - Beer Cans in the Rio La Plata
Author: Stamadianos, Jorge
Publisher: Latin American Literary Review List Price: $ 15.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 189127001 Date: 1998Booklist - Foreign Bodies
Author: Tan, Hwee
Publisher: Persea List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0892552360 Date: 1998Booklist - The Book of Blam
Author: Tisma, Aleksandar
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151002355 Date: 1998PW
Miroslav Blam walks through the empty streets of Novi Sad, remembering. The war has ended, but for Blam the town is haunted with its presence and memories of its dead. Blam lives. He seeks no revenge, no retribution. His life is a spectator's-made all the more agonizing by the clarity with which he sees the events around him. The silhouettes of the dead pass before him, and he incorporates what would have been their daily lives into his own. - Publisher Marketing. - The Riddle of the Lost Lover
Author: Veryan, Patricia
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312193246 Date: 1998Booklist
The dashing hero of The Riddle of the Alabaster Royal, Veryan's "best effort yet" (Publishers Weekly) returns in a spirited novel mixing romance and mystery. - A Man in Full
Author: Wolfe, Tom
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 28.95 ISBN: 0374270325 Date: 1998PWBooklist
National Book Award finalist
A decade ago, The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era - and established Tom Wolfe as a major fiction chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. In his new novel, set in present- day Atlanta, Wolfe shows readers the disparate worlds of contemporary America, as he chronicles the story of an event that shatters the city's delicate racial balance.
October
- The Anatomist
Author: Andahazi, Frederico
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385491328 Date: 1998LJ
Published to critical acclaim in his native Argentina, Andahazi's sensational #1 bestseller transports readers to Venice in the 16th century, telling the story of Colon - a man of science and reason - who is on the verge of making a most earthshaking discovery.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Also - Casanova in Love by Andrew Miller and The Loves that Bind by Julian Rios. - Triage
Author: Anderson, Scott
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0684846950 Date: 1998LJKirkus
Reminiscent of In the Lake of the Woods and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Triage is an exploration of the pressures exerted on love by extraordinary circumstances, and a page-turner about the payment that always comes due on secrets and lies. - Ladies of St. Petersburg
Author: Berberova, Nina
Publisher: New Directions List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0811213773 Date: 1998Kirkus - Detecting Metal
Author: Bonnie, Fred
Publisher: Livingston List Price: $ 9.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0942979532 Date: 1998Booklist - Armadillo
Author: Boyd, William
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375402233 Date: 1998Kirkus
From the acclaimed author of Brazzaville Beach and The Blue Afternoon comes a new novel, set in present day London - and demonstrating the superbly plotted storytelling that has earned Boyd his reputation as a writer whose "eccentric wit and restless intelligence exert a powerful appeal" (New York Times Book Review).
Read-alike suggestion: Soft by Rupert Thompson. - Hunger: A Novella and Stories
Author: Chang, Lan
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0393046648 Date: 1998PW
With powerful intensity, Lan Samantha Chang explores the experience of being Asian American.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars - Glove Puppet
Author: Drinnan, Neal
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312192711 Date: 1998Booklist
Johnny grew up in lower-class London with a mother who was both a prostitute and a drug addict. After her death from an overdose, he arrives in Australia to become "Vaslav" , settling into a comfortable life as the son of a prominent gay man. Drinnan's first novel is one in which love, sex, and manipulation collapse upon each other - where the best intentions can yield the worst consequences.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - Jitterbug: A Novel of Detroit
Author: Estleman, Loren
Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312863608 Date: 1998BooklistPW - The Loop
Author: Evans, Nicholas
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 038531700x Date: 1998Kirkus
A breathtaking story of love, family, and man's relationship with nature - by the acclaimed author of The Horse Whisperer. Helen Ross, a 29-year-old wolf biologist, goes alone into the hostile Montana countryside to protect the wolves there from those in a nearby town of Hope who seek to destroy them. The Loop charts her struggle, and her dangerous love affair with the son of her most powerful opponent. - Road Home
Author: Harrison, Jim
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0871137240 Date: 1998BooklistLJKirkus
The sequel to Harrison's bestselling Dalva, written ten years ago, and a magnificent story of the American West, The Road Home tells the story of a family drenched in suffering and joy, imbued with fierce independence and love, rooted in the Nebraska soil and intertwined with the destiny of whites and Native Americans.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Hectic Ethics
Author: Hinojosa, Francisco
Publisher: City Lights Books List Price: $9.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 08272863476 Date: 1998BooklistPW - The Sensualist
Author: Hodgson, Barbara
Publisher: Chronicle List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 081181906x Date: 1998Kirkus
This potent novel draws readers into a tangle of lost loves, vengeance, and murder set against the backdrop of a European winter, and illuminated with Hodgson's haunting color illustrations. - Waltzing the Cat: Stories
Author: Houston, Pam
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 039320749x Date: 1998KirkusBooklist
In 11 linked fictions featuring a peripatetic photographer named Lucy O'Rourke, Pam Houston serves up a charismatic blend of relationship and adventure, as she tells the story of one woman's struggle for balance in a world that keeps pitching and rolling under her feet. - Balls
Author: Kincaid, Nanci
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 1565121783 Date: 1998Kirkus
Set in Alabama, Balls is told by 15 women and one little girl touched by Mac Gibb's fall from fame as a college quarterback to infamy as head coach of the Birmingham University Black Bears. The story they tell is funny but not always pretty - as the view from the inside rarely is. - The Fisherman's Son
Author: Koepf, Michael
Publisher: Broadway List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0767902440 Date: 1998LJBooklistKirkus
The Fisherman's Son is at once an intimate story of a troubled family and an evocative memorial to the fast-disappearing world of commercial fishermen. From its arresting first paragraphs to its shattering ending, this enthralling tale combines the lyrical storytelling of The English Patient with the muscular excitement of The Perfect Storm.
A haunting, lyrical novel that combines bracing adventure and turbulent family drama in an unforgettable tale of the sea. From the Advance Reading Copy.
Suggested Reading: The Storm by Frederick Buecher.
Suggested Reading: All Star | Sea Stories - The Widow Killer
Author: Kohout, Pavel
Publisher: St. Martins List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312193637 Date: 1998PW
A cross between the works of Caleb Carr and Thomas Harris, The Widow Killer is the chilling new book by one of Europe's most acclaimed novelists. Pavel Kohout has written a steely, suspenseful piece that will rank as perhaps one of the last important works from one of World War II's direct eyewitnesses.
Suggested Reading: Robert Janes' series set in occupied France (Mannequin, etc.) and Phillip Kerr's Berlin Trilogy. - Divining Rod
Author: Knight, Michael
Publisher: Dutton List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 052594379x Date: 1998Kirkus
On a blistering July morning in Alabama, Sam Holladay jabs a gun into the heart of his neighbor, Simon Bell, and pulls the trigger. Michael Knight's innovative first novel is told through a series of flashbacks - a story of complicated love and tender emotions unveiled between Simon's reckless young bride, Delia, and the lonely hapless Simon. - Dogfight: And Other Stories
Author: Knight, Michael
Publisher: Plume List Price: $ 11.95 (trade paperback) ISBN: 0452278945 Date: 1998PW
In this extraordinary collection, Michael Knight delivers ten tales of ordinary people whose attempts at human connection often result in false starts, misunderstandings, or heavy silence. - The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
Author: Leonard, Elmore
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385323867 Date: 1998Kirkus
Etching a harsh, haunting landscape with razor-sharp prose, Elmore Leonard shows in these 19 brilliant stories why he has become the American poet laureate of the desperate and the bold.
Suggested Reading: Western Stars
Suggested Reading: The Smiling Country by Elmer Kelton and Deadville by Robert F. Jones. - Hyssop
Author: McIlvoy, Kevin
Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0810150859 Date: 1998PWKirkusBooklist
The friendship of a bishop and a self-proclaimed thief spans over 70 years in this stunning novel full of magic. Hyssop is an inquiry into the nature of religion, faith and belief, and into the power of moral dilemmas embedded in loving friendships and in spiritually rich but materially impoverished lives.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Casanova in Love
Author: Miller, Andrew
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151004099 Date: 1998PWKirkus
A seductive, witty, psychologically acute rendering of the extraordinary man who seduced and conquered his way into history. In 1863, at the age of 38, Casanova arrives in England seeking a respite from his restless travels and liaisons. Before long, his pursuit of young Marie Charpillon drives him from exhilaration to despair.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Also - The Loves that Bind by Julian Rios and The Anatomist by Frederico Andahazi. - Evening
Author: Minot, Susan
Publisher: Knopf List P rice: $ 23 ISBN: 0375400370 Date: 1998PWBooklistKirkus
Forty years ago, over a single, glorious summer weekend, Ann Grant Lord met and lost the love of her life. Now, in the grip of illness and surrounded by her children, she relives the affair with the clarity and intensity of a fever-dream, moving back in time, to her 25th year, to those three glittering days on the New England coast.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - A Complicated Situation
Author: Mullen, Jane
Publisher: Southern Methodist Univ List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0870744313 Date: 1998Booklist - Beyond the Limbo Silence
Author: Nunez, Elizabeth
Publisher: Seal List Price: $ 12.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1580050131 Date: 1998Booklist - Casanova in Love
Author: Miller, Andrew
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151004099 Date: 1998PWKirkus
A seductive, witty, psychologically acute rendering of the extraordinary man who seduced and conquered his way into history. In 1863, at the age of 38, Casanova arrives in England seeking a respite from his restless travels and liaisons. Before long, his pursuit of young Marie Charpillon drives him from exhilaration to despair.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Also - The Loves that Bind by Andrew Miller and The Anatomist by Frederico Andahazi. - Tomcat in Love
Author: O'Brien, Tim
Publisher: Broadway List Price: $ 26 ISBN: 0767902025 Date: 1998Booklist
Brilliant, inventive, and wildly funny, this new novel by the award-winning author of Going After Cacciato, In the Lake of the Woods, and The Nuclear Age, tells the story of a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife, and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets. - Siberian Dream
Author: Pantaeva, Irina
Publisher: Bard List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0380975548 Date: 1998Kirkus - Pears on a Willow Tree
Author: Pietrzyk, Leslie
Publisher: Bard List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0380976676 Date: 1998PW
For fans of the The Joy Luck Club and Charms for the Easy Life comes the story of "a sweating, crying, shouting, laughing group of women struggling to preserve and pass on that most precious of old family recipes: love" (Washington Post). - Angel of Galilea
Author: Restrepo, Laura
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 20 ISBN: 0690690364 Date: 1998Kirkus
A beautiful, young tabloid reporter is sent to investigate alleged sightings of an angel amid the slums of Galilea. Soon, she too has fallen under the spell of the young man's majestic, enigmatic, overwhelming story, and her own life becomes entwined with his immortal destiny. - I Married a Communist
Author: Roth, Philip
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 26 ISBN: 0395933463 Date: 1998Booklist
Iron Rinn, born Ira Ringold, is an idealistic American Communist, a self-educated ditchdigger turned popular performer, married to the nation's reigning radio actress. Fierce and funny, eloquently rendered and politically accurate, the story of Rinn's denunciation and disgrace during the time of McCarthy's "witch hunts" brings to harrowing life the human drama that was central to the nation's betrayal, blacklisting, and naming names.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | McCarthyism - The Evolution of Jane
Author: Schine, Cathleen
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0395826578 Date: 1998PWKirkus
From the bestselling author of The Love Letter and Rameau's Niece comes of comedy of natural selection. When two cousins - who once were best friends - are reunited unexpectedly on a tour of the Galapagos Islands, the result is an antic mating of family saga and natural history that forever changes their lives.
Read-alike suggestion: Animal Husbandry by Laura Zigman.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction - The Christmas Wish
Author: Siddoway, Richard
Publisher: Harmony List Price: $ 14 ISBN: 0609604147 Date: 1998PW - Understanding Women
Author: Smith, C.W.
Publisher: Texas Christian Univ Press List Price: $ 24.50 ISBN: 0875651895 Date: 1998Booklist
A big-hearted coming-of-age novel that captures the 1950's in an evocative snapshot. James Robert (Jimbo) Proctor, who has just turned 16, spends the summer in New Mexico with his uncle Waylan and his new wife, and he leaves on the cusp, not so much of manhood but of adult responsibility. - Incident at Twenty Mile
Author: Trevanian
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312192339 Date: 1998Kirkus
The author of such bestsellers as The Eiger Sanction and Shibumi returns with a brilliant foray into a new genre. Set at the turn of the last century, Incident at Twenty Mile tells a compellingly dark and dirty story of the Old West, but packed with all the chills, thrills, and improbable coincidences readers love.
Suggested Reading: Western Stars - Bech at Bay
Author: Updike, John
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 037540368x Date: 1998PWKirkus
Henry Bech, the moderately well-known Jewish-American writer who served as the hero of John Updike's previous Bech: A Book and Bech is Back, has become older but scarcely wiser, as he is relentlessly pursues literary fame. - Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions
Author: Wallace, Daniel
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 16.95 ISBN: 1565122178 Date: 1998PW
Sitting by his father's deathbed, William Bloom tries to understand the man quickly slipping away, who is more interested in evading his son's questions than answering them. So William reconstructs his father's life through a series of stories, and in doing so finds a way to say goodbye.
Suggested Reading: Funny Fiction - Hill Country
Author: Windle, Janice Woods
Publisher: Longstreet List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 1563525224 Date: 1998Kirkus - The Elusive Flame
Author: Woodiwiss, Kathleen
Publisher: Avon List Price: $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN: 0380766558 Date: 1998Booklist
In the long-awaited sequel to Woodiwiss's groundbreaking classic love story The Flame and the Flower, the saga of the bold and adventurous Birmingham family continues. This time it is Beauregard Birmingham, son of Brandon and Heather, who is the focus of the action, as he comes to the aid of a beautiful childhood companion who is in need of passage to the Carolinas. - The Catch
Author: Wozencraft, Kim
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385485166 Date: 1998PW
From the bestselling author of Rush comes a powerful new novel about drug dealing, the law and the price one mother pays to keep her family together.
September
- Childhood
Author: Alexis, Andre
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0805059814 Date: 1998KirkusLJPW
In a stirring meditation on the elusiveness of the past and humanity's yearning for emotional closure, Thomas MacMillan, a Canadian with ties to Trinidad, pieces together - from memory and from related stories - the early years of his life.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Eucalyptus
Author: Bail, Murray
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374148570 Date: 1998Kirkus
At once a modern fairy tale and a marvelously touching love story, played out against the mesmerizing backdrop of Australia, Eucalyptus tells the story of a beautiful young woman, whose father vows that she will marry only the man who can correctly name every species of each and every gum tree on his property. - The Voyage of the Narwhal
Author: Barrett, Andrea
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 039304632x Date: 1998PWKirkusLJ
A major novel by the author of Ship Fever, winner of the 1996 National Book Award for fiction. Part adventure, part love story, this unforgettable novel captures a crucial moment in the history of exploration. Combining fact and fiction, the story focuses on Erasmus Darwin Wells, a 19th-century scholar/naturalist and his expedition to search for an open polar sea.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars - Mistler's Exit
Author: Begley, Louis
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ ? ISBN: 0375402624 Date: 1998PW
The acclaimed author of Wartime Lies (winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award) now gives reaers his most moving protagonist yet: Thomas Mistler, a Madison Avenue mogul, who, facing a menacing blot on his liver, decides to seek a final reprieve in Venice. - Collected Fictions
Author: Borges, Jorge Luis
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: ? Date: 1998LJ - Small Craft Warnings: Stories
Author: Braverman, Kate
Publisher: Univ of Nevada Pr List Price: $ 16 (trade paper) ISBN: 0874173213 Date: 1998Booklist - Ka
Author: Calosso, Roberto
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 28 ISBN: 0679451315 Date: 1998PW - For Kings and Planets: A Novel
Author: Canin, Ethan
Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0679419632 Date: 1998PW
As he explores the lives of two very different men over the course of many years, who first meet at Columbia University, the author of Emperor of the Air creates the conflicts of character that mark the heart of every life. - The Martini Shot
Author: Craig, Peter
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0688156584 Date: 1998Kirkus
Winner of the prestigious Michener-Copernicus Award for best first novel, The Martini Shot tells the poignant, often hilarious story of a dysfunctional Hollywood family.
Suggested Reading: Hollywood - The Farming of Bones
Author: Danticat, Edwidge
Publisher: Soho List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 1569471266 Date: 1998PWLJBooklist
From the acclaimed author of Krik? Krak!. 1937: On the Dominican side of the Haiti border, Amabelle, a maid to the young wife of an army colonel falls in love with sugarcane cutter Sebastian. She longs to become his wife and walk into their future. Instead, terror enfolds them. But the story does not end here: it begins.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Into the Wilderness
Author: Donati, Sara
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0553107364 Date: 1998Booklist
In December of 1792, Elizabeth Middleton leaves England to join her father and brother in the remote mountain village of Paradise, New York, and falls in love with a man who's different from any she has ever encountered.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Big Government
Author: Ehrlich, Everett
Publisher: Warner List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0446523852 Date: 1998Kirkus
In the spirit of Wag the Dog, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, a former Clinton Administration official pens an uproarious and wicked satire of the American political process.
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction - Welcome to the World, Baby Girl
Author: Flagg, Fannie
Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0679426140 Date: 1998PW
The long-awaited, wonderfully entertaining new novel by the author of the classic Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Dena Nordstrom, TV anchorwoman, has a future filled with promise, a present rich with complications, and a past marked by mysteries. - The Wages of Fame
Author: Fleming, Thomas J.
Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 26.95 ISBN: 0312863098 Date: 1998Kirkus
Set in the mid-Atlantic states during the turbulent pre-Civil War years, The Wages of Fame continues the epic story of the Stapleton family. As the Mexican War approaches, passions both old and new surface as ideals collide over the fate of the country.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - I Can't Wait on God
Author: French, Albert
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385483643 Date: 1998BooklistLJ
Told over the course of five summer days and nights in 1950, I Can't Wait on God pursues the themes of beauty, humility, and what is truly precious in our lives, with a story of crowded joys and familiar despair set in post-World War II Pittsburgh.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas
Author: Gass, William H.
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375401687 Date: 1998Kirkus
The award-winning author of The Tunnel and Finding a Form now gives readers four interrelated novellas that explore Mind, Matter, and God - a profound exploration of good and evil, philosophy and action filled with Gass's definitive wit and style. - Flights of Angels: Stories
Author: Gilchrist, Ellen
Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0316314862 Date: 1998PW
Described by Publishers Weekly as "easily Gilchrist's best book in years," this collection of stories gives readers a taste of her gifted sense of the language and the humor of human foibles. - Kaaterskill Falls
Author: Goodman, Allegra
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385323891 Date: 1998PWLJ
National Book Award Finalist.
From the author Total Immersion comes a keen first novel - the story of a devout Orthodox Jewish woman, a mother of five spending the summer in a tiny town in upstate New York, who feels the need to start a project of her own... a secular project. - Lenoir
Author: Greenhall, Ken
Publisher: Zoland List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0944072933 Date: 1998PWKirkus
The deftly imagined story of the unknown African model who posed for Reuben's famous Four Heads of a Negro - in part, a deeply serious exploration of 17th- century white European society as seen through the eyes of a slave.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Like Never Before
Author: Havazelet, Ehud
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374187622 Date: 1998PWBooklist
A superb collection of thematically linked short stories by the author of What Is It Then Between Us?, these works are "astonishing in their sensitivity, clarity, and power" (San Francisco Chronicle). - Semaphore
Author: Hawkes, G.W.
Publisher: MacMurray and Beck List Price: $ 19 ISBN: 187844882x Date: 1998Kirkus
Although he cannot speak, Joseph Carl Taft is a boy with a remarkable ability--he can see into the future. Beautifully written and emotionally taut, Semaphore is about more than language and the ability to move beyond one's own time. It's about the timelessness and transcendence of love--about the connectedness of things and how to hold that sacred. - Luminous Mysteries
Author: Holman, John
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0151003491 Date: 1998Booklist - Ruby
Author: Hood, Ann
Publisher: Picador List Price: $22 ISBN: 0312195532 Date: 1998PW
Just as she begins to rebuild her life following the tragic death of her husband, Olivia, a milliner from New York City, meets Ruby, pregnant, delinquent, and obviously too immature to care for the impending baby that Olivia so strongly desires. - Wives of the Fisherman
Author: Huth, Angela
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: Date: 1998Kirkus
From the critically acclaimed author of Land Girls, comes a new novel that explores the intricate mechanisms of women's friendship with tenderness, intelligence, and understanding. - Jacob's Hands: An Original Screen Story
Author: Huxley, Aldus & Christopher Isherwood
Publisher: Buzz List Price: $ 14.95 ISBN: 0312194676 Date: 1998Kirkus - East into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi
Author: Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer
Publisher: Counterpoint List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 1887178503 Date: 1998LJ
Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times, this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New York's tony Upper East Side, Jhabvala's characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience -- jealousy, passion, temptation, and deception -- truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander. - Publisher Marketing. - Bag of Bones
Author: King, Stephen
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 28 ISBN: 0684853507 Date: 1998PWKirkus
Stephen King, master of heart-stopping, page-turning suspense, now brings readers his most gripping and unforgettable novel to date - a story of grief and a lost love's enduring bonds, of a new love haunted by the secrets of the past, of an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire of natural and supernatural forces.
Suggested Reading: Supersition by David Ambrose and Fogheart by Thomas Tessier. - Blood Ties
Author: Lash, Jennifer
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 158234003x Date: 1998PWKirkus
Set mainly in Ireland, Lash's dark, exhilarating novel tells a story of the redemptive power of love "which probes every exposed nerve of family feeling and family hell" - Independent. - The Giant O'Brien
Author: Mantel, Hillary
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0805044280 Date: 1998Kirkus
The Giant, O'Brien, is a freak of nature on display in 1782 London. On exhibit for money, he has, he soon finds out, come to die - and a man of science covets the corpse for his own purposes. Hailed as "an acute observer, fearless in exploring difficult subjects" (The Wall Street Journal) Mantel here tells of the convergence of two worlds on the cusp of a new century.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
Also - American Goliath by Harvey Jacobs. - The Silent Duchess
Author: Maraini, Dacia
Publisher: Feminist List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN:1558611940 Date: 1998PW
In this compelling and vivid historical novel, Marianna Ucria, born in Sicily in the early 18thcentury, chronicles her own life and that of three generations of her family - aided by her extraordinary ability to "hear" others' thoughts.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Rules of the Wild
Author: Marciano, Francesca
Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0375403582 Date: 1998PW
A beautiful young woman comes to Kenya after the death of her father, and discovers in the white expatriate community a close-knit crowd that must negotiate its existence in a world of great physical beauty and unforseen terror - a world in which they know they will never truly belong. - Model Behavior: A Novel and Stories
Author: McInerney, Jay
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0679428461 Date: 1998Kirkus
In his sixth novel, the author of Bright Lights, Big City chronicles the exploits of a man whose avocations - film, Zen, and Japanese Literature - are wildly remote from his journalism job in Manhattan. Also includes seven stories which span the author's career. - The Ventriloquist's Tale
Author: Melville, Pauline
Publisher: Bloomsbury List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582340099 Date: 1998LJKirkusBooklist
Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award, The Ventriloquist's Tale embraces nearly a century large in scope but intimate as a whisper, telling the story of a brother and sister who have a passionate affair at the time of the solar eclipse.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Revere Beach Boulevard
Author: Merullo, Roland
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0805060057 Date: 1998KirkusBooklist
A novel both literary and suspenseful, Revere Beach Boulevard tells the story of a family that rallies around an errant son, even as a dark secret that has blighted all their lives comes to the surface. - The River Warren
Author: Meyers, Kent
Publisher: Hungry Mind List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 1886913234 Date: 1998Kirkus
When a trucker crashes a semitrailer of someone else's cattle in downtown Cloten, killing himself and his wife in the process, he unleashes the entire town's gossip, half-truths, and memories. Narrated by seven different characters, this poignant and lyrical story introduces a remarkable voice in American fiction. - The Restraint of Beasts
Author: Mills, Magnus
Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 1559704373 Date: 1998Kirkus
Tam and Rich work for a company specializing in fences built to keep beasts in and humans out. When one of their projects goes horribly wrong, they flee to London--only to discover that sometimes good fences make disastrous neighbors.
Booker Prize short list title. - Lost in Translation
Author: Mones, Nicole
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385319347 Date: 1998PWKirkus
In a novel of searing intelligence and startling originality, Mones has created an unforgettable story of love and desire, of family ties and human conflict, and of one woman's struggle to lose herself in a foreign land - only to discover her home, her heart, and herself. - Birds of America
Author: Moore, Lorrie
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0679445978 Date: 1998PWKirkus
From the author of Self-Help, one of the most exciting writers at work today, comes a new collection of 12 stories remarkable in their range, emotional force, and dark laughter - and in the sheer beauty of their language. - Cereus Blooms at Night
Author: Mootoo, Shani
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0802116337 Date: 1998PWLJKirkusBooklist
Set on a fictional Caribbean island in the town of Paradise, Cereus Blooms at Night unveils the mystery surrounding Mala Ramchandin and the tempestuous history of her family. In luminious, sensual prose that "employs myth and magic reminiscent of Isabel Allende" (Out magazine), Mootoo joins diverse storytelling traditions to explore identity, gender, and violence in a celebration of our capacity to love despite cruelity and despair. "A swirling cauldron of cross-generational history filled with violence, romance, aching beauty, and heart-breaking mystery" - Sojourner. From the Advance Proof.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Europa
Author: Parks, Tim
Publisher: Arcade List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 155970446 Date: 1998PWKirkusLJBooklist
A finalist for the Booker Prize, this ferociously comic tale of love gone sour is the finest novel to date from the author of the national bestsellers An Italian Education and Italian Neighbors.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction | All Stars - Pagoda
Author: Powell, Patricia
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0679454896 Date: 1998BooklistKirkus
In this brilliantly original and exotic novel, a young writer brings to life the mysterious world of an immigrant who flees China in the 1890's to seek a better life in Jamaica. - Gertrude of Stony Island
Author: Purdy, James
Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 068815901x Date: 1998Kirkus
This story of a woman's struggle to come to terms with a life seemingly emptied of meaning by her estranged daughter's death explores such themes as the mysterious connection between creativity and self destruction and the paradox of loss that leads ultimately to renewed life and love. - Billy Dead
Author: Reardon, Lisa
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0670882240 Date: 1998Booklist - Charity: Stories
Author: Richard, Mark
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385425627 Date: 1998Kirkus
A new collection of ten stories by one of the most gifted and closely watched writers of his generation - the author of The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Fishboy. - Carnival Wolves
Author: Rock, Peter
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 12.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 038549209x Date: 1998PW
The eerily engrossing second novel by the author of This Is the Place tells the story of a man and his stolen dalmation and their unsettling journey across the blurred borders between people, animals, and the United States. - Blindess
Author: Saramago, Jose
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0151002517 Date: 1998PWKirkus
Portuguese Nobel Laureate Jos Saramago tells a fantastic tale about a city hit by an epidemic of "white blindness." - Shimmer
Author: Schulman, Sarah
Publisher: Bard List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0380976463 Date: 1998LJ
A brilliantly rendered, wonderfully evocative novel of three ambitious people in post-World War II New York City, by the author of Rat Bohemia, Empathy, People in Trouble, and After Delores.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | McCarthyism Stars - Reservation Road
Author: Schwartz, John Burnham
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375402632 Date: 1998PWKirkusBooklist
A compulsively readable novel of feeling and suspense about two men and their families, and the hit-and-run death of a young boy. "A nonstop read about people locked in a terrible embrace" (Ward Just), Reservation Road is powerful, wrenching, impossible to put down.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Suggested Reading: The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks and Before and After by Rosellen Brown. - Unified Field Theory: Stories
Author: Soos, Frank
Publisher: Univ of Georgia Press List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 082032048x Date: 1998Booklist - Flamboyant
Author: Swados, Elizabeth
Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0312195478 Date: 1998LJ
With insight, warmth, and humor, Swados creates a unique and memorable friendship between two very different people bound together by their common characteristics of the heart. - Soft
Author: Thompson, Rupert
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375402241 Date: 1998PWKirkus
The fates of three wildly dissimilar characters are joined when a young business executive, faced with a saturated market, contrives a revolutionary strategy for introducing a new beverage. But as each of the three soon discovers, there's nothing soft about the soft-drink business.
Read-alike suggestion: Armadillo by William Boyd. - Death in Summer
Author: Trevor, William
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 067088202x Date: 1998PWKirkus
A chilling new novel by the author of Felicia's Journey. After both his wife and mother-in-law die suddenly, Thaddeus's household seems to settle down. But then an unwelcome guest appears, heralding the third and final of the summer tragedies. - Big Girls Don't Cry
Author: Weldon, Fay
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0871137208 Date: 1998BooklistKirkus
From the critically acclaimed master commentator on the rivalry between men and women comes a darkly comic novel about the pathos of human nature - a wicked new work about women and their men. "Lively, intelligent, unfaltering" - Times Literary Supplement. - Two Cities
Author: Wideman, Edgar
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $24 ISBN: 0395857309 Date: 1998PWKirkusLJ
As Kassima mourns the loss of her husband and sons, victims of Philadephia's violent streets, she allows no on to get close to her until she meets gentle Robert Jones.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | African American Stars - Almost Heaven
Author: Wiggins, Marianne
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0517707624 Date: 1998LJ
One of today's most critically acclaimed authors presents an intellectually dazzling, emotionally incandescent story of memory and the redemptive power of love - a whirlwind love story and a personal letter to the South.
August
- The Extra Man
Author: Ames, Jonathan
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0684845040 Date: 1998Booklist
With a quirky edge and outrageous humor, Jonathan Ames has written a remarkable second novel - a modern-day New York comedy of manners that explores the memorable relationship between a young man and his eccentric older roommate.
Suggested Reading: Funny Fiction - The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
Author: Barry, Sebastian
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670878286 Date: 1998PWLJKirkusBooklist
An acclaimed playwrights novel - the heartbreaking epic of a fugitive everyman. When a Irish romantic innocent signs up to fight with the British in World War I, he is branded a traitor by his countrymen - and the IRA orders his assassination to be carried out by a childhood friend.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars - Fiber
Author: Bass, Rick
Publisher: Univ of Georgia List Price: $ 15.95 ISBN: 0820320633 Date: 1998Kirkus
As a work of fiction, Fiber is an impassioned literary call to save the imperiled and wildly beautiful Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana. Bass's message is clear, please preserve the magical forested island before it is too late. - The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Author: Bender, Aimee
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0385492154 Date: 1998PW
Bold, sexy, and daring, these stories portray a world twisted on its axis, an unconventional place that resembles nothing as much as real life, in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. Bender's prose is glorious, musical, and colloquial. - In Dark Water
Author: Blakeslee, Mermer
Publisher: Ballantine List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0345417771 Date: 1998Booklist
An utterly captivating novel about coming to terms with grief and redemption - written in the bestselling tradition of The Deep End of the Ocean. After the unexpected death of her brother, a small girl looks for a way to make sense of the adult world around her. - Visible Worlds
Author: Bowering, Marilyn
Publisher: Harperflamingo List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0060191481 Date: 1998PW
A haunting tale about the effects of war on personal lives, this extraordinary novel tells the mesmerizing story of twin brothers born into an eccentric family led by a father drawn to the magic of "personal magnetism", and a German-immigrant mother obsessed with the ghosts of the past. - Too Cool
Author: Brenna, Duff
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385489714 Date: 1998PWBooklist
A taut and fast-paced novel set in the unforgiving landscape of the American West. A reform school escapee is forced to confront the violence of his nature and the acts that have brought him to the brink of destruction, after he and his girlfriend are trapped in a blizzard.
Read-alike suggestion: The Pact by Jodi Picoult.
Suggested Reading: Stormy Weather Stars - A Nixon Man
Author: Cahill, Michael
Publisher: Buzz List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312187491 Date: 1998Kirkus
A charming yet realistic coming-of-age novel as seen through the eyes of a young boy in San Francisco in the early 1970s. In S.E. Hinton-like prose and with a nifty West Coast setting, A Nixon Man tells what happens when a boy's father is left without his hero.
Suggested Reading: Nixon
- The Silent
Author: Dann, Jack
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553097164 Date: 1998LJ
The internationally bestselling author of The Memory Cathedral now renders an extraordinary novel about a boy coming of age during the civil war.
Suggested Reading: Civil War Fiction - The Mourner's Bench
Author: Dodd, Susan
Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688157998 Date: 1998Booklist
In alternating, distinctly American voices - one the twang of a New England Yankee, the other a gentle Southern drawl - two female characters tell a wistful, wonderfully evocative story of temptation, memory, and forgiveness.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - My Sister From the Black Lagoon: A Novel of My Life
Author: Fox, Laurie
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 3 ISBN: 0684847450 Date: 1998PW
Featuring gorgeous prose, unflinching honesty, sharp wit, and images that burn into the mind and heart, this story of growing up with a mentally ill sibling offers a profoundly affecting autobiographical novel in the tradition of The Liar's Club and the works of Mona Simpson. - The Gun Runner's Daughter
Author: Gordon, Neil
Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679437053 Date: 1998Booklist
Two lawyers on opposite sides of an arms-dealing scandal fall in love, in this brilliant novel of moral and psychological suspense by the acclaimed author of Sacrifice of Isaac. - My Year in No-Man's Bay
Author: Handke, Peter
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 30 ISBN: 0374217556 Date: 1998Booklist - A Soldier's Book
Author: Higgins, Joanna
Publisher: Permanent List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 1579620094 Date: 1998Booklist
Ira Cahill Stevens, a young Union soldier taken captive by Confederates during the Battle of the Wilderness in May of 1864, finds himself fighting a new battle as the novel opens. One waged within the head and heart against the "dead nothingness of despair".
Suggested Reading: Civil War Fiction - A Life for a Life
Author: Hill, Ernest
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0684822784 Date: 1998Booklist
From the acclaimed author of Satisfied with Nothin comes a searing novel of the bond between an African-American father and the teenager who killed his son - a tale of violent self-destruction reclaimed by the power of love and forgiveness.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars - The Smiling Country
Author: Kelton, Elmer
Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 031286471x Date: 1998Booklist
Suggested Reading: Western Stars
Read-alike suggestions: The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories by Elmore Leonard and Deadville by Robert F. Jones. - Once Upon the River Love
Author: Makine, Andrei
Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 1559704381 Date: 1998Kirkus
After taking the Trans-Siberian train to Leningrad to see a film starring French matinee idol, Jean-Paul Belmondo, three teenaged boys from a remote part of Russia dream of love, adventure, and another world. - An Arrow's Flight
Author: Merlis, Mark
Publisher: St. Martin's List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312186754 Date: 1998PW
In this tour-de-force, the author of the award-winning American Studies tells the story of the Trojan War and Pyrrhus, the son of the fallen Achilles, now working as a go-go boy and hustler in the big city.
Suggested Reading: Ancient Greece | Trojan War - Like Being Killed
Author: Miller, Ellen
Publisher: Dutton List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525943722 Date: 1998Booklist
An astounding tour-de-force exploration of the limits of self-destruction and the possiblilities of redemption. When a young woman attempts to pull her new-found friend out of a herion-induced depression, she is done in by her own innocence. - The Museum Guard
Author: Norman, Howard
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374216495 Date: 1998Kirkus
When the famous Dutch painting Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam arrives at a museum in Halifax, a disturbed young woman abandons her life in favor of the one she imagines for the painting's subject --even as being a Jew in Amsterdam becomes more perilous as the clouds of World War II gather in Europe.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Art Stars - Stigmata
Author: Perry, Phylis Alesia
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0786864087 Date: 1998PWBooklist
A Pulitzer Prize-winning editor offers a stunning debut novel - a lyrical story told through a panoply of voices that matches the best in the rich tradition of African-American fiction, while charting new territory with its exploration of a young girl's apparent descent into madness.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars - Antartica
Author: Robinson, Kim Stanley
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0553100637 Date: 1998PWKirkusLJ
It is a stark and inhospitable place, where the landscape itself poses a challenge to survival; yet its strange, silent beauty has long fascinated scientists and adventurers. Now Antartica faces an uncertain future. The international treaty that protects the continent is about to dissolve, clearing the way for Antartica's resources to be plundered, its eerie beauty to be savaged. As politicians and huge corporations move to determine its fate from half a world away, radical environmentalists carry out a covert campaign of sabatoge to reclaim the land from those who would destroy it for profit. The winner of this critical battle will set the future for this last great wilderness . . . From the Advance Reading Copy.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Beach Boy
Author: Vakil, Ardashir
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0684852993 Date: 1998KirkusBooklist
Set in Bombay in the early 1970's, this delightful, comic tale is narrated by a precocious eight- year-old who is forced out of his carefree shell and into a more severe world after his parent's marriage.
Suggested Reading: Stars of India - Dream Children
Author: Wilson, A. N.
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393027406 Date: 1998Kirkus
In a series of dramatic tableaux, unfolding over the course of many years, Dream Children provides a provocative story about forbidden love: a Lolita for our times.
July
- Silent Wing
Author: Bernardo, Jose Raul
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0684843897 Date: 1998Booklist
Julian, a charismatic Cuban poet possessed with a passionate love of freedom, is exiled from his homeland for demonstrating in favor of his country's independence from the tyrannical hold of Spain. He lands in Mexico City, where he proposes marriage to Lucia, the spinster daughter of a Cuban lawyer exiled in that city. Knowing that the wedding must wait until he establishes himself professionally, Julian goes to Guatemala City, where a teaching job awaits and where Lucia is to follow him in time. What Julian has not reckoned on is that in Guatemala he will meet and fall madly in love with Sol, daughter of that country's great liberator, Don Manuel. For Sol, on the verge of womanhood, Julian is her first love, and she places her trust in him with total abandon. But Julian, a man of great principle, knows that even though he loves Sol beyond limits, he is expected to honor the pledge he made to Lucia, no matter how great the sacrifice, or how tragic the consequences. - Publisher Marketing. - Nike: A Romance
Author: Flokos, Nicholas
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 20 ISBN: 0395883962 Date: 1998PW
Fate brings together a scheming comic trio, each obsessed with the Louvre's most beautiful statue - and with whisking her back to her Greek island home - in this charming tour-de-force, the auspicious debut of a delightful new storyteller.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - Bombay Ice
Author: Forbes, Leslie
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0374115303 Date: 1998Kirkus
Starring "the toughest, most sympathetic heroine since Smilla's Sense of Snow" (Harper's Bazaar), this thriller set in exotic India tells the intriguing story of a British journalist whose life is put in jeopardy after a brutal murder. - Firebird
Author: Graham, Janice
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0399144048 Date: 1998PW
In the tradition of The Horse Whisperer comes a novel from the heart that tells a story of universal truths. Two people begin a clandestine, transcendent affair that promises to change the landscape of their lives, but their love is soon torn apart by tragedy. - Blue Place
Author: Griffith, Nicola
Publisher: Avon List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0380974460 Date: 1998PW
Ex-undercover police lieutenant Aud Tovingen collides with an alluring young woman in Atlanta, and soon finds herself drawn into a deadly international game of art forgery, drugs, sex, and murder.
Suggested Reading: Art Stars - Surveyor
Author: Hawkes, G.W.
Publisher: MacMurray & Beck List Price: $ 20 ISBN: Date: 1998Kirkus
In this distinctive and beautifully crafted novel, Hawkes writes about the importance of place, the geography of friendship, and how we manage the changing landscapes of our lives. Writing about the deep abiding friendships between men, Hawkes maps his own new and powerful literary terrain. - Publisher Marketing. - The Fall of the Sparrow
Author: Hellenga, Robert
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0684850265 Date: 1998PWLJKirkus
The critically acclaimed author of The Sixteen Pleasures establishes himself as a major literary talent with his beautifully crafted second novel - the story of a family's struggle to heal itself after the violent death of its oldest daughter. From the Advance Reading Copy.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Terrorism - The Exes
Author: Kennedy, Pagan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0684834812 Date: 1998PW
Four ex-lovers/current bandmates jam together amidst today's cutting edge music scene, in this fresh, funky novel of love lost and fame gained, written by the celebrated author of Spinsters.
Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction - The Last Resort
Author: Lurie, Alison
Publisher: Holt List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0805058664 Date: 1998PW
Like a loyal Victorian wife, Jenny has devoted her life to her much older husband, the famous writer and naturalist, Wilkie Walker. But this year, as winter approaches, Wilkie is increasingly depressed. At her wit's end, Jenny persuades him to visit Key West, the Last Resort. - Where She Has Gone
Author: Ricci, Nino
Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0312187009 Date: 1998Kirkus
Returning to the Italian landscape of his acclaimed debut, The Book of Saints, Ricci presents the third book in his Vittorio Innocente trilogy, a work of uncommon emotional impact. After his father's death, Vittorio finds himself drawn to his half-sister. - A German Picturesque
Author: Schwartz, Jason
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0679443320 Date: 1998Kirkus
Schwartz offers 21 brilliantly impressionistic stories that tap into the imagination and offer intriguing glimpses into short spans of time - a daring collection that experiments with storytelling in a strikingly fresh manner. - Object of Your Love
Author: Speak, Dorothy
Publisher: St. Martin's List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 031218638x Date: 1998PWKirkus
From "the new Alice Munro", nine diamond-hard stories about women and their lives sown with adultery and forbidden pleasures. - Full Dress Gray
Author: Truscott, Lucian
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0688159931 Date: 1998PW
In the New York Times bestseller Dress Gray, rebellious cadet Ry Slaight nearly destroyed West Point when he exposed and solved the murder of a gay cadet in 1969. Now, Slaight has been promoted to Lieutenant General and appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy. It's cause for congratulation - and the occasion for a sequel that promises to be another blockbuster.
Read-alike suggestion: The Academy by Ed Ruggero. - Ahmed's Revenge: A Novel
Author: Wiley, Richard
Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0679457445 Date: 1998PW
This new novel by the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Soldiers in Hiding is set in 1970's Kenya, where the expatriate community is attempting to coexist with the new, independent powers in a fragile environment of great beauty. - Island Justice
Author: Winthrop, Elizabeth
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 25 ISBN: Date: 1998PW
A beautifully observed novel in the tradition of Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman, Island Justice subtly examines our notions of home, in the story of a woman who finds herself being drawn deeper into the complex world of her island home's winter community.
Fiction Stars of 1998: January - June
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