Overbooked: Starred Review Lists
Fiction Stars of 1999
Page Modified: June 25, 2009
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.
January - June
Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then alphabetically
by author. Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.
A
indicates an Overbooked Jump for Joy book.
June
- Timbuktu
Author: Auster, Paul
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0805054073 Date: 1999
PW
Mr. Bones, the canine hero of Auster's remarkable new novel, is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, the brilliant, troubled, and altogether original poet-saint from Brooklyn. Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, they sally forth on a last great adventure in search of Willy's high school teacher and mentor.
Suggested Reading: Poets | Dog Stars - They Were Counted
Author: Banffy, Miklos
Publisher: Dufour List Price: $ 28.95 ISBN: 190085015x Date: 1999LJ - The Girls' Guide
to Hunting and Fishing
Author: Banks, Melissa
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 067088300x Date: 1999PWKirkusBL
As it explores the life lessons of Jane, the contemporary American Everywoman - who combines the charm of Bridget Jones, the vulnerability of Ally McBeal, and the wit of Lorrie Morre - The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing offers wise, poignant, and laugh-out-loud insight.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Chicklit Stars - Collected Tales and Fantasies of
Lord Berners
Author: Lord Berners
Publisher: Turtle Point List Price: $ 16.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1885983387 Date: 1999BL - The Metaphysical Touch
Author: Brownrigg, Sylvia
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0374199655 Date: 1999PW
In 1991 Emily Piper, a graduate student at Berkeley, has nearly finished her dissertation in metaphysics when her life is changed by the great Berkeley-Oakland fire that destroyed over 3,000 homes. Pi loses all of her belongings: her books and writings, art the things that reminded her of herself. Though others throw themselves into the task of rebuilding their lives, Pi can't. Instead, she escapes to the small coastal town of Mendocino. - Captain Kidd
Author: Charyn, Jerome
Publisher: St. Martins List Price: $ 20.95 ISBN: 0312205066 Date: 1999Kirkus
The protagonist of this comic novel of World War II is on the personal staff of General George Patton during the invasion of Germany. With Captain Roland Kahn by his side, Patton's army can expect some hilarious shenanigans.
Suggested Reading: World Wars Fiction Stars - Juneteenth
Author: Ellison, Ralph (John F. Callahan, ed)
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0394464575 Date: 1999PW
It is Washington D.C., in the 1950's and a race-baiting senator has just been shot on the Senate floor by a young black man. On his deathbed, he summons an elderly Black minister from Oklahoma who comes to his side. Their remarkable conversation and the memories it sparks take them back to their deeply buried past, and finally to a tragic event that first brought them together.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | African American Fiction Stars - Poachers: Stories
Author: Franklin, Tom
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0688167403 Date: 1999PWKirkus
In this astonishing and brilliant debut collection of stories set in a profoundly Deep South, Franklin "plumbs raw and startling places" (Rick Bass). "What a trip, awfully good." - Barry Hannah.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - Wonders of the Invisible
World
Author: Gates, David
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0679436685 Date: 1999KirkusLJ
In this extraordinary first collection of stories by the critically acclaimed author of Jernigan and Preston Falls, " the strikingly real landscapes are populated with terrifyingly self-aware figures who refuse to go anywhere gently.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - Mother of Pearl
Author: Haynes, Melinda
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 07857754850 Date: 1999PWBL
This debut work captures the irony and beauty of life in the 1950s Deep South, centering around 28-year-old Even Grade, a Mississippi black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, the 15-year-old daughter of the town whore. Both are passionately determined to discover the precious things neither expected as children: human connection, enduring commitment, and above all, unconditional love. - Local Girls
Author: Hoffman, Alice
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0399145079 Date: 1999PW
A collection of exceptionally tender, beautifully told stories by the author of such remarkable novels as Here on Earth and Practical Magic. - The Colony of Unrequited
Dreams
Author: Johnston, Wayne
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385495420 Date: 1999PWLJKirkus
Newfoundland is the setting for this story of how fate brings together a witty school boy who pursues socialist dreams and a popular newspaper columnist who writes about the history of the continent.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Labor - Interpreter of Maladies
Author: Lahiri, Jhumpa
Publisher: Mariner List Price: $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 039592720x Date: 1999Kirkus
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and a baffling new world, the characters in Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of their culture and generations.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars - Wormwood
Author: Levien, David
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0786865067 Date: 1999Kirkus - Jem (and Sam)
Author: Mount, Ferdinand
Publisher: Carroll & Graff List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 078670649x Date: 1999BL
How does Jeremiah Mount, a dealer in pornography and a failed farmer's son, come to be the lover of the Duchess of Albemarle and the colleague of the great Samuel Pepys? This novel of jealousy and envy evokes the London of the Restoration as it brings its dubious hero to life.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - The Wilder Sisters
Author: Mapson, Jo-Ann
Publisher: HarperCollins List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0060191163 Date: 1999BL
Already a widow in her 40s, Rose wonders if she'll ever love again. Still single in her 30s, Lily wonders if she'll ever love at all. When they both escape to their parents' New Mexico ranch, they discover the bonds that unite them in love and longing. - My Russian
Author: McNamer, Deidre
Publisher: Houghton List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0395956374 Date: 1999PW
Francesca Woodbridge, supposedly on a tour of Greece, is really spying on her former life - a recent lover, a wounded husband, and a rapidly changing America. - Lazarus Rumba
Author: Mestre, Ernesto
Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 27.50 ISBN: 0312199074 Date: 1999KirkusLJ
A modern tale rooted in recent historical events but filtered through a patiently unfolding storytelling style that pays homage to The Arabian Nights, this ambitious novel centers around three generations of women in a Cuban family during the time of Castro's revolutionary upheaval. - ZigZag
Author: Napoleon, Landon J.
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0805060480 Date: 1999LJKirkus - Broke Heart Blues
Author: Oates, Joyce Carol
Publisher: Dutton List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0525944516 Date: 1999KirkusBLPW
Accused of murder at 16, the minute the manhunt starts, the second the sensational trial begins, John Reddy Heart is front-page news, celebrated in song, and well on his way to becoming a small town's obsession.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Three Dollars
Author: Perlman, Elliot
Publisher: MacMurray and Beck List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 1878448889 Date: 1999PW
At once humorous and dramatic, Three Dollars is about Eddie, an honest, compassionate man who finds himself, at the age of thirty-eight, with a wife, a child, and three dollars. At any other time the world would have smiled on him. But this is the nineties and the world values other things. A brilliantly deft and poignant portrait of a man attempting to retain his humanity, his family, and his sense of humor in a corporate world. - Publisher's marketing. - The Jukebox Queen of Malta
Author: Rinaldi, Nicholas M.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684856123 Date: 1999LJ
From the heralded author of Bridge Fall Down comes a lyrical, heart-wrenching story set amidst the chaos - and absurdity- of war-torn Malta during World War II. - An Equal Music
Author: Seth, Vikram
Publisher: Broadway List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0767902912 Date: 1999PW
The author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy returns with a deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians, one of whom is going deaf, set against a magical backdrop of Europe and classical music.
Readalike List: Music & Fiction - The Palace
Author: St. Aubin de Teran, Lisa
Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0880016620 Date: 1999KirkusLJ - Wedding Jester
Author: Stern, Steve
Publisher:Graywolf List Price: $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN: 155597290x Date: 1999PW
"What good news -- more stories by Steve Stern! I am a zealous admirer of his one-of-a-kind imagination and his miraculous sentences." -- Cynthia Ozick - Who Do You Love: Stories
Author: Thomspon, Jean
Publisher: Harcourt List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0151004161 Date: 1999PW
This collection, named a finalist for the National Book Award and other honors, presents the lives of ordinary people who long for communion and grace with others. - Notes of a Desolate Man
Author: T'ien-Wen, Chu
Publisher: Columbia Univ List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 02311608x Date: 1999BL - Physics of Sunset
Author: Vandenburgh, Jane
Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0679424830 Date: 1999PW
From the highly acclaimed author of Failure to Zigzag comes a blisteringly funny and poignant new novel about the freedoms and imprisonments of desire - the story of two California families and the doomed love affair that unwittingly connects them. - The Oxygen Man
Author: Yarbrough, Steve
Publisher: MacMurray & Beck List Price: $ 20 ISBN: 1878448854 Date: 1999KirkusBL
In this powerful first novel, Steve Yarbrough takes us into the deep-South world of Ned Rose, who works nights checking the oxygen levels in fish farm ponds, does all the dirty work his boss requires, and silently shares the family home with his sister Daze, who is nearly blinded by bitterness and disdain. Since his angry teenage years, Ned's life has been marred by a violence that erupts loudly and quickly disappears, leaving him filled with secrets and regret. When Ned and Daze realize that they have one last hope for deliverance.
Suggested Reading: Debuts - One Hundred and One Ways
Author: Yoshikawa, Mako
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0553110993 Date: 1999PWBL
Lyrical, haunting, and evocative, One Hundred and One Ways offers the tale of a young Japanese-American woman whose past and future have begun to collide. - Layover
Author: Zeidner, Lisa
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375502866 Date: 1999PW
One day Claire decides to simply not go home. During the leave of absence she takes from her daily life, her behavior ranges from the illicit to the illegal to - she fears - the downright insane.
May
- Turn of the Century
Author: Anderson, Kurt
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0375500081 Date: 1999PW
A big, fresh, energetic, hyper-realistic, up-to-the-second comedy of manners set in Manhattan in 2000, Turn of the Century depicts marriage, family, friendship, and business as they are conducted at the giddy, anxious end of the millennium. - Another World
Author: Barker, Pat
Publisher: Farrar List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0374105251 Date: 1999PWKirkus
From the author of the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy comes an "old-fashioned novel in a modern idiom" (The Sunday Times [London]) - an extraordinarily powerful study of memory, and of the various ways in the which the violent past returns to haunt and distort the present. - England, England
Author: Barnes, Julian
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0375405828 Date: 1999KirkusPW
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this "commanding and imaginative achievement" (Sunday Times - London) tells the story of Sir Jack Pitman, who seeks to realize a "destination" where replicas of all England's national treasures - from Stonehenge to Princess Diana's grave - can be conveniently gathered together for tourism purposes.
Suggested Reading: Amusement & Theme Parks - Someone to Watch Over Me:
Stories
Author: Bausch, Richard
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 006017335 Date: 1999PWKirkus
One of America's master storytellers returns with a breathtaking collection of short stories peopled with engaging characters. - City of Light
Author: Belfer, Lauren
Publisher: Dial List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 038533401x Date: 1999PW
In the grand tradition of Ragtime and The Alienist comes a dazzling historical novel bursting with vibrant characters both real and imagined. At once a thriller, a love story, and a rich portrait of an American city poised for glory at the turn of the century, City of Light is a human drama wrought with remarkable depth and intelligence.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Wrack
Author: Bradley, James
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0805061088 Date: 1999PW
David Norfolk, an archeologist searching for a Portugese ship, long rumored to be buried beneath the sand dunes of Southern Australia, unearths instead the body of a man murdered 50 years ago. - Night Inspector
Author: Busch, Frederick
Publisher: Harmony List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0609602357 Date: 1999KirkusPW
New York City, 1867: Repulsed by the revelation that the conversion of black souls into merchandise has not ceased after the Civil War, a veteran finds himself drawn into a steamy underworld of murderers, whores and sewer and slum dwellers.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Elementals Fire and Ice
Author: Byatt, A. S.
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0375502505 Date: 1999BLPW
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession comes a collection of brilliant stories about opposites: passion and alienation, art and life, the human and the mythic. - Corner of the Veil
Author: Cosse, Laurence
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0684846675 Date: 1999Kirkus
Already a bestseller in France where it was nominated for several literary prizes, this brilliant theological thriller asks - and answers - perhaps the most compelling question there is: "What if God's existence was proven, undeniably and irrefutably?"
Suggested Reading: Alternative History Stars - The Orphan Game
Author: Darby, Ann
Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688167780 Date: 1999PW
In a quiet California town in the mid '60's, where the mores of the '50's haven't quite departed, a young woman's passage from a troubled family is propelled by unwanted pregnancy. - 30: A Novel
Author: Dixon, Stephen
Publisher: Holt List Price: $ 30 ISBN: 0805059237 Date: 1999Kirkus
In 30, Dixon presents readers with life according to Gould, his brilliant fictional narrator who shares his thoroughly examined life from start to several finishes. - Nanny and the Iceberg
Author: Dorfman, Ariel
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0374218986 Date: 1999BL
Rabelaisian, picaresque, and erotic, this ebullient comedy about sex, Antarctica, and Che Guevara is the most disarmingly original fiction yet from the highly acclaimed author of Konfidenz and Death and the Maiden. - Hadrian's Walls
Author: Draper, Robert
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0375403698 Date: 1999PWBL
In a surprising debut novel, the lifelong friendship between a prison's director and a notorious convict creates a conflict between obligation and loyalty. - Paris Trance
Author: Dyer, Geoff
Publisher: Farrar List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0374229813 Date: 1999PW
Boldly erotic and hauntingly elegiac, comic and romantic, this novel confirms Dyer as one of England's most original and talented writers. Luke moves to Paris with the idea of writing a novel but things - like the club scene, action movies, and love - get in the way. - Human Voices
Author: Fitzgerald, Penelope
Publisher: Mariner List Price: $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 039595617x Date: 1999KirkusLJ
Targeted by enemy bombers in 1940, the BBC turns its concert hall into a dormitory for both sexes - and the personal chaos rivals the political. Published for the first time in the U.S. - The Journal of Mrs.Pepys:
Portrait of a Marriage
Author: George, Sara
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312205546 Date: 1999Kirkus
This fascinating, fictional journal by the wife of celebrated 17th -century diarist Samuel Pepys is a portrait of a tumultuous marriage and a compelling era.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - The White Bone
Author: Gowdy, Barbara
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0805060367 Date: 1999KirkusLJ
In a work imagined entirely from the perspective of African elephants, Gowdy performs a feat virtually unparalleled in modern fiction. Plunged into an alien landscape, we orient ourselves in elephant time, elephant space, elephant consciousness and begin to feel, as Gowdy puts it, "what it would be like to be that big and gentle, to be that imperiled, and to have that prodigious memory." - A Dangerous Friend
Author: Just, Ward
Publisher: Houghton List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0395856981 Date: 1999PWLJBL
A major novel by the author of Echo House, set in Indochina is 1965. Sydney Parade, a trained political scientist, runs away to Saigon in an effort to become something larger than himself - and begins - but only begins - to understand something of the complexities of Western survival in the Third World.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars - If Men Were Angels
Author: Karaim, Reed
Publisher: Norton List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393047806 Date: 1999LJ
A searching and powerfully written novel about a dark-horse presidential candidate who seems to be the answer to the hopes of the American voters. Is he, perhaps, too good to be true?
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction - The Girl Who Loved Tom
Gordon
Author: King, Stephen
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 16.95 ISBN: 0684867621 Date: 1999PW
When a young girl gets lost in the woods, she has only her Sony Walkman for comfort. She is a huge fan of Tom Gordon, a relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, so she listens to a game and he becomes a character in her mind. The question is, is there something threatening in the woods? - Battle Creek
Author: Lasser, Scott
Publisher: Rob Weisbach List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688167853 Date: 1999PWLJ
A man who has spent his adult life juggling the roles of coach to an amateur baseball team, father to his estranged son, and caretaker to his own disapproving father, finds his life coming apart at the seams when, during one single season, his pitcher loses his arm, his son drifts further away, and he learns his father is dying of cancer. - Fleur De Leigh's Life
of Crime
Author: Leslie, Diane
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0684856956 Date: 1999LJ
A heartwarming, autobiographical debut novel about coming of age in late 1950's Hollywood. Featured on NPR's "Selected Shorts."
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Hunting Down Home
Author: McNeil, Jean
Publisher: Milkweed List Price: $ 16 ISBN: 1571310566 Date: 1999BL - The Messenger
Author: Montero, Mayra
Publisher: HarperCollins List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0060192232 Date: 1999PW
Set in Cuba, this brooding novel tells the story of two star-crossed lovers, tenor Enrico Caruso and his mulatto mistress, whose destinies unfold to the rhythms of African and Chinese magic.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - The Deposition of
Father McGreevy
Author: O'Doherty, Brian
Publisher: Turtle Point List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 1885983395 Date: 1999LJKirkus
Rich in the details of Irish life and love, with a narrative that evokes both a time and a place with a keen, unsentimental eye, this novel tells the story of a priest who must struggle to preserve what remains of a parish in an isolated village where the women mysteriously die.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars - The Bingo Queens of Paradise
Author: Park, June
Publisher: Cliff Street List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0060193123 Date: 1999LJ
Oklahoman Darla Moon struggles to break free and pursue her dreams. Blessed with the unexpected love of an itinerant preacher who sweeps her off her feet, Darla formulates a plan to escape. - Keeping Faith
Author: Picoult, Jodi
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688168256 Date: 1999Kirkus
When her parents divorce, seven-year-old Faith finds a friend who supports her - a friend who may be imaginary. Is Faith a prophet or just a troubled little girl? From the acclaimed author of The Pact comes a provocative novel about belief, betrayal, miracles, and the fierce love of a mother for her child. - Close Range: Wyoming Stories
Author: Proulx, Annie
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684852217 Date: 1999KirkusPWLJ
From one of the great writers of our time comes a collection of award-winning stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. Accompanied by watercolor illustrations by William Matthews, the pieces have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's - work by an author writing at the peak of her craft.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Sugar Land
Author: Rodgers, Joni
Publisher: Spinsters Ink List Price: $ 12 ( trade paper) ISBN: 188352332x Date: 1999LJ
This is the story of the Smithers sisters - Kit and Kiki. As children they performed throughout Texas as the Blues Babies under the tutelage of their mother, Vivica. But those glory days of county fair stages, adoring fans, and gold lame gowns are long gone. Now Kit and Kiki are all grown up. All that remains is the blues the sisters sing as they learn to cope with the vicissitudes of real life: withering marriages, cheating spouses, balloon mortgages, lost opportunities, morning sickness, and the demands of motherhood. And then there's Neeva, Kit's mother-in-law-from-hell. Oddly enough, her death places Neeva center stage in Kit's life as the of her guilty conscience. Sugar Land is the story of how two modern goddesses earn their wings by coming to terms with life and death and everything in between. It's about the healing power of forgiveness, the seemingly impossible task of loving, the resilience of family ties - and what happens when a tornado meets a double-wide trailer. - Publisher's marketing. - Tough, Tough Toys for Tough,
Tough Boys
Author: Self, Will
Publisher: Grove List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0802116442 Date: 1999PW
From the author of Great Apes come more corkscrewed tales in this sharp, funny collection packed with verbal fireworks. - Way People Run
Author: Tilghman, Christopher
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 067944971x Date: 1999PW
The author of Mason's Retreat and In a Father's Place presents a collection of stunning short stories about the fault lines that crack open in people, marriages, and families. - Brief Interviews with Hideous
Men: Stories
Author: Wallace, David Foster
Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0316925411 Date: 1999PW
These eclectic stories - which have been prominently serialized in Harper's, Esquire, and the Paris Review - explore intensely immediate states of mind with the creative daring that has won Wallace's reputation as one of the most talented fiction writers of his generation. - Tipping the Velvet
Author: Waters, Sarah
Publisher: Riverhead List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573221368 Date: 1999PW
"Lavishly crammed with the songs, smells, and costumes of late Victorian England" (The Daily Telegraph), this delicious, steamy debut novel chronicles the adventures of a young girl whose fortunes are forever changed when she falls in love with a cross-dressing music-hall singer.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - White Snake and Other Stories
Author: Yen, Geling
Publisher: Aunt Lute List Price: $ 10.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1879960559 Date: 1999LJ - Haunted Traveller: An Imaginary
Memoir
Author: Yourgrau, Barry
Publisher: Arcade List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 1559704829 Date: 1999BL
Mixing the grand gestures of travel writing with Gothic horror, amorous fables, adventure yarns, and his trademark surreal wit, Yourgrau has created a lushly atmospheric and deeply personal masterpiece of a book that distills the special sublime genius of his earlier work and pushes it to a new, richly poignant level.
April
- Leper's Companions
Author: Blackburn, Julia
Publisher: Pantheon List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0679439846 Date: 1999KirkusPW
From the widely praised author of Daisy Bates in the Desert, here is an exquisite new novel about a woman's fantastical quest for rebirth in the aftermath of a devastating loss. - Finbar's Hotel
Author: Bolger, Dermot (ed)
Publisher: Harvest List Price: $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0156006332 Date: 1999BL
In an unprecedented collaboration, seven of Ireland's finest writers join in a riotous novel about the last night in the life of a dingy Dublin hotel.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars - Lamb in Love
Author: Brown, Carrie
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ ? ISBN: 1565122038 Date: 1999PWBL
A timid English postmaster falls helplessly, secretly in love with a woman who believes love has passed her by in this novel from the author of Rose's Garden. - Driving the Heart, and Other
Stories
Author: Brown, Jason
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0393047210 Date: 1999PW
A stunningly elegant and highly original debut collection of stories at once dark and poignant, funny and bleak. Brown plumbs the hearts and minds of characters trying to make sense of their lives. - Signs and Wonders
Author: Bukiet, Melvin Jules
Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 26 ISBN: 0312200099 Date: 1999PW
On the eve of the millennium, in the midst of a brutal hurricane on the Baltic coast, a concrete prison barge rips free of its moorings, releasing 12 depraved souls and the one they call their Savior. - Famous After Death
Author: Cheever, Benjamin
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0609600052 Date: 1999PWKirkus
In this brilliant and wicked comic novel by the acclaimed author of The Plagiarist and The Partisan, Noel Hammersmith has two dreams: to bring his weight down to a slim 138 pounds and to be famous. - Living on the Edge: A Collection
of Short Fiction by Peace Corps Writers
Author: Coyne, John (ed)
Publisher: Curbstone List Price: $ 17.95 (paperback) ISBN: 1880684578 Date: 1999LJ - For the Relief
of Unbearable Urges: Stories
Author: Englander, Nathan
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0375404929 Date: 1999PWLJKirkusBL
A work of stunning authority and imagination, Englander's debut contains ten energized, irreverent stories rooted in the weight of Jewish history and the customs of Orthodox life.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Sea Came in at Midnight
Author: Erickson, Steve
Publisher: Bard List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0380977664 Date: 1999PWBL
In the final seconds of the old millennium, 1,999 woman and children march off the edge of a cliff in Northern California, urged on by a cult of silent men in white robes. Kristin -- who was meant to be two-thousandth to fall -- flees at the last moment. Answering a cryptic personals ad, she finds temporary haven in the Hollywood Hills with an obsessed unnamed man over his life's work: a massive blue calendar that measures modern time by the events of chaos. In a breathtaking literary dance of fate and coincidence, the story careens forward from here across a new and different history from a ritual sacrifice in the name of salvation to a ritual sacrifice in the name of pleasure, from an ancient haunted Celtic tower in Brittany to the revolving memory hotels of Tokyo, from a cinematic hoax in Manhattan that costs five women their lives to a mysterious bloodstained set of coordinates tacked to the wall of an abandoned San Francisco penthouse. And, unknown even to her, at the center of that dance is the seventeen-year-old Kristin, who will take the reader on an extraordinary journey through an age where everyone is a millennium unto herself. (Bard marketing) - White Oleander
Author: Fitch, Janet
Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0316285269 Date: 1999PWKirkus
When a woman murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life, her daughter must navigate a new reality - that of a series of foster homes, each its own universe, each with its own limits and dangers. - The Hippopotamus Marsh
Author: Gedge, Pauline
Publisher: Moyer Bell List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 155921225x Date: 1999LJ
Suggested Reading: Egyptian Stars - Benjamin's Gift
Author: Golding, Michael
Publisher: Warner List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0446521108 Date: 1999BL
A richly crafted novel, here is a tale that is at once the adventure-filled story of an unusual father and son and a front-row view of the momentous events that shaped the 20th century. - East of the Mountains
Author: Guterson, David
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0151002290 Date: 1999PWBLLJ
From the author of the prize-winning Snow Falling on Cedars comes a novel of America. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, a recently widowed, retired heart surgeon, accompanied by his two dogs, sets out on a journey through the West - sage deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, and vast orchards - on his last hunt.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Still Waters in Niger
Author: Hill, Kathleen
Publisher: Triquarterly List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0810150891 Date: 1999PW - The Spell
Author: Hollinghurst, Alan
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670883565 Date: 1999PW
Set in London and countryside, the narrative tracks the interlocking passions of four men. As each character falls successfully under the spell of love or drugs, this story unfurls into a richly witty picture of modern gay life. - Sabbathday River
Author: Korelitz, Jean Haniff
Publisher: Farrar Strais & Giroux List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0374253234 Date: 1999PWBL
One warm September morning in 1985, Naomi Roth finds the drowned body of a newborn baby girl floating in the Sabbathday River. The community rapidly fingers Heather Pratt, a young single mother, as the prime suspect. But when the body of a second infant is found, Heather is charged with both deaths. In this new work, Korelitz, also author of A Jury of Her Peers, has written a powerful, hypnotically readable novel about life in a small town. - Breath and Shadows
Author: Leffland, Ella
Publisher: Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688142710 Date: 1999PWKirkusBL
Ella Leffland brilliantly explores the perils of ordinary life that threaten the well-being, even the sanity, of one member of each of three generations of a Danish family in Europe and America -- people who are daring enough to believe that goodness and truth are possible in worlds they cannot control.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Spiderweb
Author: Lively, Penelope
Publisher: HarperCollins List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 006019233x Date: 1999Kirkus
From the award-winning author of Heat Wave comes a suspenseful novel about a fiercely independent woman who finally confronts the dilemma that has shaped her life - that of her conflicting needs for solitude and human connection. - The Haunted Major
Author: Marshall, Robert
Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0880016698 Date: 1999Kirkus
Originally printed in 1902, The Haunted Major tells the story of an epic golf match, the courtship of an American millionairess, and the appearance of a Scottish ghost. - Bone by Bone
Author: Matthiessen, Peter
Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375501029 Date: 1999BLKirkusLJPW
Although it stands alone, Bone by Bone is the conclusion and capstone of the Watson trilogy as well as a true tour de force. Matthiessen brings his anti-hero to life with a complexity of character and profound humanity that establishes the novel as a modern classic.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Florida Fiction | All Stars - The Queen's Bastard
Author: Maxwell, Robin
Publisher: Arcade List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 1559707456 Date: 1999PW
In this sequel to The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, Maxwell writes of a young man named Arthur Dudley, the son of Elizabeth I and her lover, Robin Dudley. Earl of Leicester.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars reading list. - Migration of Ghosts
Author: Melville, Pauline
Publisher: Bloomsbury List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 158234020x Date: 1999KirkusPW
Spirits are on the move in Melville's fabulous short story collection as she weaves a tapestry with a sense of mischief and tremendous skill. - The Late Mr. Shakespeare
Author: Nye, Robert
Publisher: Arcade List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559704691 Date: 1999Kirkus
Not since Anthony Burgess's Nothing Like the Sun has a novel bout Shakespeare been this rich, strange, and wonderful. Our guide to the life of the Bard in Robert Nye's dazzling new novel is an actor known as Pickleherring, who asserts that he was not only an original member of Shakespeare's acting troupe but the creator of the greatest female roles, from Cleopatra through Portia. In an attic above a brothel in Restoration London, Pickleherring, now ancient, sits down to write the story of Shakespeare's life. Gentle readers will learn much that will cause their eyes to pop open. Using sources both firsthand and far-fetched - recounting the myths and rumors surrounding Shakespeare with as much glee as he does earthier realities -- Pickleherring gives us an outrageously bawdy, language-loving, and edifying romp through the life and times of the greatest writer in the English language. - Publisher's marketing.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Last Things
Author: Offill, Jenny
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0374184054 Date: 1999PW
When a woman draws a young girl deeper into a strange world of myth and obsession, a father finds himself increasingly shut out. - A Prayer for the Dying
Author: O'Nan, Stewart
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0805061479 Date: 1999PWBLLJ
Dark, poetic, and chilling, A Prayer for the Dying asks if it is possible to be a good man in a time of madness as members of the town succumb to a fatal epidemic.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars - Lament of the Linnet
Author: Ortese, Anna Maria
Publisher: Harvill List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 1860462065 Date: 1999BL - Mr. Wroe's Virgins
Author: Rogers, Jane
Publisher: Overlook List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0879517026 Date: 1999PW
In Lancashire in 1830, when God told prophet John Wroe to comfort himself with seven virgins, his congregation offered him their daughters. Mr. Wroe's Virgins tells the story of the nine months of their life together, until accusations of indecency and the trial that follows bring Wroe's household to a dramatic end.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Second Hand Smoke
Author: Rosenbaum, Thane
Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312199546 Date: 1999BL
In the seamy world of Miami, Mila Katz lives by the wits with which she survived the Holocaust - and her son, who grew up under his mother's psychotic tutelage to become a lawyer and Nazi hunter, finds that at every turn he is the heir to the rage and trauma of her past. - The Ground Beneath Her
Feet
Author: Rushdie, Salman
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 27.50 ISBN: 0805053085 Date: 1999BLLJKirkus
Vina Aspara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks, and again finds her over and over throughout his own extraordinary life in music.
Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction | All Stars - The Hearts of Soldiers
Author: Schroeder, Joan Vannordsall
Publisher: DK Ink List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 078942553x Date: 1999BL - Gardens in the Dunes
Author: Silko, Leslie
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684811545 Date: 1999BLPW
From the acclaimed author of Almanac of the Dead - the smoldering, haunting, and incandescent story of an Indian girl orphaned by an act of white brutality and adopted by a proper Victorian family.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Adoption - Mosiac Man
Author: Sukenick, Ronald
Publisher: Northwest Univ List Price: $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1573660795 Date: 1999LJ - Night Gardening
Author: Swann, E.L.
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $ 16.95 ISBN: 0786864982 Date: 1999PW
When Maggie, recovering from a life-threatening illness, meets Tristan, a handsome landscape architect, her diminished spirit is rekindled. As he restores her fading garden, their relationship blooms into an intensely exciting romance neither one had ever dared to imagine. - The Books of Kings
Author: Thackara, James
Publisher: Overlook List Price: $ 27.95 ISBN: 0879519231 Date: 1999BL
An electrifying grand-scale novel set on the eve of the Nazi invasion as the idlyllic student life of four friends in Paris gives way to the frenzy of war.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Fiction - Best American Short
Stories of the Century
Author: Updike, John (ed)
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 28 ISBN: 0395843685 Date: 1999PW - The Emperor's General
Author: Webb, James H.
Publisher: Broadway List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0767900766 Date: 1999LJPWKirkus
Did the Japanese really lose World War II? The bestselling author of Fields of Fire brilliantly portrays the epic battle of wills between MacArthur, America's greatest general, and a country with a genius for self-preservation. In the superbly imagined portrait of the days just following World War II, Webb has crafted an extraordinary saga from a spellbinding chapter in American history.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Fiction | All Stars - Surrender, Dorothy
Author: Wolitzer, Dorothy
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0684848449 Date: 1999PW
Skillfully combining the humorous with the somber, the author shows readers what happens as a young woman's friends are forced to rethink their notions of friendship, maturing, and mortality.
March
- Dreamland
Author: Baker, Kevin
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 26 ISBN: 0060193093 Date: 1999PWBLLJ
A literary tour de force in the tradition of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime that delivers both a masterful, sweeping chronicle of an era of American history and an intimate portrait of a city, depicting it in all its garish, squalid, exuberant, frightening magnificence.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction | All Stars | Amusement & Theme Parks - The Return of Little Big
Man
Author: Berger, Thomas
Publisher: Little Brown List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0316098442 Date: 1999PWBLLJ
In the long-awaited sequel to the bestselling classic Little Big Man, the foremost chronicler of the American West, Jack Crabb, continues his fabulous adventures.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction | Western Stars | All Stars - Tara Road
Author: Binchy, Maeve
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385333951 Date: 1999PW
Ria, who lives on Tara Road in Dublin, thinks her marriage is fine right up until her husband leaves with his young, pregnant girlfriend. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now estranged from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars - Right from Wrong
Author: Bonner, Cindy
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN:156512104x Date: 1999BL
The fourth of Bonner's deliciously romantic historical novels, this classic tale of love, war and sin is set against the rolling hills of Central Texas and the mansard rooftops of Paris. - Devil's Valley
Author: Brink, Andre
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0151004404 Date: 1999LJ
In new novel by the author of A Dry White Season, nothing in Devil's Valley is at is seems -- the supernatural is an ingredient of everyday, the living and dead are never quite separate, and the grotesque coexists with the banal. - The Professor of Light
Author: Budhos, Marina Tamar
Publisher: Putnam List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399144730 Date: 1999PW
Psychological drama and Carribean storytelling combine in a novel about a young woman, her father, and their journey through science, dreams, and the legends of family history. - Freedom Song: Three Novels
Author: Chaundhuri, Amit
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375404279 Date: 1999PWKirkus
In three short novels, readers follow the life experiences of the intimate world of Indian men, women and children of the middle class living in Calcutta, Bombay, and England. - Teeth of the Dog
Author: Ciment, Jill
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0517702029 Date: 1999BL
With distilled emotional power and prose tactile and visual enough to feel the heat and clamor on every page, this riveting tale tackles the inevitable consequences of the hegemony of the American dream. - Lord of the Barnyard: Killing
the Fatted Calf and Arming the Aware in the Corn Belt
Author: Egolf, Tristan
Publisher: Grove/Altantic List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0802116418 Date: 1999LJBL
A manic, inventive, and painfully funny debut novel about a town's dirty laundry - and a garbageman's strike that lets it all hang out. - Carter Clay
Author: Evans, Elizabeth
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0060192658 Date: 1999PWKirkusLJ
Acclaimed for her stunning debut, The Blue Hour, Elizabeth Evans returns with an explosive tale of a drunken driver's quest for salvation . . . and the family whose lives he has irrevocably changed.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Evensong
Author: Godwin, Gail
Publisher: Ballantine List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0345372441 Date: 1999KirkusLJPW
Into the well-ordered life of a young female pastor come three strangers, whose explosive personalities will ignite a conflagration in her marriage . . . and in the depths of her very soul.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - On Mystic Lake
Author: Hannah, Kristin
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0609602497 Date: 1999PW
When her husband announces that he wants a divorce after 20 years of marriage, Anne Colwater retreats to her childhood home in Mystic, Washington, where she rediscovers love, but also emotional hardship. - Mrs. Million
Author: Hautman, Pete
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0684832437 Date: 1999Kirkus
A female lottery winner in a small Midwestern town offers a monetary prize to whomever can tell her the mysterious whereabouts of her husband who has gone into hiding.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction - The Empress of the
Splendid Season
Author: Hijuelos, Oscar
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0060175702 Date: 1999PW
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love comes the story of Lydia Espana, an emigre from Cuba who works in Manhattan as a cleaning woman. Writing with spellbinding passion, Hijuelos simultaneously tells Lydia's tale as well as stories of the secret lives she uncovers. - Trumpet
Author: Kay, Jackie
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0375405097 Date: 1999PW
Through a tapestry of voices, the startling and poignant tale of trumpeter Joss Moody and his wife, Millie, is told: how they built a love, a family, and a life for themselves and their son out a complex, dazzling lie.
Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction Stars - Intimacy
Author: Kureishi, Hanif
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 16 ISBN: 0688482756 Date: 1999PW
This third novel by the acclaimed screenwriter/author known for his uncanny ability to capture the mores of the time tells of a father who prepares to abandon his wife and two boys one night. - Daughters of Jerusalem
Author: Lemmon, Thom
Publisher: Multnomah List Price: $ 12.99 (trade paper) ISBN: 1576734773 Date: 1999BL - The Funnies
Author: Lennon, J. Robert
Publisher: Riverhead List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573221260 Date: 1999PWLJ
The second novel by the award-winning author of The Light of Falling Stars tells the sad and hilarious story of a dysfunctional, semi-estranged family forever immortalized as wisecracking imps in their father's nationally syndicated Family Circus-esque comic strip. - Breakfast on Pluto
Author: McCabe, Patrick
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0060193409 Date: 1999PW
In the 1970s, Patrick "Pussy" Braden, who piles his transsexual trade in London, finds himself inevitably drawn to Northern Ireland's maelstrom of violence and tragedy.
Suggested Reading: Gender Identity Stars - Moonlight on the
Avenue of Faith
Author: Nahai, Gina
Publisher: Harcourt List Price: $24 ISBN: 0151003882 Date: 1999LJ
Weaving together strands of Persian and Jewish culture, Gina Nahai offers a passionate saga of destiny and forbidden love in a novel sure to captivate fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. - Salesman
Author: O'Connor, Joseph
Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0312199988 Date: 1999PW
During the hottest summer in Dublin's history, Billy Sweeney, a middle-aged salesman, decides to take the law into his own hands after his daughter is attacked. But his plans go spectacularly wrong, the results are terrifying, often hilarious, and in the end, unforgettable.
Suggested Reading: Irish Stars - Geographies of Home
Author: Perez, Loida Maritza
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670868892 Date: 1999PWLJ
Iliana reluctantly returns to New York from college, where she confronts all the contradictions, superstitions, joys, and pains of someone caught between two cultures but who is intent on finding a home. - Loves of Judith
Author: Shalev, Meir
Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0880016353 Date: 1999BL
The internationally bestselling story of three men in the Jezreel Valley and their love for Judith and her son, whom each man participates in raising as his own. - Swimming With Jonah
Author: Schulman, Audrey
Publisher: Bard List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0380976862 Date: 1999PW
The author of the critically acclaimed novel The Cage now tells a hypnotic and darkly sensual story about a young woman's awakenings on a tiny Indonesian island. - The Handyman
Author: See, Carolyn
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 037550155x Date: 1999PWKirkus
A lack of artistic vision leads an aspiring painter to a second career as a handyman, thus introducing him to a cast of eccentric acquaintances with an unexpected way of showing him the real scope of his own extraordinary talent. - The Fires
Author: Steinke, Rene
Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0688161502 Date: 1999BL
As a woman struggles to come to terms with her family's tormented past and her own uncertain future, she draws the mesmerized reader ever deeper into her scorched soul, revealing a sensuality that will spiral into final, fiery destruction - unless it can be quenched by love. - Other People's Children
Author: Trollope, Joanna
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670885134 Date: 1999PW
With her sensitive eye and unerring ear, Joanna Trollope, author of The Best of Friends, explores the hard-won truths and often harder to overcome difficulties of stepfamilies: coping with present and former husbands and wives, and above all, with other people's children. - The Dragon Hunt
Author: Vu, Tran
Publisher: Hyperion List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 078684184 Date: 1999Kirkus
Tran Vu came of age during the tumultuous final years of the Vietnam War and escaped his native land as a "boat person" in 1978. In this collection of five brilliantly imagined stories, he manages to convey, in a way no writer ever has before, the psychic wound wrought by decades of conflict. - East Bay Grease
Author: Williamson, Eric Miles
Publisher: Picador List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0312198612 Date: 1999LJKirkus
As two pals wander the streets of Belfast, in search of something better - a better pint, a better job, a better woman, a better now - readers are treated to their hilarious misadventures, political intrigues, and outlandish schemes. - World and Other Places:
Stories 1986-1999
Author: Winterson, Jeanette
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0375402403 Date: 1999Kirkus
Whether trasporting reader's to bizarre new geographies or revealing the joy and pain of owing a brand-new dog, Jeanette Winterson presents all the facets of her extraordinary imagination in a collection of 17 stories.
February
- Incubus
Author: Arensberg, Anne
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0394556968 Date: 1999 Date: 1999PW
The acclaimed author of Sister Wolf and Group Sex presents her most mesmerizing novel yet - the story of a town under demonic possession. - The Houdini Girl
Author: Bedford, Martyn
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375405275 Date: 1999PW
Told with marvelously sustained suspense, persuasive conviction, and grace, this spellbinding novel about the delicate balance between illusion and betrayal, deceit and love, reveals and conceals as it takes readers behind the crafted appearance of two performers in love.
Suggested Reading: Magic & Magicians - The Broken Hearts Club
Author: Black, Ethan
Publisher: Ballantine List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0345426029 Date: 1999PW
The Broken Hearts Club, meeting regularly at Mackey's Steak and Ale Tavern, consists of a group of men with one thing in common: the sting of a broken heart. But for one of them, the rejection has turned to rage . . . and murderous violence. - Nine Below Zero
Author: Canty, Kevin
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385491603 Date: 1999Kirkus
Marvin Deernose saves the life of Senator Henry Neihart and later has a passionate affair with the man's daughter. But as Justine and Marvin's numbness to love begins to wear off, their relationship has terrifying repercussions. Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories
Author: Chabon, Michael
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0679415874 Date: 1999PW
The bestselling author of The Mysteries of Pittsburg and Wonder Boys now crafts nine stunningly original stories - each superb and shot through with Chabon's unique vision an nightmares, hilarity and pain. - My Last Days as Roy Rogers
Author: Devoto, Pat Cunningham
Publisher: Warner List Price: $ 20 ISBN: 0446523887 Date: 1999BL
A new novelist makes a stunning debut with this exceptional tale of a young woman coming of age in Alabama during the last days of the 1950's polio epidemic.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Sister of My Heart
Author: Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385489501 Date: 1999PW
From the bestselling author of The Mistress of Spices comes a passionate novel about the extraordinary bond between two sisters and the family secrets, jealousies, and loves that threaten to tear them apart.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars | Stars of India - Lucky Man, Lucky Woman
Author: Driscoll, Jack
Publisher: Pushcart List Price: $ 24.50 ISBN: 188888908x Date: 1999Kirkus
This unflinchingly honest novel tracks a man's headlong--and just possibly redemptive--leap into chaos. Winner of Pushcart's 17th annual Editor's Book Award. - House of Sand and Fog
Author: Dubus, Andre
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393046974 Date: 1999PWKirkusBL
House of Sand and Fog is a narrative triumph in which a traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story are turned upside down with brutal, heartrending consequences. It is an American tragedy, and a shockingly true picture of the county we live in today.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Reading Group Stars - Esperanza's Box of Saints
Author: Escandon, Maria
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 068485614x Date: 1999LJ
Like Water for Chocolate meets Candide in this stunning debut novel about a beautiful young widow's search for her missing child - a magical, humorous, and passion-filled odyssey that takes her from a humble Mexican village to the brothels of Tijuana and the streets of Los Angeles.
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Latino/Latina Stars - Charlotte Gray
Author: Faulks, Sebastian
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 037550169x Date: 1999Kirkus
During the darkest days of WWII, a young Scottish woman, falls in love with an RAF pilot. When she learns that his plane has been lost over France, she travels there to work for the Resistance. Soon she finds that the struggle for the country's fate is intimately linked to her own battle to take control over her life. Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | World Wars Fiction - The Tesseract
Author: Garland, Alex
Publisher: Riverhead List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573221090 Date: 1999LJ
Set in the Philippines, this Chinese puzzle of a novel, written by the author of The Beach, spans three generations, following the stories of three sets of characters whose lives are intertwined. - The Place You Return
To Is Home: Stories
Author: Gunn, Kirsty
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0871137410 Date: 1999Kirkus
Gunn, who has been called a "young master" by the Los Angeles Times, displays her stunning gifts once again in a new collection of luminous short stories. - Chocolat
Author: Harris, Joanne
Publisher: Viking List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0670881791 Date: 1999PW
Harris offers descriptions of chocolat real enough to melt in the mouths of chocholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere.
Suggested Reading: Cooked Books - Spinners
Author: McCarten, Anthony
Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688163033 Date: 1999KirkusBL
Twin Peaks meets Nathaniel Hawthorne in this wildly original debut novel of a New Zealand town turned upside down - first by flying saucer encounters and then the sudden appearance of the mayor's handsome nephew. - While I Was Gone
Author: Miller, Sue
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0375401121 Date: 1999PWLJ
A decade after her phenomenal bestseller, The Good Mother, Miller delivers an exquisitely suspenseful novel about how casually an marriage can be destroyed and how a good wife can place all she holds dear at risk. - Survivor
Author: Palahniuk, Chuck
Publisher: W.W. Norton List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393047024 Date: 1999Kirkus
From the author of the underground sensation Fight Club comes this wickedly incisive second novel, a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious vision of cult and post-cult life. (from the book jacket) - Mitt Man
Author: Taylor, Mel
Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688160948 Date: 1999BL
Expertly evoking black life in the south in the late 1920's, The Mitt Man, set in a world of gospel choirs and chain gangs, explores the dodgy realm where grifters get religion, and a perfect scam just may pay off in salvation.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Grift Sense | New Orleans - Castros's Curveball
Author: Wendel, Tim
Publisher: Ballantine List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0345424417 Date: 1999Kirkus
When an old scrapbook stirs memories, Billy Bryan looks back to the year 1947 when he was playing winter ball in Cuba, enjoying Havana's decadent nightlife, and dreaming of a major-league career. - Those Who Favor Fire
Author: Wolk, Lauren
Publisher: Random List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679448497 Date: 1999BL
In the small town of Belle Haven, built on abandoned mine shafts, a fire is burning below ground, occasionally erupting to the surface. Into this maelstrom come Rachel and Joe, the central characters in a love story of small-town life, where Americana and the American nightmare converge. - Heads by Harry
Author: Yamanka, Lois-Ann
Publisher: Soho List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0374168504 Date: 1999PWBL
Graphic, compassionate, and brutally funny; Heads by Harry completes Yamanaka's haunting and memorable trilogy on growing up in Hawaii.
Suggested Reading: Asian American Stars - A Journey to the End of the Millennium
Author: Yehoshua, A. B.
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385488823 Date: 1999Kirkus
A brilliantly conceived novel about bigamy and one man's tragic search for validation at the end of the first millennium, by the critically acclaimed author of Mr Mani and A Late Divorce.
January
- Fluke
Author: Blinder, Martin
Publisher: Permanent List Price: $ 22 ISBN: 1579620175 Date: 1999PW
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - Pink Slip
Author: Ciresi, Rita
Publisher: Delacorte List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 038532633332x Date: 1999LJ
A follow-up to Blue Italian, this heartrending novel tells of a tumultuous office romance that forces two people to confront the truth about themselves and their past. - The Country Life
Author: Cusk, Rachel
Publisher: St Martins List Price: ISBN: 0312198485 Date: 1999LJPWKirkus
"Clamamity Jane Eyre" arrives at Cold Comfort Farm in this brilliant comedy of manners and identity by a Whitbread-winning young author. "A novel that makes you laugh out loud and that you put down with regret." - London Literary Review.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction | All Stars - Feeding the Ghosts
Author: D'Aguiar, Fred
Publisher: Ecco List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 088001623x Date: 1999PWLJKirkus
A suspenseful, poetic novel, based on an actual incident about a disease-ridden slave ship, a female captive, and a shocking court case.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars - The Mother-In-Law Diaries
Author: Dawson, Carol
Publisher: Algonquin List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 1565121279 Date: 1999PWKirkus
In a funny, bittersweet novel - a book that is sure to ring true for every woman who didn't realize she was marrying not one person, but two - Dawson takes readers through the ups and downs of marriages and mothers-in-law. - Thine is the Kingdom
Author: Estevez, Abilio
Publisher: Arcade List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559704519 Date: 1999PWKirkus - Manly Pursuits
Author: Harries, Ann
Publisher: Bloomsbury List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 1582340196 Date: 1999KirkusPW
Cecil Rhodes, the great imperialist and diamond tycoon, believes he has only months to live, and that the only thing that can save him is the sound of English birdsongs in the South African country side surrounding his Cape residence.Rich and evocative, Manly Pursuits is splendidly witty novel about loyalty and disgrace, Darwinism and diamonds, imperialism and 'the white man's burden', and sexual ambivalence in a repressive era. - Bloomsbury marketing.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars - The Agent
Author: Higgins, George V.
Publisher: Harcourt Brace List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0151003572 Date: 1999PW
Alexander Drouhin built one of the nation's premier sports agencies through gritty negotiations and savvy marketing, When Drouhin is found murdered, the suspects abound. But, by the time Detective Lieutenant Inspector Francis Clay arrives on the scene, everyone seems to have an alibi. - The Dangerous Age
Author: Jaffee, Annette Williams
Publisher: Leapfrog List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0965457842 Date: 1999LJ
Ten years after her brilliantly received second novel, Recent History, Annette Williams Jaffee returns with a sharp and sensuous look at the tensions between the "perfect" marriage and the longings of the heart. - Mosquito
Author: Jones, Gayl
Publisher: Beacon List Price: $ 29 ISBN: 0807083461 Date: 1999PWLJKirkus
In Gayl Jones' new novel, once again "the command of language is spectacular, as is the breadth of knowledge and allusions" (Jill Nelson, The Nation), but the territory is brand new - the U.S. - Mexican border, along with a new cast of Chicano characters. Suggested Reading: All Stars - The Jew of New York
Author: Katchor, Ben
Publisher: Random List Price: $20 ISBN: 0375401040 Date: 1999PW
From the creator of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer comes a graphic novel of amazing originality, the fevered dream of an amateur historian in which the real " lives of New York Jews are fleshed out and given the breath of poetic truth" (The New Yorker). - Original Bliss
Author: Kennedy, A. L.
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0375402721 Date: 1999Kirkus
Kennedy presents the story of an unlikely courtship between an emotionally paralyzed woman and a self-despising man - and exhibitionist addicted to porn - who find each other in a way to break out of isolation. - The Second Angel
Author: Kerr, Philip
Publisher: Henry Holt List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0805059628 Date: 1999Kirkus
Set in 2069, on the centennial of the Apollo XII Moon mission, this dystopian, high-velocity thriller reveals an Earth where plagues have destroyed the major food supplies, climatic changes have brought constant winter to the once-industrialized West, and a new and virulent virus has infected the population. - Mara and Dann: An Adventure
Author: Lessing, Doris
Publisher: Harpercollins List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0060182946 Date: 1999KirkusPW
Doris Lessing's compelling new novel of a drought-plagued future takes readers inside the heart and soul of a truly memorable heroine - one whose struggle for survival cannot extinguish her passion for knowledge. - More Bread or I'll Appear
Author: Martin, Emer
Publisher: Hougton List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 03935918715 Date: 1999
KirkusBL
At high speed and with wicked humor, Emer Martin introduces readers to a family unlike any other. Here is the story of four siblings in an Irish family as they embark on a far-flung search for the fifth--their mother's beloved. Emer Martin's first book, Breakfast in Babylon, was named Ireland's Best Book of 1996 at the prestigious Listowel Writers' Week.
Suggested Reading: Humorous Fiction - Mr. Darwin's Shooter
Author: McDonald, Roger
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 087113733x Date: 1999PWKirkus
Aboard the HMS Beagle, 15-year-old Syms Covington enters the service of Charles Darwin, shooting and collecting hundreds of specimens for his "gent", specimens that become fundamental to the formation of Darwin's theory of evolution.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Darwin, Naturalists & Evolution - Amsterdam
Author: McEwan, Ian
Publisher: Doubleday List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0385494238 Date: 1999PWBL
A contemporary morality tale that is as profound as it is witty, this short novel is perhaps the most purely delectable fiction Ian McEwan has ever written. Booker Prize winner. - Duane's Depressed
Author: McMurtry, Larry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 26 ISBN: 068485497x Date: 1999PWKirkus
The final and eagerly awaited volume of the trilogy that includes The Last Picture Show and Texasville. Now in their hilarious twilight years, Duane, Karla, Jacy, and the other hapless residents of Thalia, Texas, come to grips with the fact that they've spent their whole lives in a miserable little town. - The River Midnight
Author: Nattel, Lilian
Publisher: Scribner List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0684853035 Date: 1999PWKirkusBL
In a novel that explores the tensions between men and women, and celebrates the wordless and kinetic bond of friendship, Nattel, whose family came from Poland, weaves a story that brings to mind such diverse writers as Isabel Allende, E.L. Doctorow, and Isaac Singer.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Out of the Woods: Stories
Author: Offut, Chris
Publisher: Simon & Schuster List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0684825562 Date: 1999PWKirkus
A new collection of stories by the acclaimed author of Kentucky Straight, whom Tobias Wolff has deemed "one of the best writers of short fiction in his - or any - generation." - Imani All Mine
Author: Porter, Connie
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0395838088 Date: 1999LJ
In the eagerly anticipated new novel from the acclaimed author of All Bright Court, the unwed mother of a baby girl narrates, in her lyrical, street-smart voice, her progress on her journey to adulthood in an increasingly violent world.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars - Thunder on the Mountain
Author: Poyer, David
Publisher: Forge List Price: $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312864949 Date: 1999PWLJBL
An ambitious novel of heroism and violence in the western Pennsylvania oil country at the nadir of the great Depression, in the tradition of Jack London and John Steinbeck.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars - The Peculiar
Memories of Thomas Penman
Author: Robinson, Bruce
Publisher: Overlook List Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0879519142 Date: 1999Kirkus - Fear
Author: Spanidou, Irini
Publisher: Knopf List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0394580559 Date: 1999PW
The author of the much praised God's Snake takes readers to Greece in the 1950's, and into the spartan military world that has shaped a 13-year-old girl, as she moves fearfully yet with intelligence and nerve toward womanhood. - November 1916
Author: Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux List Price: $ 35 ISBN: 0374223149 Date: 1999Kirkus
A vivid and sweeping panorama of Imperial Russia at war on the eve of revolution, November 1916 makes readers experience the whole bubbling cauldron. With masterly and moving empathy, the author unforgettably transports us to that time and palace the last of pre-Soviet Russia. - Amy and Isabelle
Author: Strout, Elizabeth
Publisher: Random House List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0375501347 Date: 1999PWBLKirkus
In a novel about emotional exile, Elizabeth Strout explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Face-Time
Author: Tarloff, Erik
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 23 ISBN: 0609604635 Date: 1999Kirkus
A gripping, undeniably plausible novel of a top white house aide whose girlfriend is having an affair with his boss, the president of the United States - and who refuses to give up this once-in-a-lifetime "privilege."
Suggested Reading: Political Fiction - The Music Lesson
Author: Weber, Katherine
Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 21 ISBN: 0609603175 Date: 1999LJPW
A startling, contemplative literary thriller about a passionate love affair, a stolen painting, and a violent splinter group of the IRA, by the author of Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. - The Intuitionist
Author: Whitehead, Colson
Publisher: Anchor List Price: $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385492995 Date: 1999BLKirkus
It is a time of calamity in a major metropolitan city's Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the department's first black female inspector, is at the center of it. Beautifully written and wildly imaginative, The Intuitionist stars one of the most lovable heroines of all time.
Suggested Reading: African American Stars | Labor Stars - The Shiloh Renewal
Author: Woodruff, Joan Leslie
Publisher: Black Heron List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0930773500 Date: 1999Kirkus
When a girl falls into a coma after an auto accident that kills her sister, she meets people from another century - doctors, nurses, and soldiers, both Northern and Southern, who are on their way to Shiloh to fight a great battle. The girl's doctors expect her to die, but she fools everybody, and by witnessing the deaths of her Civil War era friends, she is able to come to terms with the loss of her sister.
Suggested Reading: Civil War Fiction Stars
Contact...
Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT)
Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): overbooked1@verizon.net or ann@overbooked.com
Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.
I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents.
Who...
Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT)
Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): overbooked1@verizon.net or ann@overbooked.com
Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760. 
I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents.
Overbooked is a volunteer project undertaken by Ann Chambers Theis:
Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.
Overbooked is not an official Chesterfield County Public Library service. Overbooked does not endorse any commercial providers (or their products and services) linked to from this web site.
Overbooked was the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.
Where...
Overbooked resides in Libraryland. Physically, Overbooked is based in the metro Richmond, Virginia area.
Why...
- Because I cannot live without books.
- It is fun.
- I'm fortunate to have a job I love and access to lots of information about books. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to share this information with other book lovers.
- It is a way to channel my obsessive tendencies to organize stuff.
PANG - Play, Affiliation, Nurtance, Gratitude (in memory of my father -psychologist, musician)
Overbooked/Ann is available for panging on Facebook, My Space, and Twitter.
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