Irises
by
Francisco X. Stork
Arthur A. Levine Books, 01/01/2012
Two Sisters: Kate is bound for Stanford and an M.D. - if her family will let her go. Mary wants only to stay home and paint. When their loving but ...
more
A Devil Is Waiting: (Sean Dillon)
by
Jack Higgins
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/03/2012
A devil is indeed waiting...
The President is coming to London, but not to an entirely warm welcome. A fanatical mullah is offering a blessing to ...
more
A Good Man: A Novel
by
Guy Vanderhaeghe
Atlantic Monthly Press, 01/03/2012
A dazzling follow up to
The Englishman's Boy and
The Last Crossing.
Wesley Case is a former soldier and son of a Canadian lumber baron who sets out...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
A Walk Across the Sun: A Novel
by
Corban Addison
Silver Oak, 01/03/2012
When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. With...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Breakdown: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
by
Sara Paretsky
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/03/2012
Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago's Carmilla ...
more
Cell 8
by
Anders Roslund, Borge Hellstrom
Silver Oak, 01/03/2012
Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens of
Three Seconds returns in a riveting mystery that centers on perhaps the most controversial subject in the ...
more
Cinder: Book One in the Lunar Chronicles
by
Marissa Meyer
Feiwel & Friends, 01/03/2012
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats
by
Roger Rosenblatt
Ecco, 01/03/2012
From Roger Rosenblatt, the bestselling author of
Making Toast and
Unless It Moves the Human Heart, comes a poignant meditation on the nature of grief,...
more
Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure
by
Julia Flynn Siler
Atlantic Monthly Press, 01/03/2012
Around 200 A.D., intrepid Polynesians arrived at an undisturbed archipelago. For centuries, their descendants lived with little contact from the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Need You Now: A Novel
by
James Grippando
HarperCollins Publishers, 01/03/2012
New York Times bestseller James Grippando returns with a gripping new stand-alone novel: a story ripped from the headlines, in which a young financial...
more
Night Road
by
Kristin Hannah
St. Martin's Press, 01/03/2012
Lexi and Mia are inseparable from the moment they start high school. Different in so many ways - Lexi is an orphan and lives with her aunt on a ...
more
Perlmann's Silence
by
Pascal Mercier
Grove Press, 01/03/2012
A tremendous international success and a huge favorite with booksellers and critics, Pascal Mercier's
Night Train to Lisbon has been one of the best-...
more
Smut: Stories
by
Alan Bennett
Picador, 01/03/2012
One of England's finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people's public appearance and their private ...
more
Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind
by
Kitty Ferguson
Palgrave Macmillan, 01/03/2012
Stephen Hawking has been an iconic figure in physics for the last half a century, making many groundbreaking discoveries on the nature ...
more
The Confession: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery
by
Charles Todd
William Morrow Paperbacks, 01/03/2012
The Confession is historical crime fiction at its finest, continuing Charles Todd's
New York Times bestselling mystery series featuring severely ...
more
The Darkening Field: A Novel
by
William Ryan
Minotaur Books, 01/03/2012
Captain Alexei Korolev, unwavering in his outward party loyalty but internally conflicted, a dedicated policeman caught in terrifying circumstances, ...
more
The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future
by
Fawzia Koofi
Palgrave Macmillan, 01/03/2012
The nineteenth daughter of a local village leader in rural Afghanistan, Fawzia Koofi was left to die in the sun after birth by her mother. But she ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The Hunter: A Novel
by
John Lescroart
Dutton, 01/03/2012
Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family - until he gets a ...
more
The Man Within My Head
by
Pico Iyer
Knopf, 01/03/2012
We all carry people inside our heads - actors, leaders, writers, people out of history or fiction, met or unmet, who sometimes seem closer to us than ...
more
The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy
by
Seth Mnookin
Simon & Schuster, 01/03/2012
Who decides which facts are true?
In 1998 Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist with a history of self-promotion, published a paper with a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The World We Found: A Novel
by
Thrity Umrigar
Harper, 01/03/2012
Thrity Umrigar, acclaimed author of
The Space Between Us and
The Weight of Heaven, returns with a breathtaking new novel - a skillfully wrought, ...
more
Vulture Peak: A Sonchai Jitpleecheep Novel
by
John Burdett
Knopf, 01/03/2012
When Police Colonel Vikorn puts Sonchai in charge of the highest profile criminal case in Thailand - ending trafficking in human organs - Sonchai ...
more
Wild Abandon: A Novel
by
Joe Dunthorne
Random House, 01/03/2012
At a once vibrant communal-living property in the British countryside, back-to-basics fervor has given way to a vague discontent. A place that once ...
more
Agent 6: A Novel
by
Tom Rob Smith
Grand Central Publishing, 01/05/2012
Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow's secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a "Peace Tour" to ...
more
From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel
by
Alex Gilvarry
Viking, 01/05/2012
High fashion and homeland security clash in a masterful debut.
Boyet Hernandez is a small man with a big American dream when he arrives in New ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
How It All Began: A Novel
by
Penelope Lively
Viking, 01/05/2012
When Charlotte Rainsford, a retired schoolteacher, is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of ...
more
The Invisible Ones: A Novel
by
Stef Penney
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/05/2012
Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd...
more
The Lions of Little Rock
by
Kristin Levine
Putnam Juvenile, 01/05/2012
Two girls separated by race form an unbreakable bond during the tumultuous integration of Little Rock schools in 1958.
Twelve-year-old Marlee doesn...
more
The Street Sweeper: A Novel
by
Elliot Perlman
Riverhead Books, 01/05/2012
Lamont Williams is a paroled felon looking to turn his life around, working as a street sweeper at a large city hospital and searching for his ...
more
The Whisperer
by
Donato Carrisi
Mulholland, 01/05/2012
A gripping literary thriller and smash bestseller that has taken Italy, France, Germany and the UK by storm.
Six severed arms are discovered, ...
more
A Million Suns: An Across the Universe Novel
by
Beth Revis
Razorbill, 01/10/2012
Godspeed was fueled by lies. Now it is ruled by chaos.
It's been three months since Amy was unplugged. The life she always knew is over. And ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Believing the Lie: An Inspector Lynley Novel
by
Elizabeth George
Dutton, 01/10/2012
Inspector Thomas Lynley is mystified when he's sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the ...
more
Glaciers: A Novel
by
Alexis Smith
Tin House Books, 01/10/2012
Isabel is a single, twentysomething thrift-store shopper and collector of remnants, things cast off or left behind by others.
Glaciers follows Isabel...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Lunatics: A Novel
by
Dave Barry
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/10/2012
One of them is a bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist. The other is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Together, they form the ...
more
The Fault in Our Stars
by
John Green
Dutton, 01/10/2012
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed ...
more
The House at Sea's End: A Ruth Galloway Mystery
by
Elly Griffiths
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 01/10/2012
Elly Griffiths's Ruth Galloway novels have been praised as "highly atmospheric" (New York Times Book Review), "remarkable" (Richmond Times-Dispatch), ...
more
The Jaguar: A Charlie Hood Novel
by
T. Jefferson Parker
Dutton, 01/10/2012
Erin McKenna, a beautiful songwriter married to a crooked Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, is kidnapped by Benjamin Armenta, the ruthless leader ...
more
The Little Russian: A Novel
by
Susan Sherman
Counterpoint Press, 01/10/2012
The Little Russian spotlights an exciting new voice in historical fiction, an assured debut that should appeal to readers of Away by Amy Bloom or Cold...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Night Swimmer: A Novel
by
Matt Bondurant
Scribner, 01/10/2012
From the "remarkable storyteller" (San Francisco Chronicle) and highly acclaimed author of
The Wettest County in the World comes a suspenseful novel ...
more
The Obamas
by
Jodi Kantor
Little Brown & Company, 01/10/2012
When Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, he also won a long-running debate with his wife Michelle. Contrary to her fears, politics now ...
more
Biography/Memoir
The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen: A Novel
by
Thomas Caplan
Viking, 01/10/2012
This gripping thriller from Thomas Caplan propels readers around the globe - from Hollywood to Rome, the Black Sea to the Mediterranean - and to the ...
more
The Whole Story of Half a Girl
by
Veera Hiranandani
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 01/10/2012
After her father loses his job, Sonia Nadhamuni, half Indian and half Jewish American, finds herself yanked out of private school and thrown into the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great
by
Eva Stachniak
Bantam Books, 01/10/2012
From award-winning author Eva Stachniak comes this passionate novel that illuminates, as only fiction can, the early life of one of history's boldest ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Rook: A Novel
by
Daniel O'Malley
Little Brown & Company, 01/11/2012
"The body you are wearing used to be mine." So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Come In and Cover Me: A Novel
by
Gin Phillips
Riverhead Books, 01/12/2012
When Ren was only twelve years old, she lost her older brother, Scott, to a car crash. Since then, Scott has been a presence in her life, appearing as...
more
Hope: A Tragedy
by
Shalom Auslander
Riverhead Books, 01/12/2012
The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: No one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Death of Kings: A Novel (Saxon Tales)
by
Bernard Cornwell
Harper, 01/17/2012
The fate of a young nation rests in the hands of a reluctant warrior in the thrilling sixth volume of the
New York Times bestselling Saxon Tales ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Gone West: A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery
by
Carola Dunn
Minotaur Books, 01/17/2012
In September 1926, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential ...
more
Raylan: A Raylan Givens Novel
by
Elmore Leonard
William Morrow, 01/17/2012
The revered
New York Times bestselling author, recognized as “America’s greatest crime writer” (
Newsweek), brings back U.S. Marshal ...
more
Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir
by
Wael Ghonim
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 01/17/2012
The revolutions sweeping the Middle East in 2011 were unlike any the world had ever seen. Brutal regimes that had been in power for many decades were ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Shadows in Flight: Ender's Shadow Series #5
by
Orson Scott Card
Tor Books, 01/17/2012
Ender's Shadow explores the stars in this all-new novel...
At the end of
Shadow of the Giant, Bean flees to the stars with three of his children - ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Taft 2012: A Novel
by
Jason Heller
Quirk Books, 01/17/2012
He is the perfect presidential candidate. Conservatives love his hard-hitting Republican résumé. Liberals love his passion for peaceful ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Tempest: A Novel (Tempest - Trilogy)
by
Julie Cross
St. Martin's Press, 01/17/2012
The year is 2009. Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he's in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Chalk Girl: A Mallory Novel
by
Carol O'Connell
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/17/2012
The little girl appeared in Central Park: red-haired, blue-eyed, smiling, perfect - except for the blood on her shoulder. It fell from the sky, she ...
more
The Evening Hour: A Novel
by
Carter Sickels
Bloomsbury USA, 01/17/2012
Most of the wealth in Dove Creek, West Virginia, is in the earth - in the coal seams that have provided generations with a way of life. Born and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Face Thief: A Novel
by
Eli Gottlieb
William Morrow, 01/17/2012
Author of the New York Times Notable Book
The Boy Who Went Away - winner of the Rome Prize and the British Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize - Eli...
more
The Flame Alphabet: A Novel
by
Ben Marcus
Knopf, 01/17/2012
In
The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heartbreak and horror, a novel about how far we will go,...
more
The Inquisitor: A Novel
by
Mark Allen Smith
Henry Holt and Company, 01/17/2012
A spectacularly original thriller about a professional torturer who has a strict code, a mysterious past, and a dangerous conviction that he can save ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Look of Love: A Piper Donovan Mystery
by
Mary Jane Clark
William Morrow Paperbacks, 01/17/2012
Piper Donavan is back in this second delicious confection in the New York Times bestselling author's Wedding Cake series following
To Have and To Kill...more
The One and Only Ivan
by
Katherine Applegate
HarperCollins Publishers, 01/17/2012
Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he's seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Rope: An Anna Pigeon Novel
by
Nevada Barr
Minotaur Books, 01/17/2012
Anna Pigeon's first case - this is the story her fans have been clamoring for... this is where it all starts.
In
The Rope, the latest in Nevada ...
more
The Ruins of Us: A Novel
by
Keija Parssinen
Harper Perennial, 01/17/2012
Saudi-born author Keija Parssinen's stunning debut offers the intricate, emotionally resonant story of an American expatriate who discovers that her ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Underside of Joy: A Novel
by
Sere Prince Halverson
Dutton, 01/17/2012
Set against the backdrop of Redwood forests and shimmering vineyards, Seré Prince Halverson's compelling debut tells the story of two women, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Wayward Saints
by
Suzzy Roche
Voice, 01/17/2012
A funny and illuminating debut novel about family, music, and second chances, from folk-rock star Suzzy Roche.
Mary Saint, the rule-breaking, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea
by
Morgan Callan Rogers
Viking, 01/19/2012
A captivating debut, introducing a spirited young heroine coming of age in coastal Maine during the early 1960s.
When her mother disappears during ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Odds: A Love Story
by
Stewart O'Nan
Viking, 01/19/2012
Stewart O'Nan's thirteenth novel is another wildly original, bittersweet gem like his celebrated
Last Night at the Lobster. Valentine's weekend, Art ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
All I Did Was Shoot My Man: A Leonid McGill Mystery
by
Walter Mosley
Riverhead Books, 01/24/2012
In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-...
more
All In: The Education of General David Petraeus
by
Paula Broadwell, Vernon Loeb
Penguin Books, 01/24/2012
General David Petraeus bears the mantle of Grant, Patton, MacArthur, Marshall, and Eisenhower. In
All In, military expert Paula Broadwell examines ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
An Available Man: A Novel
by
Hilma Wolitzer
Ballantine Books, 01/24/2012
In this tender and funny novel, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the...
more
Broadway Baby: A Novel
by
Alan Shapiro
Algonquin Books, 01/24/2012
As a little girl growing up in Boston, Miriam Bluestein fantasized about a life lived on stage, specifically in a musical. Get married, have a family ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon: A Burton and Swinburne Adventure
by
Mark Hodder
Pyr, 01/24/2012
It is 1863, but not the one it should be. Time has veered wildly off course, and moves are being made that will lead to a devastating world war. Prime...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
No One
by
Gwenaelle Aubry
Tin House Books, 01/24/2012
Cleaning up her father's home after his death, Gwenaëlle Aubry discovered a handwritten, autobiographical manuscript with a note on the cover: "...
more
Taken: Elvis Cole/Joe Pike Series #15
by
Robert Crais
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/24/2012
When the police tell a wealthy industrialist that her missing son has faked his own kidnapping, she hires Elvis Cole and Joe Pike - and Cole soon ...
more
The Flight of Gemma Hardy: A Novel
by
Margot Livesey
HarperCollins Publishers, 01/24/2012
A captivating tale, set in Scotland in the early 1960s, that is both an homage to and a modern variation on the enduring classic
Jane Eyre.
Fate has ...
more
There Is No Dog
by
Meg Rosoff
Putnam Juvenile, 01/24/2012
What if God were a teenaged boy?
In the beginning, Bob created the heavens and the earth and the beasts of the field and the creatures of the sea,...
more
A Parliament of Spies: An Abbess of Meaux Mystery
by
Cassandra Clark
Minotaur Books, 01/31/2012
Abbess Hildegard may consider herself "just a nun with no useful skills or connections," yet her loyalty and intelligence have brought her to ...
more
A Place of Secrets: A Novel
by
Rachel Hore
Henry Holt and Company, 01/31/2012
The night before it all begins, Jude has the same nightmare that haunted her as a child: running through a dark forest, crying for her mother. Now her...
more
At Last: A Patrick Melrose Novel
by
Edward St. Aubyn
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 01/31/2012
For Patrick Melrose, "family" is more than a double-edged sword. As friends, relatives and foes trickle in to pay final respects to his mother, ...
more
Gillespie and I: A Novel
by
Jane Harris
Harper Perennial, 01/31/2012
As she sits in her Bloomsbury home, with her two birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter sets out to relate the story of her acquaintance, nearly ...
more
Me and You
by
Niccolo Ammaniti
Grove Press, 01/31/2012
From internationally best-selling author Niccolò Ammaniti, comes a funny, tragic, gut-punch of a novel, charting how an unlikely alliance between...
more
Norumbega Park: A Novel
by
Anthony Giardina
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 01/31/2012
Norumbega Park begins with a vision. Richie Palumbo, the most prosaic of men, gets lost one night in 1969 while driving home with his family. He ...
more
Obedience: A Novel
by
Jacqueline Yallop
Penguin Press, 01/31/2012
Set in contemporary and World War II France, this is the story of Sister Bernard: her forbidden love, her uncertain faith, and her guilt-ridden past. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Critics' Consensus:
Romance
Debut Author
The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life
by
Shimon Edelman
Basic Books, 01/31/2012
Despite the commonplace comparison, the mind isn't just like a computer; it truly is one, best defined as a bundle of computations carried out ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
The Survivors: The Sequel to Memory Boy
by
Will Weaver
HarperTeen, 01/31/2012
Two years ago, the ash started falling like gray snow. The volcanoes had erupted...
For Miles and his sister, Sarah, the real disaster started in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
These Dreams of You
by
Steve Erickson
Europa Editions, 01/31/2012
One November night in a canyon outside L.A., Zan Nordhoc - a failed novelist turned pirate radio DJ - sits before the television with his small, ...
more
Literary Fiction
Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel
by
Dorothy Allison
Penguin Books, 02/01/2012
The publication of Dorothy Allison's
Bastard Out of Carolina was a landmark event that won the author a National Book Award nomination and launched ...
more
Literary Fiction
Helpless
by
Daniel Palmer
Kensington, 02/01/2012
Nine years after he left Shilo, New Hampshire, former Navy Seal Tom Hawkins has returned to raise his teenage daughter, Jill, following the murder of ...
more
The Girls of No Return
by
Erin Saldin
Arthur A. Levine Books, 02/01/2012
The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area stretches across two million acres in northern Idaho. In its heart sits the Alice Marshall School,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Beneath a Meth Moon
by
Jacqueline Woodson
Nancy Paulsen Books, 02/02/2012
Laurel Daneau has moved on to a new life, in a new town, but inside she's still reeling from the loss of her beloved mother and grandmother after ...
more
The Dark Rose: A Novel
by
Erin Kelly
Pamela Dorman Books, 02/02/2012
Paul was led into a life of crime by his boyhood protector, a bully named Daniel; but one night, what started as a petty theft turned into a grisly ...
more
All That I Am: A Novel
by
Anna Funder
Harper, 02/07/2012
Award-winning author Anna Funder delivers an affecting and beautifully evocative debut novel about a group of young German exiles who risk their lives...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Desert Wind: A Lena Jones Mystery #7
by
Betty Webb
Poisoned Pen Press, 02/07/2012
When P.I. Lena Jones's Pima Indian partner Jimmy Sisiwan is arrested in the remote northern Arizona town of Walapai Flats, Lena closes the Desert ...
more
Girl Reading: A Novel
by
Katie Ward
Scribner, 02/07/2012
Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading.
A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena. An...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
History of a Pleasure Seeker: A Novel
by
Richard Mason
Knopf, 02/07/2012
From the acclaimed author of
The Drowning People ("A literary sensation" -
The New York Times Book Review) and
Natural Elements ("A magnum opus" -
The...more
Left for Dead: A Ali Reynolds Novel
by
J.A. Jance
Touchstone, 02/07/2012
Ali Reynolds investigates two shocking cases of victims brutally left for dead in
New York Times bestselling J.A. Jance's latest mystery-thriller. ...
more
Mysteries
On Gold Mountain
by
Lisa See
Vintage, 02/07/2012
In 1867, Lisa See's great-great-grandfather arrived in America, where he prescribed herbal remedies to immigrant laborers who were treated little ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Restoration: A Novel
by
Olaf Olafsson
Ecco, 02/07/2012
Having grown up in an exclusive circle of wealthy British ex-pats in Florence in the 1920s, Alice Orsini shocks everyone when she marries the son of a...
more
Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am
by
Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis
Simon & Schuster, 02/07/2012
Ben has always had it pretty easy - with no acting experience, he landed the lead in his high school musical, and he's dating the prettiest girl in ...
more
Stay Awake: Stories
by
Dan Chaon
Ballantine Books, 02/07/2012
Before the critically acclaimed novels
Await Your Reply and
You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer of dazzling ...
more
The Bedlam Detective: A Novel
by
Stephen Gallagher
Crown, 02/07/2012
From a basement office in London's notorious Bethlehem Hospital, Sebastian Becker investigates wealthy eccentrics whose dubious mental health may ...
more
The Coincidence Engine
by
Sam Leith
Crown, 02/07/2012
A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and, in the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Lost Saints of Tennessee: A Novel
by
Amy Franklin-Willis
Atlantic Monthly Press, 02/07/2012
With enormous heart and dazzling agility, Amy Franklin-Willis expertly mines the fault lines in one Southern working-class family. Driven by the ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right
by
Arthur Goldwag
Pantheon Books, 02/07/2012
From "Birthers" who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States to counter-jihadists who believe that the Constitution is in imminent ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Rebel Wife: A Novel
by
Taylor M Polites
Simon & Schuster, 02/07/2012
Brimming with atmosphere and edgy suspense,
The Rebel Wife presents a young widow trying to survive in the violent world of Reconstruction Alabama, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Waterline: A Novel
by
Ross Raisin
Harper Perennial, 02/07/2012
Mick Little used to be a shipbuilder on the Glasgow yards. But as they closed one after another down the river, the search for work took him and his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Pure: The Pure Trilogy, Part 1
by
Julianna Baggott
Grand Central Publishing, 02/08/2012
We know you are here, our brothers and sisters...
Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Wild Thing: A Novel
by
Josh Bazell
Reagan Arthur, 02/08/2012
It's hard to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed. So hard that when a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter Brown, ...
more
Accidents of Providence
by
Stacia Brown
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 02/14/2012
It is 1649. King Charles has been beheaded for treason. Amid civil war, Cromwell's army is running the country. The Levellers, a small faction of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Available Dark: A Crime Novel
by
Elizabeth Hand
Minotaur Books, 02/14/2012
Photographer Cass Neary is already wanted by the police for questioning when she receives a mysterious job offer that sends her to Helsinki, where an ...
more
Thrillers
Bliss
by
Kathryn Littlewood
Katherine Tegan Books, 02/14/2012
Rosemary Bliss's family has a secret. It's the Bliss Cookery Booke—an ancient, leather-bound volume of enchanted recipes like Stone Sleep ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Gypsy Boy: My Life in the Secret World of the Romany Gypsies
by
Mikey Walsh
Thomas Dunne Books, 02/14/2012
Mikey Walsh was born into a Romany Gypsy family. They live in a secluded community, and little is known about their way of life. After centuries of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Other Waters: A Novel
by
Eleni N. Gage
St. Martin's Press, 02/14/2012
Maya is an accomplished psychiatry resident with a terrific boyfriend, loving family, and bustling New York social life. When her grandmother dies in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Red Plenty
by
Francis Spufford
Graywolf Press, 02/14/2012
Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Restless in the Grave: A Kate Shugak Mystery
by
Dana Stabenow
Minotaur Books, 02/14/2012
Alaska aviation entrepreneur Finn Grant died in the fiery crash of his Piper Super Cub. Someone sabotaged his engine, and virtually everyone in ...
more
The Detour
by
Andromeda Romano-Lax
Soho Press, 02/14/2012
Ernst Vogler is twenty-four years old in 1938 when he is sent to Rome by his employer - the Third Reich's
Sonderprojekt, which is collecting the ...
more
The House I Loved
by
Tatiana de Rosnay
St. Martin's Press, 02/14/2012
Paris, France: 1860's. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Orchid House: A Novel
by
Lucinda Riley
Atria Books, 02/14/2012
Spanning from the 1930s to the present day, from the Wharton Park estate in England to Thailand, this sweeping novel tells the tale of a concert ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Quiet Twin: A Novel
by
Dan Vyleta
Bloomsbury USA, 02/14/2012
Vienna, 1939. Professor Speckstein's dog has been brutally killed, the latest victim in a string of unsolved murders. Speckstein wants answers - but ...
more
Until the Next Time: A Novel
by
Kevin Fox
Algonquin Books, 02/14/2012
For Sean Corrigan the past is simply what happened yesterday, until his twenty-first birthday, when he is given a journal left him by his father's ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Various Positions
by
Martha Schabas
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/14/2012
Trapped between the hormone-driven world of her friends and the discontent of her dysfunctional family, fourteen-year-old Georgia is only completely&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Wonder
by
R. J. Palacio
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 02/14/2012
I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.
August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Darker Shade of Blue: Stories
by
John Harvey
Pegasus Books, 02/15/2012
John Harvey has been described as the master of British crime fiction: From the mean streets of London to the jazz clubs and clip joints of Soho, this...
more
Anatomy of Murder: A Westerman Crowther Mystery
by
Imogen Robertson
Pamela Dorman Books, 02/16/2012
London, 1781. Harriet Westerman anxiously awaits news of her husband, a ship's captain who has been gravely injured in the king's naval battles with ...
more
The Darlings: A Novel
by
Cristina Alger
Pamela Dorman Books, 02/16/2012
Now that he's married to Merrill Darling, daughter of billionaire financier Carter Darling, attorney Paul Ross has grown accustomed to New York ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Before the Poison
by
Peter Robinson
William Morrow, 02/21/2012
Chris Lowndes built a comfortable career composing scores for films in Hollywood. But after twenty-five years abroad, and still quietly reeling from ...
more
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
by
Mary and Bryan Talbot
Dark Horse, 02/21/2012
Part personal history, part biography,
Dotter of Her Father's Eyes contrasts two coming-of-age narratives: that of Lucia, the daughter of James Joyce,...
more
Double
by
Jenny Valentine
Hyperion Books for Children, 02/21/2012
When the sixteen-year-old runaway Chap is mistaken for a missing boy named Cassiel, his life changes dramatically. Chap takes on Cassiel's identity, ...
more
In-Flight Entertainment: Stories
by
Helen Simpson
Knopf, 02/21/2012
A new collection of stories - dazzling, poignant, wickedly funny, and highly addictive - by the internationally acclaimed writer whose work
The Times ...
more
The Dressmaker: A Novel
by
Kate Alcott
Doubleday, 02/21/2012
Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the
Titanic comes a vivid, romantic, and relentlessly compelling historical novel about ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Shadow Patrol: A John Wells Novel
by
Alex Berenson
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/21/2012
In 2009, the CIA's Kabul Station fell for a source who promised to lead it to Bin Laden, but instead he blew himself up, taking the station's most ...
more
The Troupe
by
Robert Jackson Bennett
Orbit, 02/21/2012
Sixteen-year-old pianist George Carole has joined vaudeville for one reason only: to find the man he suspects to be his father, the great Heironomo ...
more
Bleed for Me: A Joseph O'Loughlin Novel
by
Michael Robotham
Mulholland, 02/27/2012
She's standing at the front door. Covered in blood. Is she the victim of a crime? Or the perpetrator?
A teenage girl - Sienna, a troubled friend of...
more
Archive 17: A Novel of Suspense
by
Sam Eastland
Bantam Books, 02/28/2012
Stalin's most trusted secret agent, the legendary Inspector Pekkala, is on his deadliest mission - one that could save his country... or plunge it ...
more
Coral Glynn: A Novel
by
Peter Cameron
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/28/2012
Coral Glynn arrives at Hart House, an isolated manse in the English countryside, early in the very wet spring of 1950, to nurse the elderly Mrs. Hart,...
more
Five Bells: A Novel
by
Gail Jones
Picador, 02/28/2012
On a radiant day in Sydney, four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix...
more
Half-Blood Blues: A Novel
by
Esi Edugyan
Picador, 02/28/2012
Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011
Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction
Berlin...more
House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
by
Anthony Shadid
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 02/28/2012
In spring 2011, Anthony Shadid was one of four
New York Times reporters captured in Libya, cuffed and beaten, as that country was seized by revolution...
more
Hunting Sweetie Rose: A Dek Elstrom Mystery
by
Jack Fredrickson
Minotaur Books, 02/28/2012
Sweetie Fairbairn, the doyenne of Chicago society, is known for big-hearted philanthropy and magnificent soirees in her penthouse high atop one of the...
more
If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home
by
Lucy Worsley
Walker & Company, 02/28/2012
Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lone Wolf: A Novel
by
Jodi Picoult
Atria Books, 02/28/2012
A life hanging in the balance ... a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about ...more
Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the '60s and Beyond
by
Jane Maas
Thomas Dunne Books, 02/28/2012
What was it like to be an advertising woman on Madison Avenue in the 60s and 70s - that
Mad Men era of casual sex and professional serfdom? A real-...
more
Pandemonium: Sequel to Delirium
by
Lauren Oliver
HarperCollins Publishers, 02/28/2012
I'm pushing aside
the memory of my nightmare,
pushing aside thoughts of Alex,
pushing aside thoughts of Hana
and my old school,
push,
push...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government - and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead
by
David Rothkopf
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/28/2012
The world's largest company, Wal-Mart Stores, has revenues higher than the GDP of all but twenty-five of the world's countries. Its employees ...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy
by
Andrew Preston
Knopf, 02/28/2012
A richly detailed, profoundly engrossing story of how religion has influenced American foreign relations, told through the stories of the men and ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
That Deadman Dance: A Novel
by
Kim Scott
Bloomsbury USA, 02/28/2012
Winner of the Miles Franklin Award 2011. Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding,
That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Child Who: A Novel
by
Simon Lelic
Penguin Press, 02/28/2012
An unimaginable crime and the man who must defend it - a probing psychological thriller from the author of
A Thousand Cuts.
A chance phone call ...
more
The Children and the Wolves
by
Adam Rapp
Candlewick Press, 02/28/2012
Three teenagers - a sharp, well-to-do girl named Bounce and two struggling boys named Wiggins and Orange - are holding a four-year old girl hostage in...
more
The Coward's Tale
by
Vanessa Gebbie
Bloomsbury USA, 02/28/2012
Nine-year-old Laddy Merridew, sent to live with his grandmother for reasons he does not understand, stumbles off the bus in a small Welsh town where ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Humming Room
by
Ellen Potter
Feiwel & Friends, 02/28/2012
Hiding is Roo Fanshaw's special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment's notice. When her parents ...
more
The Variations: A Novel
by
John Donatich
Henry Holt and Company, 02/28/2012
A compelling sympathy of the faiths that fill the gap between who we set out to be and who we ultimately become
A powerful debut novel about a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
These Days Are Ours
by
Michelle Haimoff
Grand Central Publishing, 02/28/2012
Six months after September 11th, New Yorkers are instructed to get on with their lives despite the terror advisories, streets filled with 9/11 ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Unwanted: A Novel
by
Kristina Ohlsson
Atria Books, 02/28/2012
In the middle of a rainy Swedish summer, a little girl is abducted from a crowded train. Despite hundreds of potential witnesses, no one noticed when ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Any Day Now: A Novel
by
Terry Bisson
Overlook, 03/01/2012
Publishers Weekly has called Bisson's prose "a wonder of seemingly effortless control and precision," and John Crowley hails Bisson as a "national ...
more
Blue Monday: A Novel
by
Nicci French
Pamela Dorman Books, 03/01/2012
Frieda Klein is a solitary, incisive psychotherapist who spends her sleepless nights walking along the ancient rivers that have been forced ...
more
Bridge Of Scarlet Leaves
by
Kristina McMorris
Kensington, 03/01/2012
Los Angeles, 1941. Violinist Maddie Kern's life seemed destined to unfold with the predictable elegance of a Bach concerto. Then she fell in love with...
more
My Friend Dahmer
by
Derf Backderf
Abrams ComicArts, 03/01/2012
You only
think you know this story. In 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer - the most notorious serial killer since Jack the Ripper - seared himself into the ...
more
Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It
by
Craig Timberg
Penguin Young Readers Group, 03/01/2012
In this groundbreaking narrative, longtime
Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg and award-winning AIDS researcher Daniel Halperin tell the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Auraria: A Novel
by
Tim Westover
QW Publishers, 03/03/2012
Water spirits, moon maidens, haunted pianos, headless revenants, and an invincible terrapin that lives under the mountains. None of these distract ...
more
Literary Fiction
New American Haggadah
by
Jonathan Safran Foer
Little Brown & Company, 03/05/2012
Read each year around the seder table, the Haggadah recounts through prayer, song, and ritual the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the ...
more
Carry the One: A Novel
by
Carol Anshaw
Simon & Schuster, 03/06/2012
Carry the One begins in the hours following Carmen's wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk, and sleepy guests accidentally hits and ...
more
Goblin Secrets
by
William Alexander
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 03/06/2012
In the town of Zombay, there is a witch named Graba who has clockwork chicken legs and moves her house around - much like the fairy tale figure of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One
by
Aimee Agresti
Harcourt Children's Books, 03/06/2012
Haven Terra is a brainy, shy high school outcast. But everything changes when she is awarded a prestigious internship at a posh Chicago hotel under ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Losing Clementine: A Novel
by
Ashley Ream
William Morrow Paperbacks, 03/06/2012
She's got the wit and sharp tongue of Dorothy Parker, the talent of Picasso, and an ex-husband who still wants her. But all that isn't enough to keep ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Created a Chief Executive
by
Ray Raphael
Knopf, 03/06/2012
The little-known story of the dramatic political maneuverings and personalities behind the creation of the office of the president, with ramifications...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge: An Aimee Leduc Investigation
by
Cara Black
Soho Press, 03/06/2012
Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It's not her fault if she can't suppress ...
more
Poison Flower: A Jane Whitefield Novel
by
Thomas Perry
Mysterious Press, 03/06/2012
Poison Flower, the seventh novel in Thomas Perry's celebrated Jane Whitefield series, opens as Jane spirits James Shelby, a man unjustly convicted of ...
more
The Expats: A Novel
by
Chris Pavone
Crown, 03/06/2012
Kate Moore is an expat mom living the expat life. In the cobblestoned streets of Luxembourg, her days are filled with play-dates and coffee ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
The House of the Wind: A Novel
by
Titania Hardie
Washington Square Press, 03/06/2012
The internationally bestselling author of
The Rose Labyrinth returns with a love story of magic and healing about two women, centuries apart, who ...
more
The Icon Thief: A Novel
by
Alec Nevala-Lee
Signet Classics, 03/06/2012
A controversial masterpiece resurfaces in Budapest. A ballerina's headless corpse is found beneath the boardwalk at Brighton Beach. And New York's ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The O'Briens: A Novel
by
Peter Behrens
Pantheon Books, 03/06/2012
An unforgettable saga of love, loss, and exhilarating change spanning half a century in the lives of a restless family.
The O'Briens is a family ...
more
The Wind in the Willows: Illustrated Edition Children's Classics (Union Square Kids Illustrated Classics)
by
Kenneth Grahame
Union Square & Co., 03/06/2012
Whether the four friends, a toad, mole, badger, and rat, are setting forth on an exciting adventure, engaging in a comic caper, or simply relaxing by ...
more
Literary Fiction
This Burns My Heart: A Novel
by
Samuel Park
Simon & Schuster, 03/06/2012
On the eve of her marriage, beautiful and strong-willed Soo-ja Choi receives a passionate proposal from a young medical student. But caught up in her ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Trigger Point
by
Matthew Glass
Atlantic Monthly Press, 03/06/2012
It's 2018. Tom Knowles, a moderate Nevada Repubilcan, is the American president hoping to lead his country into a new era of stability and growth. He ...
more
Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
by
George Dyson
Pantheon Books, 03/06/2012
"It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence," twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
1616: The World in Motion
by
Thomas Christensen
Counterpoint Press, 03/13/2012
The world of 1616 was a world of motion. Enormous galleons carrying silk and silver across the Pacific created the first true global economy, and the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
An American Spy: A Milo Weaver Novel
by
Olen Steinhauer
Minotaur Books, 03/13/2012
In Olen Steinhauer's bestseller
The Tourist, reluctant CIA agent Milo Weaver uncovered a conspiracy linking the Chinese government to the highest ...
more
Arcadia: A Novel
by
Lauren Groff
Voice, 03/13/2012
In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding what would become a commune ...
more
Collected Poems
by
Jack Gilbert
Knopf, 03/13/2012
Gathered in this volume readers will find more than fifty years of poems by the incomparable Jack Gilbert, from his Yale Younger Poets prize-winning ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Dancing on Broken Glass
by
Ka Hancock
Gallery Books, 03/13/2012
An unvarnished portrait of a marriage that is both ordinary and extraordinary,
Dancing on Broken Glass takes readers on an unforgettable journey of ...
more
Dublin Dead: A Mike Mulcahy Novel
by
Gerard O'Donovan
Scribner, 03/13/2012
Irish detective Mike Mulcahy returns in this suspenseful follow-up to the highly acclaimed international bestseller
The Priest - and now he's hot on ...
more
Froi of the Exiles: The Lumatere Chronicles
by
Melina Marchetta
Candlewick Press, 03/13/2012
Three years after the curse on Lumatere was lifted, Froi has found his home... or so he believes. Fiercely loyal to the Queen and Finnikin, Froi has ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen
by
Donna Gephart
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 03/13/2012
Olivia Bean knows trivia. She watches
Jeopardy! every night and usually beats at least one of the contestants. If she were better at geography, she ...
more
Schmidt Steps Back
by
Louis Begley
Knopf, 03/13/2012
When we last saw Albert Schmidt Esq. ("Schmidtie" to all near and dear), he had been expelled from paradise: his love Carrie, the Puerto Rican ...
more
The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense
by
M. J. Rose
Atria Books, 03/13/2012
A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created ...
more
The Dog Who Danced: A Novel
by
Susan Wilson
St. Martin's Press, 03/13/2012
From the
New York Times bestselling author of
One Good Dog comes a novel about a woman's cross-country journey to find her lost dog, and discover ...
more
The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It
by
Ricki Lewis
St. Martin's Press, 03/13/2012
Fascinating narrative science that explores the next frontier in medicine and genetics through the very personal prism of the children and families ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Reconstructionist: A Novel
by
Nick Arvin
Harper Perennial, 03/13/2012
One instant can change an entire lifetime.
As a boy, Ellis Barstow heard the sound of the collision that killed Christopher, his older half brother...
more
The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers - How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death
by
Dick Teresi
Pantheon Books, 03/13/2012
Important and provocative,
The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Vanishers: A Novel
by
Heidi Julavits
Doubleday, 03/13/2012
From the acclaimed novelist and
The Believer editor Heidi Julavits, a wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters, and ...
more
The Gilly Salt Sisters
by
Tiffany Baker
Grand Central Publishing, 03/14/2012
In the isolated Cape Cod village of Prospect, the Gilly sisters are as different as can be. Jo, a fierce and quiet loner, is devoted to the mysteries ...
more
Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
by
Ahmed Rashid
Viking, 03/15/2012
The leading journalist on Pakistan lays out America's options with Pakistan and Afghanistan in the post-Bin Laden years.
What are the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature
by
David George Haskell
Viking, 03/15/2012
A biologist reveals the secret world hidden in a single square meter of forest.
In this wholly original book, biologist David Haskell uses a one-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
by
Jon Gertner
Penguin Young Readers Group, 03/15/2012
A sweeping, atmospheric history of Bell Labs that highlights its unparalleled role as an incubator of innovation and birthplace of the century's most...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Under the Harrow
by
Mark Dunn
MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 03/16/2012
What if Charles Dickens had written a contemporary thriller? In
Under the Harrow, a group of Victorians live a semi-idyllic and unwitting, ...
more
Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship
by
Richard Aldous
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/19/2012
For decades historians have perpetuated the myth of a "Churchillian" relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, citing their longtime ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor
by
Caroline Stoessinger
Spiegel & Grau, 03/20/2012
An inspiring story of resilience and the power of optimism - the true story of Alice Herz-Sommer, the world's oldest living Holocaust survivor.
...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Caddy's World: A Casson Family Novel
by
Hilary McKay
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 03/20/2012
The amazing and hilarious Casson family is back in this all-new novel from award-winning author Hilary McKay.
Cadmium Casson is twelve years old ...
more
Croak
by
Gina Damico
Graphia, 03/20/2012
Fed up with her wild behavior, sixteen-year-old Lex’s parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Fall from Grace: A Novel
by
Richard North Patterson
Scribner, 03/20/2012
The mysterious, violent death of a prominent New England patriarch exposes a nest of dark family secrets in bestselling author Richard North Patterson...
more
Force of Nature: A Joe Pickett Novel
by
C. J. Box
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/20/2012
He never wanted to tell Joe Pickett about it, but Nate Romanowski always knew trouble was coming out of his past. Now it's here, and it may not only ...
more
Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events: Stories
by
Kevin Moffett
Harper Perennial, 03/20/2012
A dazzling new story collection from brilliant, young, award-winning writer Kevin Moffett,
Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events illuminates the...
more
Mudwoman: A Novel
by
Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco, 03/20/2012
Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate - or ...
more
So Pretty It Hurts: A Bailey Weggins Mystery (Bailey Weggins Mysteries)
by
Kate White
Harper, 03/20/2012
At long last, the
New York Times bestselling author of
The Sixes and the editor-in-chief of
Cosmopolitan brings back the sassy crime writer turned ...
more
Stay Close
by
Harlan Coben
Dutton, 03/20/2012
Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she's got two kids, a perfect husband, a picket fence, and a ...
more
The Might Have Been
by
Joe Schuster
Ballantine Books, 03/20/2012
Joseph M. Schuster's absorbing debut novel resonates with the pull of lifelong dreams, the stings of regret, and the ways we define ourselves against ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
True
by
Riikka Pulkkinen
Other Press, 03/20/2012
Elsa is dying. Her husband, Martti, and daughter Eleonoora are struggling to accept the crushing thought that they are soon to lose her. As Elsa ...
more
What to Look for in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness
by
Candia McWilliam
Harper, 03/20/2012
The story of a celebrated writer's sudden descent into blindness, and of the redemptive journey into the past that her loss of sight sets in motion. ...
more
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
by
Cheryl Strayed
Knopf, 03/20/2012
A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe - and built ...
more
Edge of Dark Water
by
Joe R. Lansdale
Mulholland, 03/25/2012
Mark Twain meets classic Stephen King - a bold new direction for widely acclaimed Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale.
May Lynn was once a pretty ...
more
Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
by
Paul Kriwaczek
Thomas Dunne Books, 03/27/2012
The ancient world comes alive in this sweeping history of the city that laid the foundation for modern civilization.
Babylon tells the story of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism
by
Arthur Fleischmann
Touchstone, 03/27/2012
At the age of two, Carly Fleischmann was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral motor condition that prevented her from speaking. Doctors predicted ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Divorce Islamic Style
by
Amara Lakhous
Europa Editions, 03/27/2012
It's 2005. The Italian secret service has received intel that a group of Muslim immigrants based in the Viale Marconi neighborhood of Rome is ...
more
Elegy for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel
by
Jacqueline Winspear
Harper, 03/27/2012
Maisie Dobbs - psychologist, investigator, and "one of the great fictional heroines, equal parts haunted and haunting" (
Parade) - returns in a ...
more
Hemlock Grove: A Novel
by
Brian McGreevy
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/27/2012
The body of a young girl is found mangled and murdered in the woods of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, in the shadow of the abandoned Godfrey Steel mill....
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Hinterland: A Novel
by
Caroline Brothers
Bloomsbury USA, 03/27/2012
It is night, and two boys are crossing a river that is also a border. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs, their inheritance stitched ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins
by
Ian Tattersall
Palgrave Macmillan, 03/27/2012
When homo sapiens made their entrance 100,000 years ago they were confronted by a wide range of other early humans - homo erectus, who walked better ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
No Time Like the Present: A Novel
by
Nadine Gordimer
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/27/2012
Nadine Gordimer is one of our most telling contemporary writers. With each new work, she attacks - with a clear-eyed fierceness, a lack of ...
more
Perla
by
Carolina De Robertis
Knopf, 03/27/2012
A coming-of-age story, based on a recent shocking chapter of Argentine history, about a young woman who makes a devastating discovery about her ...
more
Range of Ghosts
by
Elizabeth Bear
Tor Books, 03/27/2012
Temur, grandson of the Great Khan, is walking away from a battlefield where he was left for dead. All around lie the fallen armies of his cousin ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories
by
Etgar Keret
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/27/2012
Bringing up a child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar Keret's new collection, daily life is complicated, ...
more
The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
by
Eric Kandel
Random House, 03/27/2012
A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel,
The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Land of Decoration: A Novel
by
Grace McCleen
Henry Holt and Company, 03/27/2012
In Grace McCleen's harrowing, powerful debut, she introduces an unforgettable heroine in ten-year-old Judith McPherson, a young believer who sees ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Memory of Blood: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery
by
Christopher Fowler
Bantam Books, 03/27/2012
Christopher Fowler's acclaimed Peculiar Crimes Unit novels crackle with sly wit, lively suspense, and twists as chilling as London's fog. Now the ...
more
The New Republic: A Novel
by
Lionel Shriver
Harper, 03/27/2012
Ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. A disgruntled New York corporate lawyer, he's more than ready to leave his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R.
by
Carole DeSanti
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 03/27/2012
Love and war converge in this lush, epic story of a young woman's coming of age during and after France's Second Empire (1860–1871), an era that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Unseen Guest: The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Book III
by
Maryrose Wood
Balzer + Bray, 03/27/2012
Of especially naughty children it is sometimes said, "They must have been raised by wolves."
The Incorrigible children actually were.
Since ...
more
The Widow's Daughter: A Novel
by
Nicholas Edlin
Penguin Books, 03/27/2012
Peter Sokol, an artist living in San Diego, is haunted by his past. In 1943, Captain Sokol is a surgeon in the U.S. Marines stationed in Auckland, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Whatever You Love: A Novel
by
Louise Doughty
Harper Perennial, 03/27/2012
"I study the photo in the same way that a spy might study the face of a counterpart in a rival organization. I am calm as I make this promise: I am ...
more
A Surrey State of Affairs: A Novel
by
Ceri Radford
Pamela Dorman Books, 03/29/2012
Constance Harding's comfortable corner of Surrey is her own little piece of heaven. She lives in a chocolate box house complete with an Aga and a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
by
Blaine Harden
Viking, 03/29/2012
The shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.
North Korea is isolated and ...
more
The Lion is In
by
Delia Ephron
The Blue Sky Press, 03/29/2012
Tracee is a runaway bride and kleptomaniac. Lana's an audacious beauty and a recovering alcoholic. Rita is a holy-roller minister's wife, ...
more
The Professionals: A Novel
by
Owen Laukkanen
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/29/2012
Four friends, recent college graduates, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it's no joke...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food
by
Lizzie Collingham
Penguin Young Readers Group, 03/29/2012
Food, and in particular the lack of it, was central to the experience of World War II. In this richly detailed and engaging history, Lizzie Collingham...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Breath of Eyre
by
Eve Marie Mont
Kensington, 04/01/2012
A scholarship student at an exclusive prep school, Emma Townsend feels like an outsider. Her stepmother doesn't come close to filling the void left by...
more
Above
by
Leah Bobet
Reagan Arthur, 04/01/2012
Matthew has loved Ariel from the moment he found her in the tunnels, her bee's wings falling away. They live in Safe, an underground refuge for those ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Derby Day: A Novel
by
D. J. Taylor
Pegasus Books, 04/01/2012
As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Down - high life and low life, society beauties and White chapel street ...
more
Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection
by
A. J. Jacobs
Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 04/01/2012
Hospitalized with a freak case of tropical pneumonia, goaded by his wife telling him, "I don't want to be a widow at forty-five," and ashamed of a ...
more
Stopping for Strangers
by
Daniel Griffin
Vehicule Press, 04/01/2012
Detailing the lives of artists, lovers, brothers, and strangers, this collection of stories acutely probes love and loss, men and women together, and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
The False Prince: Ascendance Trilogy
by
Jennifer A. Nielsen
Scholastic, 04/01/2012
In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The List
by
Siobhan Vivian
Scholastic, 04/01/2012
It happens every year. A list is posted, and one girl from each grade is chosen as the prettiest, and another is chosen as the ugliest. Nobody knows...
more
The Names of Things
by
John Colman Wood
Ashland Creek Press, 04/01/2012
The anthropologist's wife, an artist, didn't want to follow her husband to the remote desert of northeast Africa to live with camel-herding nomads. ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Beastly Things: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery
by
Donna Leon
Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/03/2012
When the body of man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, Brunetti has little to work with. No ...
more
Black Heart: The Curse Workers 3
by
Holly Black
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 04/03/2012
Cassel Sharpe knows he's been used as an assassin, but he's trying to put all that behind him. He's trying to be good, even though he grew up in a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected - A Memoir
by
Kelle Hampton
William Morrow, 04/03/2012
Love me. Love me. I'm not what you expected, but oh, please love me.
That was the most defining moment of my life. That was the beginning of my story...more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Capitol Murder: A Novel of Suspense
by
Phillip Margolin
Harper, 04/03/2012
Private investigator Dana Cutler and attorney Brad Miller have overcome more than a few daunting challenges and powerful enemies to see justice done. ...
more
Grave Mercy: His Fair Assassin, Book I
by
Robin LaFevers
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/03/2012
Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?
Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
House of the Hunted: A Novel
by
Mark Mills
Random House, 04/03/2012
Mark Mills, bestselling author of
Amagansett,
The Savage Garden, and
The Information Officer, is renowned for blending riveting history, rich ...
more
Last Night I Sang to the Monster
by
Benjamin Alire Saenz
Cinco Puntos Press, 04/03/2012
Zach is eighteen, bright, and articulate. He's also an alcoholic, in rehab instead of high school, but he doesn't remember how he got there. What's up...
more
Literary Fiction
Paris in Love: A Memoir
by
Eloisa James
Random House, 04/03/2012
In 2009,
New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James took a leap that many people dream about: she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job ...
more
Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art
by
Christopher Moore
William Morrow, 04/03/2012
Absolutely nothing is sacred to Christopher Moore. The phenomenally popular,
New York Times bestselling satirist whom the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution...more
Strange Flesh: A Novel
by
Michael Olson
Simon & Schuster, 04/03/2012
"The only clue we have to our brother's whereabouts is this place that doesn't really exist." Ten years ago, Blythe Randall broke James Pryce's heart....
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Beginner's Goodbye
by
Anne Tyler
Knopf, 04/03/2012
Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, ...
more
The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case: A Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Book for Young Readers
by
Alexander McCall Smith
Anchor Books, 04/03/2012
Have you ever said to yourself,
Wouldn't it be nice to be a detective?
This is the story of an African girl who says just that.
Her name ...
more
The Last Camel Charge: The Untold Story of America's Desert Military Experiment
by
Forrest Bryant Johnson
Berkley Books, 04/03/2012
In the mid-nineteenth century, the U.S. Army would employ a weapon that had never before been seen on its native soil. From the Middle East came a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Red Book: A Novel
by
Deborah Copaken Kogan
Voice, 04/03/2012
Every graduate of Harvard knows the drill: once every five years, they are asked to submit a short essay highlighting their latest career and personal...
more
Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent
by
Edward Luce
Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/03/2012
"Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking." - Sir Ernest Rutherford, winner of the Nobel Prize in Nuclear Physics
Time to ...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Apartment
by
Greg Baxter
Penguin Books, 04/05/2012
'She was always in many places at once, invested deeply in a hundred different notions, and of all the things I liked about Saskia that was the thing ...
more
The Social Conquest of Earth
by
Edward O. Wilson
W.W. Norton & Company, 04/09/2012
Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? In a generational work of clarity and passion, one of our greatest living scientists directly...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
This Will Be Difficult to Explain: And Other Stories
by
Johanna Skibsrud
W.W. Norton & Company, 04/09/2012
In the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author Johanna Skibsrud's new book, nine loosely connected and hypnotic stories introduce an unforgettable...
more
2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America
by
Albert Brooks
St. Martin's Press, 04/10/2012
June 12, 2030 started out like any other day in memory - and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years before, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Charlotte's Web: A Newbery Honor Award Winner (Trophy Newbery)
by
E. B. White
HarperCollins Publishers, 04/10/2012
Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a ...
more
Literary Fiction
Cloudland: A Crime Novel
by
Joseph Olshan
St. Martin's Press, 04/10/2012
Once a major reporter for a national newspaper, Catherine Winslow has retreated to the Upper Valley of Vermont to write a household hints column. ...
more
Come Home: A Novel
by
Lisa Scottoline
St. Martin's Press, 04/10/2012
Jill Farrow is a typical suburban mom who has finally gotten her and her daughter's lives back on track after a divorce. She is about to remarry, her ...
more
Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World
by
Sadakat Kadri
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/10/2012
In the wake of the colossal acts of terrorism of the last decade, the legal historian and human rights lawyer Sadakat Kadri realized that many people ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
I Am an Executioner: Love Stories
by
Rajesh Parameswaran
Knopf, 04/10/2012
An explosive, funny, wildly original fiction debut: nine stories about the power of love and the love of power, two urgent human desires that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
June Fourth Elegies: Poems
by
Liu Xiaobo
Graywolf Press, 04/10/2012
The first publication of the poetry of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo, with a Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Liu Xiaobo has become...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Lexapros and Cons
by
Aaron Karo
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/10/2012
Sure he happens to share the name of the icon behind the coolest sneakers in the world, but even Chuck knows his bizarre system of wearing different ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Sacrilege: A Novel
by
S.J. Parris
Doubleday, 04/10/2012
London, summer of 1584: Radical philosopher, ex-monk, and spy Giordano Bruno suspects he is being followed by an old enemy. He is shocked to discover ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Book of Blood and Shadow
by
Robin Wasserman
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 04/10/2012
It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true ...
more
The Book of Madness and Cures: A Novel
by
Regina O'Melveny
Little Brown & Company, 04/10/2012
Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16
th century Venice: a woman who practices medicine. Her father, a renowned physician, has provided her entrée ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Fallen: A Jade de Jong Investigation
by
Jassy Mackenzie
Soho Press, 04/10/2012
When P.I. Jade de Jong invites Superintendent David Patel on a scuba diving holiday in St. Lucia, she hopes the time away will rebuild their ...
more
The Obsidian Blade: The Klaatu Diskos (Book One)
by
Pete Hautman
Candlewick Press, 04/10/2012
The first time his father disappeared, Tucker Feye had just turned thirteen. The Reverend Feye simply climbed on the roof to fix a shingle, let out a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Stolen Bride: An Arthurian Mystery
by
Tony Hays
Forge Books, 04/10/2012
Malgwyn ap Cuneglas is counselor to Arthur, High King of the Britons. When he accompanies his liege to the West to broker a deal between warring ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Truth Like the Sun: A Novel
by
Jim Lynch
Knopf, 04/10/2012
A classic and hugely entertaining political novel, the cat-and-mouse story of urban intrigue in Seattle both in 1962, when Seattle hosted the World's ...
more
Hand Me Down: A Novel
by
Melanie Thorne
Dutton, 04/12/2012
A tough, tender, debut novel, in the tradition of Dorothy Allison and Janet Fitch,
Hand Me Down is the unforgettable story of a girl who travels ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Narcopolis: A Novel
by
Jeet Thayil
Penguin Press, 04/12/2012
Jeet Thayil's luminous debut novel completely subverts and challenges the literary traditions for which the Indian novel is celebrated. This is a book...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man
by
Nick Dybek
Riverhead Books, 04/12/2012
Every fall, the men of Loyalty Island sail from the Olympic Peninsula up to the Bering Sea to spend the winter catching king crab. Their dangerous ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
An Unexpected Guest: A Novel
by
Anne Korkeakivi
Little Brown & Company, 04/17/2012
Clare Moorhouse, the American wife of a high-ranking diplomat in Paris, is arranging an official dinner crucial to her husband's career. As she shops ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Crossing the Borders of Time: A True Story of War, Exile, and a Love Reclaimed
by
Leslie Maitland
Other Press, 04/17/2012
Leslie Maitland is an award-winning former
New York Times investigative reporter whose mother and grandparents fled Germany in 1938 for France, where,...
more
Kaltenburg
by
Marcel Beyer
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/17/2012
Hailed by
The New Yorker as one of the best young novelists and recipient of Germany's most prestigious literary awards, Marcel Beyer returns with a...
more
Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States
by
Michael Lind
Harper, 04/17/2012
A sweeping and original work of economic history by Michael Lind, one of America's leading intellectuals,
Land of Promise recounts the epic story of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood
by
Barbara Demick
Spiegel & Grau, 04/17/2012
Logavina Street was a microcosm of Sarajevo, a six-block-long history lesson. For four centuries, it existed as a quiet residential area in a charming...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Prague Fatale: A Bernie Gunther Novel
by
Philip Kerr
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 04/17/2012
September 1941: Reinhard Heydrich is hosting a gathering to celebrate his appointment as Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. He has chosen his guests ...
more
The Chaos
by
Nalo Hopkinson
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 04/17/2012
Sixteen-year-old Scotch struggles to fit in - at home she's the perfect daughter, at school she's provocatively sassy, and thanks to her mixed ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Martian Chronicles
by
Ray Bradbury
Simon & Schuster, 04/17/2012
In
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America's preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor— of crystal pillars ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Wicked and the Just
by
J. Anderson Coats
Harcourt Children's Books, 04/17/2012
Cecily's father has ruined her life. He's moving them to occupied Wales, where the king needs good strong Englishmen to keep down the vicious Welshmen...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Waiting for Sunrise: A Novel
by
William Boyd
Harper, 04/17/2012
From one of our most celebrated and imaginative writers comes a spellbinding novel about deception, betrayal, psychoanalysis, and the mysteries of the...
more
White Horse: A Novel
by
Alex Adams
Atria Books, 04/17/2012
The world has ended, but her journey has just begun.
Thirty-year-old Zoe leads an ordinary life until the end of the world arrives. She is cleaning...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
A Wedding in Haiti
by
Julia Alvarez
Algonquin Books, 04/24/2012
A teenager when Julia and her husband, Bill, first met him in 2001, Piti crossed the border into the Dominican Republic to find work. Julia, impressed...
more
Afterwards: A Novel
by
Rosamund Lupton
Crown, 04/24/2012
The school is on fire. Her children are inside.
Grace runs toward the burning building, desperate to reach them.
In the aftermath of the ...
more
All the Right Stuff
by
Walter Dean Myers
Amistad, 04/24/2012
A provocative new novel from the national ambassador for young people's literature and the
New York Times bestselling author of
Monster.
Who's on ...
more
Crusoe's Daughter
by
Jane Gardam
Europa Editions, 04/24/2012
In 1904, six-year-old Polly Flint is sent to live with her aunt in a house by the sea. Orphaned shortly thereafter, Polly will spend the next eighty ...
more
Farther Away: Essays
by
Jonathan Franzen
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/24/2012
Jonathan Franzen's
Freedom was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the twenty-...
more
In My Father's Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate
by
Saima Wahab
Crown, 04/24/2012
Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, at age three Saima Wahab watched while her father was arrested and taken from their home by the KGB. She would never...
more
Last Will
by
Bryn Greenwood
Stairway Press, 04/24/2012
Bernie Raleigh is a failure at nearly everything he touches. Nobody notices a loser, and after being kidnapped for ransom as a child, Bernie has spent...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion
by
Mark Kram
St. Martin's Press, 04/24/2012
In the mid-1970s, brothers Buddy and Jimmy Miley were close, both on the verge of impressive athletic careers. A promising high school ...
more
Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China
by
Paul French
Penguin Press, 04/24/2012
Peking in 1937 is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, opulence and opium dens, rumors and superstition. The Japanese are encircling the city, and ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
by
Rosecrans Baldwin
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/24/2012
A self-described Francophile, Rosecrans Baldwin always dreamed of living in Paris - drinking
le café, eating
les croissants, walking in
les ...more
Critics' Consensus:
Travel & Adventure
Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
by
Madeleine Albright
Harper, 04/24/2012
From former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright comes a moving and thoughtful memoir of her formative years in Czechoslovakia during the tumult of ...
more
Somebody To Love
by
Kristan Higgins
Harlequin Books, 04/24/2012
After her father loses the family fortune in an insider-trading scheme, single mom Parker Welles is faced with some hard decisions. First order of ...
more
Temptation: A Novel
by
Douglas Kennedy
Atria Books, 04/24/2012
Like all screenwriters in Tinsel Town, David Armitage wants to be rich and famous. Finally, after eleven years of disappointment and failure, big-time...
more
The First Warm Evening of the Year: A Novel
by
Jamie M. Saul
William Morrow, 04/24/2012
"The first time I saw Marian Ballantine she looked like a burst of bittersweet among the winter branches..."
And so begins a tale of love lost and...
more
The Folded Earth: A Novel
by
Anuradha Roy
Free Press, 04/24/2012
Longlisted for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize
Shorlisted for
The Hindu Literary Prize for Best Fiction 2011
With her debut novel,
An Atlas of...more
The Girl in the Park
by
Mariah Fredericks
Random House Children's Publishing, 04/24/2012
When Wendy Geller's body is found in Central Park after the night of a rager, newspaper headlines scream,"Death in the Park: Party Girl Found ...
more
The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do about It
by
Timothy Noah
Bloomsbury USA, 04/24/2012
For the past three decades, America has steadily become a nation of haves and have-nots. Our incomes are increasingly drastically unequal: the top 1% ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Right-Hand Shore: A Novel
by
Christopher Tilghman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/24/2012
A masterful novel that confronts the dilemmas of race, family, and forbidden love in the wake of America's Civil War.
Fifteen years after the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Story of Us
by
Deb Caletti
Simon Pulse, 04/24/2012
Cricket's on a self-imposed break from her longtime boyfriend - but she's picked a bad week to sort out her love life. For one thing, her mother's ...
more
The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel
by
Stephen King
Scribner, 04/24/2012
In
The Wind Through the Keyhole, Stephen King returns to the rich landscape of Mid-World, the spectacular territory of the Dark Tower fantasy saga ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Thumped: The Sequel to Dumped
by
Megan McCafferty
Balzer + Bray, 04/24/2012
It's been thirty-five weeks since twin sisters Harmony and Melody went their separate ways. Since then, their story has become irresistible to legions...
more
Literary Fiction
True Sisters: A Novel
by
Sandra Dallas
St. Martin's Press, 04/24/2012
In a novel based on true events,
New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas delivers the story of four women - seeking the promise of salvation ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
by
Michael J. Sandel
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/24/2012
Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
When the Night: A Novel
by
Cristina Comencini
Other Press, 04/24/2012
Manfred, a surly mountaineer recently abandoned by his wife, rents the upstairs apartment in his home in the Dolomites to Marina, a woman from the ...
more
You Are Not Like Other Mothers
by
Angelika Schrobsdorff
Europa Editions, 04/24/2012
You Are Not Like Other Mothers is the story of Else Krischner, a free spirited mother of three sons. The novel spans the first half of the 20th ...
more
Literary Fiction
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet
by
Robert M. Hazen
Viking, 04/26/2012
Earth evolves. From first atom to molecule, mineral to magma, granite crust to single cell to verdant living landscape, ours is a planet constantly in...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery
by
Captain Witold Pilecki
Aquila Polonica, 04/30/2012
In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
An Uncommon Education: A Novel
by
Elizabeth Percer
Harper, 05/01/2012
Afraid of losing her parents at a young age - her father with his weak heart, her deeply depressed mother - Naomi Feinstein prepared single-mindedly ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama
by
Alison Bechdel
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 05/01/2012
Alison Bechdel's
Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Bitterblue: Graceling Volume 3
by
Kristin Cashore
The Dial Press, 05/01/2012
The long-awaited companion to
New York Times bestsellers
Graceling and
Fire
Eight years after
Graceling, Bitterblue is now queen of Monsea. But the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Death's Door: Detective Inspector Peter Shaw Series
by
Jim Kelly
Severn House, 05/01/2012
An idyllic island holds a dark secret ...
On a hot August day in 1994, 76 holidaymakers travel to an island off the North Norfolk coast. Only 75 ...
more
Faces in the Crowd
by
Valeria Luiselli
Coffee House Press, 05/01/2012
In Mexico City, a young mother is writing a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. In Harlem, a translator is desperate to publish the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Getaway
by
Lisa Brackmann
Soho Press, 05/01/2012
Michelle Mason tells herself she's on vacation. A brief stay in the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta. It's a chance to figure out her next move ...
more
Insurgent: Divergent, Book 2
by
Veronica Roth
Katherine Tegan Books, 05/01/2012
One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
by
Steve Coll
Penguin Press, 05/01/2012
In
Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil's ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Red Cell: A Novel
by
Mark Henshaw
Touchstone, 05/01/2012
From the Tom Clancy for a new generation, a debut thriller following two CIA outcasts who must race to stop a secret Chinese weapon that threatens to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
by
Robert A. Caro
Knopf, 05/01/2012
Book Four of Robert A. Caro's monumental
The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the
Times of ...
more
The Solitary House: A Novel
by
Lynn Shepherd
Delacorte Press, 05/01/2012
London, 1850. Charles Maddox had been an up-and-coming officer for the Metropolitan police until a charge of insubordination abruptly ended his career...
more
The Stonecutter: A Novel
by
Camilla Läckberg
Pegasus Books, 05/01/2012
In the third novel from the bestselling female writer in Sweden - and for the first time in English - the mysterious drowning of a little girl ...
more
The Woman Who Changed Her Brain: And Other Inspiring Stories of Pioneering Brain Transformation
by
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young
Free Press, 05/01/2012
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn - or worse. As a child, she read ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Trapeze
by
Simon Mawer
Other Press, 05/01/2012
Barely out of school and doing her bit for the British war effort, Marian Sutro has one quality that makes her stand out - she is a native French ...
more
Literary Fiction
Waiting
by
Carol Lynch Williams
Paula Wiseman Books, 05/01/2012
Alone and adrift, London finds herself torn between her brother's best friend and the handsome new boy in town as she struggles to find herself - and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
A Simple Murder
by
Eleanor Kuhns
Minotaur Books, 05/08/2012
Five years ago, while William Rees was still recovering from his stint as a Revolutionary War soldier, his beloved wife died. Devastated, Rees left ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic
by
Joe Jackson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/08/2012
In 1919, a prize of $25,000 was offered to the first aviator to cross the Atlantic in either direction between France and America. Although it was one...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Boleto: A Novel
by
Alyson Hagy
Graywolf Press, 05/08/2012
Will Testerman is a young Wyoming horse trainer determined to make something of himself. Money is tight at the family ranch, where he's living again ...
more
Don't Cry, Tai Lake: An Inspector Chen Novel
by
Qiu Xiaolong
Minotaur Books, 05/08/2012
Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is offered a bit of luxury by friends and supporters within the Party – a week's ...
more
Fall from Grace
by
Charles Benoit
HarperTeen, 05/08/2012
"I need you to steal something for me."
Grace always has a plan. There's her plan to get famous, her plan to get rich, and - above all - her plan ...
more
Fountain of Age: Stories
by
Nancy Kress
Small Beer Press, 05/08/2012
Kress unpacks the future the way DNA investigators unravelled the double helix: one gene at a time. In many of these stories gene sculpting is illegal...
more
Short Stories
Guilt by Degrees
by
Marcia Clark
Mulholland, 05/08/2012
Someone has been watching D.A. Rachel Knight - someone who's Rachel's equal in brains, but with more malicious intentions. It began when a near-...
more
I Am Forbidden: A Novel
by
Anouk Markovits
Hogarth Books, 05/08/2012
A family is torn apart by fierce belief and private longing in this unprecedented journey deep inside the most insular Hasidic sect, the Satmar.
&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
In One Person: A Novel
by
John Irving
Simon & Schuster, 05/08/2012
A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity,
In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love - tormented, funny, and affecting - and an ...
more
Jersey Angel
by
Beth Ann Bauman
Wendy Lamb Books, 05/08/2012
It's the summer before senior year and the alluring Angel is ready to have fun. She's not like her best friend, Inggy, who has a steady boyfriend, ...
more
Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story
by
Daphne Sheldrick
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/08/2012
Daphne Sheldrick, whose family arrived in Africa from Scotland in the 1820s, is the first person ever to have successfully hand-reared newborn ...
more
Mercy Train: A Novel
by
Rae Meadows
St. Martin's Press, 05/08/2012
Moving from the tempered calm of contemporary Madison, Wisconsin to the seedy underbelly of early twentieth century New York, we come face to face ...
more
Never Fall Down: A Novel
by
Patricia McCormick
Balzer + Bray, 05/08/2012
When soldiers arrive at his hometown in Cambodia, Arn is just a kid, dancing to rock 'n' roll, hustling for spare change, and selling ice cream with ...
more
Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love
by
David Talbot
Free Press, 05/08/2012
San Francisco was the cradle of the 1960s, but also its coffin, giving rise to the Zebra and Zodiac killers, Altamont, Jonestown, the assassination of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Summer of the Wolves
by
Polly Carlson-Voiles
Houghton Mifflin Books For Children, 05/08/2012
Julie of the Wolves meets
Hatchet in this middle grade novel that follows orphaned twelve-year-old Nika and her seven-year-old brother Randall as they...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Hunt
by
Andrew Fukuda
St. Martin's Press, 05/08/2012
Don't sweat. Don't laugh. Don't draw attention to yourself. And most of all, whatever you do, do not fall in love with one of them.
...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Juice: Vinous Veritas
by
Jay McInerney
Knopf, 05/08/2012
For more than a decade, Jay McInerney's vinous essays, now featured in
The Wall Street Journal, have been praised by restaurateurs ("Filled with small...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance
by
Thomas McNamee
Free Press, 05/08/2012
In the 1950s, America was a land of overdone roast beef and canned green beans - a gastronomic wasteland. Most restaurants relied on frozen, second-...
more
The Other Side of Normal: How Biology Is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior
by
Jordan Smoller
William Morrow, 05/08/2012
Psychiatry has ignored the normal. The focus on defining abnormal behavior has obscured what turns out to be a more fundamental question - how does ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Sins of the Father: The Clifton Chronicles, Volume 2
by
Jeffrey Archer
St. Martin's Press, 05/08/2012
Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of long-buried family secrets, and forced to accept...
more
The Voluntourist: A Six-Country Tale of Love, Loss, Fatherhood, Fate, and Singing Bon Jovi in Bethlehem
by
Ken Budd
William Morrow Paperbacks, 05/08/2012
Ken Budd's
The Voluntourist is a remarkable memoir about losing your father, accepting your fate, and finding your destiny by volunteering around the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Travel & Adventure
The Year of the Gadfly: A Novel
by
Jennifer Miller
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 05/08/2012
"Do you know what it took for Socrates' enemies to make him stop pursuing the truth?"
"Hemlock."
Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.
by
Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Press, 05/08/2012
To say that Augusten Burroughs has lived an unusual life is an understatement. From having no formal education past third grade and being raised...
more
Overseas: A Novel
by
Beatriz Williams
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/10/2012
When twenty-something Wall Street analyst Kate Wilson attracts the notice of the legendary Julian Laurence at a business meeting, no one's more ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Romance
Debut Author
The Seventh Gate
by
Richard Zimler
Overlook, 05/10/2012
It's Berlin, 1932. Sophie is a smart and sexually precocious fourteen-year-old coming of age during Hitler's rise to power. Forced to lead a double ...
more
Tracing Stars
by
Erin Moulton
Philomel, 05/10/2012
Indie Lee Chickory is the fish freak of Plumtown. She's an expert at making fish faces and has a pet, The Lobster Monty Cola, who lives in a salt-...
more
Literary Fiction
The Invitation
by
Anne Cherian
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/14/2012
A moving story that redefines the meaning of family, friendship, and success among a group of first-generation Indian immigrants.
When Vikram ...
more
A Confusion of Princes
by
Garth Nix
HarperCollins Publishers, 05/15/2012
You'd think being a Prince in a vast intergalactic empire would be about as good as it gets. Particularly when Princes are faster, smarter, and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience
by
Bob Massie
Nan A. Talese, 05/15/2012
Bob Massie was born with hemophilia, a fact that inspired much of his father's writing, including
Nicholas and Alexandra, his famous biography of the ...
more
Aerogrammes: and Other Stories
by
Tania James
Knopf, 05/15/2012
From the highly acclaimed author of
Atlas of Unknowns (2009), a bravura collection of short stories set in locales as varied as London, Sierra Leone,...
more
As the Crow Flies: A Walt Longmire Mystery (Book 8)
by
Craig Johnson
Viking, 05/15/2012
The Wyoming lawman returns after staking his claim on the
New York Times bestseller list.
Embarking on his eighth adventure, Wyoming Sheriff Walt ...
more
Dream New Dreams: Reimagining My Life After Loss
by
Jai Pausch
Crown Journeys, 05/15/2012
In
Dream New Dreams, Jai Pausch shares her own story for the first time: her emotional journey from wife and mother to full-time caregiver, ...
more
Biography/Memoir
I Couldn't Love You More
by
Jillian Medoff
Grand Central Publishing, 05/15/2012
Which child would you save? A decision no parent can even fathom.
Eliot Gordon would do anything for her family. A 38-year-old working mother, she ...
more
Railsea
by
China Mieville
Del Rey, 05/15/2012
On board the moletrain
Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Shelter: A Novel
by
Frances Greenslade
Free Press, 05/15/2012
From an impressive new literary talent, a heartbreaking, lushly imagined novel that explores the deep bond between two very different sisters whose ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Aleppo Codex: The True Story of Obesession, Faith, and the International Pursuit of an Ancient Bible
by
Matti Friedman
Algonquin Books, 05/15/2012
In an age when physical books matter less and less, here is a thrilling story about a book that meant everything. This true-life detective story ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Chemistry of Tears: A Novel
by
Peter Carey
Knopf, 05/15/2012
An automaton, a man and a woman who can never meet, a secret love story, and the fate of the warming world are all brought to incandescent life in ...
more
The Secrets of Mary Bowser
by
Lois Leveen
William Morrow Paperbacks, 05/15/2012
With the rich detail of
Cold Mountain, the strong female bonds of
The Help, and the untold history of
The Warmth of Other Suns, comes a powerful debut...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Taliban Cricket Club: A Novel
by
Timeri N. Murari
Ecco, 05/15/2012
Rukhsana is a spirited young journalist who works for the
Kabul Daily in Afghanistan. She takes care of her ill, widowed mother and her younger ...
more
The Testament of Jessie Lamb: A Novel
by
Jane Rogers
Harper Perennial, 05/15/2012
A rogue virus that kills pregnant women has been let loose in the world, and nothing less than the survival of the human race is at stake.
Some ...
more
Vandal Love: A Novel
by
Deni Y. Bechard
Milkweed Editions, 05/15/2012
A family curse - a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship - causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. Book One ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Reborn on the Fourth of July: The Challenge of Faith, Patriotism & Conscience
by
Logan Mehl-Laituri
InterVarsity Press, 05/16/2012
For decades now, the United States has proudly claimed the mantle of "the world's only superpower" based on military might and the scope of military ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America
by
Rebecca Jo Plant
University Of Chicago Press, 05/21/2012
By the 1940s, the idealization of motherhood had waned, and the nation's mothers found themselves blamed for a host of societal and psychological ills...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
2312
by
Kim Stanley Robinson
Orbit, 05/22/2012
The year is
2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Dark Anatomy: A Mystery
by
Robin Blake
Minotaur Books, 05/22/2012
The year is 1740. George II is on the throne, but England's remoter provinces remain largely a law unto themselves. In Lancashire a grim discovery has...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Abdication: A Novel
by
Juliet Nicolson
Atria Books, 05/22/2012
England, 1936.
The year began with the death of a beloved king and the ascension of a charismatic young monarch, sympathetic to the needs of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel
by
Bruce DeSilva
Forge Books, 05/22/2012
Prostitution has been legal in Rhode Island for more than a decade; Liam Mulligan, an old-school investigative reporter at dying Providence newspaper,...
more
Don't Ever Get Old
by
Daniel Friedman
Minotaur Books, 05/22/2012
This is the first in a one-of-a-kind, spectacularly well-written mystery series featuring Buck Schatz, an eighty-seven-year-old retired Memphis cop ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Drowned: A Novel
by
Therese Bohman
Other Press, 05/22/2012
Drowned, set in the idyllic countryside during a short-lived Swedish summer, gets under one's skin from the first page, creating an atmosphere of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Gravity: How the Weakest Force in the Universe Shaped Our Lives
by
Brian Clegg
St. Martin's Press, 05/22/2012
Physicists will tell you that four forces control the universe. Of these, gravity may the most obvious, but it is also the most mysterious. Newton ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment?
by
Fawaz A. Gerges
Palgrave Macmillan, 05/22/2012
The 2011 Arab Spring upended the status quo in the Middle East and poses new challenges for the United States. Here, Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent
by
E.J. Dionne
Bloomsbury USA, 05/22/2012
Our Divided Political Heart will be the must-read book of the 2012 election campaign. Offering an incisive analysis of how hyper-individualism is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last Hundred Days: A Novel
by
Patrick McGuinness
Bloomsbury USA, 05/22/2012
Once the gleaming "Paris of the East," Bucharest in 1989 is a world of corruption and paranoia, in thrall to the repressive regime of Nicolae ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Lower River: A Novel
by
Paul Theroux
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 05/22/2012
Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of...
more
The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel
by
Victor del Arbol
Henry Holt and Company, 05/22/2012
A betrayal and a murder in pro-Nazi Spain spark a struggle for power that grips a family for generations in this sweeping historical thriller.
...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
A Small Fortune: A Novel
by
Rosie Dastgir
Riverhead Books, 05/24/2012
An entertaining debut novel that explores the lives of an extended Pakistani family - all with a gently humorous touch and fond but wry eye.
Harris...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea
by
Callum Roberts
Viking, 05/24/2012
Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses
by
Peter Piot
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/28/2012
When Peter Piot was in medical school, a professor warned, "There's no future in infectious diseases. They’ve all been solved." Fortunately, Piot...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
A Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh
by
Jeff Shaara
Ballantine Books, 05/29/2012
In the first novel of a spellbinding new trilogy,
New York Times bestselling author Jeff Shaara returns to the Civil War terrain he knows best.
A ...more
Historical Fiction
By Love Possessed: Stories
by
Lorna Goodison
Amistad, 05/29/2012
With this highly praised collection of short fiction, Lorna Goodison demonstrates why she may be one of literature's best-kept secrets. In the ...
more
Changeling: Order of Darkness
by
Philippa Gregory
Simon Pulse, 05/29/2012
Italy, 1453. Seventeen-year-old Luca Vero is brilliant, gorgeous - and accused of heresy. Cast out of his religious order for using the new science to...
more
Historical Fiction
Dreamless: A Starcrossed Novel
by
Josephine Angelini
HarperTeen, 05/29/2012
Can true love be forgotten?
As the only scion who can descend into the Underworld, Helen Hamilton has been given a nearly impossible task. By ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Istanbul Passage: A Novel
by
Joseph Kanon
Atria Books, 05/29/2012
A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul survived the Second World War as a magnet for refugees and spies, trafficking in secrets and ...
more
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti: A Novel
by
Mohammed Hanif
Knopf, 05/29/2012
The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments need a miracle. Alice Bhatti may be just what they're looking for. She's the new junior ...
more
The Age of Doubt: The Inspector Montalbano Mysteries
by
Andrea Camilleri
Penguin Press, 05/29/2012
With their dark sophistication and dry humor, Andrea Camilleri's hugely popular Sicilian crime novels continue to win more and more fans in America. ...
more
The English Monster: or, The Melancholy Transactions of William Ablass
by
Lloyd Shepherd
Washington Square Press, 05/29/2012
London, 1811. Along the twisting streets of Wapping, bounded by the ancient Ratcliffe Highway and the modern wonder of the London Dock, many a sin is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Watchers: A Novel
by
Jon Steele
Penguin Press, 05/29/2012
Beneath Lausanne Cathedral, in Switzerland, there is a secret buried before time began, something unknown to angels and men, until now...
Marc ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Yard
by
Alex Grecian
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/29/2012
Victorian London is a cesspool of crime, and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives- known as "The Murder Squad" - to investigate countless ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Wife 22: A Novel
by
Melanie Gideon
Ballantine Books, 05/29/2012
For fans of Helen Fielding's
Bridget Jones's Diary and Allison Pearson's
I Don't Know How She Does It comes an irresistible novel of a woman losing ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Witness the Night: A Novel
by
Kishwar Desai
Penguin Press, 05/29/2012
In a small town in northern India, a house still smolders from a devastating fire. Inside a young girl is found severely beaten and barely alive, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Dancing in the Dark
by
Susan Moody
Severn House, 06/01/2012
Abandoned at the age of eleven by her beautiful, capricious mother, Theodora Cairns, twenty years on and with a painful divorce behind her, is still ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Islanders: All men are islands
by
Christopher Priest
Gollancz, 06/01/2012
A tale of murder, artistic rivalry, and literary trickery; a Chinese puzzle of a novel where nothing is quite what it seems; a narrator whose agenda ...
more
What Dies in Summer: A Novel
by
Tom Wright
W.W. Norton & Company, 06/04/2012
"I did what I did, and that's on me." From that tantalizing first sentence, Tom Wright sweeps us up in a tale of lost innocence. Jim has a touch of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Amped: A Novel
by
Daniel H. Wilson
Doubleday, 06/05/2012
As he did in
Robopocalypse, Daniel Wilson masterfully envisions a frightening near-future world. In
Amped, people are implanted with a device that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
An Unmarked Grave: A Bess Crawford Mystery
by
Charles Todd
William Morrow, 06/05/2012
World War I nurse and amateur sleuth Bess Crawford must match wits with a devious killer in this exciting and suspenseful adventure from
New York ...more
Beneath the Shadows
by
Sara Foster
Minotaur Books, 06/05/2012
A thrilling gothic debut that evokes Daphne Du Maurier's
Rebecca and Arthur Conan Doyle's
Hound of the Baskervilles. A young mother searches for the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Burning Midnight: An Amos Walker Novel
by
Loren D. Estleman
Forge Books, 06/05/2012
Amos Walker knows Detroit, from the highest to the lowest, and that includes the gangs of Mexicantown. When a friend asks Walker to get his son's ...
more
Dead Scared
by
S. J. Bolton
Minotaur Books, 06/05/2012
When a rash of suicides tears through Cambridge University, DI Mark Joesbury recruits DC Lacey Flint to go undercover as a student to investigate. ...
more
Equal of the Sun: A Novel
by
Anita Amirrezvani
Scribner, 06/05/2012
Legendary women - from Anne Boleyn to Queen Elizabeth I to Mary, Queen of Scots - changed the course of history in the royal courts of sixteenth-...
more
Historical Fiction
Inside
by
Alix Ohlin
Knopf, 06/05/2012
From the highly acclaimed author of
The Missing Person and
Babylon and Other Stories, a resonant novel of entwined lives and a woman with an ...
more
Into the Darkest Corner: A Novel
by
Elizabeth Haynes
Harper, 06/05/2012
Catherine Bailey has been enjoying the single life long enough to know a catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic and spontaneous, Lee seems ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
James Joyce: A New Biography
by
Gordon Bowker
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/05/2012
James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, his novels and stories foundational in the history of literary modernism. Yet ...
more
Kingdom of Strangers: A Novel
by
Zoë Ferraris
Little Brown & Company, 06/05/2012
A secret grave is unearthed in the desert revealing the bodies of 19 women and the shocking truth that a serial killer has been operating undetected ...
more
Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays
by
Siri Hustvedt
Picador, 06/05/2012
The internationally acclaimed novelist Siri Hustvedt has also produced a growing body of nonfiction. She has published a book of essays on painting (
...more
Master and God: A Novel of the Roman Empire
by
Lindsey Davis
St. Martin's Press, 06/05/2012
Set in the reign of the Emperor Domitian in first-century Rome,
Master and God is Lindsey Davis's meticulously researched epic novel of the life and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River
by
Jeremy Seal
Bloomsbury USA, 06/05/2012
The Meander is a river so famously winding that its name has long since come to signify digression, an approach author Jeremy Seal makes the most of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Travel & Adventure
Midwinter Blood: A Thriller
by
Mons Kallentoft
Atria Books, 06/05/2012
When the ice melts, what remains?
Thirty-four years old, blond, single, divorced with a teenage daughter, Fors is the most driven superintendent ...
more
Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas
by
John Scalzi
Tor Books, 06/05/2012
Life couldn't be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Sarah Thornhill
by
Kate Grenville
Grove Press, 06/05/2012
Sarah is the youngest child of William Thornhill, the pioneer at the center of
The Secret River. Unknown to her, her father - an uneducated ex-convict...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Cost of Hope: A Memoir
by
Amanda Bennett
Random House, 06/05/2012
When
Wall Street Journal reporter Amanda Bennett meets the eccentric, infuriating, yet somehow irresistible Terence Bryan Foley while on assignment in...
more
The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy
by
William J. Dobson
Doubleday, 06/05/2012
We are witnessing an incredible moment in the war between dictators and democracy - waves of protests are sweeping Syria and Yemen, and despots have ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Innocents: A Novel
by
Francesca Segal
Voice, 06/05/2012
Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Second World War
by
Antony Beevor
Little Brown & Company, 06/05/2012
A magisterial, single-volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known by our foremost military historian.
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World
by
Steven Saylor
Minotaur Books, 06/05/2012
The year is 92 B.C. Gordianus has just turned eighteen and is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: a far-flung journey to see the Seven ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Sunset: A John Bekker Mystery
by
Al Lamanda
Five Star, 06/06/2012
Police Detective John Bekker had it all: a beautiful wife‚ a five-year-old daughter and a job he loved… but all of that changed in the blink...
more
A Conspiracy of Friends: A Corduroy Mansions Novel
by
Alexander McCall Smith
Pantheon Books, 06/12/2012
It seems the universe itself is conspiring against the residents of Corduroy Mansions, as they all find themselves struggling with their nearest and ...
more
Beautiful Ruins: A Novel
by
Jess Walter
Harper, 06/12/2012
The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller
The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and ...
more
Heading Out to Wonderful: A Novel
by
Robert Goolrick
Algonquin Books, 06/12/2012
In
Heading Out to Wonderful, an attractive and enigmatic stranger - Charlie Beale, a loner, recently home from World War II in Europe - wanders into ...
more
Niceville: A Novel
by
Carsten Stroud
Knopf, 06/12/2012
One fine spring day in Niceville, a young boy named Rainey Teague disappears on his way home from school. Literally disappears - security camera ...
more
The Dark Monk: A Hangman's Daughter Tale, Book 2
by
Oliver Potzsch
Mariner Books, 06/12/2012
1660: Winter has settled thick over a sleepy village in the Bavarian Alps, ensuring every farmer and servant is indoors on the night a parish priest ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Red House: A Novel
by
Mark Haddon
Doubleday, 06/12/2012
The set-up of Mark Haddon's brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his ...
more
The Third Gate: A Novel
by
Lincoln Child
Doubleday, 06/12/2012
Under the direction of famed explorer Porter Stone, an archaeological team is secretly attempting to locate the tomb of an ancient pharaoh who was ...
more
Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
by
Christopher Hayes
Crown, 06/12/2012
A powerful and original argument that traces the roots of our present crisis of authority to an unlikely source: the meritocracy.
Over the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
XO: A Kathryn Dance Novel
by
Jeffery Deaver
Simon & Schuster, 06/12/2012
Country-pop ingenue Kayleigh Towne's career is just reaching new heights with her huge hit single "Your Shadow" - but increased fame is also bringing ...
more
The Bellwether Revivals: A Novel
by
Benjamin Wood
Viking, 06/14/2012
A sophisticated debut novel about a group of friends whose devotion to one among them leads to unimaginable consequences
An assistant at a nursing ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Forever Marriage: A Novel
by
Ann Bauer
Overlook, 06/14/2012
"Phenomenal" (Garrison Keillor) storyteller Ann Bauer brings to life the tale of one faithless widow. Carmen wishes Jobe, the husband she never loved,...
more
The Queen's Lover: A Novel
by
Francine du Plessix Gray
Penguin Press, 06/14/2012
Historical fiction of the highest order,
The Queen’s Lover reveals the untold love affair between Swedish aristocrat Count Axel Von Fersen and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Unfortunate Son
by
Constance Leeds
Viking, 06/14/2012
Kidnapping, family secrets, and adventure on the high seas - perfect for middle grade fans of historical fiction!
What does it mean to be lucky? ...
more
Historical Fiction
Barack Obama: The Story
by
David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster, 06/19/2012
In
Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss has written a deeply reported generational biography teeming with fresh insights and revealing ...
more
Blessed Are the Dead: A Novel
by
Malla Nunn
Atria Books, 06/19/2012
Emmanuel Cooper's life is finally back on track when a request comes from Colonel van Niekerk that he report to the local police station in Balgowan, ...
more
Burn Mark
by
Laura Powell
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 06/19/2012
In a modern world - where witches are hunted down and burned at the stake - two lives interact. Cleo is from a family of witches, and is desperate to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
City: A User's Guide to the Past, Present, and Future of Urban Life
by
P.D. Smith
Bloomsbury USA, 06/19/2012
For the first time in the history of our planet, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - is now living in cities.
City is the ultimate ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Existence
by
David Brin
Tor Books, 06/19/2012
Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Gone Missing: A Thriller (Kate Burkholder)
by
Linda Castillo
Minotaur Books, 06/19/2012
Rumspringa is the time when Amish teens are allowed to experience life without the rules. It's an exciting time of personal discovery and growth ...
more
Thrillers
House Blood: A Joe DeMarco Thriller
by
Mike Lawson
Atlantic Monthly Press, 06/19/2012
DeMarco is asked to look into the murder conviction of a lobbyist. But he has other worries on his mind: his boss is no longer Speaker, his girlfriend...
more
Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
by
Kate Summerscale
Bloomsbury USA, 06/19/2012
"I think people marry far too much; it is such a lottery, and for a poor woman - bodily and morally the husband's slave - a very doubtful happiness." ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Never Tell: An Ellie Hatcher Novel of Suspense
by
Alafair Burke
Harper, 06/19/2012
Sixteen-year-old Julia Whitmire appeared to have everything: a famous father, a luxurious Manhattan town house, a coveted spot at the elite Casden ...
more
The Orphanmaster
by
Jean Zimmerman
Viking, 06/19/2012
It's 1663 in the tiny, hardscrabble Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, now present-day southern Manhattan. Orphan children are going missing, and among ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
This Is Not a Test
by
Courtney Summers
St. Martin's Press, 06/19/2012
It's the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won't stop pounding on ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Tumbleweeds: A Novel
by
Leila Meacham
Grand Central Publishing, 06/19/2012
Devoted readers of Leila Meacham will devour this long, juicy page-turner.
Tumbleweedsis the story of three young friends - the saint, the sinner, and...
more
Antebellum: A Novel
by
R. K. Thomas
Atria Books, 06/26/2012
A thought-provoking novel about African-American culture seen through the eyes of a famous rapper who is transported to the days of slavery and forced...
more
Literary Fiction
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Evolutionaries: Unlocking the Spiritual and Cultural Potential of Science's Greatest Idea
by
Carter Phipps
Harper Perennial, 06/26/2012
Blending cutting-edge ideas with incisive spiritual insights,
Evolutionaries is the first popular presentation of an emerging school of thought called...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan
by
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Knopf, 06/26/2012
In this extraordinarily insightful, illuminating book, Rajiv Chandrasekaran focuses on southern Afghanistan in the year of Obama's surge, and reveals...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Shout Her Lovely Name
by
Natalie Serber
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 06/26/2012
Mothers - both reluctant and euphoric - ride the familial tide of joy, pride, regret, guilt, and love in these stories of resilient and flawed women. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
Summerland: A Novel
by
Elin Hilderbrand
Reagan Arthur, 06/26/2012
A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. What begins as a graduation night ...
more
Romance
Talulla Rising
by
Glen Duncan
Knopf, 06/26/2012
When I change I change fast. The moon drags the whatever-it-is up from the earth and it goes through me with crazy wriggling impatience ... I'm ...more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Age of Miracles: A Novel
by
Karen Thompson Walker
Random House, 06/26/2012
With a voice as distinctive and original as that of
The Lovely Bones, and for the fans of the speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood, Karen Thompson ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New
by
Peter Watson
Harper, 06/26/2012
Peter Watson, the acclaimed author of
Ideas and
The German Genius, offers a groundbreaking new exploration of the progress of human history. Watson's ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Island House: A Novel
by
Posie Graeme-Evans
Atria Books, 06/26/2012
One warm, rainy summer, Freya Dane, a PhD candidate in archaeology, arrives on the ancient Scottish island of Findnar. Estranged as a child from her ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker
by
Janet Groth
Algonquin Books, 06/26/2012
In 1957, when a young Midwestern woman landed a job at The New Yorker, she didn't expect to stay long at the reception desk. But stay she did, and for...
more
The Way Back Home
by
Barbara Freethy
Pocket Books, 06/26/2012
Ex-Marine Gabe Ryder has lost a lot in his life. His mother died when he was a toddler. His father succumbed to alcoholism. And a week before their ...
more
Literary Fiction
Triangles: A Novel
by
Ellen Hopkins
Atria Books, 06/26/2012
Three female friends face midlife crisis in a no-holds-barred exploration of sex, marriage, and the fragility of life.
Holly: Filled with regret ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Wait: The Art and Science of Delay
by
Frank Partnoy
Public Affairs, 06/26/2012
What do these scenarios have in common: a professional tennis player returning a serve, a woman evaluating a first date across the table, a naval ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Zoe Letting Go: A Novel
by
Nora Price
Razorbill, 06/28/2012
A girl's letters to her best friend reveal two lives derailed by anorexia in this haunting debut that's
Wintergirls meets
The Sixth Sense
It's not ...more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Whispering of Spies: A Libertus Mystery of Roman Britain
by
Rosemary Rowe
Severn House, 07/01/2012
Wealthy Volus, ex-lictor to the Imperial Governor of Gaul, is retiring to the town of Glevum. Libertus is sent to his new apartment, where he is ...
more
Death in August: A Novel
by
Marco Vichi
Pegasus Books, 07/01/2012
Florence, summer 1963. Inspector Bordelli is one of the few policemen left in the deserted city. He spends his days on routine work and his nights ...
more
Mysteries
Flying the Dragon
by
Natalie Dias Lorenzi
Charlesbridge, 07/01/2012
Flying the Dragon tells the story of two cousins in alternating chapters. American-born Skye is a good student and a star soccer player who never ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy
by
Paul Thomas Murphy
Pegasus Books, 07/01/2012
During Queen Victoria's 64-year reign, no fewer than eight attempts were made on her life. Murphy follows each would-be assassin and the repercussions...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Say Nice Things About Detroit: A Novel
by
Scott Lasser
W.W. Norton & Company, 07/02/2012
Twenty-five years after his high school graduation, David Halpert returns to a place that most people flee. But David is making his own escape - from ...
more
A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Mystery
by
Elly Griffiths
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/03/2012
When Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop, she finds the museum's curator lying dead ...
more
A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart
by
Gary Marmorstein
Simon & Schuster, 07/03/2012
"Blue Moon," "Where or When," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "My Funny Valentine," "Isn't It Romantic?," "My Romance," "There's a Small Hotel," "Falling in ...
more
Advent: A Novel
by
James Treadwell
Atria Books, 07/03/2012
A drowning, a magician's curse, and a centuries-old secret.
1537. A man hurries through city streets in a gathering snowstorm, clutching a box in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Alif the Unseen: A Novel
by
G. Willow Wilson
Grove Press, 07/03/2012
In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients - dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Burrows: A Red River Mystery, Book 2
by
Reavis Z Wortham
Poisoned Pen Press, 07/03/2012
Lyndon B. Johnson is President, Beatlemania is in overdrive and gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center ...
more
Criminal: A Novel
by
Karin Slaughter
Delacorte Press, 07/03/2012
Karin Slaughter's new novel is an epic tale of love, loyalty, and murder that encompasses forty years, two chillingly similar murder cases, and a good...
more
Die a Stranger: An Alex McKnight Novel, Book 9
by
Steve Hamilton
Minotaur Books, 07/03/2012
Late one night, a plane lands on a deserted airstrip. Five dead bodies are found there the next morning.
And now Vinnie LeBlanc is missing.
...
more
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by
Daniel Smith
Simon & Schuster, 07/03/2012
Anxiety once paralyzed Daniel Smith over a roast beef sandwich, convincing him that a choice between ketchup and barbeque sauce was as dire as that ...
more
Office Girl
by
Joe Meno
Akashic Books, 07/03/2012
No one dies in
Office Girl. Nobody talks about the international political situation. There is no mention of any economic collapse. Nothing takes ...
more
Ruler of the World: Empire of the Moghul, Book 3
by
Alex Rutherford
Thomas Dunne Books, 07/03/2012
Alex Rutherford's internationally bestselling series continues with
Ruler of the World, the story of the third great Moghul Emperor, Akbar, leader of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Good Dream: A Novel
by
Donna VanLiere
St. Martin's Press, 07/03/2012
1950 Tennessee, a time and place that straddles the past and present. Ivorie Walker is considered an old maid by the town (though she's only in her ...
more
The Last Minute: A Sam Capra Thriller
by
Jeff Abbott
Grand Central Publishing, 07/03/2012
Sam Capra has one reason to live: to rescue his baby son from the people who abducted him. An ex-CIA agent, Sam now owns bars around the world as ...
more
The Nightmare: A Novel
by
Lars Kepler
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/03/2012
After spellbinding audiences in
The Hypnotist, Detective Inspector Joona Linna is back in
The Nightmare, an internationally bestselling Swedish ...
more
The Playdate: A Novel
by
Louise Millar
Atria Books, 07/03/2012
You leave your kids with a friend down the street. Everyone does it. Until the day it goes wrong.
For the past few lonely years, Suzy has been the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Woman at the Light: A Novel
by
Joanna Brady
St. Martin's Press, 07/03/2012
A stunning debut novel set on a remote island in Key West in 1839.
Emily Lowry, born and bred in New Orleans, forgoes high society to marry a ...
more
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel
by
John Guy
Random House, 07/03/2012
Becket's life story has been often told but never so incisively reexamined and vividly rendered as it is in John Guy's hands. The son of middle-class ...
more
Tiger Lily
by
Jodi Lynn Anderson
HarperTeen, 07/03/2012
Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn't believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Up Jumps the Devil
by
Michael Poore
Ecco, 07/03/2012
A stunningly imaginative, sharp, funny, and slyly tender novel featuring the Devil himself, John Scratch.
He's made of wood. He cooks an excellent ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone
by
Kat Rosenfield
Dutton Children's Books, 07/05/2012
Becca has always longed to break free from her small, backwater hometown. But the discovery of an unidentified dead girl on the side of a dirt road ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Home is a Roof Over a Pig: An American Family's Journey in China
by
Aminta Arrington
Overlook, 07/05/2012
When all-American Aminta Arrington moves from suburban Georgia to a small town in China, she doesn't go alone. Her army husband and three young ...
more
Juliet in August
by
Dianne Warren
Amy Einhorn Books, 07/05/2012
With writing reminiscent of Alice Munro, Carol Shields, Larry McMurtry, and Elizabeth Strout,
Juliet in August uncovers the incredible drama beneath ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
15 Seconds
by
Andrew Gross
William Morrow, 07/10/2012
The nerve-shredding new thriller from the bestselling author of
Reckless and
The Blue Zone.
Henry Steadman is a successful surgeon with a thriving...
more
A Million Heavens
by
John Brandon
McSweeney’s Books, 07/10/2012
On the top floor of a small hospital, an unlikely piano prodigy lies in a coma, attended to by his gruff, helpless father. Outside the clinic, a ...
more
A Night in Brooklyn: Poems
by
D. Nurkse
Knopf, 07/10/2012
D. Nurkse's deeply satisfying new collection is a haunted love letter to the far corners of his hometown, Brooklyn, New York, and a meditation on the ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Albert of Adelaide: A Novel
by
Howard Anderson
Twelve Books, 07/10/2012
Albert of Adelaide follows the story of a duck-billed platypus who escapes from Australia's Adelaide Zoo and embarks on a journey through the outback ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian
by
Eoin Colfer
Hyperion Books for Children, 07/10/2012
Seemingly nothing in this world daunts the young criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl. In the fairy world, however, there is a small thing that ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Harry Lipkin, Private Eye: A Novel
by
Barry Fantoni
Doubleday, 07/10/2012
Harry Lipkin is a tough-talking, soft-chewing, rough-around-the-edges, slow-around-the-corners private investigator who carries a .38 along with a ...
more
Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses
by
Ron Koertge
Candlewick Press, 07/10/2012
Writing in free verse honed to a wicked edge, the incomparable Ron Koertge brings dark and contemporary humor to twenty iconic fairy tales.
Once ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Long Lankin
by
Lindsey Barraclough
Candlewick Press, 07/10/2012
When Cora and her younger sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with their elderly aunt in the isolated village of Byers Guerdon, they receive a less-than-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
On the Day I Died: Stories from the Grave
by
Candace Fleming
Random House Children's Publishing, 07/10/2012
The phenomenally versatile, award-winning author, Candace Fleming, gives teen and older tween readers ten ghost stories sure to send chills up their ...
more
Perfect Escape
by
Jennifer Brown
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 07/10/2012
Kendra has always felt overshadowed by her older brother, Grayson, whose OCD forces him to live a life of carefully coordinated routines. The only way...
more
Playing with Matches: A Novel
by
Carolyn Wall
Bantam Books, 07/10/2012
When I felt truly lost - which was most of the time - I went out to the narrow lot and sat down in the weeds. From there I could observe both houses. ...more
Seraphina
by
Rachel Hartman
Random House Children's Publishing, 07/10/2012
Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Shadow of Night: A Novel
by
Deborah Harkness
Viking, 07/10/2012
Deborah Harkness exploded onto the literary scene with her debut novel,
A Discovery of Witches, Book One of the magical
All Souls Trilogy and an ...
more
Some Kind of Peace: A Novel
by
Camilla Grebe & Asa Traff
Free Press, 07/10/2012
Published to great acclaim in Sweden and across Europe, this unconventional and evocative thriller marks the first in a series by sisters Camilla ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Absolutist
by
John Boyne
Other Press, 07/10/2012
It is September 1919: twenty-one-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a package of letters to the sister of Will ...
more
The Crowded Grave: A Mystery of the French Countryside
by
Martin Walker
Knopf, 07/10/2012
It's spring in the idyllic village of St. Denis, and for Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges that means lamb stews, bottles of his beloved Pomerol, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Investigation: A Novel
by
Philippe Claudel
Nan A. Talese, 07/10/2012
The Investigator is a man quite like any other. He is balding, of medium build, dresses conservatively - in short, he is unremarkable in every way. He...
more
The Last Policeman: A Novel
by
Ben Winters
Quirk Books, 07/10/2012
What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway?
Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid ...
more
Mysteries
The Thread: A Novel
by
Victoria Hislop
HarperPaperbacks, 07/10/2012
Thessaloniki, Greece, 1917: As Dimitri Komninos is born, a fire sweeps through the thriving multicultural city where Christians, Jews, and Muslims ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital
by
Eric Manheimer
Grand Central Publishing, 07/10/2012
In the spirit of Oliver Sacks
Awakenings and the TV series
House, Dr. Eric Manheimer's
Twelve Patientsis a memoir from the Medical Director of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
Whiplash River: A Novel
by
Lou Berney
William Morrow Paperbacks, 07/10/2012
Having left his life of crime behind, former getaway driver Charles "Shake" Bouchon has finally realized the dream of owning his own restaurant in ...
more
Thrillers
Debut Author
A Pimp's Notes: A Novel
by
Giorgio Faletti
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/17/2012
Giorgio Faletti’s first thriller,
I Kill, took Europe by storm, selling over five million copies. The
Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading ...
more
A World Away
by
Nancy Grossman
Hyperion Books for Children, 07/17/2012
A summer of firsts
Sixteen-year-old Eliza Miller has never made a phone call, never tried on a pair of jeans, never sat in a darkened theater ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Brooklyn Zoo: The Education of a Psychotherapist
by
Darcy Lockman
Doubleday, 07/17/2012
Wonder no more. This is a compelling memoir about the stressful, yet never less than exciting, education of a psychotherapist in the midst of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Creole Belle: A Dave Robicheaux Novel
by
James Lee Burke
Simon & Schuster, 07/17/2012
Creole Belle begins where the last book in the Dave Robicheaux series,
The Glass Rainbow, ended. Dave is in a recovery unit in New Orleans, where...
more
Feed
by
M. T. Anderson
Candlewick Press, 07/17/2012
But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World
by
Claire & Mia Fontaine
William Morrow, 07/17/2012
In their bestselling memoir,
Come Back, readers were moved and inspired by the story of Mia Fontaine's harrowing drug addiction and her mother, Claire...
more
Travel & Adventure
I Was Born There, I Was Born Here
by
Mourid Barghouti
Walker & Company, 07/17/2012
In 1996, award-winning Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti returned to his home for the first time since his exile - first in Egypt, then in Hungary - ...
more
Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes: A Novel
by
Betsy Woodman
Henry Holt and Company, 07/17/2012
Janet Laird's life changed the day she inherited her grandfather's house in a faraway Indian hill station. Ignoring her son's arguments to come grow ...
more
Leader of the Pack: An Andy Carpenter Mystery
by
David Rosenfelt
Minotaur Books, 07/17/2012
Over the course of his legal career, Andy Carpenter has lost a few cases. But that doesn't mean he forgets his clients. Andy has always been convinced...
more
Shine Shine Shine: A Novel
by
Lydia Netzer
St. Martin's Press, 07/17/2012
A debut unlike any other,
Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer is a shocking, searing, breathless love story, a gripping portrait of modern family, and a...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor
by
Hali Felt
Henry Holt and Company, 07/17/2012
Soundings is the story of the enigmatic, unknown woman behind one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. Before Marie Tharp, geologist...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The Fallen Angel: A Gabriel Allon Novel
by
Daniel Silva
HarperCollins Publishers, 07/17/2012
After narrowly surviving his last operation, Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, has taken refuge behind the walls of the Vatican,...
more
The Fear Artist: A Poke Rafferty Thriller
by
Timothy Hallinan
Soho Press, 07/17/2012
An accidental collision on a Bangkok sidewalk goes very wrong when the man who ran into Rafferty dies in his arms, but not before saying three words: ...
more
The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell
by
Chris Colfer
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 07/17/2012
Alex and Conner Bailey's world is about to change, in this fast-paced adventure that uniquely combines our modern day world with the enchanting realm ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Painted Bridge: A Novel
by
Wendy Wallace
Scribner, 07/17/2012
An elegant, emotionally suspenseful debut,
The Painted Bridge is a story of family betrayals, illicit power, and a woman sent to an asylum ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
by
Sam Kean
Little Brown & Company, 07/17/2012
In
The Disappearing Spoon, bestselling author Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic table. In
The Violinist's Thumb, he explores the wonders...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Tigers in Red Weather: A Novel
by
Liza Klaussmann
Little Brown & Company, 07/17/2012
Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha's Vineyard in a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Year Up: How a Pioneering Program Teaches Young Adults Real Skills for Real Jobs-With Real Success
by
Gerald Chertavian
Viking, 07/19/2012
During Gerald Chertavian's many years as a Big Brother, the former technology entrepreneur realized that our nation's "Opportunity Divide" strands ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Girl With Borrowed Wings
by
Rinsai Rossetti
The Dial Press, 07/19/2012
A stunningly written tale of an isolated girl and the shape-shifting boy who shows her what freedom could be - if only she has the courage to take it....
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Renegades: A Novel
by
Tom Young
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 07/19/2012
A catastrophic earthquake ravages Afghanistan, and American troops rush to deliver aid, among them Afghan Air Force adviser Lieutenant Colonel Michael...
more
Broken Harbor: A Novel
by
Tana French
Viking, 07/24/2012
Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, the brash cop from Tana French's bestselling
Faithful Place, plays by the book and plays hard. That's what's made him the ...
more
Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling: A Novel
by
Michael Boccacino
William Morrow Paperbacks, 07/24/2012
When the nanny to the young Darrow boys is found murdered on the outskirts of Blackfield, Charlotte Markham, the recently hired governess, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Let the Devil Sleep: A Novel
by
John Verdon
Crown, 07/24/2012
The most decorated homicide detective in NYPD history, Dave Gurney, is still trying to adjust to his life of quasi-retirement in upstate New York when...
more
The Thing about Thugs: A Novel
by
Tabish Khair
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/24/2012
In a small Bihari village, Captain William T. Meadows finds just the man to further his phrenological research back home: Amir Ali, confessed member...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Cupboard Full of Coats: A Novel
by
Yvvette Edwards
Amistad, 07/31/2012
Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize
A Kirkus Best Book of the Year
Plagued by guilt, paralyzed by shame, Jinx has spent the years since her ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Hector and the Search for Lost Time: A Hector's Journeys Novel
by
Francois Lelord
Penguin Books, 07/31/2012
Being up against the clock was a real problem for so many people, thought Hector. What could he possibly do to help them?
First he tackled ...
more
Literary Fiction
Pyg: The Memoirs of Toby, the Learned Pig
by
Russell Potter
Penguin Books, 07/31/2012
Blending the sophisticated satire of Jonathan Swift with the charming exuberance of a Pixar film,
Pyg tells the story of Toby, a truly exceptional pig...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Triburbia: A Novel
by
Karl Taro Greenfeld
Harper, 07/31/2012
Thrown together by circumstance, a group of fathers - a sound engineer, a sculptor, a film producer, a chef, a memoirist, a gangster - meets each ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
You & Me: A Novel
by
Padgett Powell
Ecco, 07/31/2012
Padgett Powell, author of the acclaimed
The Interrogative Mood and "one of the few truly important American writers of our time" (Sam Lipsyte), ...
more
Someday Dancer
by
Sarah Rubin
The Chicken House, 08/01/2012
Casey Quinn has got more grace in her pinkie toe than all those prissy ballet-school girls put together, even if you'd never guess it from the looks ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Dead Stars
by
Bruce Wagner
The Blue Sky Press, 08/02/2012
Dead Stars is Bruce Wagner's most lavish and remarkable translation yet of the national Zeitgeist: post-privacy porn culture, a Kardashian World of ...
more
Literary Fiction
Off the Grid: A Monkeewrench Novel
by
P. J. Tracy
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/02/2012
On a sailboat ten miles off the Florida coast, Grace MacBride, partner in Monkeewrench Software, thwarts an assassination attempt on retired FBI agent...
more
The Age of Desire: A Novel
by
Jennie Fields
Pamela Dorman Books, 08/02/2012
They say behind every great man is a woman. Behind Edith Wharton, there was Anna Bahlmann - her governess turned literary secretary, and her mothering...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns: A Novel
by
Margaret Dilloway
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/02/2012
Thirty-six-year-old Gal Garner lives a regimented life. Her job teaching biology and her struggle with kidney disease keep her toggling between the ...
more
Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution
by
Doug Fine
Gotham Books, 08/02/2012
The nation's economy is in trouble, but there's one cash crop that has the potential to turn it around: cannabis (also known as marijuana and hemp).&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Foreign Country
by
Charles Cumming
St. Martin's Press, 08/07/2012
On the vacation of a lifetime in Egypt, an elderly French couple are brutally murdered. Days later, a meticulously-planned kidnapping takes place on ...
more
Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation
by
Rachel Cusk
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/07/2012
In 2003, Rachel Cusk published
A Life's Work, a provocative and often startlingly funny memoir about the cataclysm of motherhood. Widely acclaimed, ...
more
Bad Little Falls: A Mike Bowditch Mysteries
by
Paul Doiron
Minotaur Books, 08/07/2012
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch has been sent into exile, transferred by his superiors to a remote outpost on the Canadian border. When a blizzard ...
more
Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution
by
Luisita Lopez Torregrosa
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 08/07/2012
In a voice haunting and filled with longing,
Before the Rain tells the story of love unexpected, its fragile bounds and subtle perils. As a ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Crow's Landing: A Virgil Cain Mystery
by
Brad Smith
Scribner, 08/07/2012
For Virgil Cain, a day of fishing on the Hudson River yields more than he bargained for when, while pulling up anchor, he hooks onto a mysterious ...
more
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
by
Bob Spitz
Knopf, 08/07/2012
It’s rare for someone to emerge in America who can change our attitudes, our beliefs, and our very culture. It’s even rarer when that ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Girl of Nightmares: Anna Dressed in Blood
by
Kendare Blake
Tor Books, 08/07/2012
It's been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can't move ...
more
Thrillers
Gone to the Forest: A Novel
by
Katie Kitamura
Free Press, 08/07/2012
Set on a struggling farm in a colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war,
Gone to the Forest is a tale of family drama and political turmoil...
more
Goodbye for Now: A Novel
by
Laurie Frankel
Doubleday, 08/07/2012
Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can't get a date. So he creates an algorithm that will match you with your soul mate. ...
more
Literary Fiction
Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings
by
Craig Brown
Simon & Schuster, 08/07/2012
Can you imagine more unlikely meetings than these: Marilyn Monroe and Frank Lloyd Wright; Sergei Rachmaninoff and Harpo Marx; T. S. Eliot and Groucho ...
more
Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth I and the Wars of Religion
by
Susan Ronald
St. Martin's Press, 08/07/2012
Elizabeth's 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only twenty-five years old, the young queen saw herself as ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Inferno: A New Translation
by
Dante Alighieri
Graywolf Press, 08/07/2012
An innovative and fascinating new version of Dante's
Inferno as it has never been rendered.
Stopped mid-motion in the middle
Of what we call a ...more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
January First: A Child's Descent into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her
by
Michael Schofield
Crown, 08/07/2012
Michael Schofield's daughter January is at the mercy of her imaginary friends, except they aren't the imaginary friends that most young children have;...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Kill You Twice
by
Chelsea Cain
Minotaur Books, 08/07/2012
Nothing makes Portland detective Archie Sheridan happier than knowing that Gretchen Lowell - the serial killer whose stunning beauty is belied by the ...
more
Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World: A Novel
by
Sabina Berman
Henry Holt and Company, 08/07/2012
A transporting and brilliant novel narrated by an unforgettable woman: Karen Nieto, an autistic savant whose idiosyncrasies prove her greatest gifts
...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Munster's Case: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
by
Hakan Nesser
Pantheon Books, 08/07/2012
For Waldemar Leverkuhn the day could not have begun more auspiciously. He and three of his friends, all retirees, have just won the lottery. It’s...
more
Mysteries
Out of It: A Novel
by
Selma Dabbagh
Bloomsbury USA, 08/07/2012
Gaza is being bombed. Rashid - an unemployed twenty-seven-year-old, who has stayed up smoking grass and watching it happen - wakes the next day to the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Requiem
by
Frances Itani
Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/07/2012
By the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize-winning author of
Deafening comes a new historical novel that traces the lives of one Japanese-Canadian family...
more
Sentinel: A Spycatcher Novel
by
Matthew Dunn
William Morrow, 08/07/2012
A New Spycatcher Novel Featuring Will Cochrane
Fourteen days ago, CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, received a cryptic message from an agent ...
more
The Black Isle
by
Sandi Tan
Grand Central Publishing, 08/07/2012
Uprooted from Shanghai with her father and twin brother, young Cassandra finds the Black Isle's bustling, immigrant-filled seaport, swampy jungle, and...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Dog Stars: A Novel
by
Peter Heller
Knopf, 08/07/2012
Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Exceptions
by
David Cristofano
Grand Central Publishing, 08/07/2012
No loose ends. It's the Bovaro family motto. As part of the Bovaro clan, one of the most powerful and respected families in organized crime, Jonathan ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Forrests: A Novel
by
Emily Perkins
Bloomsbury USA, 08/07/2012
Dorothy Forrest is immersed in the sensory world around her; she lives in the flickering moment. From the age of seven, when her odd, disenfranchised ...
more
The Iron Wyrm Affair: Introducing Bannon and Clare
by
Lilith Saintcrow
Orbit, 08/07/2012
Emma Bannon, forensic sorceress in the service of the Empire, has a mission: to protect Archibald Clare, a failed, unregistered mentath. His skills of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Shadow of the Rock: A Spike Sanguinetti Novel
by
Thomas Mogford
Walker & Company, 08/07/2012
On a humid summer night in Gibraltar, lawyer Spike Sanguinetti finds Solomon Hassan, an old school friend, waiting on his doorstep. Accused of ...
more
Thrillers
Debut Author
This Is How It Ends: A Novel
by
Kathleen MacMahon
Grand Central Publishing, 08/07/2012
Fall, 2008.
This is where it begins
The coast of Dublin, Ireland.
This is why it begins
Bruno, an American, has come to Ireland to search ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music
by
Adam Brent Houghtaling
HarperCollins Publishers, 08/07/2012
Sad music moves us like nothing else, and despite its gloomy nature it also has the curious power to make us happy. In
This Will End in Tears: The ...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Time Untime: A Dark-Hunters Novel
by
Sherrilyn Kenyon
St. Martin's Press, 08/07/2012
The Mayans aren't the only ones with a 2012 prophecy…
Long before recorded history, there was a Keetoowah warrior so feared that everyone ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Vengeance: A Quirk Novel
by
Benjamin Black
Henry Holt and Company, 08/07/2012
It's a fine day for a sail, and Victor Delahaye, one of Ireland's most successful businessmen, takes his boat far out to sea. With him is his partner'...
more
Wake: A Watersong Novel
by
Amanda Hocking
St. Martin's Press, 08/07/2012
Gorgeous. Fearless. Dangerous. They're the kind of girls you envy; the kind of girls you want to hate. Strangers in town for the summer, Penn, Lexi ...
more
After Eli
by
Rebecca Rupp
Candlewick Press, 08/14/2012
Some people die heroically, others accidentally. When Daniel Anderson's older brother dies, he wonders which category Eli's death falls into. In an ...
more
And When She Was Good: A Novel
by
Laura Lippman
William Morrow, 08/14/2012
A brilliant new stand alone novel from New York Times Bestselling author Laura Lippman. A suburban madam, a convicted murderer whose sentence is about...
more
False Memory
by
Dan Krokos
Hyperion Books for Children, 08/14/2012
Miranda wakes up alone on a park bench with no memory. In her panic, she releases a mysterious energy that incites pure terror in everyone around her....
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
More Baths Less Talking: Notes from the Reading Life of a Celebrated Author Locked in Battle with Football, Family, and Time Itself
by
Nick Hornby
McSweeney’s Books, 08/14/2012
"Read what you enjoy, not what bores you," Nick Hornby tells us. That simple, liberating, and indispensable directive animates each installment of the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Paris: A Love Story
by
Kati Marton
Simon & Schuster, 08/14/2012
This is a memoir for anyone who has ever fallen in love in Paris, or with Paris.
It is for anyone who has ever had their heart broken or their ...
more
Soonchild
by
Russell Hoban
Candlewick Press, 08/14/2012
In the cold north where the white wind blows lives Sixteen-Face John, a shaman. His wife is expecting their first child - a "soonchild." But Soonchild...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Caller: An Inspector Sejer Mystery
by
Karin Fossum
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 08/14/2012
One mild summer evening, a young couple are enjoying dinner while their daughter sleeps peacefully in her stroller under a tree. When her mother steps...
more
The Inn at Rose Harbor: A Novel
by
Debbie Macomber
Ballantine Books, 08/14/2012
Jo Marie Rose first arrives in Cedar Cove seeking a sense of peace and a fresh start. Coping with the death of her husband, she purchases a local bed-...
more
Literary Fiction
The Kingmaker's Daughter: The Cousins' War
by
Philippa Gregory
Touchstone, 08/14/2012
Known as the "Kingmaker," Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick: the most powerful magnate in fifteenth-century England. Without a son and heir, he uses ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Second Empress: A Novel of Napoleon's Court
by
Michelle Moran
Crown Journeys, 08/14/2012
National bestselling author Michelle Moran returns to Paris, this time under the rule of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte as he casts aside his beautiful ...
more
Historical Fiction
The St. Zita Society: A Novel
by
Ruth Rendell
Scribner, 08/14/2012
From three-time Edgar Award–winning mystery writer Ruth Rendell comes a captivating and expertly plotted tale of residents and servants on one ...
more
Valley of Ashes: A Novel
by
Cornelia Read
Grand Central Publishing, 08/14/2012
Madeline Dare trades New York's gritty streets for the tree-lined avenues of Boulder, Colorado when her husband Dean lands a promising job. Madeline, ...
more
We're Flying: Stories
by
Peter Stamm
Other Press, 08/14/2012
Following the publication of the widely acclaimed novel
Seven Years comes a trove of stories from the Swiss master Peter Stamm. They all possess the ...
more
Saving the School: The True Story of a Principal, a Teacher, a Coach, a Bunch of Kids and a Year in the Crosshairs of Education Reform
by
Michael Brick
Penguin Press, 08/16/2012
Being principal was never her dream. Anabel Garza, the young widow of a young cop, got by teaching English to immigrant children, taking college ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Syndrome E: A Novel
by
Franck Thilliez
Viking, 08/16/2012
Already a runaway bestseller in France,
Syndrome E tells the story of beleaguered detective Lucie Hennebelle, whose old friend has developed a case of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
George Orwell's Diaries
by
edited by Peter Davison & Christopher Hitchens
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/20/2012
This groundbreaking volume, never before published in the United States, at last introduces the interior life of George Orwell, the writer who defined...
more
Chickadee
by
Louise Erdrich
HarperCollins Publishers, 08/21/2012
Twin brothers Chickadee and Makoons have spent every day side by side and have done everything together since they were born - until the day the ...
more
Literary Fiction
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
by
Fredrik Logevall
Random House, 08/21/2012
The struggle for Vietnam occupies a central place in the history of the twentieth century. Fought over a period of three decades, the conflict drew in...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hidden Things: A Novel
by
Doyce Testerman
Harper Voyager, 08/21/2012
Watch out for the hidden things... That's the last thing Calliope Jenkins's best friend says to her before ending a two a.m. phone call from Iowa, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Hostage
by
Elie Wiesel
Knopf, 08/21/2012
From Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and author of
Night, a charged, deeply moving novel about the legacy of the Holocaust in today's troubled world and ...
more
Lionel Asbo: State of England
by
Martin Amis
Knopf, 08/21/2012
A savage, funny, and mysteriously poignant saga by a renowned author at the height of his powers.
Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug ...
more
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend: A Novel
by
Matthew Dicks
St. Martin's Press, 08/21/2012
Imaginary friend Budo narrates this heartwarming story of love, loyalty, and the power of the imagination - the perfect read for anyone who has ever ...
more
Palace of Stone: Princess Academy, Book 2
by
Shannon Hale
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 08/21/2012
Coming down from the mountain to a new life in the city seems a thrill beyond imagining. When Miri and her friends from Mount Eskel set off to help ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Sharp: A Memoir
by
David Fitzpatrick
William Morrow, 08/21/2012
A shocking and beautifully written memoir that goes inside the mind of a man's twenty-year battle to with depression and self-mutilation, sure to ...
more
Such Wicked Intent: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, Book Two
by
Kenneth Oppel
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 08/21/2012
When does obsession become madness? Tragedy has forced sixteen-year-old Victor Frankenstein to swear off alchemy forever. He burns the Dark Library. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Absent One: A Department Q Novel
by
Jussi Adler-Olsen
Dutton, 08/21/2012
In
The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen introduced Detective Carl Mørck, a deeply flawed, brilliant detective newly assigned to run ...
more
The Bartender's Tale: A Novel
by
Ivan Doig
Riverhead Books, 08/21/2012
Tom Harry has a streak of frost in his black pompadour and a venerable bar called The Medicine Lodge, the chief watering hole and last refuge of ...
more
The Devil in Silver: A Novel
by
Victor LaValle
Spiegel & Grau, 08/21/2012
The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themes that spark all of Victor LaValle's radiant fiction: faith, race, class, madness,...
more
The Laughterhouse: A Thriller
by
Paul Cleave
Atria Books, 08/21/2012
From the internationally bestselling author of
Blood Men and
Collecting Cooper comes a riveting new thriller about one father's revenge and another's ...
more
The Orchardist: A Novel
by
Amanda Coplin
Harper, 08/21/2012
At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Roots of the Olive Tree: A Novel
by
Courtney Miller Santo
William Morrow, 08/21/2012
Set in northern California, a beautiful and touching debut novel that brings to life five generations of women, the secrets and lies, that divide them...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Survivor
by
Gregg Hurwitz
St. Martin's Press, 08/21/2012
One morning in Los Angeles, Nate Overbay - a divorced former solider suffering from PTSD and slowly dying from ALS - goes to an eleventh-floor bank, ...
more
Thrillers
The Twelve Rooms of the Nile
by
Enid Shomer
Simon & Schuster, 08/21/2012
Before she became the nineteenth century’s greatest heroine, before he had written a word of
Madame Bovary, Florence Nightingale and Gustave ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
We Sinners: A Novel
by
Hanna Pylväinen
Henry Holt and Company, 08/21/2012
The Rovaniemis and their nine children belong to a deeply traditional church (no drinking, no dancing, no TV) in modern-day Michigan. A normal family ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
by
Michael Gorra
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/27/2012
Henry James (1843–1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the ...
more
A Certain October
by
Angela Johnson
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 08/28/2012
Scotty compares herself to tofu: no flavor unless you add something. And it’s true that Scotty’s friends, Misha and Falcone, and her brother...
more
A Sunless Sea: A William Monk Novel
by
Anne Perry
Ballantine Books, 08/28/2012
Anne Perry's spellbinding Victorian mysteries, especially those featuring William Monk, have enthralled readers for a generation. The
Plain Dealer ...
more
A Winter's Night
by
Valerio Massimo Manfredi
Europa Editions, 08/28/2012
Set during the first half of the twentieth century, this is the story of the Brunis, a family of farmers from the Italian Padan Plain who have worked ...
more
Don't Turn Around
by
Michelle Gagnon
HarperCollins Publishers, 08/28/2012
Sixteen-year-old Noa has been a victim of the system ever since her parents died. Now living off the grid and trusting no one, she uses her computer-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science
by
Lucia Greenhouse
Broadway Books, 08/28/2012
Lucia Ewing had what looked like an all-American childhood. She lived with her mother, father, sister, and brother in an affluent suburb of ...
more
Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America
by
Jonathan Kozol
Crown Journeys, 08/28/2012
In this powerful and culminating work about a group of inner-city children he has known for many years, Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hold It 'til It Hurts
by
T. Geronimo Johnson
Coffee House Press, 08/28/2012
When Achilles Conroy and his brother Troy return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, their white mother presents them with the key to their past: ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Katerina's Wish
by
Jeannie Mobley
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 08/28/2012
Katerina has a dream. It's her papa's dream, too. Her family came to America to buy their own farm. But a year later, Papa is still working in the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Kept in the Dark
by
Penny Hancock
Plume, 08/28/2012
At the house next door, respectability can hide all manner of sins.
When her neighbor’s fifteen-year-old nephew goes missing, Sonia is the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
ROTC Kills: Poems
by
John Koethe
Harper Perennial, 08/28/2012
From award-winning poet John Koethe, a rich and resonant new collection that moves easily between autobiographical anecdote and philosophical ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Beautiful Mystery: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, #8
by
Louise Penny
Minotaur Books, 08/28/2012
No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered ...
more
The Demon Catchers of Milan: The Demon Catchers of Milan Trilogy: Book 1
by
Kat Beyer
Egmont USA, 08/28/2012
Mia’s ordinary life is disrupted for good in the most horrifying way possible when she is possessed by a hungry and powerful demon - and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Distance Between Us: A Memoir
by
Reyna Grande
Atria Books, 08/28/2012
After publishing two acclaimed and award-winning novels about the Mexican immigrant experience and the families forced to navigate its twists and ...
more
The Mirrored World: A Novel
by
Debra Dean
Harper, 08/28/2012
The bestselling author of
The Madonnas of Leningrad returns with a breathtaking novel of love, madness, and devotion set against the extravagant royal...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Spy Lover
by
Kiana Davenport
Thomas & Mercer, 08/28/2012
Reminiscent of
Cold Mountain or
Daughter of Fortune, this extraordinary tale emanates from acclaimed author Kiana Davenport's own family history, and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Thrall: Poems
by
Natasha Trethewey
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 08/28/2012
The stunning follow-up volume to her 2007 Pulitzer Prize–winning
Native Guard, by America’s new Poet Laureate
Natasha Trethewey's poems ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy)
by
Jennifer Worth
Penguin Books, 08/29/2012
Viewers everywhere have fallen in love with this candid look at post-war London. In the 1950s, twenty-two-year-old Jenny Lee leaves her comfortable ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Caravan of Thieves
by
David Rich
Dutton, 08/30/2012
Rollie Waters is the smartest guy in any room. He knows all the angles, and he's never less than two steps ahead of trouble - a skill he learned from ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Act Three: Create the life you want after your first career and full-time motherhood
by
Julie Shifman
Greenleaf Book Group Press, 09/01/2012
You have more time, and you want to do something with it: perhaps go back to work, start a small business, commit to a cause you care about. But if ...
more
Advice
An Age of Madness
by
David Maine
Red Hen Press, 09/01/2012
Dr. Regina Moss has built herself a successful career as a psychiatrist in Boston: she enjoys a lucrative private practice, hefty consultation fees, ...
more
Literary Fiction
Drama
by
Raina Telgemeier
Scholastic, 09/01/2012
Callie loves theater. And while she would totally try out for her middle school's production of Moon Over Mississippi, she's a terrible singer. ...
more
Island of Bones: Essays
by
Joy Castro
University of Nebraska Press, 09/01/2012
What is "identity" when you're a girl adopted as an infant by a Cuban American family of Jehovah's Witnesses? The answer isn't easy. You won't find it...
more
Little Sinners, and Other Stories: Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
by
Karen Brown
University of Nebraska Press, 09/01/2012
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Karen Brown's
Little Sinners, and Other Stories features a sad, strange mosaic of women and men ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
Man in the Blue Moon
by
Michael Morris
Tyndale House Publishers, 09/01/2012
"He’s a gambler at best. A con artist at worst," her aunt had said of the handlebar-mustached man who snatched Ella Wallace away from her dreams ...
more
Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past
by
Peter G. Boag
University of California Press, 09/01/2012
But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Dark Unwinding
by
Sharon Cameron
Scholastic, 09/01/2012
When Katharine Tulman's inheritance is called into question by the rumor that her eccentric uncle is squandering away the family fortune, she is sent ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Breed: A Novel
by
Chase Novak
Mulholland, 09/04/2012
Alex and Leslie Twisden lead charmed lives - fabulous jobs, a luxurious town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a passionate marriage. What they ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Carnival of Souls
by
Melissa Marr
HarperCollins Publishers, 09/04/2012
In a city of daimons, rigid class lines separate the powerful from the power-hungry. And at the heart of The City is the Carnival of Souls, where both...
more
Death in Breslau: An Eberhard Mock Investigation
by
Marek Krajewski
Melville House, 09/04/2012
Occupied Breslau, 1933: Two young women are found murdered on a train, scorpions writhing on their bodies, an indecipherable note in an apparently ...
more
Detroit Breakdown
by
D. E. Johnson
Minotaur Books, 09/04/2012
Will Anderson and Elizabeth Hume are called to the vast Eloise Insane Asylum outside of Detroit, where Elizabeth's cousin Robbie is a patient and...
more
Fobbit
by
David Abrams
Grove Press, 09/04/2012
Fobbit \’fä-b?t\, noun. Definition: A U.S. soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base, esp. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Gods and Warriors
by
Michelle Paver
The Dial Press, 09/04/2012
Young Hylas - goatherd, Outsider, thief - is hunted by powerful warriors who want him dead and have kidnapped his sister. Hylas is forced to flee his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Hemingway's Girl
by
Erika Robuck
NAL, 09/04/2012
"She remembered when Hemingway had planted a banyan tree at his house and told her its parasitic roots were like human desire. At the time she’d ...more
Horten's Incredible Illusions: Magic, Mystery & Another Very Strange Adventure
by
Lissa Evans
Sterling Publishing, 09/04/2012
This magical follow-up to
Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms continues Stuart's amazing adventures - with more enchantment, more surprises, and more ...
more
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
by
Paul Tough
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 09/04/2012
Why do some children succeed while others fail?
The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: Success comes...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
In the Shadows of Paris: A Victor Legris Mystery
by
Claude Izner
Minotaur Books, 09/04/2012
In the turbulent Parisian summer of 1893, Victor Legris has vowed to his fiancée to give up the dangerous hobby of amateur sleuthing to ...
more
Interventions: A Life in War and Peace
by
Kofi Annan
Penguin Press, 09/04/2012
Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2001, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke to a world still reeling from the terrorist ...
more
John Saturnall's Feast
by
Lawrence Norfolk
Grove Press, 09/04/2012
A beautiful, rich and sensuous historical novel,
John Saturnall's Feast tells the story of a young orphan who becomes a kitchen boy at a manor house, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Monstrous Beauty
by
Elizabeth Fama
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/04/2012
Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Mortality
by
Christopher Hitchens
Twelve Books, 09/04/2012
On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir,
Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with ...
more
My Book of Life by Angel
by
Martine Leavitt
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/04/2012
Pretty soon she's addicted to his candy, and she moves in with him. As a favor, he asks her to hook up with a couple of friends of his, and then ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
NW: A Novel
by
Zadie Smith
Penguin Press, 09/04/2012
This is the story of a city.
The northwest corner of a city. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people ...
more
On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson
by
William Souder
Crown, 09/04/2012
Published on the fiftieth anniversary of her seminal book,
Silent Spring, here is an indelible new portrait of Rachel Carson, founder of the ...
more
Origin
by
Jessica Khoury
Razorbill, 09/04/2012
Pia has grown up in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Amazon rain forest. She was raised by a team of scientists who have created her to be the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Stag's Leap: Poems
by
Sharon Olds
Knopf, 09/04/2012
In this wise and intimate telling - which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending - Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Bloodletter's Daughter: A Novel of Old Bohemia
by
Linda Lafferty
Amazon Publishing, 09/04/2012
Inspired by a real-life murder that threatened to topple the powerful Hapsburg dynasty,
The Bloodletter’s Daughter is a dark and richly detailed...
more
Historical Fiction
The Book of Mischief: New and Selected Stories
by
Steve Stern
Graywolf Press, 09/04/2012
The Book of Mischief triumphantly showcases twenty-five years of outstanding work by one of our true masters of the short story. Steve Stern’s ...
more
The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Volume One of Bobby Dollar
by
Tad Williams
DAW Books, 09/04/2012
Bobby Dollar is an angel - a real one. He knows a lot about sin, and not just in his professional capacity as an advocate for souls caught between ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Fine Color of Rust: A Novel
by
P. A. O'Reilly
Washington Square Press, 09/04/2012
Set in the Australian bush, a wryly funny, beautifully observed novel about friendship, motherhood, love, and the importance of fighting for things ...
more
The Garden of Evening Mists
by
Tan Twan Eng
Weinstein Books, 09/04/2012
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of ...
more
The Map of the Sky: A Novel
by
Felix J Palma
Atria Books, 09/04/2012
The
New York Times bestselling author of
The Map of Time returns with a mesmerizing novel casting H.G. Wells in a leading role, as the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Other Half of Me: A Novel
by
Morgan McCarthy
Free Press, 09/04/2012
"What good can the past do the living? What harm?"
Growing up in their family's ancestral home in Wales, Jonathan Anthony and his little sister, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Rapture of the Nerds
by
Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross
Tor Books, 09/04/2012
Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century.
Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For the most part, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Three Day Affair
by
Michael Kardos
Mysterious Press, 09/04/2012
The first debut novel from the newly relaunched Mysterious Press introduces a phenomenal new voice in the realm of crime fiction.
Will, Jeffrey, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Time Keeper
by
Mitch Albom
Hyperion, 09/04/2012
From the author who's inspired millions worldwide with books like
Tuesdays with Morrie and
The Five People You Meet in Heaven comes his most ...
more
Wilderness: A Novel
by
Lance Weller
Bloomsbury USA, 09/04/2012
Thirty years after the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness left him maimed, Abel Truman has found his way to the edge of the continent, the rugged, ...
more
A Wanted Man: A Jack Reacher Novel
by
Lee Child
Delacorte Press, 09/11/2012
Four people in a car, hoping to make Chicago by morning. One man driving, eyes on the road. Another man next to him, telling stories that don’t ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom
by
Jacques Berlinerblau
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 09/11/2012
Weary of religious conservatives urging "defense of marriage" and atheist polemicists decrying the crimes of religion? Sick of pundits who want ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
One Year in Coal Harbor
by
Polly Horvath
Random House Children's Publishing, 09/11/2012
Readers rejoice - Primrose Squarp is back! The wise and curious heroine of the Newbery Honor Book
Everything on a Waffle is facing another adventure-...
more
Personal Effects
by
E.M. Kokie
Candlewick Press, 09/11/2012
Ever since his brother, T.J., was killed in Iraq, Matt feels like he’s been sleepwalking through life - failing classes, getting into fights, and...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Read This!: Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores
by
Hans Weyandt (Editor)
Coffee House Press, 09/11/2012
This book offers lists of favorites that have flown under the radar, but off of bookstore shelves. First published on Hans Weyandt's blog for Micawber...
more
Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man
by
Walter Stahr
Simon & Schuster, 09/11/2012
William Henry Seward was one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century: progressive governor of New York, outspoken U.S. senator, odds...
more
Biography/Memoir
Shadowfell
by
Juliet Marillier
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 09/11/2012
Sixteen-year-old Neryn is alone in the land of Alban, where the oppressive king has ordered anyone with magical strengths captured and brought before ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The People of Forever Are Not Afraid: A Novel
by
Shani Boianjiu
Hogarth Books, 09/11/2012
The searing, riveting debut novel about young women coming of age in the military, from one of the most promising literary talents of her generation.
...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Secret of the Stone Frog
by
David Nytra
Candlewick Press, 09/11/2012
In a magical world unlike any you’ve seen before ...
When Leah and Alan awaken in an enchanted forest, they have only each other and their ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Graphic Novels
Debut Author
The White Forest: A Novel
by
Adam McOmber
Touchstone, 09/11/2012
In the bestselling tradition of
The Night Circus and Sarah Waters'
The Little Stranger, Adam McOmber's hauntingly original debut novel follows a young...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
To Keep Love Blurry: American Poets Continuum
by
Craig Morgan Teicher
BOA Editions, Ltd., 09/11/2012
To Keep Love Blurry is about the charged and troubled spaces between intimately connected people: husbands and wives, parents and children, writers ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Vessel
by
Sarah Beth Durst
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 09/11/2012
In a desert world of sandstorms and sand-wolves, a teen girl must defy the gods to save her tribe in this mystical, atmospheric tale from the author ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
How Music Works
by
David Byrne
McSweeney’s Books, 09/12/2012
How Music Works is David Byrne's remarkable and buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. In it he explores how ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work
by
Jeanne Marie Laskas
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/13/2012
Five hundred feet underground, Jeanne Marie Laskas asked a coal miner named Smitty, "Do you think it’s weird that people know so little about you...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores
by
Jen Campbell
Overlook, 09/13/2012
Customer: Have you read every single book in here?
Bookseller: No, I can't say I have.
Customer: Well, you're not very good at your job, are you...
more
Other
With Blood in Their Eyes
by
Thomas Cobb
University of Arizona Press, 09/13/2012
On February 10, 1918, John Power woke to the sound of bells and horses' hooves. He was sharing a cabin near the family mine with his brother Tom and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations (Phoenix Poets)
by
David Ferry
Yale University Press, 09/14/2012
To read David Ferry's
Bewilderment is to be reminded that poetry of the highest order can be made by the subtlest of means. The passionate nature and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
A Death in Valencia: A Max Cámara Mystery
by
Jason Webster
Minotaur Books, 09/18/2012
Max Cámara is feeling low. Ominous cracks have appeared in the walls of his flat; the body of a well-known paella chef has been washed up on the ...
more
Beautiful Lies
by
Clare Clark
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 09/18/2012
London 1887. For Maribel Campbell Lowe, the beautiful bohemian wife of a maverick politician, it is the year to make something of herself. A self-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Because It Is My Blood: Birthright Series
by
Gabrielle Zevin
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/18/2012
"Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in." - Michael Corleone,
The Godfather
Since her release from Liberty Children's Facility, Anya...
more
Fourmile
by
Watt Key
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/18/2012
Twelve-year-old Foster knows in his gut that Dax Ganey, the man dating his widowed mother, is a bad seed. Then a mysterious stranger arrives...
more
Glass Heart
by
Amy Garvey
HarperTeen, 09/18/2012
Wren can do things that other people can only dream of. Make it snow on a clear, crisp day. Fly through an abandoned tunnel. Bring a paper bird to ...
more
Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan
by
Robin Maxwell
Tor Books, 09/18/2012
Cambridge, England, 1905. Jane Porter is hardly a typical woman of her time. The only female student in Cambridge University’s medical program, ...
more
Life After Death
by
Damien Echols
The Blue Sky Press, 09/18/2012
In 1993, teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. - who have come to be known as the West Memphis Three - were arrested for ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Outrage: An Inspector Erlendur Novel
by
Arnaldur Indridason
Minotaur Books, 09/18/2012
Haunted by personal demons, Detective Erlunder decides to take a short leave of absence, putting his female assistant, Elinborg, in charge while ...
more
Painter of Silence: A Novel
by
Georgina Harding
Bloomsbury USA, 09/18/2012
It is the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of the hospital in Iasi, Romania. He is deaf and mute, but a young nurse named Safta ...
more
Reinventing Bach
by
Paul Elie
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/18/2012
The story of a revolution in music and technology, told through a century of recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
In
Reinventing Bach,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Safekeeping
by
Karen Hesse
Feiwel & Friends, 09/18/2012
Radley's parents had warned her that all hell would break loose if the American People's Party took power. And now, with the president assassinated ...
more
San Miguel
by
T.C. Boyle
Viking, 09/18/2012
On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new ...
more
Stormdancer: (The Lotus War Book One)
by
Jay Kristoff
Thomas Dunne Books, 09/18/2012
The first in an epic new fantasy series, introducing an unforgettable new heroine
A DYING LAND
The Shima Imperium verges on the brink...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Crown of Embers
by
Rae Carson
Greenwillow Books, 09/18/2012
She does not know what awaits her at the enemy's gate.
Elisa is a hero. She led her people to victory over a terrifying, sorcerous army. Her place ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Cutting Season: A Novel
by
Attica Locke
Harper, 09/18/2012
In
Black Water Rising, Attica Locke delivered one of the most stunning and sure-handed fiction debuts in recent memory, garnering effusive critical ...
more
The Diviners
by
Libba Bray
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 09/18/2012
Evie O'Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City - and she is pos-i-toot-ly thrilled...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Incense Game: A Novel of Feudal Japan
by
Laura Joh Rowland
Minotaur Books, 09/18/2012
When a massive earthquake devastates Japan in 1703, even the shogun's carefully regulated court is left teetering on the brink of chaos. This is ...
more
The Peculiar
by
Stefan Bachmann
Greenwillow Books, 09/18/2012
Don't get yourself noticed and you won't get yourself hanged.
In the faery slums of Bath, Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie live by these ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Raven Boys
by
Maggie Stiefvater
Scholastic, 09/18/2012
"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark's Eve," Neeve said. "Either you’re his true love ... or you killed him."...more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Scientists: A Family Romance
by
Marco Roth
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/18/2012
With the precociousness expected of the only child of a doctor and a classical musician - from the time he could get his toddler tongue to a pronounce...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Winter of the World: Book Two of the Century Trilogy
by
Ken Follett
Dutton, 09/18/2012
Ken Follett's
Fall of Giants, the first novel in his extraordinary new historical epic, The Century Trilogy, was an international sensation, acclaimed...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Beggar's Feast
by
Randy Boyagoda
Pintail, 09/25/2012
Sam Kandy, born to low prospects in a Ceylon village in 1899, dies a hundred years later as the wealthy headman of the same village - a self-made ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Dodger
by
Terry Pratchett
HarperCollins Publishers, 09/25/2012
A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Kind One
by
Laird Hunt
Coffee House Press, 09/25/2012
As a teenage girl, Ginny marries Linus Lancaster, her mother's second cousin, and moves to his Kentucky pig farm "ninety miles from nowhere." In the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Lazarus is Dead
by
Richard Beard
Europa Editions, 09/25/2012
Brimming with wit and humor,
Lazarus Is Dead transcends genres as it recounts the story of a great friendship lost and re-found.
In the gospels ...
more
Historical Fiction
My Brilliant Friend
by
Elena Ferrante
Europa Editions, 09/25/2012
From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors,
My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila, set ...
more
My Name Is Parvana
by
Deborah Ellis
Groundwood Books, 09/25/2012
On a military base in post-Taliban Afghanistan, American authorities have just imprisoned a teenaged girl found in a bombed-out school. The army major...
more
Panorama City
by
Antoine Wilson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 09/25/2012
Oppen Porter, a self-described "slow absorber," thinks he's dying. He's not, but from his hospital bed, he unspools into a cassette recorder...
more
Sophia's War: A Tale of the Revolution
by
Avi
Simon & Schuster, 09/25/2012
In 1776, young Sophia Calderwood witnesses the execution of Nathan Hale in New York City, which is newly occupied by the British army. Sophia is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Sutton
by
J.R. Moehringer
Hyperion, 09/25/2012
Born in the squalid Irish slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the twentieth century, Willie Sutton came of age at a time when banks were out of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Talking to the Dead: A Novel
by
Harry Bingham
Delacorte Press, 09/25/2012
She knows what it's like ...
At first, the murder scene appears sad, but not unusual: a young woman undone by drugs and prostitution, her six-year-...
more
The Dangerous Animals Club
by
Stephen Tobolowsky
Simon & Schuster, 09/25/2012
If you ran into Stephen Tobolowsky on the street, you would not be mistaken: Yes, you've seen him before. A childhood dentist? A former geometry ...
more
The Daylight Gate
by
Jeanette Winterson
Grove Press, 09/25/2012
Set in seventeenth-century England during the reign of James I - the monarch who wrote his own book on witchcraft -
The Daylight Gate is best-selling ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Hallowed Ones
by
Laura Bickle
Houghton Mifflin Books For Children, 09/25/2012
Katie is on the verge of her
Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Paladin Prophecy: Book 1
by
Mark Frost
Random House Children's Publishing, 09/25/2012
Will West is careful to live life under the radar. At his parents' insistence, he's made sure to get mediocre grades and to stay in the middle of the...
more
The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age
by
Janet Wallach
Nan A. Talese, 09/25/2012
A captivating biography of America's first female tycoon, Hetty Green, the iconoclast who forged one of the greatest fortunes of her time.
No woman...
more
In a Glass Grimmly
by
Adam Gidwitz
Dutton Children's Books, 09/27/2012
More Grimm tales await in the harrowing, hilarious companion to a beloved new classic
Take caution ahead--
Oversize plant life, eerie amphibious...
more
May We Be Forgiven: A Novel
by
A. M. Homes
Viking, 09/27/2012
Harold Silver has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter, and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a ...
more
Meme: Kuhl House Poets
by
Susan Wheeler
University of Iowa Press, 10/01/2012
Acclaimed poet Susan Wheeler, whose last individual collection predicted the spiritual losses of the economic collapse, turns her attention to the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Merivel: A Man of His Time
by
Rose Tremain
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/01/2012
Robert Merivel, courtier to Charles II is no longer a young man - but off he goes to France in search of the Sun King and to Switzerland in pursuit of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Dogs of Winter
by
Bobbie Pyron
Arthur A. Levine Books, 10/01/2012
A small boy, a cruel city, and the incredible dogs who save him. Based on a true story!
When Ivan's mother disappears, he's abandoned on the ...
more
The Ruins of Lace
by
Iris Anthony
Sourcebooks, 10/01/2012
Lace is a thing like hope.
It is beauty; it is grace.
It was never meant to destroy so many lives.
The mad passion for forbidden lace has ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
A Working Theory of Love
by
Scott Hutchins
Penguin Press, 10/02/2012
Settled back into the San Francisco singles scene following the implosion of his young marriage just months after the honeymoon, Neill Bassett is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Ancient Light
by
John Banville
Knopf, 10/02/2012
Is there any difference between memory and invention? That is the question that fuels this stunning novel, written with the depth of character, the ...
more
Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia
by
Siddharth Kara
Columbia University Press, 10/02/2012
In
Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, Siddharth Kara conducted one of the most comprehensive, systematic accounts of the global ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Building Stories
by
Chris Ware
Pantheon Books, 10/02/2012
Building Stories imagines the inhabitants of a three-story Chicago apartment building: a 30-something woman who has yet to find someone with whom to ...
more
Does This Church Make Me Look Fat?: A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems
by
Rhoda Janzen
Grand Central Publishing, 10/02/2012
What does it mean to give church a try when you haven't
really tried since you were twelve? At the end of her bestselling memoir
Mennonite in a Little...more
Down the Rabbit Hole
by
Juan Pablo Villalobos
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/02/2012
Tochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines, and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Eve and Adam
by
Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant
Feiwel & Friends, 10/02/2012
In the beginning, there was an apple –
And then there was a car crash, a horrible injury, and a hospital. But before Evening Spiker's head ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Familiar
by
J. Robert Lennon
Graywolf Press, 10/02/2012
Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual, somber visit to her son Silas's grave when something changes. Actually, everything changes: her body is ...
more
Fever Season: The Story of a Terrifying Epidemic and the People Who Saved a City
by
Jeanette Keith
Bloomsbury USA, 10/02/2012
While the American South had grown to expect a yellow fever breakout almost annually, the 1878 epidemic was without question the worst ever. Moving up...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Finding Casey: A Novel
by
Jo-Ann Mapson
Bloomsbury USA, 10/02/2012
Glory Vigil, newly married, unexpectedly pregnant at forty-one, is nesting in the home she and her husband, Joseph, have just moved to in Santa Fe, a ...
more
In Sunlight and in Shadow
by
Mark Helprin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 10/02/2012
Can love and honor conquer all?
Mark Helprin's enchanting and sweeping novel springs from this deceptively simple question, and from the sight...
more
Isaac's Army: A Story of Courage and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland
by
Matthew Brzezinski
Random House, 10/02/2012
Starting as early as 1939, disparate Jewish underground movements coalesced around the shared goal of liberating Poland from Nazi occupation. For the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Keeper of the Lost Cities
by
Shannon Messenger
Aladdin, 10/02/2012
Twelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fit into her life. She's skipped multiple grades and doesn't really connect with the older kids at school, but ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Live Through This
by
Mindi Scott
Simon Pulse, 10/02/2012
If Coley Sterling's best friend would stop hating her, if her dance-team captains would lighten up, if her friends would stop asking her about Reece, ...
more
Literary Fiction
Mad River: A Virgil Flowers Novel
by
John Sandford
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/02/2012
Bonnie and Clyde, they thought. And what's-his-name, the sidekick. Three teenagers with dead-end lives, and chips on their shoulders, and guns.
The...
more
Mao: The Real Story
by
Alexander V. Pantsov, Steven I Levine
Simon & Schuster, 10/02/2012
This major new biography of Mao uses extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to biographers to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
My Last Empress: A Novel
by
Da Chen
Crown Journeys, 10/02/2012
A sweeping story of passion and obsession, set against the upheavals of 19th-century imperial China, by the
New York Times bestselling author Da Chen....
more
Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story
by
The Paris Review
Picador, 10/02/2012
What does it take to write a great short story? In
Object Lessons, twenty contemporary masters of the genre answer that question, sharing favorite ...
more
Paradise City: A Joe Gunther Novel
by
Archer Mayor
Minotaur Books, 10/02/2012
Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation are alerted to a string of unrelated burglaries across Vermont. Someone, in addition ...
more
Passenger
by
Andrew A. Smith
Feiwel & Friends, 10/02/2012
Best friends Jack and Conner can't stay away from Marbury. It's partly because of their obsession with this alternate world and the unresolved war ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Peaches for Father Francis
by
Joanne Harris
Viking, 10/02/2012
The bestselling author of
Chocolat and
The Girl with No Shadow returns to Lansquenet in this enchanting new novel,
Peaches for Father Francis (in the ...
more
Phantom: A Harry Hole Novel
by
Jo Nesbo
Knopf, 10/02/2012
Following from Jo Nesbø's electrifying international best-sellers
The Snowman and
The Leopard, now comes
Phantom, which plunges the brilliant, ...
more
Predictive Health: How We Can Reinvent Medicine to Extend Our Best Years
by
Kenneth L. Brigham
Basic Books, 10/02/2012
Our health care system is crippled by desperate efforts to prevent the inevitable. A third of the national Medicare budget - nearly $175 billion - is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
Salvation of a Saint
by
Keigo Higashino
Minotaur Books, 10/02/2012
From the author of the internationally bestselling, award-winning
The Devotion of Suspect X comes the latest novel featuring "Detective Galileo".
...
more
Say You're Sorry: A Joe O'Loughlin Novel
by
Michael Robotham
Mulholland, 10/02/2012
During the worst blizzard in decades, a husband and wife are brutally killed in their home while half of London is without power. The suspect, a ...
more
Son
by
Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin Books For Younger Readers, 10/02/2012
They called her Water Claire. When she washed up on their shore, no one knew that she came from a society where emotions and colors didn't exist. That...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Starry River of the Sky
by
Grace Lin
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/02/2012
The moon is missing from the remote Village of Clear Sky, but only a young boy named Rendi seems to notice! Rendi has run away from home and is now ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Geneva Trap: A Liz Carlyle novel
by
Stella Rimington
Bloomsbury USA, 10/02/2012
At a tracking station in Virginia, U.S. Navy officers watch in horror as one of their communications satellites plummets into the Indian Ocean and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Heart Broke In
by
James Meek
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/02/2012
From James Meek, the award-winning author of the international bestseller
The People's Act of Love, comes a rich and intricate novel about ...
more
The Hot Country
by
Robert Olen Butler
Mysterious Press, 10/02/2012
In
The Hot Country, Christopher Marlowe Cobb ("Kit"), the swashbuckling early 20th century American newspaper war correspondent travels to Mexico in ...
more
The Last Dragonslayer: The Chronicles of Kazam
by
Jasper Fforde
Houghton Mifflin Books For Children, 10/02/2012
In the good old days, magic was indispensable - it could both save a kingdom and clear a clogged drain. But now magic is fading: drain cleaner is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Lighthouse Road: A Novel
by
Peter Geye
Unbridled Books, 10/02/2012
Against the wilds of sea and wood, a young immigrant woman settles into life outside Duluth in the 1890s, still shocked at finding herself alone in a ...
more
The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined
by
Salman Khan
Twelve Books, 10/02/2012
Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, has written what is destined to become one of the most influential books about education in our time.
A ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Sisters: A Novel
by
Nancy Jensen
St. Martin's Press, 10/02/2012
Growing up in hardscrabble Kentucky in the 1920s, with their mother dead and their stepfather an ever-present threat, Bertie Fisher and her older ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Spindlers
by
Lauren Oliver
HarperCollins Publishers, 10/02/2012
One night when Liza went to bed, Patrick was her chubby, stubby, candy-grubbing and pancake-loving younger brother, who irritated and amused her both,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Woman Who Died A Lot: A Thursday Next Novel
by
Jasper Fforde
Viking, 10/02/2012
The Bookworld's leading enforcement officer, Thursday Next, has been forced into a semiretirement following an assassination attempt, returning home ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Three Parts Dead
by
Max Gladstone
Tor Books, 10/02/2012
A god has died, and it's up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Toby's Room
by
Pat Barker
Doubleday, 10/02/2012
From Booker Prize winner Pat Barker, a masterful novel that portrays the staggering human cost of the Great War. Admirers of her Regeneration ...
more
Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
by
Kirstin Cronn-Mills
Flux, 10/08/2012
My birth name is Elizabeth, but I'm a guy. Gabe. My parents think I've gone crazy and the rest of the world is happy to agree with them, but I know I'...
more
Literary Fiction
Care of Wooden Floors
by
Will Wiles
New Harvest, 10/09/2012
A British copywriter house-sits at his composer friend Oskar's ultra-modern apartment in a glum Eastern European city. The instructions are simple: ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Jepp, Who Defied the Stars
by
Katherine Marsh
Hyperion Books for Children, 10/09/2012
Is it written in the stars from the moment we are born?
Or is it a bendable thing that we can shape with our own hands?
Jepp of Astraveld needs ...
more
Historical Fiction
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
by
Sean Howe
Harper, 10/09/2012
An unvarnished, unauthorized, behind-the-scenes account of one of the most dominant pop cultural forces in contemporary America.
Operating out of ...
more
Silent House
by
Orhan Pamuk
Knopf, 10/09/2012
Never before published in English, Orhan Pamuk's second novel is the story of a Turkish family gathering in the shadow of the impending military coup ...
more
The Hydrogen Sonata
by
Iain M. Banks
Orbit, 10/09/2012
The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization.
An ancient people, organized on military ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster
by
Tim Crothers
Scribner, 10/09/2012
Phiona Mutesi sleeps in a decrepit shack with her mother and three siblings and struggles to find a single meal each day. Phiona has been out of ...
more
The Story of Ain't: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published
by
David Skinner
Harper, 10/09/2012
Created by the most respected American publisher of dictionaries and supervised by the editor Philip Gove,
Webster's Third broke with tradition, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Stonemouth
by
Iain Banks
Pegasus Books, 10/10/2012
After five years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of local patriarch Joe Murston, even though the last time Stewart saw the Murstons ...
more
The Time of the Wolf: A Novel of Medieval England Book 1 (published as Hereward Book 1 in UK)
by
James Wilde
Pegasus Books, 10/10/2012
1062, a time many fear is the End of Days. With the English King Edward heirless and ailing, across the grey seas in Normandy the brutal ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
This Is Life
by
Dan Rhodes
Canongate Books, 10/10/2012
This is Life is a missing baby mystery and an enchanted Parisian adventure. Hand in hand with lovable heroine Aurelie Renard, you will see life as you...
more
Island of Bones: A Crowther and Westerman Novel
by
Imogen Robertson
Pamela Dorman Books, 10/11/2012
Imogen Robertson's first two historical suspense novels featuring the forthright Mrs. Harriet Westerman and reclusive anatomist Gabriel Crowther have ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Overhaul
by
Kathleen Jamie
Picador, 10/11/2012
The Overhaul is Kathleen Jamie's first collection since the award-winning
The Tree House, and it broadens her poetic range considerably.
The Overhaul ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Big Exit
by
David Carnoy
Overlook, 10/11/2012
Richie Forman is freshly out of prison. By night, he makes a living impersonating Frank Sinatra in San Francisco's lounges and corporate parties. But ...
more
A Fatal Winter: A Max Tudor Novel
by
G. M. Malliet
Minotaur Books, 10/16/2012
Last year, Agatha Award-winning author G. M. Malliet charmed mystery lovers, cozy fans, and Agatha Christie devotees with
Wicked Autumn, the first ...
more
Crewel: Crewel World #1
by
Gennifer Albin
Macmillan Children’s Books, 10/16/2012
Deadly Secrets
Tangled Lies
Woven truths
Incapable. Awkward. Artless. That's what the other girls whisper behind her back. But sixteen-year-old ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Death on Telegraph Hill: A Sarah Woolson Mystery
by
Shirley Tallman
Minotaur Books, 10/16/2012
San Francisco, 1882. After enjoying an evening listening to the young Oscar Wilde, crusading young lawyer Sarah Woolson and her brother, Samuel, are ...
more
How to Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto
by
Eric Asimov
William Morrow, 10/16/2012
Whether you're a connoisseur or a novice, already love wine or want to know it better, here is the book for you.
Eric Asimov, the acclaimed chief ...
more
Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves
by
Henry Wiencek
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/16/2012
Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book - based on ...
more
Mrs Queen Takes the Train
by
William Kuhn
Harper, 10/16/2012
After decades of service and years of watching her family's troubles splashed across the tabloids, Britain's Queen is beginning to feel her age. She ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - from World War to Cold War
by
Michael Dobbs
Knopf, 10/16/2012
From the author of the best-selling
One Minute to Midnight, a riveting account of the pivotal six-month period spanning the end of World War II, the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Swimming Home: A Novel
by
Deborah Levy
Bloomsbury USA, 10/16/2012
As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is ...
more
The Fractal Prince
by
Hannu Rajaniemi
Tor Books, 10/16/2012
"The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to."
A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Panther: A John Corey Novel
by
Nelson DeMille
Grand Central Publishing, 10/16/2012
Anti-Terrorist Task Force agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, have been posted overseas to Sana'a, Yemen - one of the most ...
more
The Twelve: Book Two of The Passage Trilogy
by
Justin Cronin
Ballantine Books, 10/16/2012
The end of the world was only the beginning.
In his internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel
The Passage, Justin Cronin ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Theophobia: American Poets Continuum
by
Bruce Beasley
BOA Editions, Ltd., 10/16/2012
Theophobia is the latest volume in Bruce Beasley's ongoing spiritual meditation which forms a kind of postmodern devotional poetry in a reinvention of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
This Is Not Forgiveness
by
Celia Rees
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 10/16/2012
Everyone says Caro is bad, but Jamie can't help himself. She is totally different from the other girls. But he soon realizes there is more to Caro - ...
more
Zoo Time
by
Howard Jacobson
Bloomsbury USA, 10/16/2012
Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The ...
more
Hush Hush: Stories
by
Steven Barthelme
Melville House, 10/23/2012
With his brothers Donald and Frederick, Steven has made the Barthelme name synonymous with some of the best short-fiction writing of our time. With ...
more
The Elephant Keepers' Children
by
Peter Hoeg
Other Press, 10/23/2012
Told from the precocious perspective of fourteen-year-old Peter,
The Elephant Keepers' Children is about three siblings and how they deal with life ...
more
The Hollow Man
by
Oliver Harris
HarperPaperbacks, 10/23/2012
Describing London police detective Nick Belsey, hero of
The Hollow Man, an enthrallingly original thriller from British crime novelist Oliver Harris -...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Middlesteins
by
Jami Attenberg
Grand Central Publishing, 10/23/2012
For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering...
more
The Racketeer
by
John Grisham
Doubleday, 10/23/2012
Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is ...
more
The Stockholm Octavo
by
Karen Engelmann
Ecco, 10/23/2012
Life is close to perfect for Emil Larsson, a self-satisfied bureaucrat in the Office of Customs and Excise in 1791 Stockholm. He is a true man of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
This Living Hand: And Other Essays
by
Edmund Morris
Random House, 10/23/2012
When the multitalented biographer Edmund Morris (who writes with equal virtuosity about Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Beethoven, and Thomas ...
more
Who Could That Be At This Hour?: All the Wrong Questions
by
Lemony Snicket
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/23/2012
In a fading town, far from anyone he knew or trusted, a young Lemony Snicket began his apprenticeship in an organization nobody knows about. He ...
more
Burning Blue
by
Paul Griffin
The Dial Press, 10/25/2012
How far would you go for love, beauty, and jealousy?
When Nicole Castro, the most beautiful girl in her wealthy New Jersey high school, is splashed...
more
Fear Itself
by
Andrew Rosenheim
Overlook, 10/25/2012
Set in the tense and uncertain years before the Second World War, when America was still largely conflicted about entering the war on either side, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Dark Winter
by
David Mark
Penguin Books, 10/25/2012
What Ian Rankin is to Edinburgh, David Mark is to Hull, the northern England port as old and mysterious as its bordering sea. There, a series of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Rime of the Modern Mariner
by
Nick Hayes
Viking, 10/25/2012
Is it possible to update a masterpiece? Only, perhaps, with a brand-new masterpiece. Written in 1797, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was the ...
more
Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles
by
Fabio Bartolomei
Europa Editions, 10/30/2012
Diego is a forty-something car salesman with a talent for telling half-truths. Fausto sells watches over the phone. Claudio manages (barely) his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Astray
by
Emma Donoghue
Little Brown & Company, 10/30/2012
The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers ...
more
Black Flower
by
Young-ha Kim
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 10/30/2012
In 1904, as the Russo-Japanese War deepened, Asia was parceled out to rising powers and the Korean empire was annexed by Japan. Facing war and the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Eleven Pipers Piping: A Father Christmas Mystery
by
C. C. Benison
Delacorte Press, 10/30/2012
Father Tom Christmas, the recently widowed vicar adjusting to life in the English village of Thornford Regis, would do almost anything to avoid ...
more
Elsewhere: A memoir
by
Richard Russo
Knopf, 10/30/2012
After eight commanding works of fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winner now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving, and always surprising account of his ...
more
Leonardo and the Last Supper
by
Ross King
Walker & Company, 10/30/2012
Early in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began work in Milan on what would become one of history's most influential and beloved works of art -
The Last Supper...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries
by
Jon Ronson
Riverhead Books, 10/30/2012
Ronson investigates the strange things we're willing to believe in, from lifelike robots programmed with our loved ones' personalities to indigo ...
more
The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today
by
Thomas E. Ricks
Penguin Press, 10/30/2012
History has been kind to the American generals of World War II - Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley - and less kind to the generals of the wars...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Girl on the Cliff
by
Lucinda Riley
Atria Books, 10/30/2012
To escape a recent heartbreak in New York, Grania Ryan returns to her family home on the rugged, wind-swept coast of Ireland. Here, on the cliff edge ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Walnut Tree: A Holiday Tale
by
Charles Todd
William Morrow, 10/30/2012
"I was in Paris the day the French Army was mobilized."
In 1914, while visiting her friend Madeleine, Lady Elspeth Douglas's life is thrown into ...
more
Literary Fiction
Colin Fischer
by
Ashley Edward Miller
Razorbill, 11/01/2012
But when a gun is found in the school cafeteria, interrupting a female classmate's birthday celebration, Colin is the only for the investigation. It's...
more
Literary Fiction
Rootless
by
Chris Howard
Scholastic, 11/01/2012
17-year-old Banyan is a tree builder. Using salvaged scrap metal, he creates forests for rich patrons who seek a reprieve from the desolate landscape...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Seeds of Fiction: Graham Greene's Adventures in Haiti and Central America 1954-1983
by
Bernard Diederich
Peter Owen Publishers, 11/01/2012
An essential read for fans of literary biography, this book finally and fully illuminates a pivotal episode in Graham Greene's life and...
more
A Little History of Science
by
William Bynum
Yale University Press, 11/06/2012
Science is fantastic. It tells us about the infinite reaches of space, the tiniest living organism, the human body, the history of Earth. People have ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Bronze Summer: The Northland Trilogy
by
Stephen Baxter
Penguin Books, 11/06/2012
Stephen Baxter's imaginative and bold novel
Stone Spring drew readers into an alternate prehistoric scenario that now continues with
Bronze Summer. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Days of Blood & Starlight: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
by
Laini Taylor
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 11/06/2012
Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.
This is not that world.
Art student...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Hallucinations
by
Oliver Sacks
Knopf, 11/06/2012
Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Passion Blue
by
Victoria Strauss
Amazon Publishing, 11/06/2012
When seventeen-year-old Giulia, the orphaned, illegitimate daughter of a Milanese nobleman, learns she's to be packed off to a life behind convent ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Perry's Killer Playlist
by
Joe Schreiber
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 11/06/2012
When Perry ends up in Venice on a European tour with his band Inchworm, he can't resist a visit to Harry's Bar, where Gobi told him she'd meet him ...
more
The Cassandra Project
by
Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick
Ace Books, 11/06/2012
Early in his career, Jerry Culpepper could never have been accused of being idealistic. Doing public relations - even for politicians - was strictly ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Labyrinth of Osiris
by
Paul Sussman
Atlantic Monthly Press, 11/06/2012
Detective Arieh-Ben Roi of the Jerusalem police is tasked with the investigation into the death of a well-known Israeli journalist, Rivka Kleinberg, ...
more
The Last Shepherd
by
Martin Etchart
University of Nevada Press, 11/06/2012
Mathieu Etchiberri wants nothing more than to leave his family's Arizona sheep ranch and go to college, but his father insists that he take over the ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
by
Rian Malan
Grove Press, 11/06/2012
Since its original publication twenty years ago Rian Malan's classic work of narrative nonfiction
My Traitor's Heart has earned its author comparisons...
more
The Marseille Caper
by
Peter Mayle
Knopf, 11/06/2012
Lovable rogue and sleuth extraordinaire Sam Levitt is back in another beguiling romp through the South of France.
At the end of
The Vintage Caper, Sam...
more
The Woodcutter
by
Kate Danley
Amazon, 11/06/2012
Deep within the Wood, a young woman lies dead. Not a mark on her body. No trace of her murderer. Only her chipped glass slippers hint at her identity...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Will Sparrow's Road
by
Karen Cushman
Clarion, 11/06/2012
In his thirteenth year, Will Sparrow, liar and thief, becomes a runaway. On the road, he encounters a series of con artists - a pickpocket, a tooth ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom
by
Marcus Rediker
Viking, 11/08/2012
On June 28, 1839, the Spanish slave schooner
Amistad set sail from Havana on a routine delivery of human cargo. On a moonless night, after four days ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Boy in the Snow: An Edie Kiglatuk Mystery
by
M. J. McGrath
Viking, 11/08/2012
In
The Boy in the Snow, half-Inuit Edie Kiglatuk finds herself in Alaska with Sergeant Derek Palliser, helping her ex-husband Sammy in his bid to win ...
more
The Trial of Fallen Angels
by
James Kimmel Jr.
Amy Einhorn Books, 11/08/2012
Brek Cuttler has it all: a husband she loves, a daughter she adores, a successful law practice. And then one day everything she has ever known ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
A Death in the Small Hours: Charles Lenox Mysteries
by
Charles Finch
Minotaur Books, 11/13/2012
Charles Lenox is at the pinnacle of his political career and is a delighted new father. His days of regularly investigating the crimes of ...
more
A Drop of Chinese Blood
by
James Church
Minotaur Books, 11/13/2012
James Church's Inspector O novels have been hailed as "crackling good" (
The Washington Post) and "tremendously clever" (
Tampa Tribune), while Church ...
more
Bartholomew Biddle and the Very Big Wind
by
Gary Ross (Author), Matthew Myers (Illustrator)
Candlewick Press, 11/13/2012
Bartholomew Biddle's life has always been pretty ordinary, but when a huge wind blows past his window one night, he feels the call of adventure - and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Beneath the Abbey Wall
by
A. D. Scott
Atria Books, 11/13/2012
On a dark, damp Sunday evening, a man taking a shortcut home sees a hand reaching out in supplication from a bundle of sacks. In an instant he knows ...
more
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
by
Susannah Cahalan
Free Press, 11/13/2012
One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a strange hospital room, strapped to her bed, under guard, and unable to move ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a Family Man
by
Brian McGrory
Crown, 11/13/2012
Award-winning journalist Brian McGrory goes head to beak in a battle royale with another male for a top-spot in his home, vying for dominance with the...
more
Biography/Memoir
John Keats: A New Life
by
Nicholas Roe
Yale University Press, 11/13/2012
This landmark biography of celebrated Romantic poet John Keats explodes entrenched conceptions of him as a delicate, overly sensitive, tragic figure. ...
more
Life Among Giants
by
Bill Roorbach
Algonquin Books, 11/13/2012
At seventeen, David "Lizard" Hochmeyer is nearly seven feet tall, a star quarterback, and Princeton-bound. His future seems all but assured until his ...
more
Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds
by
Jim Sterba
Crown, 11/13/2012
This may be hard to believe but it is very likely that more people live in closer proximity to more wild animals, birds and trees in the eastern ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Poems 1962-2012
by
Louise Glück
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/13/2012
It is the astonishment of Louise Glück's poetry that it resists collection. With each successive book her drive to leave behind what came before ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Reached: Matched Trilogy Book 3
by
Ally Condie
Dutton Children's Books, 11/13/2012
Cassia faces the ultimate choices in the long-anticipated conclusion to the New York Times bestselling
Matched Trilogy.
After leaving Society and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On
by
Christine Benvenuto
St. Martin's Press, 11/13/2012
Christine Benvenuto had been married for more than twenty years - with three young children - when her husband turned to her one night in bed and...
more
The Carbon Crunch: How We're Getting Climate Change Wrong--and How to Fix It
by
Dieter Helm
Yale University Press, 11/13/2012
Despite commitments to renewable energy and two decades of international negotiations, global emissions continue to rise. Coal, the most damaging of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Heat of the Sun
by
David Rain
Henry Holt and Company, 11/13/2012
With Sophie Tucker belting from his hand-crank phonograph and a circle of boarding-school admirers laughing uproariously around him, Ben "Trouble" ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Lawgiver: A Novel
by
Herman Wouk
Simon & Schuster, 11/13/2012
For more than fifty years, legendary author Herman Wouk has dreamed of writing a novel about the life of Moses. Finally, at age ninety-seven, he has ...
more
The Other Side of the World
by
Jay Neugeboren
Two Dollar Radio, 11/13/2012
Charlie is a journeyman whose friend Nick convinces him to move to Singapore, where he falls in love with the vibrant and endangered world of nearby ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor
by
Jake Tapper
Little Brown & Company, 11/13/2012
At 6:00 a.m. on the morning of October 3, 2009, Combat Outpost Keating was viciously attacked by Taliban insurgents. The 53 U.S. troops, having been ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy
by
David Nasaw
Penguin Books, 11/13/2012
Joseph Patrick Kennedy - whose life spanned the First World War, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the Cold War - ...
more
The Testament of Mary
by
Colm Toibin
Scribner, 11/13/2012
Provocative, haunting and indelible, Colm Tóibín's portrait of Mary presents her as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
by
Jon Meacham
Random House, 11/13/2012
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
American Lion and
Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an ...
more
Young Philby
by
Robert Littell
Thomas Dunne Books, 11/13/2012
Bestselling novelist Robert Littell employs all his considerable skills in telling the story of Kim Philby through the eyes of more than ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality
by
Jacob Tomsky
Doubleday, 11/20/2012
Jacob Tomsky never
intended to go into the hotel business. As a new college graduate, armed only with a philosophy degree and a singular lack of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Married Love: And Other Stories
by
Tessa Hadley
Harper Perennial, 11/20/2012
Married Love is a masterful collection of short fiction from one of today's most accomplished storytellers. These tales showcase the qualities for ...
more
The Fact of the Matter: Poems
by
Sally Keith
Milkweed Editions, 11/20/2012
Moving from the mundane to the profound, first through observation of fact and matter, then shifting perspective, engaging a deeper sense of self, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
1775: A Good Year for Revolution
by
Kevin Phillips
Viking, 11/27/2012
In
1775, iconoclastic historian and bestselling author Kevin Phillips punctures the myth that 1776 was the watershed year of the American Revolution. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Thread Unbroken
by
Kay Bratt
AmazonEncore, 11/27/2012
Chai and Josi share a bond that transcends ordinary friendship. While Chai has always been Josi's protector - ever since they were toddlers, growing ...
more
Literary Fiction
Mandarin Gate: An Inspector Shan Mystery
by
Eliot Pattison
Minotaur Books, 11/27/2012
In
Mandarin Gate, Edgar Award winner Eliot Pattison brings Shan back in a thriller that navigates the explosive political and religious...
more
Ru: A Novel
by
Kim Thúy
Bloomsbury USA, 11/27/2012
At ten years old, Kim Thúy fled Vietnam on a boat with her family, leaving behind a grand house and the many less tangible riches of their home ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Girl Who Fell to Earth: A Memoir
by
Sophia Al-Maria
Harper Perennial, 11/27/2012
When Sophia Al-Maria's mother sends her away from rainy Washington State to stay with her husband's desert-dwelling Bedouin family in Qatar, she ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The Legend of Broken
by
Caleb Carr
Random House, 11/27/2012
Legend meets history in this mesmerizing novel from #1
New York Times bestselling author Caleb Carr. Demonstrating the rich storytelling, skillful ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Man Who Bridged the Mist
by
Kij Johnson
Phoenix Pick, 11/30/2012
A few Ferries make dangerous and treacherous journeys across the Mist when they can, trusting in good fortune and the uncanny skills of those plying ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Come the Fear: A Richard Nottingham Mystery
by
Chris Nickson
Crème de la Crime, 12/01/2012
March, 1733. Fire rages through an empty house in a rundown area of Leeds, but the investigation takes a disturbing turn with the discovery of the ...
more
The Valley of Unknowing
by
Philip Sington
W.W. Norton & Company, 12/03/2012
In the twilight years of Communist East Germany, Bruno Krug, author of a single world-famous novel written twenty years earlier, falls for Theresa ...
more
Bone River
by
Megan Chance
Amazon Publishing, 12/04/2012
In the mid-19th century, Leonie Monroe Russell works alongside her husband, Junius, an oysterman in Shoalwater Bay in the Pacific Northwest. At night...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Climates
by
Andre Maurois
Other Press, 12/04/2012
Written in 1928 by French biographer and novelist Andre Maurois,
Climates became a best seller in France and all over Europe. The first 100,000 copies...
more
Open Heart
by
Elie Wiesel
Knopf, 12/04/2012
A profoundly and unexpectedly intimate, deeply affecting summing up of his life so far, from one of the most cherished moral voices of our time.
...
more
Quick Question: New Poems
by
John Ashbery
Ecco, 12/04/2012
Hailed by Harold Bloom as "America's greatest living poet," John Ashbery has won every major American literary award for his poetry, including the ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Child's Child: A Novel
by
Barbara Vine
Scribner, 12/04/2012
From three-time Edgar Award–winning mystery writer Ruth Rendell, writing here under her Barbara Vine pseudonym, an ingenious novel-within-a-novel...
more
Literary Fiction
The Man Who Turned Both Cheeks
by
Gillian Royes
Atria Books, 12/04/2012
Hopes for the impoverished village of Largo Bay come alive with the arrival of Joseph, estranged son of bar owner Eric. Janna, who has returned to the...
more
The Sanctity of Hate: A Medieval Mystery
by
Priscilla Royal
Poisoned Pen Press, 12/04/2012
The corpse of an unpopular newcomer floats in the priory millpond. A Jewish family, refugees under the 1275 Statute of the Jewry, is accused. Did ...
more
Brideshead Revisited
by
Evelyn Waugh
Back Bay Books, 12/11/2012
The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece -- a novel that immerses us in the ...
more
Literary Fiction
Falling Kingdoms
by
Morgan Rhodes
Razorbill, 12/11/2012
In a land where magic has been forgotten but peace has reigned for centuries, a deadly unrest is simmering. Three kingdoms grapple for power - ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Good Junk: A Cliff St. James Novel
by
Ed Kovacs
Minotaur Books, 12/11/2012
Cliff St. James returns to a Post-Katrina New Orleans to take on another case in Ed Kovac's
Good Junk, this wonderful action-packed follow-up to ...
more
On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature
by
Melanie Challenger
Counterpoint Press, 12/11/2012
Realizing the link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinctions, award-winning writer ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Safe House
by
Chris Ewan
Minotaur Books, 12/11/2012
A brilliant thriller from the author of the acclaimed
Good Thief's Guide series asks, how can a beautiful woman simply vanish?
When Rob Hale wakes ...
more
The Bones of the Old Ones: Dabir and Asim
by
Howard Andrew Jones
Thomas Dunne Books, 12/11/2012
As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Loved One
by
Evelyn Waugh
Little Brown & Company, 12/11/2012
Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering...
more
Literary Fiction
Apostoloff
by
Sibylle Lewitscharoff
Seagull Books, 12/15/2012
"Gone,
finito, The End, I say. A father who puts an end to it all before he wears down the whole family deserves more praise than damnation."
Two ...
more
Literary Fiction
A Bit of Difference
by
Sefi Atta
Interlink Books, 12/17/2012
A new novel from the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.
At thirty-nine, Deola Bello, a Nigerian expatriate in London, is ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Dead Shall Not Rest: Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mysteries
by
Tessa Harris
Kensington, 12/24/2012
It is not just the living who are prey to London's criminals and cutpurses. Corpses, too, are fair game - dug up from fresh graves and sold to men of ...
more
Mysteries
The Plum Tree
by
Ellen Marie Wiseman
Kensington, 12/24/2012
A deeply moving and masterfully written story of human resilience and enduring love,
The Plum Tree follows a young German woman through the chaos of ...
more
Historical Fiction
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
by
Juliann Garey
Soho Press, 12/26/2012
In her
tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks
by
Simon Garfield
Gotham Books, 12/27/2012
Simon Garfield's
Just My Type illuminated the world of fonts and made everyone take a stand on Comic Sans and care about kerning. Now Garfield takes ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds
by
Ping Fu
Portfolio, 12/31/2012
"Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have ...more
Biography/Memoir
