A Matter of Justice: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery
by
Charles Todd
William Morrow, 01/01/2009
At the turn of the century, in a war taking place far from England, two soldiers chance upon an opportunity that will change their lives forever. To ...
more
Agincourt: A Novel
by
Bernard Cornwell
HarperCollins Publishers, 01/01/2009
The word
Agincourt echoes still for us today. It was one of the greatest English victories ever. The few, the yeomen of England, triumphed over their ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Buried Strangers
by
Leighton Gage
Soho Press, 01/01/2009
A playful dog finds a bone at the outset of this mystery set in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the federal police based in Brasilia...
more
Cambridge Blue
by
Alison Bruce
Soho Press, 01/01/2009
Gary Goodhew is intelligent, intuitive, and the youngest detective at Cambridge's Parkside Station. When Gary discovers the first body in a series of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
If You Eat, You Never Die: Chicago Tales
by
Tony Romano
Harper Perennial, 01/01/2009
In a neighborhood on Chicago's outskirts, Fabio and Lucia Comingo have built a new American life—and struggle to comprehend the influences that ...
more
Nemesis
by
Jo Nesbo
HarperCollins Publishers, 01/01/2009
Grainy CCTV footage shows a man walking into a bank and putting a gun to a cashier's head. He tells her to count to twenty-five. When he doesn't get ...
more
Never Tell a Lie: A Novel of Suspense
by
Hallie Ephron
William Morrow, 01/01/2009
It all started with the yard sale. Ivy was eight months and one week pregnant when she insisted that she and her husband, David, clean out the junk ...
more
Ransom My Heart
by
Meg Cabot
Avon Books, 01/01/2009
Paperback Original. He's a tall, handsome knight with a secret. She's an adventurous beauty with more than a few secrets of her own. Finnula needs ...
more
The Book of Unholy Mischief: A Novel
by
Elle Newmark
Atria Books, 01/01/2009
It’s 1498, the dawn of the Renaissance, and Venice is teeming with rumors about an
ancient book thought to hold dangerous secrets. Powerful men ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Ladies' Lending Library: A Novel
by
Janice Kulyk Keefer
HarperCollins Publishers, 01/01/2009
Paperback Original.
It is August of 1963, the year of the Taylor/Burton film epic
Cleopatra, showcasing a passion too grand to be contained on ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Literary Fiction
The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008
by
Louise Erdrich
Harper, 01/01/2009
This unique volume brings together for the first time three decades of short stories by one of the most innovative and exciting writers of our day. A ...
more
The Searchers
by
Alan Le May
Leisure Books, 01/01/2009
Now, the novel that gave birth to the film returns to print--a timeless work of vivid, raw western fiction and a no-holds-barred portrait of the real ...
more
Historical Fiction
Things I've Been Silent About: Memories
by
Azar Nafisi
Random House, 01/01/2009
Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international bestseller
Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in a family...
more
What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything
by
John Brockman
Harper Perennial, 01/01/2009
Paperback Original.Edge (www.edge.org), the influential online intellectual salon, recently asked 150 high-powered thinkers to discuss their most ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Why Evolution Is True
by
Jerry A. Coyne
Oxford University Press, 01/01/2009
For all the discussion in the media about creationism and 'Intelligent Design', virtually nothing has been said about the evidence in question - the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Boy Toy
by
Barry Lyga
Clarion, 01/05/2009
Five years ago, Josh's life changed. Drastically. And everyone in his school, his town—seems like the world—thinks they understand. But ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front
by
Peter Hart
Pegasus Books, 01/05/2009
On July 1, 1916, the British Army launched the "Big Push" that was supposed to bring an end to the horrific stalemate on the Western Front between ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals
by
Temple Grandin
Houghton Mifflin, 01/06/2009
The best-selling animal advocate Temple Grandin offers the most exciting exploration of how animals feel since
The Hidden Life of Dogs. In her ...
more
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
by
David Sheff
Mariner Books, 01/06/2009
Before Nic became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger ...
more
Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind
by
Daniel Tammet
Free Press, 01/06/2009
"The brain is wider than the sky
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside."
Emily Dickinson's poem ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis (The Myths)
by
Ali Smith
Canongate Books, 01/06/2009
Girl Meets Boy is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, and the absurdity of consumerism, as well as a story of reversals ...
more
Literary Fiction
Ivory's Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants
by
John Frederick Walker
Atlantic Monthly Press, 01/06/2009
Ivory's Ghosts is the first comprehensive, contemporary look at the world's most treasured organic material, ivory. Using a wide range of historical ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lark and Termite
by
Jayne Anne Phillips
Knopf, 01/06/2009
A rich, wonderfully alive novel from one of our most admired and best-loved writers, her first book in nine years.
Lark and Termite is set during the ...
more
Plum Spooky: A Between-the-Numbers Novel
by
Janet Evanovich
St. Martin's Press, 01/06/2009
Turn on all the lights and check under your bed. Things are about to get spooky in Trenton, New Jersey. According to legend, the Jersey Devil prowls ...
more
Mysteries
The Fire Gospel (Myths, The)
by
Michel Faber
Canongate Books, 01/06/2009
Theo Griepenkerl, a Canadian linguistics scholar, is sent to Iraq in search of artifacts that have survived the destruction and looting of the war. ...
more
The Impostor: A Novel
by
Damon Galgut
Grove Press, 01/06/2009
Paperback Original.
In
The Impostor, his first novel since
The Good Doctor, Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of post-apartheid ...
more
The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising
by
Kenneth Roman
Palgrave Macmillan, 01/06/2009
Famous for his colorful personality and formidable intellect, David Ogilvy left an indelible mark on the advertising world, transforming it into a ...
more
The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity
by
Matt Miller
Times Books, 01/06/2009
A leading political and business thinker identifies the greatest threat to our economic future: the things we think we know—but don't.
America...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye
by
C.J. Box
Minotaur Books, 01/06/2009
Jack and Melissa McGuane have spent years trying to have a baby. Finally their dream has come true with the adoption of their daughter, Angelina. But ...
more
Thrillers
Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees
by
Roger Deakin
Free Press, 01/06/2009
Here, published for the first time in the United States, is the last book by Roger Deakin, famed British nature writer and icon of the ...
more
Daemon
by
Daniel Suarez
Dutton, 01/08/2009
Already an underground sensation, a high-tech thriller for the wireless age that explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running ...
more
Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America
by
Adam Cohen
Penguin Press, 01/08/2009
Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history - the tense, feverish first one hundred days of FDR's presidency, when he and his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Sky Below
by
Stacey D'Erasmo
Houghton Mifflin, 01/09/2009
In her new novel, D'Erasmo reaches back to Ovid for inspiration in this tale of how the mythic animates our everyday lives. At thirty-seven, Gabriel ...
more
Murder in Mykonos
by
Jeffrey Siger
Poisoned Pen Press, 01/10/2009
A young woman on holiday to Mykonos, the most famous of Greece’s Aegean Cycladic islands, simply disappears off the face of the earth. And no one...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows
by
Ann Brashares
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 01/13/2009
summer is a time to grow...
seeds
Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. ...
more
Best African American Fiction: 2009
by
Selected Authors
Bantam Books, 01/13/2009
Introducing the first volume in an exciting new annual anthology featuring the year's most outstanding fiction by some of today's finest African ...
more
Mounting Fears
by
Stuart Woods
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/13/2009
President Will Lee is having a rough week. His vice president just died during surgery. Confirmation hearings for the new vice president are under way...
more
The Piano Teacher
by
Janice Y. K. Lee
Viking, 01/13/2009
In the sweeping tradition of
The English Patient, a gripping tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong
In 1942, Will Truesdale, an Englishman...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Literary Fiction
Runner: Jane Whitefield Series #6
by
Thomas Perry
Houghton Mifflin, 01/14/2009
For more than a decade, Jane pursued her unusual profession: "I'm a guide . . . I show people how to go from places where somebody is trying to kill ...
more
Sand: The Never-Ending Story
by
Michael Welland
University of California Press, 01/15/2009
From individual grains to desert dunes, from the bottom of the sea to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years in the past to the future, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
The Blue Door
by
David Fulmer
Harvest Books, 01/15/2009
Welterweight boxer Eddie Cero is out of the ring with an injury, but he still can't bear to see an unfair fight. In a Philadelphia alley he steps in ...
more
Child Care Today: Getting It Right for Everyone
by
Penelope Leach
Knopf, 01/20/2009
Who is caring for today's children? How well are they succeeding at it? What does care cost, and who is paying for it? How do parents go about ...
more
Advice
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
by
Phillip M Hoose
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 01/20/2009
“When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Honestly Dearest, You're Dead: A Mystery (Dek Elstrom Mysteries)
by
Jack Fredrickson
Minotaur Books, 01/20/2009
A Safe Place for Dying, the first in Jack Fredrickson's Dek Elstrom mystery series, was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. Now, ...
more
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food
by
Moira Hodgson
Nan A. Talese, 01/20/2009
Moira Hodgson is British by birth and cosmopolitan by education. The daughter of a Foreign Service officer, she spent her childhood in many a strange ...
more
Mind Over Ship
by
David Marusek
Tor Books, 01/20/2009
The year is 2135, and the international program to seed the galaxy with human colonies has stalled as greedy, immoral powerbrokers park their ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter
by
Sakie Yokota
Vertical Inc, 01/20/2009
Twenty years later a newspaper revealed she was abducted by North Korean operatives and was still in North Korea. Megumi and at least 13 others were ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Random Acts of Heroic Love
by
Danny Scheinmann
Thomas Dunne Books, 01/20/2009
1992: Leo Deakin wakes up in a hospital somewhere in South America, his girlfriend Eleni is dead and Leo doesn't know where he is or how Eleni died. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government
by
Robert G. Kaiser
Knopf, 01/20/2009
A true insider, Robert G. Kaiser has monitored American politics for The Washington Post for nearly half a century. In this sometimes shocking and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Empty Mirror
by
J. Sydney Jones
St. Martin's Press, 01/20/2009
The summer of 1898 finds Austria terrorized by a killer who the press calls "Vienna's Jack the Ripper." Four bodies have already been found, but when ...
more
The Error World: An Affair with Stamps
by
Simon Garfield
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 01/20/2009
From the author of
Mauve, an obsessively readable memoir that brings the mania for stamp collecting to life From the Penny Red to the Blue Mauritius, ...
more
The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power
by
David E. Sanger
Harmony Books, 01/20/2009
For the next two months, the President-elect will be getting security briefings about the perilous world he is about to inherit.
Here's yours.
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Steel Remains
by
Richard K. Morgan
Delta, 01/20/2009
A dark lord will rise. Such is the prophecy that dogs Ringil Eskiath - Gil, for short - a washed-up mercenary and onetime war hero whose cynicism is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself
by
Hannah Holmes
Random House, 01/20/2009
The well-dressed ape, aka Homo sapiens, is a strange mammal. It mates remarkably often, and with unprecedented affection. With similar enthusiasm, it ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Work Hard, Be Nice: How Two Inspired Teachers Created America's Best Schools
by
Jay Mathews
Algonquin Books, 01/20/2009
When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin signed up for Teach for America right after college and found themselves utter failures in the classroom, they vowed...
more
Blonde Roots
by
Bernardine Evaristo
Riverhead Books, 01/22/2009
A provocative novel that upends the history of the transatlantic slave trade, reversing and reexamining notions of savagery and civilization, as it ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
by
Liaquat Ahamed
Penguin Press, 01/22/2009
With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Why Evolution Is True
by
Jerry A. Coyne
Viking, 01/22/2009
In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant “intelligent design,” there is an element of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
A Darker Place
by
Jack Higgins
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/27/2009
A famous Russian writer and ex-paratrooper named Alexander Kurbsky is fed up with the Putin government and decides he wants to “disappear” ...
more
Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
by
Adam Gopnik
Knopf, 01/27/2009
On a memorable day in human history, February 12, 1809, two babies were born an ocean apart: Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky log cabin; Charles...
more
Dragon in Chains
by
Daniel Fox
Del Rey, 01/27/2009
Paperback Original.
From award-winning author Daniel Fox comes a ravishingly written epic of revolution and romance set in a world where magic is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Eve: A Novel of the First Woman
by
Elissa Elliott
Delacorte Press, 01/27/2009
It is the world’s oldest tale: the story of Eve, her husband, Adam, and the tragedy that would overcome her sons…. In this luminous debut ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Heart of a Shepherd
by
Rosanne Parry
Random House Children's Publishing, 01/27/2009
When Brother's dad is shipped off to Iraq, along with the rest of his reserve unit, Brother must help his grandparents keep the ranch going. He’s...
more
Heroes of the Valley
by
Jonathan Stroud
Hyperion Books for Children, 01/27/2009
Halli Sveinsson has grown up in the House of Svein, listening to the legends of the heroes as all his forefathers did. His is a peaceful society ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing
by
Jeffrey Tayler
Houghton Mifflin, 01/27/2009
A gripping journey through some of the planet's most remote and challenging terrain and its peoples, in search of why democracy has yet to thrive in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Scat
by
Carl Hiaasen
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 01/27/2009
Mrs. Bunny Starch, the most feared biology teacher ever, was last seen during a field trip to Black Vine Swamp. The school's headmaster and the police...
more
Literary Fiction
Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story
by
Asha Bandele
Collins, 01/27/2009
From the author of
The Prisoner's Wife, a poetic, passionate, and powerful memoir about the hard realities of single motherhood.
When Asha Bandele,...
more
Stuffed: An Insider's Look at Who's (Really) Making America Fat
by
Hank Cardello & Doug Garr
Ecco, 01/27/2009
Stuffed takes up where
Fast Food Nation left off. Echoing Jeffrey Wigand's whistle-blowing on the tobacco industry, Cardello, a food-industry insider,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
The Associate
by
John Grisham
Doubleday, 01/27/2009
Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father'’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale...
more
Thrillers
The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
by
Bryan Burrough
Penguin Press, 01/27/2009
In
The Big Rich, bestselling author and
Vanity Fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough chronicles the rise and fall of one of the great economic and...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
by
George Friedman
Doubleday, 01/27/2009
"Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution
by
Adrian Desmond & James Moore
Houghton Mifflin, 01/28/2009
Mining untapped sources, the authors of an acclaimed biography of Darwin offer an astonishing new portrait of the scientific icon.
In
Darwin's Sacred...more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Death Was in the Picture
by
Linda L. Richards
St. Martin's Press, 01/29/2009
In 1931, while most of Los Angeles is struggling to survive the Depression, the business of Hollywood is booming. And everyone wants a piece. The ...
more
Future Missionaries of America
by
Matthew Vollmer
MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 01/30/2009
Published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback.
A waiter at Yellowstone National Park seeks consolation in the arms of his dead friend's ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
by
Barbara Brown Taylor
HarperOne, 02/01/2009
From simple practices such as walking, working, and getting lost to deep meditations on topics like prayer and pronouncing blessings, Taylor reveals ...
more
Asta in the Wings
by
Jan Elizabeth Watson
Tin House Books, 02/01/2009
Paperback Original.
Asta in the Wings is the moving and often darkly funny story of Asta Hewitt, a resourceful seven-year-old and intrepid narrator...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Blood and Bone
by
William Lashner
William Morrow, 02/01/2009
For a son, every funeral before his father's death is a rehearsal and every funeral thereafter is a memorial.
Kyle Byrne, the illegitimate son of ...
more
Mysteries
Dream House
by
Valerie Laken
Harper, 02/01/2009
One terrible night. One outraged act. What price will people pay to hold their homes and dreams together?
When Kate and Stuart Kinzler buy a run-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Fool
by
Christopher Moore
William Morrow, 02/01/2009
A man of infinite jest, Pocket has been Lear's cherished fool for years, from the time the king's grown daughters—selfish, scheming Goneril, ...
more
No More Us for You
by
David Hernandez
HarperTeen, 02/01/2009
For a life to come together, sometimes it first has to fall completely apart.
Isabel is a regular seventeen-year-old girl, still reeling from ...
more
North of Beautiful
by
Justina Chen Headley
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 02/01/2009
Born with a port-wine stain birthmark covering her entire right cheek, Terra Rose Cooper is ready to leave her stifling, small Washington town where ...
more
Shambling Towards Hiroshima
by
James Morrow
Tachyon Publications, 02/01/2009
Paperback Original.
In the tradition of Godzilla as both a playful romp and a parable of the dawn of the nuclear era, this original satire blends ...
more
The Baptism of Billy Bean
by
Roger Alan Skipper
Counterpoint Press, 02/01/2009
Paperback Original.
Lane Hollar’s seen little of the world beyond West Virginia—Parris Island and Vietnam—but that was enough. Now,...
more
The Laws of Harmony
by
Judith R. Hendricks
HarperPaperbacks, 02/01/2009
Paperback Original
Sunny Cooper has been running since she was eighteen, from the New Mexican commune where she grew up ... and from the haunting ...
more
The Leisure Seeker
by
Michael Zadoorian
William Morrow, 02/01/2009
With Ella as his vigilant copilot, John steers their '78 Leisure Seeker RV along the forgotten roads of Route 66 toward Disneyland in search of a ...
more
The Samaritan's Secret
by
Matt Beynon Rees
Soho Press, 02/01/2009
A member of the tiny but ancient Samaritan community has been murdered. The dead man controlled hundreds of millions of dollars of government money. ...
more
The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History#and How We Can Fight Back
by
Alan Michael Collinge
Beacon Press, 02/01/2009
An in-depth exploration and exposé of the predatory nature of the student loan industry
For the past thirty years, college tuition has risen ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
This Full House
by
Virginia Euwer Wolff
HarperTeen, 02/01/2009
Each discovery disturbs the arrangements of the known world, and it is our job to stay alert to all possibilities.
LaVaughn believes she is keeping...
more
Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War
by
Pratap Chatterjee
Nation Books, 02/02/2009
Halliburton’s Army is the first book to show, in shocking detail, how Halliburton really does business, in Iraq, and around the world. From ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Thrillers
Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love
by
Myron Uhlberg
Bantam Books, 02/03/2009
By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg's memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents—and his life in a ...
more
Home Schooling: Stories
by
Carol Windley
Atlantic Monthly Press, 02/03/2009
The Giller Prize-nominated
Home Schooling marks the American debut of a masterful, award-winning storyteller. Set against the moody landscape of ...
more
Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran
by
Azadeh Moaveni
Random House, 02/03/2009
Both a love story and a reporter's first draft of history,
Honeymoon in Tehran is a stirring, trenchant, and deeply personal chronicle of two years in...
more
Irreplaceable
by
Stephen Lovely
Voice, 02/03/2009
Alex Voormann is a cerebral thirty-year-old archaeologist married to the woman of his dreams - a beautiful, ambitious botanist named Isabel. When ...
more
Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed
by
Kathy Marks
Free Press, 02/03/2009
Pitcairn Island -- remote and wild in the South Pacific, a place of towering cliffs and lashing surf -- is home to descendants of Fletcher Christian ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
True Crime
Debut Author
Mortal Coils
by
Eric Nylund
Tor Books, 02/03/2009
Nothing interesting ever happened to fifteen-year-old orphans Eliot and Fiona while they’ve lived in the strict, oppressive household of their ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Supermarket
by
Satoshi Azuchi
Thomas Dunne Books, 02/03/2009
A modern classic of literature in Japan,
Supermarket is a novel of the human drama surrounding the management of a supermarket chain at...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Good Parents
by
Joan London
Grove Press, 02/03/2009
Paperback Original.
A two-time winner of Australia’s prestigious
The Age Book of the Year Award, Joan London’s debut novel,
Gilgamesh, ...
more
The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg
by
Helen Rappaport
St. Martin's Press, 02/03/2009
On the sweltering summer night of July 16, 1918, in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg, a group of assassins led an unsuspecting Tsar Nicholas II of ...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Lost Witness: A Lena Gamble Novel
by
Robert Ellis
St. Martin's Press, 02/03/2009
With his novel
City of Fire, Robert Ellis debuted a dynamic new character in Los Angeles detective Lena Gamble, but also captured a vivid picture of ...
more
The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them
by
Amy Dickinson
Hyperion, 02/03/2009
Millions of Americans know and love Amy Dickinson from reading her syndicated advice column "Ask Amy" and from hearing her wit and wisdom weekly on ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The Seance
by
John Harwood
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 02/03/2009
A gothic thriller set in Victorian England.
Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual ...
more
The Shanghai Moon: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Novel
by
S. J. Rozan
St. Martin's Press, 02/03/2009
Estranged for months from fellow P.I. Bill Smith, Chinese-American private investigator Lydia Chin is brought in by colleague and former ...
more
The Ties That Bind: A Memoir of Race, Memory and Redemption
by
Bertice Berry
Broadway Books, 02/03/2009
When novelist Bertice Berry set out to write a history of her family, she initially believed she’d uncover a story of slavery and black pain, but...
more
The Vagrants
by
Yiyun Li
Random House, 02/03/2009
Brilliant and illuminating, this astonishing debut novel by the award-winning writer Yiyun Li is set in China in the late 1970s, when Beijing was ...
more
The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family's Journey to Freedom
by
John F Baker
Atria Books, 02/03/2009
When John F. Baker Jr. was in the seventh grade, he saw a photograph of four former slaves in his social studies textbook. When he learned that two of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
True Colors
by
Kristin Hannah
St. Martin's Press, 02/03/2009
The Grey sisters have always been close. After their mother’s death, the girls banded together, becoming best friends. Their stern, disapproving ...
more
Ultimate Weapon
by
Chris Ryan
Weinstein Books, 02/03/2009
The new blockbuster from the bestselling author of
The Increment and Greed — a former SAS commander and the only member of his team to escape ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Versed
by
Rae Armantrout
Wesleyan University Press, 02/03/2009
Rae Armantrout has always organized her collections of poetry as though they were works in themselves. Versed brings two of these sequences together, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
War Child: A Child Soldier's Story
by
Emmanuel Jal
St. Martin's Press, 02/03/2009
In the mid-1980s, Emmanuel Jal was a seven year old Sudanese boy, living in a small village with his parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings. But as ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Great Powers: America and the World After Bush
by
Thomas P.M. Barnett
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/05/2009
Barnett delivers his most sweeping— and important—book of all.
For eight years, the current administration has done much to disconnect or ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Sima's Undergarments for Women
by
Ilana Stanger-Ross
Overlook, 02/05/2009
There are some life-long quests that all women have in common--meaningful work, true love, and a bra that doesn't leave red marks on your skin. With ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Wandering Stars
by
Sholem Aleichem, translated by Aliza Shevrin
Viking, 02/05/2009
The first complete translation of an epic love story by the creator of Tevye in
Fiddler on the RoofNext year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth ...
more
Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer--and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets
by
Jo Marchant
Da Capo Press, 02/09/2009
The bronze fragments of an ancient Greek device have puzzled scholars for more than a century after they were recovered from the bottom of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Drood
by
Dan Simmons
Little Brown & Company, 02/09/2009
On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens--at the height of his powers and popularity,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Galway Bay
by
Mary Pat Kelly
Grand Central Publishing, 02/09/2009
Here at last is one Irish family's epic journey, capturing the tragedy and triumph of the Irish-American experience. In a rousing tale that echoes the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
How We Decide
by
Jonah Lehrer
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 02/09/2009
From the acclaimed author of
Proust Was a Neuroscientist, a fascinating look at the new science of decision-making—and how it can help us make ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Dog On It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery
by
Spencer Quinn
Atria Books, 02/10/2009
Meet Chet, the wise and lovable canine narrator of
Dog on It, who works alongside Bernie, a down-on-his-luck private investigator. Chet might have ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Feathered Serpent
by
Xu Xiaobin
Atria Books, 02/10/2009
This beautifully portrayed epic family history spans one hundred years, from the 1890s during the later stages of the Qing Dynasty to the 1990s, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Lethal Legacy: Alexandra Cooper Series #11
by
Linda Fairstein
Doubleday, 02/10/2009
When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor ...
more
Shannon
by
Frank Delaney
Random House, 02/10/2009
In the summer of 1922, Robert Shannon, a young American hero of the Great War, lands in Ireland. A Marine chaplain, he was present at the frightful ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
SUM: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
by
David Eagleman
Pantheon Books, 02/10/2009
SUM is a dazzling exploration of funny and unexpected afterlives that have never been considered – each presented as a vignette that offers us a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008
by
Thomas E. Ricks
Penguin Books, 02/10/2009
Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks’s #1
New York Times bestseller, transformed the political dialogue on the war in Iraq—
The Gamble is the next news ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Music Teacher
by
Barbara Hall
Algonquin Books, 02/10/2009
The Music Teacher is a penetrating and richly entertaining look into the heart and mind of a woman who has failed both as an artist and as a wife.
...
more
The Renegades
by
T. Jefferson Parker
Dutton, 02/10/2009
Some say that outlaws no longer exist, that the true spirit of the American West died with the legendary bandits of pulp novels and bedtime stories. ...
more
The Silent Man
by
Alex Berenson
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/10/2009
It isn’t easy to steal warheads from the heart of Russia’s nuclear complex in Mayak. It requires a great deal of money, coordination, ...more
The Way Through Doors
by
Jesse Ball
Vintage, 02/10/2009
Paperback Original.
With his debut novel,
Samedi the Deafness, Jesse Ball emerged as one of our most extraordinary new writers. Now, Ball returns ...
more
The Women
by
T.C. Boyle
Viking, 02/10/2009
Having brought to life eccentric cereal king John Harvey Kellogg in
The Road to Wellville and sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in
The Inner Circle, T.C. ...
more
Valley of the Lost
by
Vicki Delany
Poisoned Pen Press, 02/10/2009
In the bucolic mountain town of Trafalgar, British Columbia, a young woman is found dead of a heroin overdose, her baby lying at her side. While this ...
more
Welcome to the Departure Lounge: Adventures in Mothering Mother
by
Meg Federico
Random House, 02/10/2009
The adventure begins when Meg’s mother, Addie, vacationing in Florida, takes a spill. At the hospital, Addie bolts upright on her gurney and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror
by
John Merriman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 02/12/2009
On a February evening in 1894, a young radical intellectual named Émile Henry drank two beers at an upscale Parisian restaurant, then left behind...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village
by
Thomas Robisheaux
W.W. Norton & Company, 02/16/2009
On the night of the festive holiday of Shrove Tuesday in 1672 Anna Fessler died after eating one of her neighbor's buttery cakes. Could it have been...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Virginian
by
Owen Wister
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 02/16/2009
The Virginian, both the character and the book, are considered to be first of their kind. The character is seen as the first real cowboy character ...
more
Historical Fiction
A Mad Desire to Dance
by
Elie Wiesel
Knopf, 02/17/2009
Doriel, a European expatriate living in New York, suffers from a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a member of the Resistance, ...
more
Among the Mad: A Maisie Dobbs Novel
by
Jacqueline Winspear
Henry Holt and Company, 02/17/2009
It’s Christmas Eve 1931. On the way to see a client, Maisie Dobbs witnesses a man commit suicide on a busy London street. The following day, the ...
more
Befriend and Betray: Infiltrating the Hells Angels, Bandidos and Other Criminal Brotherhoods
by
Alex Caine
Thomas Dunne Books, 02/17/2009
The Hells Angels. The Bandidos. Asian triads. Russian mobsters and corrupt cops. Even the KKK. Just part of a day's work for Alex Caine, an ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Critical Mass
by
Whitley Strieber
Forge Books, 02/17/2009
What would we do if a nuclear weapon was detonated in Washington, and the US government suddenly disappeared? What would we do if a terrorist ...
more
Thrillers
Hangman Blind
by
Cassandra Clark
St. Martin's Press, 02/17/2009
In November 1382, the month of the dead, Abbess Hildegard rides out for York from the Abbey of Meaux. This is no ordinary journey—it is a time of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Heart and Soul
by
Maeve Binchy
Knopf, 02/17/2009
With the warmth, humor, and compassion we have come to expect from her, Maeve Binchy tells a story of family, friends, patients, and staff who are ...
more
Lamentation: The Psalms of Isaak
by
Ken Scholes
Tor Books, 02/17/2009
An ancient weapon has completely destroyed the city of Windwir. From many miles away, Rudolfo, Lord of the Nine Forest Houses, sees ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Pictures at an Exhibition
by
Sara Houghteling
Knopf, 02/17/2009
Set in a Paris darkened by World War II, Sara Houghteling’s sweeping and sensuous debut novel tells the story of a son’s quest to recover ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Precious
by
Sandra Novack
Random House, 02/17/2009
The summer of 1978, ten-year-old Vicki Anderson rides her bike to the local park and goes missing. Her tight-knit blue-collar Pennsylvania ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business
by
Lynda Resnick
Broadway Books, 02/17/2009
POM Wonderful. FIJI Water. Teleflora. The Franklin Mint. Lynda Resnick's marketing triumphs read like an encyclopedia of branding. She is the smartest...
more
Steal Across the Sky
by
Nancy Kress
Tor Books, 02/17/2009
The aliens appeared one day, built a base on the moon, and put an ad on the internet:
"We are an alien race you may call the Atoners. Ten thousand ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Second Opinion
by
Michael Palmer
St. Martin's Press, 02/17/2009
Dr. Thea Sperelakis, diagnosed as a teen with Asperger’s syndrome, has always been an outsider. She has a brilliant medical mind, and a ...
more
While My Sister Sleeps
by
Barbara Delinsky
Doubleday, 02/17/2009
Once again Barbara Delinsky brings us a masterful family portrait, filled with thought-provoking ideas about the nature of life itself, how emotions ...
more
Whisper to the Blood: A Kate Shugak Novel
by
Dana Stabenow
Minotaur Books, 02/17/2009
Inside Alaska’s biggest national park, around the town of Niniltna, a gold mining company has started buying up land. The residents of the Park ...
more
Mysteries
Einstein's Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe
by
Evalyn Gates
W.W. Norton & Company, 02/23/2009
Dark energy. Dark matter. These strange and invisible substances don't just sound mysterious: their unexpected appearance in the cosmic census is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
American Rust
by
Philipp Meyer
Spiegel & Grau, 02/24/2009
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town,
American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation—...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation
by
Xinran Xue
Pantheon Books, 02/24/2009
From the highly praised author of
The Good Woman of China and
Sky Burial--an extraordinary work of oral history that illuminates the diverse ways in ...
more
Death of a Witch: Hamish Macbeth Mysteries, No. 25
by
M. C. Beaton
Grand Central Publishing, 02/24/2009
Returning from a foreign holiday, Hamish Macbeth is worried because he senses a dark cloud of evil hanging over the Highland village of Lochdubh. He ...
more
Fatal Lies
by
Frank Tallis
Random House, 02/24/2009
Paperback Original.
A dogged police inspector and an insightful young psychiatrist match wits with depraved criminal minds in this acclaimed ...
more
My Father's Roses: A Family's Journey from World War I to Treblinka
by
Nancy Kohner
Pegasus Books, 02/24/2009
Nancy's father was not like the other fathers in their northern English town. Elegantly dressed after the Eastern European fashion, an impeccable ...
more
Night and Day: A Jesse Stone Novel
by
Robert B. Parker
Putnam Juvenile, 02/24/2009
Things are getting strange in Paradise, Massachusetts. Police Chief Jesse Stone is called to the junior high school when reports of lewd conduct by ...
more
Thrillers
Promises in Death
by
J.D. Robb
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/24/2009
Dallas's friend Chief Medical Examiner Morris and Coltraine had started a serious relationship, and from all accounts the two were headed for a ...
more
Ten Degrees of Reckoning: The True Story of a Family's Love and the Will to Survive
by
Hester Rumberg
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 02/24/2009
In 1993, Judith and Michael Sleavin and their two children set out to live their dream: to sail around the world. But one night, a freighter off the ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Terminal Freeze
by
Lincoln Child
Doubleday, 02/24/2009
Alaska's Federal Wilderness Zone…two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle…one of the most remote places on Earth. But for a group of ...
more
The Girl Who Threw Butterflies
by
Mick Cochrane
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 02/24/2009
For an eighth grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a...
more
Literary Fiction
The Local News
by
Miriam Gershow
Spiegel & Grau, 02/24/2009
"Going missing was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done."
Even a decade later, the memories of the year Lydia Pasternak turned sixteen...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Singing: The Fourth Book of Pellinor (Pellinor Series)
by
Alison Croggon
Candlewick Press, 02/24/2009
The climactic volume of the epic quartet follows the Bards of Edil-Amarandh on a vital quest to merge their powers against a nameless evil.
In an ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
1948: A Soldier's Tale - The Bloody Road to Jerusalem
by
Uri Avnery
Oneworld Publications, 02/25/2009
Joining the Israeli army at the outbreak of war, and later volunteering for the legendary commando unit, "Samson's Foxes," Uri Avnery took part in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
All the Colors of Darkness: Inspector Alan Banks #18
by
Peter Robinson
William Morrow, 03/01/2009
When the body of a man is discovered hanging from a tree in the woods near
Eastvale, all signs point toward suicide. At least that's what it ...
more
Callisto
by
Torsten Krol
HarperCollins Publishers, 03/01/2009
Paperback Original.
Odell Deefus, who's not the sharpest tool in the shed, has one goal: to "try my hardest to be a good soldier against the mad ...
more
Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet
by
Edward Humes
Ecco, 03/01/2009
From Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes comes
Eco Barons, the story of the remarkable visionaries who have quietly dedicated their lives and their ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Flyaway: How A Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings
by
Suzie Gilbert
Harper, 03/01/2009
Through adolescence and into adulthood, Suzie Gilbert struggled to find her calling. But when she took a job working at the animal hospital near her ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Jumped
by
Rita Williams-Garcia
Amistad, 03/01/2009
Trina: "Hey," I say, though I don't really know them. The boyed-up basketball girl barely moves. The others, her girls, step aside. It's okay if they ...
more
Khomeini's Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam
by
Con Coughlin
Ecco, 03/01/2009
In February 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after nearly
fifteen years in exile and received a hero's welcome. Just as the new ...
more
Life Sentences
by
Laura Lippman
William Morrow, 03/01/2009
Author Cassandra Fallows has achieved remarkable success by baring her life
on the page. Her two widely popular memoirs continue to sell briskly, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Marcelo In The Real World
by
Francisco Stork
Arthur A. Levine Books, 03/01/2009
Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear - part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify - and he's always attended ...
more
Murder in the Latin Quarter: An Aimee Leduc Investigation
by
Cara Black
Soho Press, 03/01/2009
Set in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank of the Seine, in the old university district of Paris.
A Haitian woman arrives at the office of Leduc ...
more
My Life in Pink & Green
by
Lisa Greenwald
Amulet Books, 03/01/2009
Twelve-year-old Lucy Desberg is a natural problem solver. After the local homecoming queen shows up at her family’s struggling drugstore with a ...
more
Serendipity Market
by
Penny Blubaugh
HarperTeen, 03/01/2009
When Toby breathes on Mama Inez's bird-shaped invitations, giving them the power to fly, plans for the Serendipity Market begin. Soon, eleven honored ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Believers
by
Zoe Heller
Harper, 03/01/2009
When radical New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to reexamine everything she ...
more
The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant
by
Robert Sullivan
HarperCollins Publishers, 03/01/2009
Henry David Thoreau is one of those authors that readers think they know, even if they don't. He's the solitary curmudgeon with the shack out in the ...
more
Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (New California Poetry)
by
Keith Waldrop
University of California Press, 03/02/2009
This compelling selection of recent work by internationally celebrated poet Keith Waldrop presents three related poem sequences--"Shipwreck in Haven,"...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Angels of Destruction
by
Keith Donohue
Shaye Areheart Books, 03/03/2009
Keith Donohue’s first novel,
The Stolen Child, was a national bestseller hailed as “captivating” (USA Today), “luminous and ...
more
Breathers: A Zombie's Lament
by
S. G. Browne
Broadway Books, 03/03/2009
Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society ...
more
Confessions of a Mullah Warrior
by
Masood Farivar
Atlantic Monthly Press, 03/03/2009
Masood Farivar was ten years old when his childhood in peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan was shattered by the Soviet invasion in 1979. Farivar, who ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Feelers
by
Brian M Wiprud
Minotaur Books, 03/03/2009
Morty Martinez is known in the industry of estate liquidation as a "feeler." If you were to look him up in the Brooklyn yellow pages, he would ...
more
Handle with Care
by
Jodi Picoult
Atria Books, 03/03/2009
Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.
Every expectant parent will tell you that they don...
more
Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins
by
Donald Dr Johanson & Kate Wong
Harmony Books, 03/03/2009
In his New York Times bestseller,
Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, renowned paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson told the incredible story of his ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors
by
Brian Eule
St. Martin's Press, 03/03/2009
Each year, on the third Thursday in March, more than 15,000 graduating medical students exult, despair, and endure Match Day: the decision of a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Mixed Blood
by
Roger Smith
Henry Holt and Company, 03/03/2009
An American fugitive hides out in Cape Town—one of the world’s most beautiful and violent cities—in this riveting debut thriller that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Paths of Glory
by
Jeffrey Archer
St. Martin's Press, 03/03/2009
Some people have dreams that are so magnificent that if they were to achieve them, their place in history would be guaranteed. Francis Drake, Robert ...
more
Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
by
Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Ronald Cotton, Erin Torneo
St. Martin's Press, 03/03/2009
Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph
by
C. Vivian Stringer
Three Rivers, 03/03/2009
At a time when heroes are too rare, C. Vivian Stringer sets a shining example. She has time and again shown character, fortitude, and heart, both on ...
more
Starvation Lake
by
Bryan Gruley
Touchstone, 03/03/2009
In the dead of a Michigan winter, pieces of a snowmobile wash up near the crumbling, small town of Starvation Lake -- the same snowmobile that went ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
The Mao Case: An Inspector Chen Novel
by
Qiu Xiaolong
St. Martin's Press, 03/03/2009
Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is the head of the Special Case group and is often put in charge of those cases that are ...
more
The Missing
by
Tim Gautreaux
Knopf, 03/03/2009
Sam Simoneaux’s troopship docked in France just as World War I came to an end. Still, what he saw of the devastation there sent him back to New ...
more
Historical Fiction
The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience
by
Kirstin Downey
Nan A. Talese, 03/03/2009
Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Based on eight years of ...
more
The Rose of Sebastopol
by
Katharine McMahon
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/05/2009
In 1854, beautiful, adventurous Rosa Barr travels to the Crimean battlefield with Florence Nightingale’s nursing corps. A headstrong idealist, ...
more
Historical Fiction
Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World
by
Tom Zoellner
Viking, 03/05/2009
Uranium is a common element in the earth’s crust and the only naturally occurring mineral with the power to end all life on the planet. After ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
White Riot: A Joe Donovan Thriller
by
Martyn Waites
Pegasus Books, 03/08/2009
When the savagely beaten body of a Muslim student is discovered in a rundown area of Newcastle, blame falls on the far right National Unity Party&#...
more
Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles
by
Richard Dowden
Public Affairs, 03/09/2009
After a lifetime’s close observation of the continent, one of the world’s finest Africa correspondents has penned a landmark book on life ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Love as Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him
by
Loree Rackstraw
Da Capo Press, 03/09/2009
When Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ducked into his classroom at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in September of 1965, his jokes drew only weak laughter and a few ...
more
The Bellini Card: A 'Yashim the Eunuch' Mystery
by
Jason Goodwin
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/09/2009
Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdulmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellini’s vanished masterpiece - a portrait of Mehmed the Conqueror - may have...
more
The Cradle
by
Patrick Somerville
Little Brown & Company, 03/09/2009
Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the ...
more
A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond between Two Friends and a Lion
by
Anthony Bourke
Broadway Books, 03/10/2009
In 2008 an extraordinary two-minute film clip appeared on YouTube and immediately became an international phenomenon. It captures the moving reunion ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green
by
Thomas Cahill
Nan A. Talese, 03/10/2009
On October 26, 2004, Dominique Green, thirty, was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. Arrested at the age of eighteen in the fatal ...
more
Cheever: A Life
by
Blake Bailey
Knopf, 03/10/2009
From the acclaimed author of
A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates comes the unforgettable life of John Cheever (1912–1982), a man...
more
Corsair: Oregon Files Series #6
by
Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/10/2009
Corsairs are pirates, and pirates come in many different varieties. There are the pirates who fought off the Barbary Coast in the late eighteenth and ...
more
Thrillers
Crossing the Hudson
by
Peter Stephan Jungk
Other Press, 03/10/2009
Gustav Rubin, a fur dealer in Vienna, flies to New York to spend the summer with his wife and two young children in a lake house north of the city. ...
more
Dead Silence: Doc Ford Series #16
by
Randy Wayne White
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/10/2009
When a Minnesota teen is kidnapped, Doc Ford is given an unthinkable ultimatum, and only 36 hours to act on it. But there's something unusual about ...
more
Fault Line
by
Barry Eisler
Ballantine Books, 03/10/2009
In Silicon Valley, the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent carjacking. In Istanbul, a cynical undercover ...
more
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
by
William D. Cohan
Doubleday, 03/10/2009
This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had $17.3 billion in...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood
by
Donovan Campbell
Random House, 03/10/2009
After graduating from Princeton, Donovan Campbell, motivated by his unwavering patriotism and commitment, decided to join the service, realizing that ...
more
Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas
by
Paul Mcgeough
New Press, 03/10/2009
"[It was] all very James Bond. One country needs the antidote held by another, to treat an illness it doesn't understand. The clock's ticking...so ...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Murder in the Dark: A Phryne Fisher Mystery
by
Kerry Greenwood
Poisoned Pen Press, 03/10/2009
It’s Christmas, and Phryne has an invitation to the Last Best party of 1928, a four-day extravaganza being held at Werribee Manor house and ...
more
Nothing but a Smile
by
Steve Amick
Pantheon Books, 03/10/2009
It’s 1944, and Wink Dutton, a former illustrator for
Yank and
Stars and Stripes, has arrived in Chicago after an injury to his drawing hand gets ...
more
Revenge of the Spellmans
by
Lisa Lutz
Simon & Schuster, 03/10/2009
Private investigator Isabel Spellman is back on the case and back on the couch - in court-ordered therapy after getting a little too close to her ...
more
Sophomore Switch
by
Abby Mcdonald
Candlewick Press, 03/10/2009
Take an administrative snafu, a bad breakup, and what shall heretofore be known as "The Hot-Tub Incident," and you’ve got two unprepared ...
more
Literary Fiction
Surface Tension: A Novel in Four Summers
by
Brent Runyon
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 03/10/2009
Lucas at 13 is excited about everything—swimming, fishing, skipping rocks, and searching for lucky stones—there’s so much to do in two ...
more
The Birthday Present
by
Barbara Vine
Shaye Areheart Books, 03/10/2009
Ivor Tesham is a handsome, single, young member of Parliament whose political star is on the rise. When he meets a woman in a chance encounter – ...
more
The Forest of Hands and Teeth
by
Carrie Ryan
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 03/10/2009
In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
My Abandonment
by
Peter Rock
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 03/12/2009
A thirteen-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, the enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. There they inhabit an elaborate cave ...
more
We Never Talk About My Brother
by
Peter S. Beagle
Tachyon Publications, 03/15/2009
Modern parables of love, death, and transformation are peppered with melancholy in this extraordinary collection of contemporary fantasy. Each short ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Max (Maximum Ride, Book 5)
by
James Patterson
Little Brown & Company, 03/16/2009
Comfortable in their new safe house, Max and the rest of the Flock finally begin to feel optimistic about their newly-gained freedom. Then the Machine...
more
Thrillers
The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food
by
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/16/2009
In this revelatory work, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shows how food affects our moral selves, our health, and the environment. It raises questions to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Sisters Antipodes
by
Jane Alison
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 03/16/2009
The Sisters Antipodes is a unique window on the intimate devastations of family betrayal, in equal measure unsettling and engrossing.
When Jane ...
more
A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg
by
John Guy
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 03/17/2009
Sir Thomas More's life is well known: his opposition to Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, his arrest for treason, his execution and martyrdom. Yet...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Natural Elements
by
Richard Mason
Knopf, 03/17/2009
The setting is London. The time is the present. Mother and daughter are choosing an assisted-living facility. The mother, eighty years old, is a ...
more
Shatter
by
Michael Robotham
Doubleday, 03/17/2009
Joe O'Loughlin is on familiar territory—standing on a bridge high above a flooded gorge, trying to stop a distraught woman from jumping. She is ...
more
The Act of Love: A Novel
by
Howard Jacobson
Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 03/17/2009
In a stunning follow-up to his much-heralded masterpiece,
Kalooki Nights, Howard Jacobson has turned his mordant and uncanny sights on Felix Quinn, a ...
more
The Last Dickens
by
Matthew Pearl
Random House, 03/17/2009
In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries.
The Last ...more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Weight of a Mustard Seed: The Intimate Story of an Iraqi General and His Family During Thirty Years of Tyranny
by
Wendell Steavenson
HarperCollins Publishers, 03/17/2009
General Kamel Sachet was a favorite of Saddam Hussein's, a hero of the Iran-Iraq war, head of the army in Kuwait City during Desert Storm, governor of...
more
Therapy
by
Sebastian Fitzek
St. Martin's Press, 03/17/2009
No witnesses, no evidence, no body: Star psychologist Viktor Larenz’s twelve-year-old daughter, Josy, who had suffered from an inexplicable ...
more
Until It's Over
by
Nicci French
Minotaur Books, 03/17/2009
Astrid Bell has known most of her housemates for years, but while they have a tangled history together—romantic pairings, one...
more
Grave Goods: Mistress of the Art of Death series
by
Ariana Franklin
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/19/2009
Combining the best of modern forensic thrillers with the drama of medieval fiction,
New York Times–bestselling author Ariana Franklin returns ...
more
The Girl She Used to Be
by
David Cristofano
Grand Central Publishing, 03/19/2009
When Melody Grace McCartney was six years old, she and her parents witnessed an act of violence so brutal that it changed their lives forever. The ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Romance
Debut Author
The Possession of Mr. Cave
by
Matt Haig
Viking, 03/19/2009
A novel of chilling suspense about a father who will do anything to protect his teenage daughter.
Following the tragic deaths of his wife and son, ...
more
The Third Reich at War
by
Richard J. Evans
Penguin Press, 03/19/2009
The final volume in Richard J. Evans's masterly trilogy on the history of Nazi Germany traces the rise and fall of German military might, the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Through Black Spruce
by
Joseph Boyden
Viking, 03/19/2009
A haunting novel about identity, love, and loss by the author of
Three Day RoadWill Bird is a legendary Cree bush pilot, now lying in a coma in a ...
more
Hand of Isis
by
Jo Graham
Orbit, 03/23/2009
Following her acclaimed debut,
Black Ships, Jo Graham returns to the ancient world with a novel that will captivate lovers of fantasy, history and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It
by
Joshua Cooper Ramo
Little Brown & Company, 03/23/2009
Today the very ideas that made America great imperil its future. Our plans go awry and policies fail. History's grandest war against terrorism creates...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Anything But Typical
by
Nora Raleigh Baskin
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 03/24/2009
Jason Blake is an autistic 12-year-old living in a neurotypical world. Most days it's just a matter of time before something goes wrong. But Jason ...
more
Literary Fiction
Dante's Numbers
by
David Hewson
Delacorte Press, 03/24/2009
It was a warm, golden evening in Rome—a night filled with anticipation. A legendary director was premiering his new film version of Dante’s ...
more
Don't Cry
by
Mary Gaitskill
Pantheon Books, 03/24/2009
Following the extraordinary success of her novel
Veronica, Mary Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories--her first in more than ...
more
Etta
by
Gerald Kolpan
Ballantine Books, 03/24/2009
Beautiful, elusive, and refined, Etta Place captivated the nation at the turn of the last century as she dodged the law with the Wild Bunch, led by ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Execution Dock
by
Anne Perry
Ballantine Books, 03/24/2009
Readers of Anne Perry’s bestselling William Monk novels feel as if they’ve experienced the many shades of Victorian London, from Belgravia ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Genghis: Bones of the Hills
by
Conn Iggulden
Delacorte Press, 03/24/2009
The Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, stalked by enemies seen and unseen and plagued by a divided family, leads a sprawling force of horsemen beyond the ...
more
Historical Fiction
Krapp's Last Cassette
by
Anne Argula
Ballantine Books, 03/24/2009
Quinn, a sharp-tongued private investigator in Seattle who’s been busy waving goodbye to her philandering husband while fanning her hot flashes ...
more
Palace Circle
by
Rebecca Dean
Broadway Books, 03/24/2009
Paperback Original.
Delia Chandler, an eighteen-year-old southern girl, marries Viscount Ivor Conisborough just before WWII, and becomes part of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Romance
Debut Author
Pursuit
by
Karen Robards
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/24/2009
And she's right, it is - only not in the way she hopes. It's late on a Saturday night, and Riordan is busy - and, Jess can tell, well on his way to ...
more
Thrillers
Reunion
by
Therese Fowler
Ballantine Books, 03/24/2009
Following the acclaimed success of
Souvenir, Therese Fowler's captivating new novel will resonate with every woman who has wondered what if—as a ...
more
The Long Fall
by
Walter Mosley
Riverhead Books, 03/24/2009
His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. It’s a name that takes a little explaining, but he&#...
more
The Temporal Void
by
Peter F. Hamilton
Del Rey, 03/24/2009
Long ago, a human astrophysicist, Inigo, began dreaming scenes from the life of a remarkable human being named Edeard, who lived within the Void, a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Toby Alone
by
Timothee De Fombelle
Candlewick Press, 03/24/2009
Toby Lolness may be just one and a half millimeters tall, but he’s the most wanted person in his world — the world of the great oak Tree. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
True Detectives
by
Jonathan Kellerman
Ballantine Books, 03/24/2009
In Jonathan Kellerman’s gripping novels, the city of Los Angeles is as much a living, breathing character as the heroes and villains who roam its...
more
Thrillers
When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood
by
Said Sayrafiezadeh
Dial Press, 03/24/2009
“The revolution is not only inevitable, it is imminent. It is not only imminent, it is quite imminent. And when the time comes, my father will ...more
In the Courts of the Sun
by
Brian D'Amato
Dutton, 03/26/2009
A mind-bending, time-bending, zeitgeist-defining novel about the days leading up to December 21, 2012—the day the Maya predicted the world would ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University
by
Kevin Roose
Grand Central Publishing, 03/26/2009
No drinking. No smoking. No cursing. No dancing. No R-rated movies.
Kevin Roose wasn't used to rules like these. As a sophomore at Brown University...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Judas: A Biography
by
Susan Gubar
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/30/2009
In this expansive cultural biography of Judas, prominent scholar Susan Gubar explores the meaning of Jesus' betrayer over twenty centuries. Who was ...
more
A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream
by
Mark Gevisser
Palgrave Macmillan, 03/31/2009
A gripping social history of South Africa’s past and future. Beautifully narrated by one of Africa’s most esteemed journalists,
From ...more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Reliable Wife
by
Robert Goolrick
Algonquin Books, 03/31/2009
Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
All the Living
by
C. E. Morgan
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/31/2009
One summer, a young woman travels with her lover to the isolated tobacco farm he has inherited after his family dies in a terrible accident. As ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Armenian Golgotha
by
Grigoris Balakian
Knopf, 03/31/2009
Never before in English,
Armenian Golgotha is the most dramatic and comprehensive eyewitness account of the first modern genocide.
On April 24, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World
by
Diana Preston
Walker & Company, 03/31/2009
The story of the world’s best-remembered celebrity couple, set against the political backdrop of their time.
On a stiflingly hot day in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cold Hands, Warm Heart
by
Jill Wolfson
Henry Holt and Company, 03/31/2009
Dani was born with her heart on the wrong side of her body. In her fifteen years of life, she’s had more doctor’s appointments, X-rays, and ...
more
Flipping Out: A Lomax & Biggs Mystery
by
Marshall Karp
Minotaur Books, 03/31/2009
Nora Bannister is a bestselling mystery novelist who buys run-down houses in LA. While her business partners turn the house into a showpiece, ...
more
In the Dark
by
Brian Freeman
St. Martin's Press, 03/31/2009
Two young lovers. A sultry summer night. One brutal, cold-blooded murder. In this stunning, atmospheric thriller, Brian Freeman takes you deep ...
more
Thrillers
Leaving Tangier
by
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Penguin Books, 03/31/2009
In his new novel, award-winning, internationally bestselling author Tahar Ben Jelloun tells the story of a Moroccan brother and sister making new ...
more
Long Lost: Myron Bolitar Series #9
by
Harlan Coben
Dutton, 03/31/2009
Myron Bolitar hasn’t heard from Terese Collins since their torrid affair ended ten years ago, so her desperate phone call from Paris catches him ...
more
One Nation Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics, and Organic Pet Food
by
Michael Schaffer
Henry Holt and Company, 03/31/2009
In 2003, Michael Schaffer and his wife drove to a rural shelter and adopted an emaciated, dreadlocked Saint Bernard who they named Murphy. They vowed ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Shadowland: Book III of the Brotherhood of the Conch
by
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Roaring Brook Press, 03/31/2009
The hero of the Brotherhood of the Conch series, now fifteen, is settling back into his life as an apprentice in the lush Silver Valley, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Color of Lightning: A Novel
by
Paulette Jiles
William Morrow, 03/31/2009
In 1863, as the War Between the States creeps inevitably toward its bloody conclusion, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson ventures west into unknown ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Dark Side of Love
by
Rafik Schami
Interlink Books, 03/31/2009
A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul's Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer--and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out to ...
more
The Lost Quilter: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel
by
Jennifer Chiaverini
Simon & Schuster, 03/31/2009
Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson treasures an antique quilt called by three names -- Birds in the Air, after its pattern; the Runaway Quilt, ...
more
Historical Fiction
The Secret: Seasons of Grace, #1
by
Beverly Lewis
Bethany House Publishers, 03/31/2009
In the seemingly ordinary Amish home of Grace Byler, secrets abound. Why does her mother weep in the night? Why does her father refuse to admit ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Spy Game: A Novel
by
Georgina Harding
Bloomsbury USA, 03/31/2009
On a freezing January morning in 1961, eight-year-old Anna’s mother disappears into the fog. A kiss that barely touches Anna’s cheek, a ...
more
Broken Soup
by
Jenny Valentine
HarperTeen, 04/01/2009
Positive.
Negative.
It's how you look at it. . . .
Someone shoves a photo negative into Rowan's hands. She is distracted but, frankly, she has ...
more
Buffalo Lockjaw
by
Greg Ames
Hyperion, 04/01/2009
Paperback Original.
James Fitzroy isn't doing so well. Though his old friends in Buffalo believe his life in New York City is a success, in fact he...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Dare to Die: A Death on Demand Mystery #19
by
Carolyn Hart
William Morrow, 04/01/2009
She came in the rain. Alone. On a bicycle.
Annie and Max Darling are completely unprepared when the arrival of a mysterious young woman shocks ...
more
Dear Husband
by
Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco, 04/01/2009
A gripping and moving new collection of stories by Joyce Carol Oates, which reimagines the meaning of family—by unexpected, often startling means...
more
Figures in Silk: A Novel
by
Vanora Bennett
William Morrow, 04/01/2009
Two sisters discover passion during the War of the Roses—one in the arms of the king, the other in the world of silk
From the author of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science
by
Curtis Ebbesmeyer
HarperCollins Publishers, 04/01/2009
Pioneering oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer unravels the mystery of marine currents, uncovers the astonishing story of flotsam, and changes the world's...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Italian Shoes: A Novel
by
Henning Mankell
New Press, 04/01/2009
Living on a tiny island entirely surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ...
more
Once the Shore: Stories
by
Paul Yoon
Sarabande Books, 04/01/2009
Spanning over half a century—from the years just before the Korean War to the present—the eight stories in this collection reveal an ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
Practicing Catholic
by
James Carroll
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/01/2009
Practicing Catholic is a personal history of the American Catholic Church during James Carroll’s lifetime. It traces the transformation of a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Summer World: A Season of Bounty
by
Bernd Heinrich
Ecco, 04/01/2009
In
Summer World: A Season of Bounty, Bernd Heinrich brings us the same
bottomless reserve of wonder and reverence for the teeming animal life of
...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Air Between Us
by
Deborah Johnson
Amistad, 04/01/2009
A captivating novel that will appeal to readers of
The Secret Life of Bees and
Mudbound about the fault lines – both seen and unseen – that ...
more
The Ballad of West Tenth Street: A Novel
by
Marjorie Kernan
Harper Perennial, 04/01/2009
Paperback Original.
Once upon a time in Manhattan . . .
. . . there stood a pair of fine old brick townhouses on West Tenth Street. One had a blue...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Dakota Cipher: An Ethan Gage Adventure, #3
by
William Dietrich
Harper, 04/01/2009
Ethan Gage, the hero of
Napoleon's Pyramids and
The Rosetta Key, just wants to enjoy the fruits of victory after helping Napoleon win the Battle of ...
more
The Hornet's Sting: The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum
by
Mark Ryan
Skyhorse Publishing, 04/01/2009
Assassination by crossbow, refueling homemade planes in mid-air, mother and daughter seduction - Allied spy Tommy Sneum has done it all. The exploits ...
more
The King's Rifle: A Novel
by
Biyi Bandele
Amistad, 04/01/2009
Paperback Original.
It's winter 1944 and the second World War is entering its most crucial state. A few months ago Ali Banana was a blacksmith's ...
more
The Winner Stands Alone
by
Paulo Coelho
Harper, 04/01/2009
Igor Malev has one thing on his mind - his ex-wife Ewa. He's handsome, rich, and effortlessly personable - but she left him for a successful fashion ...
more
Literary Fiction
Audrey, Wait!
by
Robin Benway
Razorbill, 04/02/2009
When funny, charming, absolutely-normal Audrey Cuttler dumps her boyfriend Evan, he writes a song about her that becomes a number-one hit?and rockets ...
more
Literary Fiction
Devil's Garden
by
Ace Atkins
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 04/02/2009
San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis ...
more
English: A Novel
by
Wang Gang
Viking, 04/02/2009
During the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution, a twelve-year-old boy named Love Liu wonders what life is like beyond the region of Xinjiang in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Secret Keeper
by
Paul Harris
Dutton, 04/02/2009
In the tradition of John le Carré,
The Secret Keeper, set in war-torn Sierra Leone, tells the story of one man’s search for the truth in a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift
by
Kate Griffin
Orbit, 04/06/2009
For Matthew Swift, today is not like any other day. It is the day on which he returns to life.
Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Columbine
by
Dave Cullen
Twelve Books, 04/06/2009
On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist
by
Michael J. Fox
Hyperion, 04/07/2009
There are many words to describe Michael J. Fox: Actor. Husband. Father. Activist. But readers of
Always Looking Up will soon add another to the list...
more
Biography/Memoir
Borderline
by
Nevada Barr
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 04/07/2009
The killings on Isle Royale have left Anna drained and haunted, her memories of her time with the wolf study group forever marred by the carnage on ...
more
Eye of My Heart: 27 Writers Reveal the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother
by
Barbara Graham
Harper, 04/07/2009
In
Eye of My Heart, twenty-seven smart, gutsy writers explode myths and stereotypes and tell the whole crazy, complicated truth about being a ...
more
Essays
Freaky Friday
by
Mary Rodgers
HarperCollins Publishers, 04/07/2009
Annabel Andrews is tired of her mother telling her on what to do. She's tired of being told to do her homework, clean up her room, and be nice to her ...
more
Literary Fiction
Just Take My Heart
by
Mary Higgins Clark
Simon & Schuster, 04/07/2009
Natalie Raines, one of Broadway's brightest stars, accidentally discovers who killed her former roommate and sets in motion a series of shocking ...
more
Thrillers
Mistress of the Sun: A Novel
by
Sandra Gulland
Touchstone, 04/07/2009
The author of the internationally acclaimed Josephine Bonaparte trilogy returns with another irresistible historical novel, this one based on the life...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Day We Found the Universe
by
Marcia Bartusiak
Pantheon Books, 04/07/2009
From one of our most acclaimed science writers: a dramatic narrative of the discovery of the true nature and startling size of the universe, delving ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Forgotten Garden: A Novel
by
Kate Morton
Atria Books, 04/07/2009
A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few ...
more
The Song Is You: A Novel
by
Arthur Phillips
Random House, 04/07/2009
Julian Donahue is in love with his iPod.
Each song that shuffles through “that greatest of all human inventions” triggers a memory. There...
more
The Twilight Prisoner
by
Katherine Marsh
Hyperion Books for Children, 04/07/2009
After traveling to the ghostly underworld beneath New York City, Jack has made it back above ground, to join the living. But if he's alive why is he ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa
by
R.A. Scotti
Knopf, 04/07/2009
In Paris at the start of a radically new century, the most famous face in the history of art stepped out of her frame and into a sensational mystery.
...
more
Wrongful Death: A Novel
by
Robert Dugoni
Touchstone, 04/07/2009
Just minutes after winning a $1.6 million wrongful-death verdict, attorney David Sloane confronts the one case that threatens to blemish his unbeaten ...
more
About Face: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, #18
by
Donna Leon
Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/08/2009
Incinerators across the south of Italy are at full capacity, burning who-knows-what and releasing unacceptable levels of dangerous air pollutants, ...
more
The Big One: An Island, an Obsession, and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish
by
David Kinney
Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/08/2009
Renowned for its pristine beaches and celebrity inhabitants, Martha’s Vineyard is one of the most exclusive destinations in America. But each ...
more
Ultimatum
by
Matthew Glass
Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/08/2009
November 2033, Joe Benton, a three-term democratic senator from Arizona, is the newly elected American president. Just days into his presidency, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Laura Rider's Masterpiece
by
Jane Hamilton
Grand Central Publishing, 04/09/2009
Married for 12 years, Laura and Charlie Rider have come to share almost everything: their nursery business, their love for their animals, and, most ...
more
Literary Fiction
Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future
by
Charles Bowden
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/09/2009
In
Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing, the brilliant and iconoclastic Charles Bowden continues the quest he first set out on in
Blood Orchid (1995) ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Pain Nurse
by
Jon Talton
Poisoned Pen Press, 04/10/2009
Cheryl Beth Wilson is an elite nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital who finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having...
more
Admission
by
Jean Hanff Korelitz
Grand Central Publishing, 04/13/2009
"Admissions.
Admission. Aren't there two sides to the word? And two opposing sides...It's what we let in, but it's also what we let out."
For years...
more
A Proper Education for Girls: A Novel
by
Elaine diRollo
Crown, 04/14/2009
Not since the Brontës have we seen the likes of the Talbot sisters, plucky peach growers with a peculiar upbringing and a flair for subversion. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Bloodhound: Beka Cooper Book 2
by
Tamora Pierce
Random House Children's Publishing, 04/14/2009
Beka Cooper is finally a Dog—a full-fledged member of the Provost’s Guard, dedicated to keeping peace in Corus’s streets. But there&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Give Me Back My Legions!
by
Harry Turtledove
St. Martin's Press, 04/14/2009
Publius Quinctilius Varus, a Roman politician, is summoned by the Emperor, Augustus Caesar. Given three legions and sent to the Roman frontier east of...
more
Historical Fiction
I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles
by
Lily Burana
Weinstein Books, 04/14/2009
A former stripper with a penchant for fishnets and anarchist politics, Lily's lacerating wit and rebellious past never would have suggested a marriage...
more
Liars Anonymous
by
Louise Ure
Minotaur Books, 04/14/2009
'Hands On Emergency. This is Jessie. Is there an emergency in the vehicle?' Roadside Assistance Operator, Jessie Dancing, knows what it's like to take...
more
Life Without Summer
by
Lynne Griffin
St. Martin's Press, 04/14/2009
Life Without Summer tells the story of Tessa, a mother who has just lost her four-year-old daughter in a hit-and-run accident and the grief counselor,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Living Witness: A Gregor Demarkian Novel
by
Jane Haddam
Minotaur Books, 04/14/2009
In her 91 years, Ann-Victoria Hadley has often been the most hated person in Snow Hill, Pennsylvania. But now, it’s worse than ever. After a new ...
more
Night Navigation
by
Ginnah Howard
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/14/2009
Night Navigation opens on a freezing-rain night in upstate New York: the kindling gone, the fire in the woodstove out. Del’s thirty-seven-year-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Perfect Fifths: A Jessica Darling novel
by
Megan McCafferty
Crown, 04/14/2009
Old flames are reignited in the fifth and final book in the
New York Times bestselling Jessica Darling series.
Captivated readers have followed ...
more
Literary Fiction
Prayers for Sale
by
Sandra Dallas
St. Martin's Press, 04/14/2009
Hennie Comfort is eighty-six and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado. Nit Spindle is just seventeen...
more
Rhyming Life and Death
by
Amos Oz
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/14/2009
An ingenious, witty, behind-the-scenes novel about eight hours in the life of an author.
A literary celebrity is in Tel Aviv on a stifling hot night...
more
The Challenge for Africa
by
Wangari Maathai
Pantheon Books, 04/14/2009
The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai offers a refreshingly unique perspective on the challenge ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Horse Boy: A Father's Quest to Heal His Son
by
Rupert Isaacson
Little Brown & Company, 04/14/2009
When his son Rowan was diagnosed with autism, Rupert Isaacson was devastated, afraid he might never be able to communicate with his child. But when ...
more
The Immortality Factor
by
Ben Bova
Tor Books, 04/14/2009
Some see stem-cell research as mankind’s greatest scientific breakthrough. Others see a blasphemous attempt to play God. Suddenly, the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Yes, My Darling Daughter: A Novel
by
Margaret Leroy
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/14/2009
Such a pretty girl. Four years old; well-loved by her young mother, Grace. But there’s something ... off about the child. Her deathly fear of ...
more
False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World
by
Alan Beattie
Riverhead Books, 04/16/2009
An important book for turbulent times - an accessible and engaging economic history of the world, by a leading economic writer.
Alan Beattie has ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Jantsen's Gift: A True Story of Grief, Rescue, and Grace
by
Pam Cope
Grand Central Publishing, 04/16/2009
Nine years ago, Pam Cope owned a cozy hair salon in the tiny town of Neosho, Missouri, and her life revolved around her son's baseball games, her ...
more
Water Ghosts
by
Shawna Yang Ryan
Penguin Press, 04/16/2009
Locke, CA, 1928 - Three bedraggled Chinese women suddenly appear out of the mist one afternoon in a small Chinese farming town on the Sacramento River...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy
by
Thomas Buergenthal
Little Brown & Company, 04/20/2009
Thomas Buergenthal, now a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, tells his astonishing experiences as a young boy in his memoir
A ...more
Genesis
by
Bernard Beckett
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/20/2009
Set on a remote island in a post-apocalyptic, plague-ridden world, this electrifying novel is destined to become a modern classic.
Anax thinks she ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Atlas of Unknowns
by
Tania James
Knopf, 04/21/2009
A poignant, funny, blazingly original debut novel about sisterhood, the tantalizing dream of America, and the secret histories and hilarious ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
First Family
by
David Baldacci
Grand Central Publishing, 04/21/2009
It began with what seemed like an ordinary children's birthday party. Friends and family gathered to celebrate. There were balloons and cake, games ...
more
Thrillers
Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town
by
Warren St. John
Spiegel & Grau, 04/21/2009
The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town
Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern ...
more
Secret Son
by
Laila Lalami
Algonquin Books, 04/21/2009
Youssef el-Mekki, a young man of nineteen, is living with his mother in the slums of Casablanca when he discovers that the father he believed to be ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Literary Fiction
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
by
T.J. Stiles
Knopf, 04/21/2009
A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism.
Founder of a dynasty, builder of ...
more
The Winter Vault
by
Anne Michaels
Knopf, 04/21/2009
Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes ...
more
The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves
by
James Tooley
Cato Institute, 04/25/2009
Everyone from Bono to the United Nations is looking for a miracle to bring schooling within reach of the poorest children on Earth. James Tooley found...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Burnt Shadows: A Novel
by
Kamila Shamsie
Picador, 04/27/2009
Paperback Original.
August 9, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the...
more
Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival
by
Clara Kramer
Ecco, 04/27/2009
This heart-stopping story of a young girl hiding from the Nazis is based on Clara Kramer's diary of her years surviving in an underground bunker with ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Funny How Things Change
by
Melissa Wyatt
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/27/2009
Remy Walker has it all: he found the love of his life at home in crumbling little Dwyer, West Virginia, deep in his beloved Appalachian Mountains ...
more
Jack Tumor
by
Anthony McGowan
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/27/2009
Hector is being hectored by an unlikely bully: a talking brain tumor. And it's not just a talking brain tumor. It's a know-it-all, pain-in-the-arse, ...
more
No Such Creature: A Novel
by
Giles Blunt
Henry Holt and Company, 04/27/2009
Eight years ago, Owen Maxwell was saved from a foster home by the arrival of his uncle Max from England. Once a promising Shakespearean actor, Magnus ...
more
Nobody Move: A Novel
by
Denis Johnson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/27/2009
From the National Book Award–winning, bestselling author of
Tree of Smoke comes a provocative thriller set in the American West.
Nobody Move, ...
more
People Who Walk In Darkness: An Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov Mystery
by
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Forge Books, 04/27/2009
Rostnikov is a Russian bear of a man, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Russia. Known as "The Washtub," Rostnikov is one of the...
more
The Eternal Smile: Three graphic short stories
by
Gene Luen Yang
First Second, 04/27/2009
A fantastical adventure through the worlds we live in and the worlds we create in three magical tales: The story of a prince who defeats his greatest ...
more
The Servants' Quarters
by
Lynn Freed
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/27/2009
Haunted by phantoms of the Second World War and the Holocaust, young Cressida lives in terror of George Harding, who, severely disfigured, has ...
more
Beaumarchais: A Biography
by
Maurice Lever
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/28/2009
Playwright, politician, publisher, entrepreneur, spy, and rebel: few men of eighteenth-century letters led a more varied or controversial life than ...
more
Father's Day
by
Keith Gilman
Minotaur Books, 04/28/2009
Keith Gilman's provocative debut is a dark and atmospheric tale of an ex-cop from Philadelphia who must face old ghosts.
Louis Kline, PI, is ...
more
Mysteries
Debut Author
Home Safe: A Novel
by
Elizabeth Berg
Random House, 04/28/2009
Beloved author Elizabeth Berg tells the story of the recently widowed Helen Ames and of her twenty-seven-year-old daughter Tessa. Helen is shocked to ...
more
In the Shadow of Gotham
by
Stefanie Pintoff
Minotaur Books, 04/28/2009
Dobson, New York, 1905.
Detective Simon Ziele lost his fiancée in the General Slocum ferry disaster—a thousand perished on that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Lucky Girl
by
Mei-Ling Hopgood
Algonquin Books, 04/28/2009
In a true story of family ties, journalist Mei-Ling Hopgood, one of the first wave of Asian adoptees to arrive in America, comes face to face with her...
more
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Neptune Avenue: A Jack Leightner Crime Novel (Detective Jack Leightner)
by
Gabriel Cohen
Minotaur Books, 04/28/2009
"'If we took it all personally,' Brooklyn South homicide detective Jack Leightner tells his rookie NYPD partner, 'there’s no way we could do the ...
more
Thrillers
Reality Check
by
Peter Abrahams
HarperTeen, 04/28/2009
QB of the varsity football team. Passing grades in all his classes. Dating the hottest—and smartest—girl at school. Summer job paying more ...
more
Red April: A Novel
by
Santiago Roncagliolo
Pantheon Books, 04/28/2009
A chilling, internationally acclaimed political thriller,
Red April is a grand achievement in contemporary Latin American fiction, written by the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Sag Harbor: A Novel
by
Colson Whitehead
Doubleday, 04/28/2009
The year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller...
more
The Cold Light of Mourning
by
Elizabeth J. Duncan
St. Martin's Press, 04/28/2009
Elizabeth J. Duncan spins a charming tale of murder and intrigue in this winning first novel.
The picturesque North Wales market town of Llanelen ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
The Language of Bees
by
Laurie R. King
Bantam Spectra, 04/28/2009
In a case that will push their relationship to the breaking point, Mary Russell must help reverse the greatest failure of her legendary husband’s...
more
Valeria's Last Stand
by
Marc Fitten
Bloomsbury USA, 04/28/2009
A comic romp celebrating late-flowering love in a Hungarian village that will appeal to readers of
Absurdistan,
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel ...more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Walking Dead
by
Greg Rucka
Bantam Books, 04/28/2009
In this explosive new thriller, Greg Rucka, the acclaimed author of
Shooting at Midnight and
Patriot Acts, isets bodyguard-turned-international-...
more
Weller's War: A Legendary Foreign Correspondent's Saga of World War II on Five Continents
by
George Weller
Crown Journeys, 04/28/2009
Walter Cronkite called him "one of our best war correspondents." His stories from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Paci?c during World War II won him the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Woodsburner: A Novel
by
John Pipkin
Nan A. Talese, 04/28/2009
Woodsburner springs from a little-known event in the life of one of America’s most iconic figures, Henry David Thoreau. On April 30, 1844, a year...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Little Stranger
by
Sarah Waters
Riverhead Books, 04/30/2009
From the multi-award-winning and bestselling author of
The Night Watch
and
Fingersmith comes an astonishing novel about love, loss, and the
...
more
Boy Alone: A Brother's Memoir
by
Karl Taro Greenfeld
Harper, 05/01/2009
Karl Taro Greenfeld knew from an early age that his little brother, Noah, was not like other children. He couldn't crawl, and he had trouble making ...
more
Hard Stop
by
Chris Knopf
The Permanent Press, 05/01/2009
Sam Acquillo is getting to be a lot more sociable. People are constantly dropping by, including guys in black outfits with .45 automatics breaking ...
more
Havana Fever
by
Leonardo Padura
Bitter Lemon Press, 05/01/2009
Paperback Original.
Havana, 2003, fourteen years since Mario Conde retired from the police force and much has changed in Cuba. He now makes a ...
more
Intent to Kill: A Novel of Suspense
by
James Grippando
Harper, 05/01/2009
A fallen baseball star must use his new skills as Boston's king of sports radio to outwit a dangerous caller and prove—live and on the air—...
more
Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945
by
Andrew Roberts
Harper, 05/01/2009
An epic joint biography,
Masters and Commanders explores the degree to which the course of the Second World War turned on the relationships and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery
by
Enrique Joven
William Morrow, 05/01/2009
The fathers of astronomy and physics.
The Church that vowed to silence them.
A book no one can read. And the young man at the center, ...
more
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Moment Between
by
Nicole Baart
Tyndale House Publishers, 05/01/2009
It is us against the world, Abigail thought.
You and me. . . .
Sisters.
Abigail Bennett was completely in control of her life ...
more
The Road to Jerusalem: Book One of the Crusades Trilogy
by
Jan Guillou
Harper, 05/01/2009
Born in 1150 to a noble family in the Kingdom of Western Götaland, young Arn Magnusson is marked early on by a miraculous and fateful event. When...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Scenic Route: A Novel
by
Binnie Kirshenbaum
Harper Perennial, 05/01/2009
Paperback Original.
Sylvia is a forty two year old woman who is trying to make sense of her present using the only tool she has--her past. She must...
more
Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret
by
Steve Luxenberg
Hyperion, 05/05/2009
Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Everyone knew it: her grown children, her friends, even people she'd only recently met. So when her secret emerged, ...
more
Appassionata
by
Eva Hoffman
Other Press, 05/05/2009
Isabel Merton is a renowned concert pianist, whose performances are marked by a rare responsiveness to the complexities of her art,&#...
more
Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace
by
Ayelet Waldman
Doubleday, 05/05/2009
In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, neglectful mothers, and occasionally great mothers.
Today we have only Bad Mothers.
...
more
Brimstone
by
Robert B. Parker
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/05/2009
W hen we last saw Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, they had just put things to right in the rough-and-tumble Old West town of Resolution. It's now ...
more
Dark Places: A Novel
by
Gillian Flynn
Shaye Areheart Books, 05/05/2009
I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.
Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of ...
more
Gabriel García Márquez: A Life
by
Gerald Martin
Knopf, 05/05/2009
The first full and authorized biography of the 1982 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature—the most popular international novelist of the last ...
more
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan
by
Doug Stanton
Scribner, 05/05/2009
Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small band of Special
Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war
...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Paper Butterfly: A Mei Wang Mystery
by
Diane Wei Liang
Simon & Schuster, 05/05/2009
Modern-Day Beijing. Mei Wang, 31, lives and works as a private detective in China's capital city. After her resignation from the Ministry for Public ...
more
Paul Newman: A Life
by
Shawn Levy
Harmony Books, 05/05/2009
Paul Newman, the Oscar-winning actor with the legendary blue eyes, achieved superstar status by playing charismatic renegades, broken heroes, and ...
more
Pygmy
by
Chuck Palahniuk
Doubleday, 05/05/2009
“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. ...more
Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
by
Ammon Shea
TarcherPerigee, 05/05/2009
"I'm reading the
OED so you don't have to," says Ammon Shea on his slightly masochistic journey to scale the word lover's Mount Everest: the
Oxford ...more
Biography/Memoir
Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money that Made the Metropolitan Museum
by
Michael Gross
Broadway Books, 05/05/2009
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is America’s wealthiest and arguably the world’s greatest art museum—and behind every great institution ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Shadow Valley
by
Steven Barnes
Del Rey, 05/05/2009
Thirty thousand years ago, in the shadow of Kilimanjaro . . .
Since the beginning of time, the peaceful Ibandi people had been sheltered by their ...
more
Historical Fiction
Stone's Fall: A Novel
by
Iain Pears
Spiegel & Grau, 05/05/2009
In his most dazzling novel since the groundbreaking
New York Times bestseller
An Instance of the Fingerpost,
Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone,...
more
The Family Man
by
Elinor Lipman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 05/05/2009
A hysterical phone call from his ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph upend Henry Archer’s well-ordered life. They bring him back into ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
by
C. M. Mayo
Unbridled Books, 05/05/2009
A sweeping historical novel of Mexico during the short, tragic, at times surreal, reign of Emperor Maximilian and his court.
Even as the American ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet
by
Reif Larsen
Penguin Press, 05/05/2009
When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Sign
by
Raymond Khoury
Dutton, 05/05/2009
In Antarctica, a scientific expedition drops anchor for a live news feed. As the CNN journalist begins her report, a massive, shimmering sphere of ...
more
The Visibles: A Novel
by
Sara Shepard
Free Press, 05/05/2009
The only piece of information that Summer Davis takes away from her years at Peninsula Upper School - one of the finest in the Brooklyn Heights-to-...
more
War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars
by
Richard N. Haass
Simon & Schuster, 05/05/2009
When should the United States go to war?
It is arguably the most important foreign policy question facing any president, and Richard Haass - a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Apache: Inside the Cockpit of the World's Most Deadly Fighting Machine
by
Ed Macy
Atlantic Monthly Press, 05/06/2009
Apache is the incredible true story of Ed Macy, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot, that takes you inside the cockpit of the world's deadliest, most ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else
by
Christopher Beha
Grove Press, 05/06/2009
In
The Whole Five Feet, Christopher Beha turns to the great books for answers after undergoing a series of personal and family crises and learning ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Flat Broke in the Free Market: How Globalization Fleeced Working People
by
Jon Jeter
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/11/2009
Growing up in an African American working-class family in the Midwest, Jon Jeter watched the jobs undergirding a community disappear. As a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Great Perhaps
by
Joe Meno
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/11/2009
The sky is falling for the Caspers, a family of cowards: for Jonathan, a paleontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric giant squid; for his ...
more
A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy
by
Charlotte Greig
Other Press, 05/12/2009
Susannah's official boyfriend, Jason, is the perfect foil for her student lifestyle. He is ten years older, an antiques dealer, and owns a stylish ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Trace of Smoke
by
Rebecca Cantrell
Forge Books, 05/12/2009
Even though hardened crime reporter Hannah Vogel knows all too well how tough it is to survive in 1931 Berlin, she is devastated when she sees a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Alexandria: A Marcus Didius Falco Novel
by
Lindsey Davis
Minotaur Books, 05/12/2009
In first century A.D. Rome, during the reign of Vespasian, Marcus Didius Falco works as a private "informer," often for the emperor, ferreting out ...
more
Assegai
by
Wilbur Smith
Thomas Dunne Books, 05/12/2009
It is 1913 and Leon Courtney, an ex-soldier turned professional hunter in British East Africa, guides the rich and powerful from America and Europe on...
more
Beach Trip: A Novel
by
Cathy Holton
Ballantine Books, 05/12/2009
Mel, Sara, Annie, and Lola have traveled distinct and diverse paths since their years together at a small Southern liberal arts college during the ...
more
Literary Fiction
Broken: A Love Story
by
Lisa Jones
Scribner, 05/12/2009
Writer Lisa Jones went to Wyoming for a four-day magazine assignment and came home four years later with a new life.
At a dusty corral on the Wind ...
more
Cemetery Dance
by
Douglas Preston
Grand Central Publishing, 05/12/2009
William Smithback, a
New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their ...
more
Darkwood
by
M.E. Breen
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 05/12/2009
Darkness falls so quickly in Howland that the people there have no word for evening. One minute the sky is light, the next minute it is black. But ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy
by
David O. Stewart
Simon & Schuster, 05/12/2009
In 1868 Congress impeached President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the man who had succeeded the murdered Lincoln, bringing the nation to the brink of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Marine One
by
James Huston
St. Martin's Press, 05/12/2009
The president rushes across the South Lawn through a pounding thunderstorm to Marine One to fly to Camp David late at night. His advisers plead with ...
more
Sanctuary: A Jack Taylor Novel
by
Ken Bruen
Minotaur Books, 05/12/2009
When a letter containing a list of victims arrives in the post, P.I. Jack Taylor tells himself that it’s got nothing to do with him. He has ...
more
The Devlin Diary: A Novel
by
Christi Phillips
Pocket Books, 05/12/2009
London, 1672. The past twelve years have brought momentous changes: the restoration of the monarchy, a devastating plague and fire. Yet the city ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
by
Jacqueline Kelly
Henry Holt and Company, 05/12/2009
Calpurnia Virginia Tate is eleven years old in 1899 when she wonders why the yellow grasshoppers in her Texas backyard are so much bigger than the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Way Home
by
George Pelecanos
Little Brown & Company, 05/12/2009
Christopher Flynn is trying to get it right. After years of trouble and rebellion that enraged his father and nearly cost him his life, he has a ...
more
Valkyrie
by
Philip Freiher Von Boeselager
Knopf, 05/12/2009
When the Second World War broke out, Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, age twenty-five, fought for his country enthusiastically as a cavalry officer. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Wanting: A Novel
by
Richard Flanagan
Atlantic Monthly Press, 05/12/2009
It is 1841. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, a barefoot aboriginal girl sits for a portrait in a red silk dress. She is Mathinna,...
more
Wicked Prey
by
John Sandford
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/12/2009
Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home, in the superlative new thriller by the #1
New York Times–bestselling author.
...
more
Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II
by
Thomas Childers
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 05/13/2009
One of our most enduring national myths surrounds the men and women who fought in the so-called "Good War." The Greatest Generation, we're told by Tom...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Love and Obstacles
by
Aleksandar Hemon
Riverhead Books, 05/14/2009
Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputation— and his MacArthur “genius grant”—for his short stories, and he returns to the form with a ...
more
The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal
by
Mark Kurlansky
Riverhead Books, 05/14/2009
Award-winning
New York Times–bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Increment: A Novel
by
David Ignatius
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/18/2009
From a hidden enclave in the maze of Tehran, an Iranian scientist who calls himself "Dr. Ali" sends an encrypted message to the CIA. It falls to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language
by
Arika Okrent
Spiegel & Grau, 05/19/2009
Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man's attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Into the Beautiful North: A Novel
by
Luis Alberto Urrea
Little Brown & Company, 05/19/2009
Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US to find work. Recently, it ...
more
Martyr
by
Rory Clements
Bantam Books, 05/19/2009
In this ingenious debut, Rory Clements introduces John Shakespeare, Elizabethan England's most remarkable investigator, and delivers a tale of murder ...
more
Historical Fiction
The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue
by
Michael J. Tougias
Scribner, 05/19/2009
In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor'easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Late, Lamented Molly Marx: A Novel
by
Sally Koslow
Ballantine Books, 05/19/2009
Molly Marx led an enviable life—until she was found dead along the bank of the Hudson River. A young wife and mother, Molly now finds herself in ...
more
The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition, and Get a Truly International Education
by
Maya Frost
Three Rivers, 05/19/2009
Good-bye, Old School. Hello, Bold School!
In 2005, Maya Frost and her husband sold everything and left their suburban American lifestyle behind in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Advice
Debut Author
Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities
by
Amy Stewart
Algonquin Books, 05/21/2009
A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
by
Richard Wrangham
Basic Books, 05/25/2009
Until two million years ago, our ancestors were apelike beings the size of chimpanzees. Then
Homo erectus was born and we became human. What caused ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone
by
Eduardo Galeano
Nation Books, 05/25/2009
Mirrors, Galeano’s most ambitious project since
Memory of Fire, is an unofficial history of the world seen through history’s unseen, unheard...
more
Also Known As Harper
by
Ann Haywood Leal
Henry Holt and Company, 05/26/2009
Harper Lee Morgan is an aspiring poet, which isn't surprising, seeing as how she's named after her mama's favorite writer, Harper Lee. And life is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
An Elegy for Easterly: Stories
by
Petina Gappah
Faber and Faber, 05/26/2009
A woman in a township in Zimbabwe is surrounded by throngs of dusty children but longs for a baby of her own; an old man finds that his new job making...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
Hylozoic
by
Rudy Rucker
Tor Books, 05/26/2009
After the Singularity, everyone and everything is sentient and telepathic. Aliens notice and invade Earth. In Rucker's last novel,
Postsingular, the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel
by
Percival Everett
Graywolf Press, 05/26/2009
Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an ...
more
Literary Fiction
One Lonely Degree
by
C. K. Kelly Martin
Putnam Juvenile, 05/26/2009
Anything is possible. . . .
Finn has always felt out of place, but suddenly her world is unraveling. It started with The Party. And Adam Porter. And ...
more
Literary Fiction
Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-Torn Village
by
James Dr Maskalyk
Spiegel & Grau, 05/26/2009
In 2006 James Maskalyk, a young, single ER physician, gave up a successful practice at one of Toronto’s finest hospitals to join Doctors Without ...
more
The City & The City
by
China Mieville
Del Rey, 05/26/2009
When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú ...
more
The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World
by
James Davidson
Random House, 05/26/2009
The first comprehensive look at homosexuality in ancient Greece since the advent of the gay rights movement,
The Greeks and Greek Love upends commonly...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Scarecrow
by
Michael Connelly
Little Brown & Company, 05/26/2009
Forced out of the
Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the ...
more
The Sorceress: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #3
by
Michael Scott
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 05/26/2009
Book Three in the New York Times
bestselling series.Nicholas Flamel's heart almost broke as he watched his beloved Paris crumble before him. The city ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda
by
Andrew Rice
Metropolitan Books, 05/26/2009
From Rwanda to Sierra Leone, African countries recovering from tyranny and war are facing an impossible dilemma: to overlook past atrocities for the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
An Honorable German: A Novel of World War II
by
Charles McCain
Grand Central Publishing, 05/28/2009
When World War II begins, Max Brekendorf, a young German naval officer, fights for his country with honor and courage. With the seemingly unstoppable ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Dark Horse: A Walt Longmire Mystery
by
Craig Johnson
Viking, 05/28/2009
Interweaving classic noir sensibilities and humor with contemporary themes of social justice, Craig Johnson's popular Walt Longmire mysteries ...
more
The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles: A Woman's Fight to Save Two Orphans
by
Hala Jaber
Riverhead Books, 05/28/2009
The inspiring true story of a prizewinning foreign correspondent longing for a child, two small Iraqi girls in need of a mother, and what love and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Signal: A Novel
by
Ron Carlson
Viking, 05/28/2009
Backpacking into the Wind River Mountains on their tenth annual trip, Mack and his wife, Vonnie, find the magnificent woods and stunning mountains of ...
more
Dismantled: A Novel
by
Jennifer Mcmahon
Harper, 06/01/2009
Dismantlement = Freedom
Henry, Tess, Winnie and Suz banded together in college to form the Compassionate Dismantlers. Following the first rule of ...
more
Four Freedoms
by
John Crowley
William Morrow, 06/01/2009
One of the most admired and honored of our contemporary literary artists, author John Crowley now brilliantly re-creates a time in America when ...
more
Fugitive: A Novel
by
Phillip Margolin
Harper, 06/01/2009
Amanda Jaffe, the heroine of
Wild Justice and
Proof Positive, is back—in this twisting tale of international intrigue and murder that leads her ...
more
Love, Aubrey
by
Suzanne M. LaFleur
Wendy Lamb Books, 06/01/2009
"I had everything I needed to run a household: a house, food, and a new family. From now on it would just be me and Sammy–the two of us, and no ...more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The American Future: A History
by
Simon Schama
Ecco, 06/01/2009
Acclaimed historian and award-winning author Simon Schama offers an essential historical perspective on the crucial 2008 presidential election and its...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Convalescent
by
Jessica Anthony
McSweeney’s Books, 06/01/2009
The Convalescent is the story of a small, bearded man selling meat out of a bus parked next to a stream in suburban Virginia ... and also, somehow, ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Little Victim
by
R.T. Raichev
Soho Press, 06/01/2009
It promised to be the perfect holiday with every modern convenience: exotic terraced gardens complete with an English folly, thirty-eight varieties of...
more
The Rise and Fall of Communism
by
Archie Brown
Ecco, 06/01/2009
Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — a definitive and ground-breaking account of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
You or Someone Like You
by
Chandler Burr
Ecco, 06/01/2009
Anne Rosenbaum leads a life of quiet Los Angeles privilege, the wife of Hollywood executive Howard Rosenbaum and mother of their seventeen-year-old ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Die for You
by
Lisa Unger
Shaye Areheart Books, 06/02/2009
Isabel and Marcus Raines are the perfect couple. She is a well known novelist; he is a brilliant inventor of high-tech games. They’ve been ...
more
Thrillers
Lake with No Name: A True Story of Love and Conflict in Modern China
by
Diane Wei Liang
Simon & Schuster, 06/02/2009
Beijing University, 1986. The Communists were in power, but the Harvard of China was a hotbed of intellectual and cultural activity, with political ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Medusa
by
Clive Cussler
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 06/02/2009
In the Micronesian Islands, a top secret, U.S. government–sponsored undersea lab conducting vital biomedical research on a rare jellyfish known ...
more
Skin Trade: A Vampire Hunter Novel
by
Laurell K. Hamilton
Berkley Books, 06/02/2009
When a vampire serial killer sends Anita Blake a grisly souvenir from Las Vegas, she has to warn Sin City's local authorities what they're dealing ...
more
The Case of the Missing Servant: A Vish Puri Mystery
by
Tarquin Hall
Simon & Schuster, 06/02/2009
Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India's ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
The Demon's Lexicon
by
Sarah Rees Brennan
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 06/02/2009
Nick and his brother, Alan, have spent their lives on the run from magic. Their father was murdered, and their mother was driven mad by magicians and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Lovers: A Thriller
by
John Connolly
Atria Books, 06/02/2009
Charlie Parker is a lost soul. Deprived of his private investigator's license and under scrutiny by the police, Parker takes a job in a Portland bar. ...
more
The Story Sisters: A Novel
by
Alice Hoffman
Shaye Areheart Books, 06/02/2009
This luminous tale filled with honesty and love charts the lives of sisters who find their curse and their salvation on the street where they live. ...
more
The Earth Hums in B Flat
by
Mari Strachan
Canongate Books, 06/03/2009
Young Gwenni Morgan has a gift. She can fly in her sleep. She's also fond of strawberry whip, detective stories and asking difficult questions. When a...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The New Valley
by
Josh Weil
Grove Press, 06/03/2009
The linked novellas that comprise Josh Weil's masterful debut bring us into America's remote, unforgiving backcountry, and delicately unveil the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot
by
Bruce and Andrea Leininger with Ken Gross
Grand Central Publishing, 06/05/2009
This is the story of James Leininger, who - a little more than two weeks after his second birthday - began having blood-curdling nightmares that just ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Between the Assassinations
by
Aravind Adiga
Free Press, 06/09/2009
Welcome to Kittur, India. It's on India's southwestern coast, bounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Kaliamma River to the south and east. It'...
more
Death Wore White
by
Jim Kelly
Minotaur Books, 06/09/2009
Rookie detective Peter Shaw, along with his chain-smoking, hard-as-nails, veteran partner, is confronted with a baffling crime that stretches him to ...
more
Do Not Deny Me
by
Jean Thompson
Simon & Schuster, 06/09/2009
Paperback Original. Jean Thompson, heralded as "America's Alice Munro ... one of the best contemporary short-story writers" by
Kirkus Reviews, ...
more
Even
by
Andrew Grant
Minotaur Books, 06/09/2009
David Trevellyan is a Royal Navy intelligence operative who usually works undercover, sometimes with the approval of his masters—and sometimes ...
more
Far North
by
Marcel Theroux
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/09/2009
Out on the far northern border of a failed state, Makepeace—sheriff and perhaps the last citizen—patrols the city ruins, salvaging books but...
more
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
by
Greg Grandin
Metropolitan Books, 06/09/2009
In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family In A Changing World
by
Justine Hardy
Free Press, 06/09/2009
"If there is a paradise on earth, it is definitely here and only here," said the early seventeenth century Mughal Emperor Jehangir when describing the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Mare's War
by
Tanita S. Davis
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 06/09/2009
Meet Mare, a grandmother with flair and a fascinating past.
Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with ...
more
Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel
by
Jeffery Deaver
Simon & Schuster, 06/09/2009
The Monterey Peninsula is rocked when a killer begins to leave roadside crosses beside local highways -- not in memoriam, but as announcements of his ...
more
Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
by
Michael Norman & Elizabeth M Norman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/09/2009
For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle of World War II, the battle...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Bourne Deception: A Jason Bourne Novel
by
Eric Van Lustbader
Grand Central Publishing, 06/09/2009
After Bourne is ambushed and nearly killed while in Indonesia, he fakes his death to take on a new identity and mission - to find out who is trying to...
more
The Devil's Tickets: A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age
by
Gary M. Pomerantz
Crown, 06/09/2009
As the Roaring Twenties' last celebratory peals rang through a nation about to slip into the Depression, Myrtle Bennett, a glamorous Kansas City ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Opposite of Love
by
Julie Buxbaum
The Dial Press, 06/09/2009
With perfect pitch for the humor and heartbreak of everyday life, debut author Julie Buxbaum has fashioned a heroine who will be instantly ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency
by
Matthew Aid
Bloomsbury USA, 06/09/2009
In the first complete history of the National Security Agency, America's most powerful and secretive intelligence organization.
In February 2006...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals
by
Charles Siebert
Scribner, 06/09/2009
While traveling around the country to report on the conditions in which captive chimpanzees in America live, Charles Siebert visited a retirement home...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Year That Follows
by
Scott Lasser
Knopf, 06/09/2009
Cat is a single mother living in Detroit when her brother is killed in New York, and she sets off in search of his child. Her search is still under ...
more
Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
by
Novella Carpenter
Penguin Press, 06/11/2009
Novella Carpenter loves cities—the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two ...
more
The Marriage Bureau for Rich People
by
Farahad Zama
Putnam Juvenile, 06/11/2009
Alexander McCall Smith meets Jane Austen in this delightfully charming Indian novel about finding love.
What does an Indian man with a wealth of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
When the Whistle Blows
by
Fran Slayton
Philomel, 06/11/2009
Jimmy lives in Rowlesburg, West Virginia, during the 1940s. He does all the things boys do in the small mountain town: plays a mean game of football, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
A Short History of Women: A Novel
by
Kate Walbert
Scribner, 06/16/2009
National Book Award finalist Kate Walbert's
A Short History of Women is a profoundly moving portrayal of the complicated legacies of mothers and ...
more
Along for the Ride
by
Sarah Dessen
Viking, 06/16/2009
It's been so long since Auden slept at night. Ever since her parents' divorce—or since the fighting started. Now she has the chance to spend a ...
more
Below Zero
by
C. J. Box
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 06/16/2009
Below Zero begins with an unassuming phone message: "Tell Sherry April called." But Sherry—Joe Pickett's oldest daughter, Sheridan—and the ...
more
Border Songs
by
Jim Lynch
Knopf, 06/16/2009
Six foot eight and severely dyslexic, Brandon Vanderkool has always had an unusual perspective—which comes in handy once his father pushes him ...
more
Fragment: A Novel
by
Warren Fahy
Delacorte Press, 06/16/2009
In this powerhouse of suspense—as brilliantly imagined as
Jurassic Park and
The Ruins—scientists have made a startling discovery: a fragment...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire: A Novel
by
Margot Berwin
Pantheon Books, 06/16/2009
Shortly after her divorce, advertising executive Lila Nova purchases her first plant. It's a bird-of-paradise, and the seller is David Exley, a rugged...
more
It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower
by
Michela Wrong
HarperCollins Publishers, 06/16/2009
In January 2003, Kenya—seen as the most stable country in Africa—was hailed as a model of democracy after the peaceful election of its new ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Knock Out: An FBI Thriller
by
Catherine Coulter
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 06/16/2009
Seven-year-old Autumn Backman has a gift: She can communicate telepathically with others. Not everyone, mind you, but with a select few with whom she ...
more
Strangers: A Novel
by
Anita Brookner
Random House, 06/16/2009
Literary master Anita Brookner's elegant style is manifest on every page of her brilliant new novel. Beautifully crafted and emotionally evocative, ...
more
The Neighbor
by
Lisa Gardner
Bantam Books, 06/16/2009
From a master of suspense comes a chilling new novel that explores the dangers lurking closer than you think. Because even in the perfect family, you ...
more
Thrillers
Trouble
by
Kate Christensen
Doubleday, 06/16/2009
A vibrant story of female friendship and midlife sexual awakening from the acclaimed author of
The Great Man.
Josie is a Manhattan psychotherapist ...
more
Body Blows: A Joe Grundy Mystery
by
Marc Strange
Dundurn Press, 06/22/2009
Ex-boxer Joe Grundy is embroiled in the intrigues of his own boss, millionaire Leo Alexander, the owner of Vancouver's Lord Douglas Hotel. Somebody ...
more
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
by
Nick Lane
W.W. Norton & Company, 06/22/2009
A renowned biochemist draws on cutting-edge scientific findings to construct the mosaic of life’s astounding history. How did life invent ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
A Monster's Notes
by
Laurie Sheck
Knopf, 06/23/2009
What if Mary Shelley had not invented Frankenstein's monster but had met him when she was a girl of eight, sitting by her mother's grave, and he came ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Gifts of War: A Novel
by
Mackenzie Ford
Nan A. Talese, 06/23/2009
The Gifts of War brings readers into the vivid landscape of World War I while combining the drama of military intelligence with elements of romance ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America
by
Robert Charles Wilson
Tor Books, 06/23/2009
In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Let the Great World Spin
by
Colum McCann
Random House, 06/23/2009
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August ...
more
Sworn to Silence
by
Linda Castillo
Minotaur Books, 06/23/2009
Some secrets are too terrible to reveal . . .
Some crimes are too unspeakable to solve . . .
In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the ...
more
The Baker Street Letters
by
Michael Robertson
Minotaur Books, 06/23/2009
Reggie and Nigel Heath are relatively close in age, but worlds apart in personality. The older of the two brothers, Reggie is a successful attorney ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
The Embers: A Novel
by
Hyatt Bass
Henry Holt and Company, 06/23/2009
It's the fall of 2007, and Emily Ascher should be celebrating: she just got engaged to the man she loves, her job is moving in new and fulfilling ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Trust No One
by
Gregg Hurwitz
St. Martin's Press, 06/23/2009
Over the past two decades, Nick Horrigan has built a quiet, safe life for himself, living as much under the radar as possible. But all of that ...
more
White is for Witching
by
Helen Oyeyemi
Nan A. Talese, 06/23/2009
As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother ...
more
Fall
by
Colin McAdam
Riverhead Books, 06/25/2009
From an internationally acclaimed, prizewinning author, whom critics have compared to Dave Eggers and Michael Ondaatje, comes a tour de force: a ...
more
Free Agent
by
Jeremy Duns
Viking, 06/25/2009
Jeremy Duns's lightning-paced debut introduces a morally complex and unforgettable agent named Paul Dark into the canon of espionage literature. In ...
more
Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon
by
Craig Nelson
Viking, 06/25/2009
At 9:32 A.M. on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 rocket launched in the presence of more than a million spectators who had gathered to witness a truly ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hiding in the Spotlight: A Musical Prodigy's Story of Survival, 1941-1946
by
Greg Dawson
Pegasus Books, 06/27/2009
Zhanna, a young Jewish girl from Ukraine, also happens to be a gifted piano prodigy and is giving concerts by the age of six. When disaster strikes ...
more
A Plague of Secrets
by
John Lescroart
Dutton, 06/30/2009
The first victim is Dylan Vogler, a charming ex-convict who manages the Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. ...
more
City of Strangers
by
Ian MacKenzie
Penguin Books, 06/30/2009
Paperback Original
Faith, family, and the weight of history intersect in this remarkable debut from a rising literary talent.
A cold, gray ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Heroic Measures
by
Jill Ciment
Pantheon Books, 06/30/2009
A gasoline tanker truck is "stuck" in the Midtown Tunnel. New Yorkers are panicked ... Is this the next big attack? The streets of Manhattan are ...
more
Killer Summer
by
Ridley Pearson
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 06/30/2009
Sun Valley, Idaho—playground of the wealthy and politically connected—is home to an annual wine auction that attracts high rollers from ...
more
Londongrad: An Artie Cohen Mystery
by
Reggie Nadelson
Walker & Company, 06/30/2009
Through seven previous novels, Reggie Nadelson has created one of the more memorable characters in detective fiction: Artie Cohen, New York police ...
more
Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us
by
Alyssa Katz
Bloomsbury USA, 06/30/2009
How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and how the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.
Our ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Chalk Circle Man
by
Fred Vargas
Penguin Books, 06/30/2009
Paperback Original
The debut mystery in the internationally bestselling Commissaire Adamsberg series—now available for the first time in the ...
more
The Sound of Water
by
Sanjay Bahadur
Atria Books, 06/30/2009
Paperback Original
Written with rare literary style by a former director of the Indian Ministry of Coal,
The Sound of Water provides an agonizing ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Women of Nell Gwynne's
by
Kage Baker
Subterranean Press, 06/30/2009
Lady Beatrice was the proper British daughter of a proper British soldier, until tragedy struck and sent her home to walk the streets of early-...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Good Things I Wish You
by
A. Manette Ansay
Harper, 07/01/2009
Battling feelings of loss and apathy in the wake of a painful divorce, novelist Jeanette struggles to complete a book about the long-term relationship...
more
Literary Fiction
The Doomsday Key
by
James Rollins
William Morrow, 07/01/2009
At Princeton University, a famed geneticist dies inside a biohazard lab. In Rome, a Vatican archaeologist is found dead in St. Peter's Basilica. In ...
more
The End Is Now
by
Rob Stennett
Zondervan, 07/01/2009
One week from tomorrow, at precisely 6:11 in the morning, the rapture or apocalypse or Armageddon or whatever else it is you’d prefer to call it,...
more
Literary Fiction
The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide
by
Dick Lehr
Harper, 07/01/2009
The Boston police officers who brutally beat Michael Cox at a deserted fence one icy night in 1995 knew right away that they had made a terrible ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Idea of Love
by
Louise Dean
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/01/2009
When a cluster of expatriate families converges on Provence, it seems as if sunshine, good wine, and an endless round of parties will make for a ...
more
The Stolen Voice: A Gil Cunningham Murder Mystery
by
Pat McIntosh
Soho Press, 07/01/2009
In Sir William's remote part of Scotland it seems almost possible that a young boy could have been stolen away by the fairies and returned forty years...
more
The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana
by
Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/01/2009
The Wild Marsh is Rick Bass's most mature, full account of life in the Yaak and a crowning achievement in his celebrated career. It begins with his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance
by
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Basic Books, 07/05/2009
Novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o has been a force in African literature for decades: Since the 1970s, when he gave up the English language to commit himself...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
To Heaven by Water
by
Justin Cartwright
Bloomsbury USA, 07/06/2009
Now that his wife is dead, retired television news anchor, David Cross, believes that he is more himself than he has been for forty years. When Nancy ...
more
A Happy Marriage
by
Rafael Yglesias
Scribner, 07/07/2009
A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic...
more
Alone in the Crowd: An Inspector Espinosa Mystery
by
Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Henry Holt and Company, 07/07/2009
Inspector Espinosa unwittingly ignites the obsessions of a menacing misanthrope in the latest from the highly acclaimed mystery author.
An elderly ...
more
Mysteries
Amateur Barbarians
by
Robert Cohen
Scribner, 07/07/2009
Teddy Hastings is more of a doer than a thinker, a man who measures his life by what he has built: a successful career as a middle school principal, a...
more
American Adulterer
by
Jed Mercurio
Simon & Schuster, 07/07/2009
"The subject is an American citizen holding high elected office, married, and father to a young family..."
From its opening line,
American ...more
Asterios Polyp
by
David Mazzucchelli
Pantheon Books, 07/07/2009
Graphic Novel
Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect and teacher, aesthete and womanizer, whose life is wholly upended ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Graphic Novels
Debut Author
Breaking Faith: A Faith Zanetti Thriller
by
Anna Blundy
Minotaur Books, 07/07/2009
Faith Zanetti doesn't much care who put the bomb on flight TAA67, the plane that blew up over the tiny Scottish village of Cairbridge twenty-five ...
more
By Heresies Distressed
by
David Weber
Tor Books, 07/07/2009
The Kingdom of Charis and the Kingdom of Chisholm have joined together, pledged to stand against the tyranny of a corrupt Church. The youthful Queen ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Deadly Intent: An Anna Travis Mystery
by
Lynda La Plante
Touchstone, 07/07/2009
Anna Travis is back in a new gripping mystery from Lynda La Plante, featuring the female detective every bit as intelligent, ambitious, and flawed as ...
more
Drawing in the Dust
by
Zoe Klein
Pocket Books, 07/07/2009
Brilliant archaeologist Page Brookstone is convinced bones speak, yet none of the ancient remnants she has unearthed during her twelve years of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Dreaming in Hindi
by
Katherine Russell Rich
Houghton Mifflin, 07/07/2009
Having miraculously survived a serious illness and now at an impasse in her career as a magazine editor, Rich spontaneously accepted a free-lance ...
more
Exiles in the Garden
by
Ward Just
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/07/2009
"One of the most astute writers of American fiction" (
New York Times Book Review) delivers the resonant story of Alec Malone, a senator's son who ...
more
How Shall I Tell the Dog?: And Other Final Musings
by
Miles Kington
Newmarket, 07/07/2009
In this hilarious and moving book, popular English humorist Miles Kington faces cancer and death with his sparkling trademark wit, musing on ...
more
Huge
by
James Fuerst
Three Rivers, 07/07/2009
Paperback Original.
Life hasn't been easy for 12-year-old Eugene "Huge" Smalls, amateur sleuth, devotee of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Last Known Address
by
Theresa Schwegel
Minotaur Books, 07/07/2009
Detective Sloane Pearson is new to the Sex Crimes Division but no stranger to being treated like an incompetent blonde by her hardened male co-workers...
more
Six Suspects
by
Vikas Swarup
Minotaur Books, 07/07/2009
Seven years ago, Vivek "Vicky" Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered bartender Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New ...
more
The Blue Notebook: A Novel
by
James Levine M.D.
Spiegel & Grau, 07/07/2009
Dear Reader:
Every now and then, we come across a novel that moves us like no other, that seems like a miracle of the imagination, and that haunts us...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Castaways: A Novel
by
Elin Hilderbrand
Little Brown & Company, 07/07/2009
Greg and Tess MacAvoy are one of four prominent Nantucket couples who count each other as best friends. As pillars of their close-knit community, the ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Crying Tree: A Novel
by
Naseem Rakha
Broadway Books, 07/07/2009
Irene and Nate Stanley are living a quiet and contented life with their two children, Bliss and Shep, on their family farm in southern Illinois when ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Devil's Company
by
David Liss
Random House, 07/07/2009
The year is 1722. Ruffian for hire, ex-boxer, and master of disguise, Weaver finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, pitted against ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Devil's Punchbowl: A Novel
by
Greg Iles
Scribner, 07/07/2009
As a prosecuting attorney in Houston, Penn Cage sent hardened killers to death row. But it is as mayor of his hometown -- Natchez, Mississippi -- that...
more
The Game of Opposites
by
Norman Lebrecht
Pantheon Books, 07/07/2009
From the author of
The Song of Names (winner of the 2002 Whitbread First Novel Award), a powerful new novel that explores the reverberations of love ...
more
The House of Lost Souls
by
F.G. Cottam
Thomas Dunne Books, 07/07/2009
Just weeks after four students cross the threshold of the derelict Fischer House, one of them has committed suicide and the other three are descending...
more
The Innocent Spy
by
Laura Wilson
Minotaur Books, 07/07/2009
London. June, 1940. When the body of silent screen star Mabel Morgan is found impaled on a wrought iron fence, Detective Ted Stratton suspects that ...
more
The Lady in Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce
by
Hallie Rubenhold
St. Martin's Press, 07/07/2009
She was a spirited young heiress. He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. The marriage of Lady Seymour Dorothy Fleming and ...
more
The Unscratchables
by
Cornelius Kane
Scribner, 07/07/2009
Paperback Original
Crusher McNash is the police force's most fearless detective, a barrel-chested bull terrier with a biscuit-thin temper and a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders, and Cover-ups: Six Decades of Espionage Against America and Great Britain
by
Chapman Pincher
Random House, 07/07/2009
This landmark book is a massive, meticulous, and utterly riveting account of the duplicity and incompetence that characterized twentieth-century ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Where the Dead Lay
by
David Levien
Doubleday, 07/07/2009
After the sudden disappearance of two high-priced detectives, former Indianapolis cop Frank Behr—the brooding private investigator introduced in ...
more
A Girl Made of Dust
by
Nathalie Abi-Ezzi
Grove Press, 07/08/2009
In her peaceful town outside Beirut, Ruba is slowly awakening to the shifting contours within her household: hardly speaking and refusing to work, her...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
House Secrets: A Joe DeMarco Thriller
by
Mike Lawson
Atlantic Monthly Press, 07/08/2009
In
House Secrets, DeMarco is sent to investigate the death of a reporter, the son of one of his boss's old colleagues, even though it appears to be ...
more
How I Became a Famous Novelist
by
Steve Hely
Black Cat, 07/08/2009
Paperback Original
What Pete Tarslaw wants is simple enough: a realistic amount of fame that will open new avenues of sexual opportunity; the kind ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare'sThe Tempest
by
Hobson Woodward
Viking, 07/09/2009
In 1609, aspiring writer William Strachey set sail aboard the
Sea Venture, bound for the New World. Caught in a hurricane, the ship separated from its...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
by
Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo
Penguin Press, 07/09/2009
A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries—many of them still ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
What I Thought I Knew: A Memoir
by
Alice Eve Cohen
Viking, 07/09/2009
At age forty-four, Alice Eve Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she was engaged to an inspiring man, joyfully ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Where Underpants Come From: From Cotton Fields to Checkout Counters - Travels Through the New China and Into the New Global Economy
by
Joe Bennett
Overlook, 07/09/2009
One man's intrepid journey into Asia to discover why his underpants are so cheap
When Joe Bennett bought a six-pack of underwear in his local ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Best Friends Forever: A Novel
by
Jennifer Weiner
Atria Books, 07/14/2009
Some bonds can never be broken...
Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That's what Addie believes after Valerie moves across...
more
Literary Fiction
In the Heart of the Canyon
by
Elisabeth Hyde
Knopf, 07/14/2009
Meet Peter, twenty-seven, single, and looking for a quick hookup; Evelyn, a fifty-year-old Harvard professor; and Ruth and Lloyd, river veterans in ...
more
Jericho's Fall
by
Stephen L. Carter
Knopf, 07/14/2009
In an imposing house in the Colorado Rockies, Jericho Ainsley, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and a Wall Street titan, lies dying. He ...
more
Last Light over Carolina
by
Mary Alice Monroe
Pocket Books, 07/14/2009
Every woman in the lowcountry knows the unspoken fear that clutches the heart every time her man sets out to sea. Now, that fear has become a terrible...
more
Literary Fiction
Persona Non Grata: A Novel of the Roman Empire
by
Ruth Downie
Bloomsbury USA, 07/14/2009
At long last, Gaius Petreius Ruso and his companion, Tilla, are headed home—to Gaul. Having received a note consisting only of the words "COME ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Rain Gods
by
James Lee Burke
Simon & Schuster, 07/14/2009
When Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border, he'd hoped to leave certain things behind: his checkered ...
more
Sacred Hearts: A Novel
by
Sarah Dunant
Random House, 07/14/2009
The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina, in the Italian city of Ferrara, noblewomen find space to pursue their lives under God’s ...
more
Historical Fiction
Something Missing
by
Matthew Dicks
Broadway Books, 07/14/2009
Paperback Original
A career criminal with OCD tendencies and a savant-like genius for bringing order to his crime scenes, Martin considers himself ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Swimming
by
Nicola Keegan
Knopf, 07/14/2009
When we first meet Pip, the extraordinary heroine of Nicola Keegan's first novel, she is landlocked in a small town in the center of Kansas, literally...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Best of Times
by
Penny Vincenzi
Doubleday, 07/14/2009
In this masterfully crafted page-turner, peopled with intense characters and centered on one devastating moment that involves them all, plot-twist ...
more
The Big Steal
by
Emyl Jenkins
Algonquin Books, 07/14/2009
Hired to assess the value of broken and missing antiques following a suspicious burglary at a Virginia manor house, intrepid appraiser and amateur ...
more
The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World
by
Paul Collins
Bloomsbury USA, 07/14/2009
One book above all others has transfixed connoisseurs for four centuries—a book sold for shillings in the streets of London, whisked to Manhattan...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Night Counter
by
Alia Yunis
Shaye Areheart Books, 07/14/2009
After 85 long years, Fatimah Abdullah is dying, and she knows when her time will come. In fact, it should come just nine days from tonight, the 992nd...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Three of Us: A Family Story
by
Julia Blackburn
Vintage, 07/14/2009
After Julia's parents divorced, her mother took in male lodgers with the hope they would become her lovers. When one of the lodgers began an affair ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Undone
by
Karin Slaughter
Delacorte Press, 07/14/2009
In the trauma center of Atlanta's busiest hospital, Sara Linton treats the city's poor, wounded, and unlucky—and finds refuge from the tragedy ...
more
Ravens
by
George Dawes Green
Grand Central Publishing, 07/15/2009
The Boatwrights just won 318 million dollars in the Georgia State lottery. It's going to be the worst day of their lives.
When Shaw McBride and ...
more
Some Dream for Fools
by
Faiza Guene
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/15/2009
Ahlème, a young woman living on the outskirts of Paris, is trying to make a life out of the dreams she brought with her from Algeria and the ...
more
Get Real: A John Dortmunder novel
by
Donald E. Westlake
Grand Central Publishing, 07/17/2009
In Donald E. Westlake's classic caper novels, the bad get better, the good slide a bit, and Lord help anyone caught between a thief named John ...
more
A Disobedient Girl
by
Ru Freeman
Atria Books, 07/21/2009
Set against the volatile events of the last forty years of Sri Lankan history,
A Disobedient Girl traces the lives of three characters whose ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Bug Boy
by
Eric Luper
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/21/2009
It is the summer of 1934, and even at the height of the Great Depression, money is no object for the socialites at posh Saratoga Race Course. The ...
more
It's Beginning to Hurt: Stories
by
James Lasdun
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/21/2009
The stories in this remarkable collection are vibrant and gripping. James Lasdun's great gift is his unfailing psychological instinct for the ...
more
Storm Cycle
by
Iris Johansen
St. Martin's Press, 07/21/2009
Rachel Kirby is a computer genius whose personal life is hell. While she continues to climb the corporate ranks, her beloved twin sister is plagued by...
more
Thrillers
The Cavalier of the Apocalypse: An Aristide Ravel Mystery
by
Susanne Alleyn
Minotaur Books, 07/21/2009
A murdered man is found in a Parisian cemetery in 1786, where struggling writer Aristide Ravel recognizes the strange symbols surrounding the body to ...
more
The Defector
by
Daniel Silva
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 07/21/2009
Six months after the dramatic conclusion of
Moscow Rules, Gabriel has returned to the tan hills of Umbria to resume his honeymoon with his new wife, ...
more
Thrillers
The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Catherine de Medici
by
Jeanne Kalogridis
St. Martin's Press, 07/21/2009
Catherine de Medici is one of the most maligned monarchs in history: blamed for the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in which hundreds of innocents died...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Price of Spring: The Long Price Quartet, Book 4
by
Daniel Abraham
Tor Books, 07/21/2009
Fifteen years have passed since the devastating war between the Galt Empire and the cities of the Khaiem in which the Khaiem’s poets and their ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Twenties Girl: A Novel
by
Sophie Kinsella
Dial Books, 07/21/2009
Lara Lington has always had an overactive imagination, but suddenly that imagination seems to be in overdrive. Normal professional twenty-something ...
more
Literary Fiction
Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places
by
Bill Streever
Little Brown & Company, 07/22/2009
From avalanches to glaciers, from seals to snowflakes, and from Shackleton's expedition to "The Year Without Summer," Bill Streever journeys through ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Bad Things Happen
by
Harry Dolan
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 07/23/2009
The man who calls himself David Loogan is leading a quiet, anonymous life in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He's hoping to escape a violent ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Dead Men's Boots
by
Mike Carey
Grand Central Publishing, 07/23/2009
You might think that helping a friend's widow to stop a lawyer from stealing her husband's corpse would be the strangest thing on your To Do list. But...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Short Girls
by
Bich Minh Nguyen
Viking, 07/23/2009
Van and Linny Luong are as baffling to each other as their parents' Vietnamese legacy is to them both. Van, the quintessential overachiever, has ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Benny & Shrimp
by
Katarina Mazetti
Penguin Press, 07/28/2009
Paperback Original
An international sensation, this addictively readable tale asks the question: Why is it so impossible to get a relationship ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Labor Day
by
Joyce Maynard
William Morrow, 07/28/2009
With the end of summer closing in and a steamy Labor Day weekend looming in the town of Holton Mills, New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Henry - lonely,...
more
Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West
by
Christopher Caldwell
Doubleday, 07/28/2009
Can you have the same Europe with different people in it? The answer, says
Christopher Caldwell, is no
.
Europe has undergone a demographic ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Convict's Sword
by
I. J. Parker
Penguin Books, 07/28/2009
Paperback Original
I. J. Parker's phenomenal Akitada mystery series has been gaining fans with each new novel. The latest,
The Convict’s Sword...more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Last Bridge
by
Teri Coyne
Ballantine Books, 07/28/2009
For fans of Jodi Picoult and Sue Miller, a dark, edgy, page-turning debut about the lengths one woman will travel to escape her past.
After a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Weight of Silence
by
Heather Gudenkauf
Mira, 07/28/2009
It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
America Libre
by
Raul Ramos y Sanchez
Grand Central Publishing, 07/29/2009
After years of anti-immigrant backlash, anger seethes in the nation's Latino communities. The crowded streets bristle with restless youth, idled by a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Best Served Cold
by
Joe Abercrombie
Orbit, 07/29/2009
Springtime in Styria. And that means war.
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Informers
by
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Riverhead Books, 07/30/2009
When Gabriel Santoro's biography is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a public intellectual and famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel could not...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Blindman's Bluff: A Decker and Lazarus Novel
by
Faye Kellerman
William Morrow, 08/01/2009
As a lieutenant in the LAPD, homicide detective Peter Decker doesn't get many calls at 3 a.m. unless a case is nasty, sensational—or both. ...
more
Fire and Ice: A Beaumont and Brady Novel
by
J. A. Jance
William Morrow, 08/01/2009
Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont is working a series of murders in which six young women have been wrapped in tarps, doused with gasoline, and set ...
more
Thrillers
Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement
by
Patricia Sullivan
New Press, 08/01/2009
Ten years in the making,
Lift Every Voice is the first major history of America's oldest civil rights organization and destined to be a classic in the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Rhino Ranch
by
Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster, 08/01/2009
Returning home to recover from a near-fatal heart attack, Duane discovers that he has a new neighbor: the statuesque K.K. Slater, a quirky ...
more
The Elephant Keeper
by
Christopher Nicholson
William Morrow, 08/01/2009
"I asked the sailor what an Elephant looked like; he replied that it was like nothing on earth."
In the middle of the 18th century, a ship docks...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Bad Moon Rising: A Dark-Hunter Novel
by
Sherrilyn Kenyon
St. Martin's Press, 08/04/2009
Fang Kattalakis isn't just a wolf. He is the brother of two of the most powerful members of the Omegrion: the ruling council that enforces the laws of...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Before the Big Bang: The Prehistory of Our Universe
by
Brian Clegg
St. Martin's Press, 08/04/2009
According to a recent survey, the most popular question about science from the general public was: what came before the Big Bang? We all know on some ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
City of Silver
by
Annamaria Alfieri
Minotaur Books, 08/04/2009
In Potosí, the richest city in the Western Hemisphere, Inez de la Morada, the bewitching, cherished daughter of the rich and powerful Mayor, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Daughter of Kura: A Novel
by
Debra Austin
Touchstone, 08/04/2009
On the parched African earth more than half a million years ago sits the village of Kura, a matriarchal society of Homo erectus. Snap - a young, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Down in the Flood
by
Kenneth Abel
Minotaur Books, 08/04/2009
Danny Chaisson's latest case is bid-rigging. But as his investigation proceeds, a gathering storm named Katrina blasts his world apart.
Surrounded ...
more
Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought
by
James G. Workman
Walker & Company, 08/04/2009
"We don't govern water. Water governs us," writes James G. Workman. In
Heart of Dryness, he chronicles the memorable saga of the famed Bushmen of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
In This Way I Was Saved
by
Brian DeLeeuw
Simon & Schuster, 08/04/2009
On a chilly November afternoon, six-year-old Luke Nightingale's life changes forever. On the playground across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Inherent Vice
by
Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Press, 08/04/2009
It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a ...
more
Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Trilogy
by
Marie Vieux-Chauvet
The Modern Library, 08/04/2009
Suppressed immediately upon publication in 1968 and finally released in France in 2005, this stunning trilogy, brilliantly introduced by Edwidge ...
more
Short Stories
Of Bees and Mist
by
Erick Setiawan
Simon & Schuster, 08/04/2009
Raised in a sepulchral house where ghosts dwell in mirrors, Meridia grows up lonely and miserable. But at age sixteen, she has a chance at happiness ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court
by
Amy Bach
Metropolitan Books, 08/04/2009
The stories of grave injustice are all too familiar: the lawyer who sleeps through a trial, the false confessions, the convictions of the innocent. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Panic Attack
by
Jason Starr
Minotaur Books, 08/04/2009
Dr. Adam Bloom has the perfect life. He's financially secure and lives in a luxurious house with his wife, Dana, and their twenty-two-year-old ...
more
Prospero Lost: Prospero's Daughter, Book I
by
L. Jagi Lamplighter
Tor Books, 08/04/2009
More than four hundred years after the events of Shakespeare's
The Tempest, the sorcerer Prospero, his daughter Miranda, and his other children have ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Rules of Vengeance
by
Christopher Reich
Doubleday, 08/04/2009
Months after foiling an attack on a commercial jetliner, Doctors Without Borders physician Jonathan Ransom is working under an assumed name in a ...
more
That Old Cape Magic
by
Richard Russo
Knopf, 08/04/2009
Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about ...
more
The Arms Maker of Berlin
by
Dan Fesperman
Knopf, 08/04/2009
This powerfully suspenseful new novel from Dan Fesperman takes us deep into the early 1940s in Switzerland and Germany as it traces the long reach of ...
more
The Calligrapher's Daughter
by
Eugenia Kim
Henry Holt and Company, 08/04/2009
In early-twentieth-century Korea, Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. Smart and headstrong, she is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Return: Book IV of Voyagers
by
Ben Bova
Tor Books, 08/04/2009
In the 1980s, an alien starship visited Earth. While investigating what appeared to be a sarcophagus bearing the preserved body of its builder, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Siege
by
Stephen White
Dutton, 08/04/2009
In
The Siege, Gregory’s longtime friend Sam Purdy takes center stage in a story that feels ripped from tomorrow’s headlines. From the first ...
more
The Silent Hour: A Lincoln Perry Mystery
by
Michael Koryta
Minotaur Books, 08/04/2009
Whisper Ridge
Home to Dreams
October 2, 1992--April 12, 1996
So reads the strange epitaph carved beside the door of the home called Whisper Ridge, ...
more
The Traffickers
by
W.E.B. Griffin
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/04/2009
Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne is used to murder, but lately there's been an awful lot of it in Philadelphia. A gangland shooting in a popular ...
more
Thrillers
The Water's Edge
by
Karin Fossum
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 08/04/2009
A married couple, Reinhardt and Kristine Ris, are out for a Sunday walk when they discover the body of a boy and see the figure of a man limping away....
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
While I'm Falling
by
Laura Moriarty
Hyperion, 08/04/2009
In
While I'm Falling, Laura Moriarty presents a compelling depiction of how one young woman's life changes when her family breaks up for good.
Ever...
more
Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land
by
David Mas Masumoto
Free Press, 08/04/2009
It was when David Mas Masumoto's father had a stroke on the sprawling fields of their farm that the son looked with new eyes on the land where he and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
An Expensive Education
by
Nick McDonell
Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/05/2009
Professor Susan Lowell has it made. A happily married mother of two in a tenure-track job at Harvard, she has just won a Pulitzer Prize for her book ...
more
New Tricks
by
David Rosenfelt
Grand Central Publishing, 08/06/2009
Andy Carpenter gains possession of an adorable Bernese puppy whose owner was brutally murdered. Few can rival Andy's affection for dogs, and he will ...
more
The Bride's Farewell
by
Meg Rosoff
Viking, 08/06/2009
In Meg Rosoff’s fourth novel, a young woman in 1850s rural England runs away from home on horseback the day she's to marry her childhood ...
more
The Last Ember
by
Daniel Levin
Riverhead Books, 08/06/2009
Jonathan Marcus was a promising young archeologist studying at the American Academy in Rome when a terrible accident during an illegal excavation ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Wet Nurse's Tale
by
Erica Eisdorfer
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/06/2009
Susan Rose isn't the average protagonist: she's scheming, promiscuous, plump, and she is also smart, funny, tender, and entirely lovable. Like many ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Amigoland
by
Oscar Casares
Little Brown & Company, 08/10/2009
In a small town on the Mexican border live two brothers, Don Fidencio and Don Celestino. Stubborn and independent, they now must face the facts: they ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
After
by
Amy Efaw
Viking, 08/11/2009
An infant left in the trash to die. A teenage mother who never knew she was pregnant...
Before That Morning, these were the words most often used ...
more
Fear the Worst: A Novel
by
Linwood Barclay
Bantam Books, 08/11/2009
Your daughter doesn't come home one night from her summer job. You go there looking for her. No one's seen here. But it's worse than that. No one's ...
more
Intervention
by
Robin Cook
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/11/2009
It's been more than thirty years since New York City medical examiner Jack Stapleton's college graduation and almost as long since he'd been in touch ...
more
Thrillers
Major Farran's Hat: The Untold Story of the Struggle to Establish the Jewish State
by
David Cesarani
Da Capo Press, 08/11/2009
In May 1947 a sixteen-year-old Jewish activist named Alexander Rubowitz was abducted in broad daylight from the streets of Jerusalem. At the abduction...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Once on a Moonless Night
by
Dai Sijie
Knopf, 08/11/2009
When Puyi, the last emperor, was exiled to Manchuria in the early 1930s, it is said that he carried an eight-hundred-year-old silk scroll inscribed ...
more
Rosie and Skate
by
Beth Ann Bauman
Wendy Lamb Books, 08/11/2009
It's off-season at the Jersey shore, when the boardwalk belongs to the locals. Rosie is 15 and her sister Skate is 16. Their dad, an amiable drunk, is...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Self's Murder: Gerhard Self mystery #3
by
Bernhard Schlink
Vintage, 08/11/2009
Paperback Original. Despite his failing health and his girlfriend's pleading, Gerhard Self won't stop doing what he does best—investigating. And ...
more
The Castaways: The Curse of the Jolly Stone Trilogy, Book III
by
Iain Lawrence
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 08/11/2009
The spirited adventure that began in
The Convicts and continued in
The Cannibals has its riveting conclusion in
The Castaways—in which Tom Tin ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Rapture
by
Liz Jensen
Doubleday, 08/11/2009
It is a June unlike any other before, with temperatures soaring to asphyxiating heights. All across the world, freak weather patterns—and the ...
more
The Truth About Love
by
Josephine Hart
Knopf, 08/11/2009
It opens in a small Irish town in the 1960s with the accidental death of a teenage boy who commits one final, heartrending act of love.
Then: three ...
more
Literary Fiction
Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly
by
James E. McWilliams
Little Brown & Company, 08/15/2009
We suffer today from food anxiety, bombarded as we are with confusing messages about how to eat an ethical diet. Should we eat locally? Is organic ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
A Princess of Landover
by
Terry Brooks
Del Rey, 08/18/2009
Ben Holiday, Chicago lawyer and mere mortal turned monarch of enchanted Landover, has grappled with scheming barons, fire-breathing beasts, diabolical...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Baking Cakes in Kigali
by
Gaile Parkin
Delacorte Press, 08/18/2009
Baking Cakes in Kigali is a tale in fourteen confections, and behind each cake lies a story. As baker Angel Tungaraza busies herself with her ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Devil's Trill: Daniel Jacobus Mystery, #1
by
Gerald Elias
Minotaur Books, 08/18/2009
From concert violinist Gerald Elias comes this debut set in the classical music world about the theft of a priceless violin.
Daniel Jacobus is a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Hell's Gate: A Novel
by
Stephen Frey
Atria Books, 08/18/2009
When thirty-five-year-old lawyer Hunter Lee decides to turn his back on the New York City rat race that has made him rich but cost him his marriage, ...
more
Thrillers
Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels
by
Tristram Hunt
Metropolitan Books, 08/18/2009
A remarkable new biography from one of Britain’s leading young historians that recovers the co-founder of communism from the shadows of history.
...
more
One Foot Wrong
by
Sofie Laguna
Other Press, 08/18/2009
Paperback original
"The stars shine brightest out of the deepest dark..." A child is imprisoned in a house by her reclusive, religious parents. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Red to Black
by
Alex Dryden
Ecco, 08/18/2009
Finn is a veteran MI6 operative stationed in Moscow. In the guise of an amiable trade secretary, he has penetrated deep into the dangerous labyrinth ...
more
The Dame
by
R. A. Salvatore
Tor Books, 08/18/2009
The vast road network of Honce, completed a decade before, had brought great optimism to the people of the land. Commerce could travel more ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Law of Nines
by
Terry Goodkind
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/18/2009
Turning twenty-seven may be terrifying for some, but for Alex, a struggling artist living in the midwestern United States, it is cataclysmic. ...
more
The White Queen: A Novel
by
Philippa Gregory
Touchstone, 08/18/2009
Brother turns on brother to win the ultimate prize, the throne of England, in this dazzling account of the wars of the Plantagenets. They are the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Vanished
by
Joseph Finder
St. Martin's Press, 08/18/2009
Nick Heller is tough, smart, and stubborn. And in his line of work, it's essential. Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered ...
more
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
by
Rebecca Solnit
Viking, 08/20/2009
Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster - whether manmade or natural-people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Remedies
by
Kate Ledger
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/20/2009
A captivating new voice in women's fiction delves into the haunted past of a physician's seemingly perfect marriage.
Simon and Emily Bear look like a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care
by
T.R. Reid
Penguin Press, 08/20/2009
New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the otherindustrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can't seem to...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed
by
Judy Shepard
Hudson Street Press, 08/20/2009
Today, the name Matthew Shepard is synonymous with gay rights, but before his grisly murder in 1998, Matthew was simply Judy Shepard’s son. For ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
by
Carol K. Yoon
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/24/2009
Biologist and journalist Carol Kaesuk Yoon takes us beyond genus and species to deep cognition, revealing our drive to name life. She tells the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
206 Bones: A Novel
by
Kathy Reichs
Scribner, 08/25/2009
There are 206 bones in the human body. Forensic anthropologists know them intimately, can read in them stories of brief or long lives, and use them to...
more
After You: A Novel
by
Julie Buxbaum
Dial Press, 08/25/2009
It happened on a tree-lined street in Notting Hill to a woman who seemed to have the perfect life. Ellie Lerner’s best friend, Lucy, was murdered...
more
Another Faust
by
Daniel And Dina Nayeri
Candlewick Press, 08/25/2009
One night, in cities all across Europe, five children vanish — only to appear, years later, at an exclusive New York party with a strange and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Await Your Reply
by
Dan Chaon
Ballantine Books, 08/25/2009
The varied lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways – and with unexpected consequences – in Dan Chaon's gripping, ...
more
Even Money
by
Dick Francis
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/25/2009
On the first day of Royal Ascot, the worlds most famous horse racing event, the crowd rejoices in a string of winning favorites. Ned Talbot has worked...
more
Gourmet Rhapsody
by
Muriel Barbery
Europa Editions, 08/25/2009
Paperback Original. In the heart of Paris, in the posh building made famous in
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Pierre Athens, the greatest food critic ...
more
Home Boy
by
H. M. Naqvi
Shaye Areheart Books, 08/25/2009
They are renaissance men. They are bons vivants. They are three young Pakistani men in New York City at the turn of the millennium: AC, a gangsta-rap-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Homer's Odyssey
by
Gwen Cooper
Delacorte Press, 08/25/2009
The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. ...
more
However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home
by
Awista Ayub
Hyperion, 08/25/2009
Born in Kabul, Awista Ayub escaped with her family to Connecticut in 1981, when she was two years old, but her connection to her heritage remained ...
more
Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World
by
Rafe Esquith
Viking, 08/25/2009
In his bestselling book,
Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, readers were introduced to Rafe Esquith and his extraordinary students in Hobart Elementary ...
more
Advice
Love Is the Higher Law
by
David Levithan
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 08/25/2009
First there is a Before, and then there is an After... .
The lives of three teens—Claire, Jasper, and Peter—are altered forever on ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
by
J. Randy Taraborrelli
Grand Central Publishing, 08/25/2009
When Marilyn Monroe became famous in the 1950s, the world was told that her mother was either dead or simply not a part of her life. However, that was...
more
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
by
Graham Farmelo
Basic Books, 08/25/2009
Paul Dirac was among the great scientific geniuses of the modern age. One of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, the most revolutionary theory of ...
more
The Skating Rink
by
Roberto Bolano
New Directions Publishing, 08/28/2009
A hair-raising book that delivers Bolaño's signature mix of mordant wit and romantic tenderness,
The Skating Rink is both a crime and a love ...
more
Literary Fiction
A Duty to the Dead: A Bess Crawford Mystery
by
Charles Todd
William Morrow, 09/01/2009
England, 1916. Independent-minded Bess Crawford's upbringing is far different from that of the usual upper-middle-class British gentlewoman. Growing ...
more
A Rule Against Murder: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4
by
Louise Penny
Minotaur Books, 09/01/2009
It is the height of summer, and Armand Gamache and his wife are celebrating their wedding anniversary at an isolated, luxurious inn not far from the ...
more
Anna In-Between
by
Elizabeth Nunez
Akashic Books, 09/01/2009
Anna In-Between is Elizabeth Nunez's finest literary achievement to date. In spare prose, with laser-like attention to every word and the ...
more
Bending Toward the Sun: A Mother and Daughter Memoir
by
Leslie Gilbert-Lurie
Harper, 09/01/2009
A miraculous lesson in courage and recovery,
Bending Toward the Sun tells the story of a unique family bond forged in the wake of brutal terror. ...
more
Blame: A Novel
by
Michelle Huneven
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/01/2009
Michelle Huneven, Richard Russo once wrote, is "a writer of extraordinary and thrilling talent." That talent explodes with her third book,
Blame, a ...
more
Catching Fire: The Second Book of the Hunger Games
by
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic, 09/01/2009
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Dragon House
by
John Shors
NAL, 09/01/2009
From the critically acclaimed author of
Beneath a Marble Sky and
Beside a Burning Sea—a new novel set in modern-day Vietnam.
Dragon House tells...
more
Dreamwish Beasts and Snarks
by
Mike Resnick
Golden Gryphon Press, 09/01/2009
At times humorous, at other times serious, this endearing collection of short fiction explores many concepts regarding fantastical or futuristic ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Everything for a Dog
by
Ann M. Martin
Feiwel & Friends, 09/01/2009
Bone and his sister, Squirrel, are stray dogs born in a shed. Left motherless as puppies, the two dogs survive together for a while, but are soon ...
more
Evil at Heart
by
Chelsea Cain
Minotaur Books, 09/01/2009
Gretchen Lowell is still on the loose. These days, she's more of a cause célèbre than a feared killer, thanks to sensationalist news ...
more
Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome
by
Anthony Everitt
Random House, 09/01/2009
Acclaimed author Anthony Everitt, whose
Augustus was praised by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "a narrative of sustained drama and skillful analysis," ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hell
by
Robert Olen Butler
Grove Press, 09/01/2009
Hatcher McCord is an evening news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He’s not the only one to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Little Bird of Heaven: A Novel
by
Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco, 09/01/2009
Set in the mythical small city of Sparta, New York, this searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and ...
more
Long Past Stopping: A Memoir
by
Oran Canfield
William Morrow, 09/01/2009
Juggled between an endless succession of friends, relatives, anarchist boarding schools, libertarian commune dwellers, socialist rebels, and born-...
more
Biography/Memoir
Moonlight in Odessa
by
Janet Skeslien Charles
Bloomsbury USA, 09/01/2009
Odessa, Ukraine, is the humor capital of the former Soviet Union, but in an upside-down world where waiters earn more than doctors and Odessans depend...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
More
by
Austin Clarke
Amistad, 09/01/2009
At the news of her son's involvement in gang crime, Idora Morrison collapses in her rented basement apartment. For four days and nights, she retreats...
more
More About Boy: Roald Dahl's Tales from Childhood
by
Roald Dahl
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/01/2009
Twenty-five years ago in
Boy, the world's favorite storyteller recollected scenes from his youth—some funny, some frightening, all true.
More ...more
Biography/Memoir
My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran
by
Haleh Esfandiari
Ecco, 09/01/2009
At the Ministry of Intelligence in Tehran, a man in a checkered shirt sits down in an easy chair. He removes several documents from his pocket and ...
more
Biography/Memoir
No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process
by
Colin Beavan
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/01/2009
A guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, and generally becomes a tree-hugging ...
more
Pop
by
Gordon Korman
HarperTeen, 09/01/2009
When Marcus moves to a new town in the dead of summer, he doesn't know a soul. While practicing football for impending tryouts, he strikes up an ...
more
Prospect Park West
by
Amy Sohn
Simon & Schuster, 09/01/2009
Brooklyn's famed Park Slope neighborhood has it all: sprawling, majestic Prospect Park; acclaimed public schools; historic brownstones; and ...
more
Red Bones
by
Ann Cleeves
Minotaur Books, 09/01/2009
When a young archaeologist discovers a set of human remains, the locals are intrigued. Is it an ancient find—or a more contemporary mystery? Then...
more
Skeleton Hill: An Inspector Peter Diamond Investigation
by
Peter Lovesey
Soho Press, 09/01/2009
On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors...
more
Skull Duggery
by
Aaron Elkins
Berkley Books, 09/01/2009
Gideon and his wife are on vacation in Mexico when a local police chief requests his assistance on a case. A mummified corpse was discovered in the ...
more
Spartan Gold
by
Clive Cussler
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/01/2009
Thousands of years ago, the Persian king Xerxes the Great was said to have raided the Treasury at Delphi, carrying away two solid gold pillars as ...
more
Thrillers
The Collector of Worlds: A Novel of Sir Richard Francis Burton
by
Iliya Troyanov
Ecco, 09/01/2009
Iliya Troyanov's fictionalized account imagines the life of Sir Richard Francis Burton - a 19th-century British colonial officer with a rare ability ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Cry of the Sloth
by
Sam Savage
Coffee House Press, 09/01/2009
Living on a diet of fried Spam, vodka, sardines, cupcakes, and Southern Comfort, Andrew Whittaker is slowly being sucked into the morass of middle age...
more
The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War
by
James David Robenalt
Palgrave Macmillan, 09/01/2009
Warren Harding fell in love with his beautiful neighbor, Carrie Phillips, in the summer of 1905, almost a decade before he was elected a United States...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World
by
Rowan Jacobsen
Bloomsbury USA, 09/01/2009
In the 1990s, a marine scientist named Brian Kingzett was commissioned to survey Canada’s western coast. He saw amazing sights, from the wildest,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Lost Conspiracy
by
Frances Hardinge
HarperCollins Publishers, 09/01/2009
On an island of sandy beaches, dense jungles, and slumbering volcanoes, colonists seek to apply archaic laws to a new land, bounty hunters stalk the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Love Children
by
Marilyn French
The Feminist Press, 09/01/2009
Marilyn French's 1977 novel
The Women's Room epitomized the feminist movement and became one of the most influential books of our time. Now, in her ...
more
The Miles Between
by
Mary E. Pearson
Henry Holt and Company, 09/01/2009
Destiny Faraday makes a point of keeping her distance from her classmates at Hedgebrook Academy. Her number-one rule: Don't get attached. But one day,...
more
The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel
by
Maureen Lindley
Bloomsbury USA, 09/01/2009
Paperback Original. Peking, 1914. When the eight-year-old princess Eastern Jewel is caught spying on her father's liaison with a servant girl, she is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Promised World: A Novel
by
Lisa Tucker
Atria Books, 09/01/2009
On a March afternoon, while Lila Cole is working in her quiet office, her twin brother Billy points an unloaded rifle out of a hotel window, closing ...
more
The Spire: A Novel
by
Richard North Patterson
Henry Holt and Company, 09/01/2009
Mark Darrow grew up in a small Ohio town with no real advantages beyond his intelligence and athletic ability. But thanks to the intervention of ...
more
The Windup Girl
by
Paolo Bacigalupi
Night Shade Books, 09/01/2009
Emiko is the
Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, grown and programmed to satisfy the ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary
by
Bertrand M. Patenaude
Harper, 09/01/2009
In
Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, Stanford University lecturer Bertrand M. Patenaude tells the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final years in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Under This Unbroken Sky
by
Shandi Mitchell
HarperCollins Publishers, 09/01/2009
Spring 1938. After nearly two years in prison for the crime of stealing his own grain, Ukrainian immigrant Teodor Mykolayenko is a free man. While he ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink
by
Jane Goodall
Grand Central Publishing, 09/02/2009
At a time when animal species are becoming extinct on every continent and we are confronted with bad news about the environment nearly every day, Jane...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Newsgirl
by
Liza Ketchum
Viking, 09/03/2009
It's the spring of 1851 and San Francisco is booming. Twelve-year-old Amelia Forrester has just arrived with her family and they are eager to make a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Hidden Man
by
David Ellis
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/03/2009
Jason Kolarich is a midwestern Everyman with a lineman's build and an easy smart-ass remark. He’s a young, intelligent maverick, but he’s ...
more
In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue
by
Lauren Weber
Little Brown & Company, 09/07/2009
What does it mean to be cheap? When is stowing money away wise, and when is it miserly? How might American interpret the economic downturn after years...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
31 Hours
by
Masha Hamilton
Unbridled Books, 09/08/2009
A woman in New York awakens knowing, as deeply as a mother's blood can know, that her grown son is in danger. She has not heard from him in weeks. His...
more
A Quiet Belief in Angels
by
R.J. Ellory
Overlook, 09/08/2009
1939. In the small, rural community of Augusta Falls, Georgia, twelve-year-old Joseph Vaughan learns of the brutal assault and murder of a young girl,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life
by
Michael Greenberg
Other Press, 09/08/2009
To the literary elite, Michael Greenberg has always been known for his trenchant and moving columns that appear biweekly in the
Times Literary ...more
Day After Night
by
Anita Diamant
Scribner, 09/08/2009
Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp,...
more
Dexter by Design
by
Jeff Lindsay
Doubleday, 09/08/2009
After his surprisingly glorious honeymoon in Paris, life is almost normal for Dexter Morgan. Married life seems to agree with him: he’s devoted ...
more
God Sleeps in Rwanda: A Journey of Transformation
by
Joseph Sebarenzi
Atria Books, 09/08/2009
A harrowing tale of survival and reconciliation by a Rwandan Tutsi who flees his homeland before the 1994 genocide and later returns to be elected ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Josie's Story: A Mother's Inspiring Crusade to Make Medical Care Safe
by
Sorrel King
Atlantic Monthly Press, 09/08/2009
Ninety-eight thousand people die every year from medical errors, making it a leading cause of death in the United States, but the subject has long ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Level 26: Dark Origins
by
Anthony E. Zuiker and Duane Swierczynski
Dutton, 09/08/2009
Level 26 is a series of crime thrillers centered on a rogue serial killer hunter. Steve Dark is head of a highly secret and incredibly skilled black-...
more
Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success
by
James Marcus Bach
Scribner, 09/08/2009
The volatility of the job market and the limitless opportunities afforded by the internet have forever changed people's attitudes about schooling. In ...
more
Stitches: A Memoir
by
David Small
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/08/2009
Graphic Novel.
One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A ...
more
The Anthologist
by
Nicholson Baker
Simon & Schuster, 09/08/2009
The Anthologist is narrated by Paul Chowder - a once-in-a-while-published kind of poet who is writing the introduction to a new anthology of poetry. ...
more
The Ask and the Answer: Chaos Walking: Book Two
by
Patrick Ness
Candlewick Press, 09/08/2009
Reaching the end of their tense and desperate flight in
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Todd and Viola did not find healing and hope in Haven. They ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Fatal Child
by
John Dickinson
David Fickling Books, 09/08/2009
The final novel in this compelling trilogy set in a medieval fantasy world.Atti is the Fatal Child. Beautiful and adored, she is troubled by a ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Georges and the Jewels
by
Jane Smiley
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 09/08/2009
Jane Smiley makes her debut for young readers in this stirring novel set on a California horse ranch in the 1960s. Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt has ...
more
The Golden City
by
John Twelve Hawks
Doubleday, 09/08/2009
John Twelve Hawks's previous novels about the mystical Travelers and the Brethren, their ruthless enemies, generated an extraordinary following around...
more
The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11
by
John Farmer
Riverhead Books, 09/08/2009
Drawing on records that have only recently been released, John Farmer, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, presents a definitive account that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last Song
by
Nicholas Sparks
Grand Central Publishing, 09/08/2009
Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from
New York City to ...
more
Romance
The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall
by
Michael Meyer
Scribner, 09/08/2009
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" President Ronald Reagan's famous exhortation when visiting Berlin in 1987 has long been widely cited as the ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story
by
Sue Monk Kidd
Viking, 09/08/2009
Sue Monk Kidd has touched millions of readers with her novels
The Secret Life of Bees and
The Mermaid Chair and with her acclaimed nonfiction. In this...
more
The Quiet War
by
Paul J. McAuley
Pyr, 09/10/2009
Twenty-third century Earth, ravaged by climate change, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
by
Morris Dickstein
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/14/2009
In this timely and long-awaited cultural history of the 1930s, Morris Dickstein, whom Norman Mailer called "one of our best and most distinguished ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
In the Valley of the Kings: Stories
by
Terrence Holt
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/14/2009
A practicing physician, Terrence Holt has written prize-winning stories for publications like
TriQuarterly and
Zoetrope but has operated, until now, ...
more
Reheated Cabbage: Tales of Chemical Degeneration
by
Irvine Welsh
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/14/2009
Reheated Cabbage gathers stories showcasing Irvine Welsh’s trademark skills: vaulting imagination, brilliant vernacular ear, scabrous humor, and ...
more
True Compass: A Memoir
by
Edward M. Kennedy
Twelve Books, 09/14/2009
In this landmark autobiography, five years in the making, Senator Edward M. Kennedy tells his extraordinary personal story--of his legendary family, ...
more
Biography/Memoir
After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam
by
Lesley Hazleton
Doubleday, 09/15/2009
Even as Muhammad lay dying, the battle over his successor had begun. Pitting the family of his favorite wife, the controversial Aisha, against ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Airlift to America: How Barack Obama, Sr., John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya, and 800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours
by
Tom Shachtman
St. Martin's Press, 09/15/2009
This is the long-hidden saga of how a handful of Americans and Kenyans fought the British colonial government, the U.S. State Department, and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cleopatra's Daughter
by
Michelle Moran
Crown, 09/15/2009
The marriage of Marc Antony and Cleopatra is one of the greatest love stories of all time, a tale of unbridled passion with earth-shaking political ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth
by
Ray C. Anderson
St. Martin's Press, 09/15/2009
In 1994, Interface founder and chairman Ray Anderson set an audacious goal for his commercial carpet company: to take nothing
from the earth ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization
by
Lars Brownworth
Crown, 09/15/2009
In AD 476 the Roman Empire fell – or rather, its western half did. Its eastern half, which would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire, would ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Mathilda Savitch
by
Victor Lodato
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/15/2009
I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it's night, not yet time for bed but too late to...more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
New World Monkeys
by
Nancy Mauro
Shaye Areheart Books, 09/15/2009
Duncan and Lily, young and adrift in a prickly marriage and lackluster careers, flee Manhattan for the peaceful allure of a recently inherited ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
No Time to Wave Goodbye
by
Jacquelyn Mitchard
Random House Reader's Circle, 09/15/2009
It has been twenty-two years since Beth Cappadora’s three-year-old son Ben was abducted. By some miracle, he returned nine years later, and the ...
more
The Disappearance at Pere-Lachaise: A Victor Legris Mystery
by
Claude Izner
Minotaur Books, 09/15/2009
Fin de siècle Paris: the world of Verlaine and Zola, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec; a time of anarchists, scientists, and occultists, when can-can ...
more
The Good Soldiers
by
David Finkel
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/15/2009
It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it the surge. "...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War
by
Nicholas Thompson
Henry Holt and Company, 09/15/2009
Only two Americans held positions of great influence throughout the Cold War; ironically, they were the chief advocates for the opposing strategies ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Lost Symbol
by
Dan Brown
Doubleday, 09/15/2009
The Lost Symbol once again features Dan Brown’s unforgettable protagonist, Robert Langdon. Brown's longtime editor, Jason Kaufman, Vice President...
more
The Mom & Pop Store: How the Unsung Heroes of the American Economy Are Surviving and Thriving
by
Robert Spector
Walker & Company, 09/15/2009
Business journalist Robert Spector grew up working in his family's butcher shop in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he learned invaluable lessons about ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Other Lands: Book Two of the Acacia Trilogy
by
David Anthony Durham
Doubleday, 09/15/2009
A few years have passed since the conquering of the Mein, and Queen Corinn is firmly in control of the Known World - perhaps too firmly. With plans to...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Possibility of Everything
by
Hope Edelman
Ballantine Books, 09/15/2009
From the bestselling author of
Motherless Daughters, here is the real-life story of one woman's search for a cure to her family's escalating troubles,...
more
The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis
by
Barbara O'Connor
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/15/2009
Nothing ever happens in Fayette, South Carolina. That’s what Popeye thinks, anyway. His whole life, everything has just been boring, boring, ...
more
The War After Armageddon
by
Ralph Peters
Forge Books, 09/15/2009
Shocking scenes of battle…unforgettable soldiers…heartbreaking betrayals…. In this stunning, fast-paced novel, a ruthless future ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Top Producer
by
Norb Vonnegut
St. Martin's Press, 09/15/2009
In a world that moves as fast as finance does, top producers have to think three steps ahead and make snap decisions. Theirs is a blurred version of ...
more
Thrillers
Debut Author
Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on the USS Kitty Hawk
by
Gregory Freeman
Palgrave Macmillan, 09/15/2009
In the vein of
Crimson Tide, with action pulled straight from a high seas thriller, this is the exciting story of a mutiny that the U.S. Navy denies ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
by
Jon Krakauer
Doubleday, 09/15/2009
The bestselling author of
Into the Wild,
Into Thin Air, and
Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man...
more
Biography/Memoir
A Season of Gifts
by
Richard Peck
The Dial Press, 09/17/2009
The eccentric, forceful, big-hearted Grandma Dowdel is the star of the Newbery Medal–winning
A Year Down Yonder and Newbery Honor–winning
A ...more
Bicycle Diaries
by
David Byrne
Viking, 09/17/2009
Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability
by
David Owen
Riverhead Books, 09/17/2009
In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Change in Altitude
by
Anita Shreve
Little Brown & Company, 09/22/2009
Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure - a year living in Kenya. ...
more
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
by
Neil Sheehan
Random House, 09/22/2009
From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning classic
A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
An Echo in the Bone: Outlander Series #7
by
Diana Gabaldon
Delacorte Press, 09/22/2009
Jamie Fraser, former Jacobite and reluctant rebel, is already certain of three things about the American rebellion: The Americans will win, fighting ...
more
Historical Fiction
Blood's A Rover
by
James Ellroy
Knopf, 09/22/2009
Summer, 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead. The assassination conspiracies have begun to unravel. A dirty-tricks squad is getting ...
more
Candor
by
Pam Bachorz
Egmont USA, 09/22/2009
In the model community of Candor, Florida, every teen wants to be like Oscar Banks. The son of the town’s founder, Oscar earns straight As, is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Going Bovine
by
Libba Bray
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 09/22/2009
All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It's not a lot to ask. But that'...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Hardball: A V. I. Warshawski Novel
by
Sara Paretsky
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/22/2009
Chicago's unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, ...
more
Hothouse Orchid
by
Stuart Woods
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/22/2009
After Special Agent Holly Barker lets international terrorist Teddy Fay slip through her fingers for a second time, the CIA thinks she might want a ...
more
Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance
by
Garrison Keillor
Viking, 09/22/2009
Margie Krebsbach dreams up the idea of a trip to Rome, hoping to get her husband Carl to make love to her—he’s been sleeping across the hall...
more
Romance
Riot
by
Walter Dean Myers
Egmont USA, 09/22/2009
As the Civil War rages, another battle breaks out behind the lines.
During a long hot July in 1863, the worst race riots the United States has ever ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Case for God
by
Karen Armstrong
Knopf, 09/22/2009
Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy
by
David E. Hoffman
Doubleday, 09/22/2009
This riveting narrative history of the end of the arms race sheds new light on the frightening last chapters of the Cold War and the legacy of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
by
Richard Dawkins
Free Press, 09/22/2009
In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a Pew ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
by
Douglas Rogers
Harmony Books, 09/22/2009
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Douglas Rogers is the son of white farmers living through that country’s long and tense transition from postcolonial...
more
Literary Fiction
The Year of the Flood
by
Margaret Atwood
Nan A. Talese, 09/22/2009
The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly ...
more
A Separate Country
by
Robert Hicks
Grand Central Publishing, 09/23/2009
Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War,
A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Spooner
by
Pete Dexter
Grand Central Publishing, 09/24/2009
Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor's office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday ...
more
Twisted Tree
by
Kent Meyers
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 09/24/2009
Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of small-town Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible event—their loss, their place...
more
Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day
by
Diane Ackerman
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/28/2009
In an eye-opening sequence of personal meditations through the cycle of seasons, Diane Ackerman awakens us to the world at dawn—drawing on ...
more
The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King - A Nonfiction Thriller
by
James Patterson & Martin Dugard
Little Brown & Company, 09/28/2009
Thrust onto Egypt's most powerful throne at the age of nine, King Tut's reign was fiercely debated from the outset. Behind the palace's veil of ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Squire's Quest: The Squire's Tales
by
Gerald Morris
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 09/28/2009
Why is it, Terence wondered, that the things you know most surely are always the things you can't demonstrate to any one else?
And why is it, after...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce's Masterpiece
by
Declan Kiberd
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/28/2009
Declan Kiberd, professor of Anglo-Irish literature at the University College Dublin and Ireland’s premier literary historian, offers an audacious...
more
13 1/2
by
Nevada Barr
Vanguard Press, 09/29/2009
In 1971, the state of Minnesota was rocked by the “Butcher Boy” incident, as coverage of a family brutally murdered by one of their own ...
more
Blind Eye
by
Stuart MacBride
Minotaur Books, 09/29/2009
It’s summer in the Granite City, but even the sunshine can’t improve the mood at Grampian Police Headquarters. Aberdeen’s growing ...
more
Boneshaker: Clockwork Century, #1
by
Cherie Priest
Tor Books, 09/29/2009
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Capitol Offense: A Novel
by
William Bernhardt
Ballantine Books, 09/29/2009
In his thrilling novels of suspense, William Bernhardt takes us into the fault lines of the criminal justice system, where one mistake, a twist of ...
more
Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius
by
Colin Dickey
Unbridled Books, 09/29/2009
Beginning dramatically with the opening of Haydn's grave two days after his death in October 1820, Cranioklepty takes us on an extraordinary history ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Crossing Stones
by
Helen Frost
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/29/2009
For as long as Muriel can remember, the families' lives have been intertwined,
connected by the crossing stones that span the water. But now that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Dark Mirror: A Brock and Kolla Mystery
by
Barry Maitland
Minotaur Books, 09/29/2009
Newly promoted to Detective Inspector, Kathy Kolla of the Serious Crimes Unit is called in by the forensic pathologist regarding the recent sudden ...
more
Gallows Lane: An Inspector Devlin Mystery
by
Brian McGilloway
Minotaur Books, 09/29/2009
In his critically acclaimed debut,
Borderlands, Brian McGilloway opened a window onto modern Ireland through the eyes of Garda Inspector Benedict ...
more
Generosity: An Enhancement
by
Richard Powers
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/29/2009
When Chicagoan Russell Stone finds himself teaching a Creative Nonfiction class, he encounters a young Algerian woman with a disturbingly luminous ...
more
Have a Little Faith: A True Story
by
Mitch Albom
Hyperion, 09/29/2009
What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together?
In
Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story...
more
Advice
Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel
by
Audrey Niffenegger
Scribner, 09/29/2009
When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their ...
more
Thrillers
Juliet, Naked: a novel
by
Nick Hornby
Riverhead Books, 09/29/2009
Annie loves Duncan—or thinks she does. Duncan loves Annie, but then, all of a sudden, he doesn’t. Duncan really loves Tucker Crowe,
a ...
more
Liar
by
Justine Larbalestier
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 09/29/2009
Micah will freely admit that she’s a compulsive liar, but that may be the one honest thing she’ll ever tell you. Over the years she’s ...
more
Rebel Yell
by
Alice Randall
Bloomsbury USA, 09/29/2009
Abel Jones Jr., a civil rights lawyer’s son turned black Washington neo-con, has met an unlikely end: collapsing at the Rebel Yell dinner theater...
more
Risk: A Novel
by
Colin Harrison
Picador, 09/29/2009
George Young never thought of himself as a detective, but that's pretty much his vocation - an attorney for a top insurance firm, it’s his job to...
more
Rizzo's War
by
Lou Manfredo
Minotaur Books, 09/29/2009
“There’s no wrong, there’s no right, there just is.” This is the refrain of Joe Rizzo, a decades-long veteran of the NYPD, as...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Rough Country: A Virgil Flowers Novel
by
John Sandford
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/29/2009
Virgil's always been known for having a somewhat active, er, social life, but he's probably not going to be getting too many opportunities for that ...
more
Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq
by
Christina Asquith
Random House, 09/29/2009
Caught up in a terrifying war, facing choices of life and death, two Iraqi sisters take us into the hidden world of women's lives under U.S. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Stardust: A Novel
by
Joseph Kanon
Atria Books, 09/29/2009
Hollywood, 1945. Ben Collier has just arrived from war-torn Europe to find that his brother, Daniel, has died in mysterious circumstances. Why would a...
more
The Boy from Baby House 10: From the Nightmare of a Russian Orphanage to a New Life in America
by
Alan Philps
St. Martin's Press, 09/29/2009
In 1990, a young boy afflicted with cerebral palsy was born, prematurely, in Russia. His name was Vanya. His mother abandoned him to the state ...
more
Biography/Memoir
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
by
Lydia Davis
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/29/2009
Now, for the first time, Davis's short stories will be collected in one volume, from the groundbreaking Break It Down (1986) to the 2007 National Book...
more
Short Stories
The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir
by
Amanda, Liz, Dan & Diana Welch
Harmony Books, 09/29/2009
"Perfect is boring."
Well, 1983 certainly wasn't boring for the Welch family. Somehow, between their handsome father's mysterious death, their ...
more
The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness
by
Harlow Unger
Da Capo Press, 09/29/2009
In this lively and compelling biography Harlow Giles Unger reveals the dominant political figure of a generation. A fierce fighter in four critical ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Ninth Daughter: An Abigail Adams Mystery
by
Barbara Hamilton
Berkley Books, 09/29/2009
1773: The Massachusetts colony is torn between patriots who want independence from British rule and loyalists who support the King. At the center is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Owl Killers: A Novel
by
Karen Maitland
Delacorte Press, 09/29/2009
England, 1321. The tiny village of Ulewic teeters between survival and destruction, faith and doubt, God and demons. For shadowing the villagers’...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Price of Malice: A Joe Gunther Novel
by
Archer Mayor
Minotaur Books, 09/29/2009
Wayne Castine was found brutally murdered and the murderer remains at large. Castine, a suspected child predator, was killed in Brattleboro where he ...
more
The Time of My Life
by
Patrick Swayze
Atria Books, 09/29/2009
In a career spanning more than thirty years, Patrick Swayze has made a name for himself on the stage, the screen, and television. Known for his ...
more
Biography/Memoir
The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf
by
Stephanie Barron
Bantam Spectra, 09/29/2009
In March 1941, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in England's River Ouse. Her body was found three weeks later. What ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Wrong Mother
by
Sophie Hannah
Penguin Books, 09/29/2009
Paperback Original. Sally Thorning is watching the news with her husband when she hears an unexpected name - Mark Bretherick. It's a name she shouldn'...
more
The Geometry of God
by
Uzma Aslam Khan
Interlink Books, 09/30/2009
Amal: the practical sister who digs up the "diamond key" that unlocks the mystery of Pakicetus, a whale-dog creature who once swam the ancient seas ...
more
A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice
by
Malalai Joya
Scribner, 10/01/2009
Malalai Joya has been called "the bravest woman in Afghanistan." At a constitutional assembly in Kabul in 2003, she stood up and denounced her country...
more
America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story
by
Bruce Feiler
William Morrow, 10/01/2009
Whenever the USA has experienced hard times it has turned to the Exodus story for direction, inspiration and hope. The Pilgrims quoted his story. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Black Friday: A Maggie O'Dell Novel
by
Alex Kava
Mira, 10/01/2009
On the busiest shopping day of the year, some idealistic college students believe they're about to carry out an elaborate media stunt at the largest ...
more
Thrillers
Blood Safari
by
Deon Meyer
Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/01/2009
Emma Le Roux, a beautiful young woman, sees her brother named on the Cape Town news as the prime suspect in the killing of four poachers and a witch ...
more
Chinese Whispers: A China Thriller
by
Peter May
Poisoned Pen Press, 10/01/2009
His victims are young, beautiful and viciously mutilated. He calls himself the Beijing Ripper. The media and terror-sticken public are demanding the ...
more
Crow Call
by
Lois Lowry
Scholastic, 10/01/2009
This is the story of young Liz, her father, and their strained relationship. Dad has been away at WWII for longer than she can remember, and they ...
more
David's Revenge
by
Hans Werner Kettenbach
Bitter Lemon Press, 10/01/2009
When David Ninochvili arrives from war-torn Georgia, the peaceful existence of a schoolteacher’s family in Germany comes to an abrupt end. ...
more
Doom Machine
by
Mark Teague
Scholastic, 10/01/2009
When a spaceship lands in Vern Hollow, Jack's hometown, he and his no-account inventor-uncle Bud are busy trying to fix a car driven by Dr. Shumway ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Double Take: A Memoir
by
Kevin Michael Connolly
Harper Studio, 10/01/2009
Kevin Michael Connolly is a twenty-three-year-old man who has seen the world in a way most of us never will. Whether swarmed by Japanese tourists at ...
more
Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters
by
Chesley B. Sullenberger
William Morrow, 10/01/2009
On January 15, 2009, the world witnessed one of the most remarkable emergency landings in history when Captain Chelsley 'Sully' Sullenberger ...
more
Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America
by
Patrick Carr & Maria J. Kefalas
Beacon Press, 10/01/2009
In 2001, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas moved to Iowa to understand the rural brain ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hummingbirds
by
Joshua Gaylord
Harper, 10/01/2009
Spend a year at the Carmine-Casey School for Girls, an elite prep school on Manhattan's Upper East Side: the year when the intimate private school ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
In the First Circle: The First Uncensored Edition
by
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
HarperCollins Publishers, 10/01/2009
Paperback. Set in Moscow during a three-day period in December 1949,
The First Circle is the story of the prisoner Gleb Nerzhin, a brilliant ...
more
Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future
by
Tim Flannery
Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/01/2009
In
Now or Never, the internationally acclaimed author of
The Weather Makers returns to the subject of climate change with a book that is at once a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Odd and the Frost Giants
by
Neil Gaiman
HarperCollins Children's Books, 10/01/2009
In this inventive, short, yet perfectly formed novel inspired by traditional Norse mythology, Neil Gaiman takes readers on a wild and magical trip to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells---Our Ride to the Renewable Future
by
Amanda Little
Harper, 10/01/2009
After covering the environment and energy beat for more than a decade, Amanda Little decided that the only way to really understand America's energy ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Deluxe Heirloom Edition (Pride and Prej. and Zombies)
by
Jane Austen
Quirk Books, 10/01/2009
Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses,
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an audacious ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Serena: A Novel
by
Ron Rash
Ecco, 10/01/2009
The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Sunflowers
by
Sheramy Bundrick
Avon Books, 10/01/2009
Paperback Original.
"I'd heard about him but had never seen him, the foreigner with the funny name who wandered the countryside painting pictures....
more
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Financial Lives of the Poets
by
Jess Walter
HarperCollins Publishers, 10/01/2009
In the winning and utterly original novels
Citizen Vince and
The Zero, Jess Walter ("a ridiculously talented writer"—
New York Times) painted an ...
more
The Ghosts of Belfast
by
Stuart Neville
Soho Press, 10/01/2009
Fegan has been a "hard man," an IRA killer in northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by twelve ghosts: a mother ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Monster in the Box: An Inspector Wexford Novel
by
Ruth Rendell
Scribner, 10/01/2009
The Monster In The Box is the latest addition to Ruth Rendell's classic and beguiling Inspector Wexford series. In this enthralling new book, Rendell,...
more
The Price of Love and Other Stories: Featuring a New Inspector Banks Novella
by
Peter Robinson
William Morrow, 10/01/2009
Ever since the publication of his first mystery featuring Detective Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson has been steadily building a reputation for ...
more
The Unfinished Angel
by
Sharon Creech
HarperCollins Children's Books, 10/01/2009
Peoples are strange!
The things they are doing and saying—sometimes they make no sense. Did their brains fall out of their heads? And why so ...
more
Unseen Academicals
by
Terry Pratchett
Harper, 10/01/2009
Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork — not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Windfall
by
Penny Vincenzi
Overlook, 10/01/2009
Sensible Cassia Fallon has been married to her doctor husband for seven years when her godmother leaves her a huge fortune. For the first time in her ...
more
Fire
by
Kristin Cashore
The Dial Press, 10/05/2009
She is the last of her kind...
It is not a peaceful time in the Dells. In King City, the young King Nash is clinging to the throne, while rebel ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Manituana
by
Wu Ming
Verso, 10/05/2009
A book of dazzling scope,
Manituana is the latest from the collective of four young Italian writers who call themselves Wu Ming. Set during the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood
by
David Benedictus
Dutton Children's Books, 10/05/2009
It was eighty years ago, on the publication of
The House at Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin said good-bye to Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Professional: A Spenser Novel
by
Robert B. Parker
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/05/2009
A knock on Spenser's office door can only mean one thing: a new case. This time the visitor is a local lawyer with an interesting story. Elizabeth ...
more
A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories
by
Alia Malek (editor)
Free Press, 10/06/2009
Among the surfeit of narratives about Arabs that have been published in recent years, surprisingly little has been reported on Arabs in America - an ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
As God Commands
by
Niccolo Ammaniti
Black Cat, 10/06/2009
Paperback Original. From the internationally best-selling author of
I'm Not Scared comes a dizzying and compulsively readable novel set in a moribund ...
more
Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World
by
Harold S. Kushner
Knopf, 10/06/2009
An inescapable component of our lives, fear comes in many guises: fear of unemployment; fear of aging, illness, losing beauty; fear of a terrorist ...
more
Dancing with Butterflies: A Novel
by
Reyna Grande
Washington Square Press, 10/06/2009
Paperback Original.
Dancing with Butterflies uses the alternating voices of four very different women whose lives interconnect through a common ...
more
Evidence: An Alex Delaware Novel
by
Jonathan Kellerman
Ballantine Books, 10/06/2009
In the half-built skeleton of a monstrously vulgar mansion in one of L.A.'s toniest neighborhoods, a watchman stumbles on the bodies of a young couple...
more
Thrillers
The Book of Illumination: A Novel from the Ghost Files
by
Mary Ann Winkowski
Three Rivers, 10/06/2009
The criminal underworld meets the spiritual otherworld in this thrilling debut collaboration between the inspiration for television’s
The Ghost ...more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Christmas List
by
Richard Paul Evans
Simon & Schuster, 10/06/2009
Dear Reader,
When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, gave our class the intriguing (if somewhat macabre) assignment of ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays
by
Chinua Achebe
Knopf, 10/06/2009
Chinua Achebe's characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. In a preface, he ...
more
The End
by
Salvatore Scibona
Riverhead Books, 10/06/2009
It is August 15, 1953, the day of a boisterous and unwieldy street carnival in Elephant Park, an Italian immigrant enclave in northern Ohio. As the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Gates: A Novel
by
John Connolly
Atria Books, 10/06/2009
Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Halloween, which is how ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps
by
William Styron
Random House, 10/06/2009
Before writing his memoir of madness,
Darkness Visible, William Styron was best known for his ambitious works of fiction – including
The ...more
War Dances
by
Sherman Alexie
Grove Press, 10/06/2009
Fresh off his National Book Award win, Alexie delivers a heartbreaking, hilarious collection of stories that explores the precarious balance between ...
more
And Another Thing...
by
Eoin Colfer
Hyperion, 10/12/2009
An Englishman's continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea...
Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds
by
Sanjay Gupta
Grand Central Publishing, 10/12/2009
An unborn baby with a fatal heart defect...a skier submerged for an hour in a frozen Norwegian lake...a comatose brain surgery patient whom doctors ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Cockroach: A Novel
by
Rawi Hage
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/12/2009
One of the most highly anticipated novels of the year,
Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage’s critically acclaimed ...
more
Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man and his Times
by
William E. Wallace
Cambridge University Press, 10/12/2009
Michelangelo is universally recognized to be one of the greatest artists of all time. In this vividly written biography, William E. Wallace offers a ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal
by
Tristram Stuart
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/12/2009
With shortages, volatile prices and nearly one billion people hungry, the world has a food problem—or thinks it does. Farmers, manufacturers, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam
by
Wafa Sultan
St. Martin's Press, 10/13/2009
From the front page of
The New York Times to YouTube, Dr. Wafa Sultan has become a force radical Islam has to reckon with. For the first time, she ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Almost Perfect
by
Brian Katcher
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 10/13/2009
You only hurt the ones you love.
Logan Witherspoon recently discovered that his girlfriend of three years cheated on him. But things start to look ...
more
Literary Fiction
Box 21: A Novel
by
Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/13/2009
Three years ago, Lydia and Alena were two hopeful girls from Lithuania. Now they are sex slaves, lured to Sweden with the promise of better jobs and ...
more
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
by
Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan Books, 10/13/2009
Americans are a "positive" people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Canticle: The Psalms of Isaak Book 2
by
Ken Scholes
Tor Books, 10/13/2009
It is nine months after the end of the previous book. Many noble allies have come to the Ninefold Forest for a Feast in honor of General Rudolfo...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
D-Day: The Battle for Normandy
by
Antony Beevor
Viking, 10/13/2009
The definitive account of the Normandy invasion by the bestselling author of
Stalingrad and
The Fall of Berlin 1945
From critically acclaimed ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Dracula The Un-Dead
by
Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt
Dutton, 10/13/2009
Bram Stoker's
Dracula is the prototypical horror novel, an inspiration for the world's seemingly limitless fascination with vampires. Though many ...
more
Flesh and Fire: Book One of The Vineart War
by
Laura Anne Gilman
Pocket Books, 10/13/2009
Once, all power in the Vin Lands was held by the prince-mages, who alone could craft spellwines, and selfishly used them to increase their own wealth ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Hush, Hush
by
Becca Fitzpatrick
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 10/13/2009
Romance was not part of Nora Grey's plan. She's never been particularly attracted to the boys at her school, no matter how hard her best friend, Vee, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home
by
Rhoda Janzen
Henry Holt and Company, 10/13/2009
Not long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her brilliant husband of fifteen years left her for Bob...
more
Nine Dragons
by
Michael Connelly
Little Brown & Company, 10/13/2009
Fortune Liquors is a small shop in a tough South L.A. neighborhood, a store Bosch has known for years. The murder of John Li, the store's owner, hits ...
more
Thrillers
The Book of Fathers
by
Miklos Vamos
Other Press, 10/13/2009
When in 1705 Kornell Csillag’s grandfather returns destitute to his native Hungary from exile, he happens across a gold fob-watch gleaming in the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army
by
Greg Jaffe
Crown Journeys, 10/13/2009
They were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked to save an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. They survived the military's ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Search
by
Heuvel, van der Rol & Schippers
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/13/2009
Graphic Novel, 64 pages. Esther remembers her own experience of the Holocaust as a Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, and recounts to her grandson ...
more
Graphic Novels
The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy
by
Leanda de Lisle
Ballantine Books, 10/13/2009
Mary, Katherine, and Jane Grey – sisters whose mere existence nearly toppled a kingdom and altered a nation's destiny – are the captivating ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Advice
When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
by
Gail Collins
Little Brown & Company, 10/14/2009
Picking up where her previous successful, and highly lauded book,
America's Women, left off, Gail Collins recounts the sea change women have ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A World Without Bees
by
Alison Benjamin
Pegasus Books, 10/15/2009
"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left."—Albert Einstein
From Los Angeles to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
A World Without Ice
by
Henry Pollack Ph.D
Avery, 10/15/2009
Much has been written about global warming, but the crucial relationship between people and ice has received little focus - until now. As one of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Arch Enemy: The Looking Glass Wars
by
Frank Beddor
The Dial Press, 10/15/2009
The Heart Crystal's power has been depleted, and Imagination along with it. The people of Wonderland have all lost their creative drive, and most ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
by
Robert Lacey
Viking, 10/15/2009
Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox. It is a modern state driven by contemporary technology and possessed of vast oil deposits, yet its ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Locked In
by
Marcia Muller
Grand Central Publishing, 10/15/2009
Shot in the head by an unknown assailant, San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone finds herself trapped by locked-in syndrome: almost total paralysis ...
more
The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War
by
Caroline Alexander
Viking, 10/15/2009
Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer's hero...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
by
Stewart Brand
Viking, 10/15/2009
According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Front and Center
by
Catherine Murdock
Houghton Mifflin Books For Children, 10/19/2009
After five months of sheer absolute craziness I was going back to being plain old background D.J. In photographs of course I’m always in the ...more
How We Live and Why We Die: The Secret Lives of Cells
by
Lewis Wolpert
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/19/2009
Everything about our existence—movement and memory, imagination and reproduction, birth and, ultimately, death—is governed by our cells. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
by
Timothy Egan
Houghton Mifflin, 10/19/2009
In
The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Blood Game: An Eve Duncan Forensics Thriller
by
Iris Johansen
St. Martin's Press, 10/20/2009
Eve Duncan returns in a thriller that pits her against the most evil mind she has ever encountered: a ruthless killer who taunts her with his every ...
more
Hold Still
by
Nina LaCour
Dutton Children's Books, 10/20/2009
dear caitlin, there are so many things that i want so badly to tell you but i just can’t.
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King
by
Brad Matsen
Pantheon Books, 10/20/2009
Jacques Cousteau opened up the undersea world as no one has done before or since. But not generally know is the fascinating and compelling individual...
more
Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction
by
Kurt Vonnegut
Delacorte Press, 10/20/2009
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. ...
more
The American Civil War: A Military History
by
John Keegan
Knopf, 10/20/2009
For the past half century, John Keegan, the greatest military historian of our time, has been returning to the scenes of America's most bloody and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Evolution of Shadows
by
Jason Quinn Malott
Unbridled Books, 10/20/2009
Paperback Original. In July of 1995, the news photographer Gray Banick disappeared into the Bosnian war zone and doing so took away pieces of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Islands of the Blessed
by
Nancy Farmer
Atheneum Books, 10/20/2009
Foolish boy, whispers the cobwebby voice of the hogboon. You force me to slay you.
But Jack and Thorgil between them possess the rune of protection...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Museum of Innocence: A Novel
by
Orhan Pamuk
Knopf, 10/20/2009
It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of...
more
The Scarpetta Factor
by
Patricia Cornwell
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/20/2009
It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta—despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior...
more
Thrillers
The Vintage Caper
by
Peter Mayle
Knopf, 10/20/2009
Set in Hollywood, Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseille, Peter Mayle's newest and most delightful novel is filled with culinary delights, sumptuous wines, ...
more
The Witch Doctor's Wife
by
Tamar Myers
Avon Books, 10/20/2009
Paperback Original
The Congo beckons to young Amanda Brown in 1958, as she follows her missionary calling to the mysterious "dark continent" far from...
more
To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom
by
Gingrich & Forstchen
Thomas Dunne Books, 10/20/2009
After two bestselling series examining the Civil War and WWII, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have turned their sharp eye for detail on the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
7th Son: Descent
by
J.C. Hutchins
St. Martin's Griffin, 10/27/2009
As America reels from the bizarre presidential assassination committed by a child, seven men are abducted from their normal lives and delivered to a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Christmas Promise: A Novel
by
Anne Perry
Ballantine Books, 10/27/2009
Three days before Christmas, in the freezing slums of London’s East End, thirteen-year-old Gracie Phipps encounters Minnie Maude Mudway, who is ...
more
Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim
by
Anne Rice
Knopf, 10/27/2009
Anne Rice returns to the mesmerizing storytelling that has captivated readers for more than three decades in a tale of unceasing suspense set in time ...
more
Beyond America's Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East
by
Stephen P. Cohen
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/27/2009
In this book, the Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen traces U.S. policy in the region back to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, when the Great ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker
by
James McManus
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/27/2009
Cowboys Full is the story of poker, from its roots in China, the Middle East, and Europe to its ascent as a global - but especially an American - ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
by
Jean Sasson
St. Martin's Press, 10/27/2009
A true story that few ever believed would come to light,
Growing Up Bin Laden uncovers startling revelations and hidden secrets carefully guarded by ...
more
Indigo Springs
by
A.M. Dellamonica
Tor Books, 10/27/2009
Paperback Original. Indigo Springs is a sleepy town where things seem pretty normal ... until Astrid's father dies and she moves into his house. She ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist
by
Peter Clarke
Bloomsbury USA, 10/27/2009
The ideas of John Maynard Keynes inspired the New Deal and helped rebuild world economies after World War II —and were later dismissed as '...
more
Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel
by
John Irving
Random House, 10/27/2009
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable&#...
more
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
by
Harriet Reisen
Henry Holt and Company, 10/27/2009
A vivid, energetic account of the life of Louisa May Alcott, the first complete biography of the beloved author whose work has delighted millions of ...
more
Makers
by
Cory Doctorow
Tor Books, 10/27/2009
Perry and Lester invent things—seashell robots that make toast, Boogie Woogie Elmo dolls that drive cars. They also invent entirely new economic ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
by
Steven D. Levitt
William Morrow, 10/27/2009
he
New York Times best-selling
Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Cloud Pavilion: A Sano Ichiro Novel
by
Laura Joh Rowland
Minotaur Books, 10/27/2009
Japan, 1701. A woman is brutally attacked within a bamboo prison as clouds swirl around her head. Meanwhile, at Edo Castle, samurai detective turned ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily
by
Nancy Goldstone
Walker & Company, 10/27/2009
On March 15, 1348, Joanna I , Queen of Naples, stood trial for her life before the Pope and his court in Avignon. She was twenty-two years old. Her ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Long Division
by
Derek Nikitas
Minotaur Books, 10/27/2009
An Atlanta house-cleaner flees her nowhere life to reunite with the son she gave up for adoption. The teenage boy joins his long-lost mother on an ...
more
The Pursuit of Other Interests: A Novel
by
Jim Kokoris
St. Martin's Press, 10/27/2009
Charlie Baker is a neurotic but charming 50-year-old workaholic CEO of a major Chicago ad agency who seems to have it all: an impressive house in...
more
The Widow's Revenge: A Charlie Moon Mystery
by
James D. Doss
Minotaur Books, 10/27/2009
Even with some of the toughest hombres and nastiest outlaws roaming the Southwest, bestselling author James D. Doss’s seven-foot-tall rancher and...
more
True Blue
by
David Baldacci
Grand Central Publishing, 10/27/2009
Mason "Mace" Perry was a firebrand cop on the D.C. police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything-her badge, her ...
more
Typhoon: A Novel
by
Charles Cumming
St. Martin's Press, 10/27/2009
It's 1997, and the British are about to return Hong Kong to Chinese rule, Joe Lennox, a young operative for SIS (MI6), loses both his girlfriend and ...
more
You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
by
Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Press, 10/27/2009
You've eaten too much candy at Christmas…but have you ever eaten the face off a six-foot stuffed Santa? You've seen gingerbread houses…but ...
more
Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
by
Michael Specter
Penguin Books, 10/29/2009
In
Denialism, New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter reveals that Americans have come to mistrust institutions and especially the institution of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
January's Sparrow
by
Patricia Polacco
Philomel, 10/29/2009
In the middle of the night, The Crosswhites—including young Sadie—must flee the Kentucky plantation they work on. Dear January has been ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Boston Noir
by
Dennis Lehane (Editor)
Akashic Books, 11/01/2009
Dennis Lehane has proven himself to be a master of both crime fiction and literary fiction. Here, he extends his literary prowess to that of master ...
more
Short Stories
Lit: A Memoir
by
Mary Karr
Harper, 11/01/2009
The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood.
Cherry, her account of her adolescence, "continued to set ...
more
Matchless: A Christmas Story
by
Gregory Maguire
William Morrow, 11/01/2009
Each year, National Public Radio asks a writer to compose a story with a Christmas theme. In 2008, Gregory Maguire offered a new twist on a classic ...
more
Literary Fiction
Merry, Merry Ghost: Bailey Ruth Mystery #2
by
Carolyn Hart
William Morrow, 11/01/2009
Christmas is a time for family and giving, and a wealthy woman in Adelaide, Oklahoma, is about to embrace both. Discovering that she has a young ...
more
Phoenix Noir
by
Patrick Millikin (Editor)
Akashic Books, 11/01/2009
Brand-new stories by: Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, James Sallis, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Talton, Megan Abbott, Charles Kelly, Robert Anglen, Patrick ...
more
Short Stories
Ten Storey Love Song: A Novel
by
Richard Milward
Harper Perennial, 11/01/2009
Paperback Original.
Ten Storey Love Song, over the course of a single dynamite paragraph, we follow Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and horrific...more
The Gift: A Novel
by
Cecelia Ahern
HarperTrophy, 11/01/2009
Extremely successful executive, Lou Suffern is always overstretched, immune to the holiday spirit that delights everyone around him. The classic ...
more
Wishin' and Hopin': A Christmas Story
by
Wally Lamb
Harper, 11/01/2009
Wally Lamb delivers a holiday treat with
Wishin' and Hopin'—an
unforgettable novella that captures the warmth and joy of the holiday season.
...
more
Literary Fiction
The Humbling
by
Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 11/02/2009
Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his ...
more
A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa
by
Dominique Lapierre
Da Capo Press, 11/03/2009
In 1652 a small group of Dutch farmers landed on the southernmost tip of Africa. Sent by the powerful Dutch India Company, their mission was simply to...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cherries in Winter: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times
by
Suzan Colón
Doubleday, 11/03/2009
What is the secret to finding hope in hard times?
When Suzan Colón was laid off from her dream job at a magazine during the economic downturn ...
more
Churchill
by
Paul Johnson
Viking, 11/03/2009
For eminent historian Paul Johnson, Winston Churchill remains an enigma in need of unraveling. Soldier, parliamentarian, Prime Minister, orator, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Elegy Beach
by
Steven R. Boyett
Ace Books, 11/03/2009
Thirty years ago the lights went out, the airplanes fell, the cars went still, the cities all went dark. The laws humanity had always known were ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told
by
Kenneth Turan
Doubleday, 11/03/2009
Free for All is the irresistible oral history of the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater - two institutions that under the inspired ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Kindred in Death
by
J.D. Robb
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 11/03/2009
When the newly promoted captain of the NYPSD and his wife return a day early from their vacation, they were looking forward to spending time with ...
more
Thrillers
No Less Than Victory: A Novel of World War II
by
Jeff Shaara
Ballantine Books, 11/03/2009
After the success of the Normandy invasion, the Allied commanders are buoyantly confident that the war in Europe will be over in a matter of weeks, ...
more
Historical Fiction
The Art Student's War
by
Brad Leithauser
Knopf, 11/03/2009
In
The Art Student's War, his sixth novel, Brad Leithauser has brought off a double feat of imagination: a keen and affectionate rendering of an ...
more
The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory
by
David Plouffe
Viking, 11/03/2009
David Plouffe not only led the effort that put Barack Obama in the White House, but he also changed the face of politics forever and reenergized the ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name
by
Toby Lester
Free Press, 11/03/2009
The Fourth Part of the World is an epic adventure story about the creation of the map that introduced Europe to America and ushered in the New World.
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China
by
Hannah Pakula
Simon & Schuster, 11/03/2009
With the beautiful, powerful, and sexy Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the center of one of the great dramas of the twentieth century, this is the story of ...
more
Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
by
John Milton Cooper Jr.
Knopf, 11/03/2009
The first major biography of America's twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America's foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars.
A ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service--A Year Spent Riding across America
by
James McCommons
Chelsea Green Publishing, 11/06/2009
During the tumultuous year of 2008—when gas prices reached $4 a gallon, Amtrak set ridership records, and a commuter train collided with a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Friend of the Family
by
Lauren Grodstein
Algonquin Books, 11/10/2009
Pete Dizinoff has spent years working toward a life that would be, by all measures, deemed successful. A skilled internist, he's built a thriving ...
more
Cape Greed
by
Sam Cole
Minotaur Books, 11/10/2009
Set along the coast of Cape Town, this first rate crime novel introduces two private investigators who get involved in seemingly different cases. ...
more
Generation A: A Novel
by
Douglas Coupland
Scribner, 11/10/2009
Generation A is set in the near future in a world where bees are extinct, until five unconnected people from around the world -- in the United States,...
more
How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities
by
John Cassidy
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/10/2009
Behind the alarming headlines about job losses, bank bailouts, and corporate greed is a little-known story of bad ideas. For fifty years or more, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade
by
George Packer
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/10/2009
Throughout his career as a journalist, George Packer has always been attuned to the voices and stories of individuals caught up in the big ideas and ...
more
The Brothers Story
by
Katherine Sturtevant
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/10/2009
Teenage twins Kit and Christy have grown up amid grinding poverty in their Essex village. As Christy has been 'simple' from birth, Kit is literally ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Giant-Slayer
by
Iain Lawrence
Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 11/10/2009
The spring of 1955 tests Laurie Valentine’s gifts as a storyteller. After her friend Dickie contracts polio and finds himself confined to an iron...
more
The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives
by
Otto Penzler (Editor)
Little Brown & Company, 11/10/2009
A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them...
more
Under the Dome: A Novel
by
Stephen King
Scribner, 11/10/2009
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an ...
more
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
by
Zadie Smith
Penguin Books, 11/12/2009
Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the...
more
Memoir: A History
by
Ben Yagoda
Riverhead Books, 11/12/2009
From Saint Augustine's
Confessions to Augusten Burroughs's
Running with Scissors, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses Grant, from Mark Twain to David ...
more
The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures
by
Nicholas Wade
Penguin Press, 11/12/2009
Noted science writer Nicholas Wade offers for the first time a convincing case based on a broad range of scientific evidence for the evolutionary ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order
by
Martin Jacques
Penguin Press, 11/12/2009
According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear
by
Richard Ellis
Knopf, 11/17/2009
Polar bears—fierce and majestic—have captivated us for centuries. Feared by explorers, revered by the Inuit, and beloved by zoo goers ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Original of Laura
by
Vladimir Nabokov
Knopf, 11/17/2009
When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Wrecker
by
Clive Cussler
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 11/17/2009
In
The Chase, Clive Cussler introduced an electrifying new hero, the tall, lean, no-nonsense detective Isaac Bell, who, driven by his sense of justice...
more
The Red Flag: A History of Communism
by
David Priestland
Grove Press, 11/20/2009
Communism was one of the most powerful political and intellectual movements the world has ever seen. At the height of their influence, Communists ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Good Fall: Stories
by
Ha Jin
Pantheon Books, 11/24/2009
With the same profound attention to detail that is a hallmark of his previous acclaimed works of fiction, Ha Jin depicts here the full spectrum of ...
more
Breathless: A Novel
by
Dean Koontz
Bantam Books, 11/24/2009
Grady Adams lives a simple, solitary life deep in the Colorado mountains. Here the thirty-five-year-old carpenter works out of a converted barn, ...
more
Thrillers
Bryant & May on the Loose: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery
by
Christopher Fowler
Bantam Books, 11/24/2009
The Peculiar Crimes Unit is no more. After years of defying the odds and infuriating their embarrassed superiors, detectives Arthur Bryant and John ...
more
Delilah: A Novel
by
India Edghill
St. Martin's Press, 11/24/2009
Given to the temple of Atargatis as a child, Delilah is raised to be a priestess to the Five Cities that rule Canaan. With her beloved friend ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
London Boulevard
by
Ken Bruen
Minotaur Books, 11/24/2009
When Mitchell is released from prison after serving three years for a vicious attack he doesn't even remember, Billy Norton is there to pick him up. ...
more
Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life
by
Carol Sklenicka
Scribner, 11/24/2009
When Raymond Carver died at age fifty, readers lost a distinctive voice in its prime. Carver was, the
Times of London said, "the Chekhov of middle ...
more
The Devil's Alphabet
by
Daryl Gregory
Del Rey, 11/24/2009
From Daryl Gregory, whose Pandemonium was one of the most exciting debut novels in memory, comes an astonishing work of soaring imaginative power that...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War
by
James Bradley
Little Brown & Company, 11/24/2009
In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Red Velvet Turnshoe
by
Cassandra Clark
Minotaur Books, 11/24/2009
In the midst of a long, bleak winter in the year 1383, flooding brought famine, famine brought disease, and The Black Death visited town after town.
...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Sting of Justice: A Mystery of Medieval Ireland
by
Cora Harrison
Minotaur Books, 11/24/2009
The year is 1509 and autumn has come to the Burren in western Ireland. It’s a time of harvest and preparation for the winter to come—the end...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman
by
Lisa Scottoline
St. Martin's Press, 11/24/2009
At last, together in one collection, are Lisa Scottoline's wildly popular
Philadelphia Inquirer columns. In her column, Lisa lets her hair down, roots...
more
Essays
Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession
by
Julie Powell
Little Brown & Company, 12/01/2009
Julie Powell thought cooking her way through Julia Child's
Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the craziest thing she'd ever do--until she ...
more
In Big Trouble: A Tess Monaghan Novel
by
Laura Lippman
William Morrow, 12/01/2009
Tess Monaghan has learned the hard way how to survive on the streets of Baltimore—first as a fearless investigative reporter and lately as a PI. ...
more
Mysteries
Pirate Latitudes: A Novel
by
Michael Crichton
Harper, 12/01/2009
From one of the best-loved authors of all time comes an irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World, a classic story of treasure ...
more
Thrillers
Stealing Fatima
by
Frank X. Gaspar
Counterpoint Press, 12/01/2009
As the last light of All-Hallows’ Eve falls on a small town at the tip of Cape Cod, Father Manuel Furtado begins his nightly ritual of gin and ...
more
Literary Fiction
Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
by
Greg Mortenson
Viking, 12/01/2009
From the author of the #1 bestseller
Three Cups of Tea, the continuing story of this determined humanitarian's efforts to promote peace through ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Paris Vendetta: A Cotton Malone Novel
by
Steve Berry
Ballantine Books, 12/01/2009
When Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile in 1821, he took to the grave a powerful secret. As general and emperor, he had stolen immeasurable riches from ...
more
Trial by Fire: A Novel of Suspense
by
J.A. Jance
Touchstone, 12/01/2009
In the heat of the Arizona desert, a raging fire pushes temperatures to a deadly degree, and one woman is left to burn. Pulled naked and barely ...
more
U is for Undertow: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery
by
Sue Grafton
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 12/01/2009
It's April, 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth birthday, and she's alone in her office doing paperwork when a young man arrives ...
more
Writ in Stone: A Mystery of Medieval Ireland
by
Cora Harrison
Severn House, 12/01/2009
Christmas, 1509. Mara, the investigating judge of the Burren, has accepted the offer of marriage made by King Turlough. But on the eve of the marriage...
more
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong
by
Terry Teachout
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 12/02/2009
Louis Armstrong was the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century and a giant of modern American culture. He knocked the Beatles off the top of ...
more
The Anarchist: A Novel
by
John Smolens
Three Rivers, 12/08/2009
On a stifling, hot afternoon in September 1901, a young anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, who has been stalking President William McKinley, waits in line to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
by
Joan Schenkar
St. Martin's Press, 12/08/2009
Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th Century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-...
more
Too Much Money: A Novel
by
Dominick Dunne
Crown, 12/15/2009
My name is Gus Bailey…It should be pointed out that it is a regular feature of my life that people whisper things in my ear, very private things,...more
Literary Fiction
The Fall Girl
by
Kaye C Hill
Crème de la Crime, 12/18/2009
Accidental P.I. Lexy Lomax is investigating a suspicious death in a decidedly spooky cottage. Kinky, her truculent chihuahua, hates the place, but he ...
more
Thrillers
A Whole Nother Story
by
Dr. Cuthbert Soup
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 12/22/2009
The three Cheeseman children, their father, and their psychic dog are all on the run. From whom? Well the CIA, naturally. But also corporate agents #5...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Family Britain, 1951-1957
by
David Kynaston
Walker & Company, 12/22/2009
As in his highly acclaimed
Austerity Britain, David Kynaston invokes an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices to drive his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hidden Empire
by
Orson Scott Card
Tor Books, 12/22/2009
In this sequel to Card's bestselling novel
Empire, Averell Torrent has become President of the United States, with enormous political and popular ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II
by
A. N. Wilson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 12/22/2009
When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, many proclaimed the start of a new Elizabethan Age. Few had any inkling, however, of the stupendous ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The New Frugality: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better
by
Chris Farrell
Bloomsbury USA, 12/22/2009
As a once-in-a-lifetime downturn deepens, our go-go economy has become an uh-oh economy. But as trusted finance reporter Chris Farrell explains, there...
more
Advice
An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming
by
Nigel Lawson
Overlook, 12/29/2009
In the 1960s we were warned that the population explosion would lead to mass global starvation. In the 1970s we were warned that the planet was ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Becoming Jane Eyre: A Novel
by
Sheila Kohler
Penguin Books, 12/29/2009
The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Best African American Fiction 2010
by
Gerald Early
Ballantine Books, 12/29/2009
Paperback Original. Bursting with energy and innovation, the second volume in the annual anthology collects the year's best short stories by African ...
more
Deeper Than the Dead
by
Tami Hoag
Dutton, 12/29/2009
California, 1984. Three children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. ...
more
Galileo's Dream
by
Kim Stanley Robinson
Bantam Spectra, 12/29/2009
The winner of every major science fiction award, Kim Stanley Robinson is a novelist who looks ahead with optimism even while acknowledging the steep ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Ghosts and Lightning
by
Trevor Byrne
Doubleday, 12/29/2009
Set in contemporary Dublin and the surrounding countryside,
Ghosts and Lightning is a picaresque account of Denny Cullen's life after he is called ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Happy: A Memoir
by
Alex Lemon
Scribner, 12/29/2009
His freshman year of college, Alex Lemon was supposed to be the star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team. He was the boy getting every ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
How to Save Your Own Life: 15 Lessons on Finding Hope in Unexpected Places
by
Michael Gates Gill
Gotham Books, 12/29/2009
Michael Gill's lemons-to-lemonade memoir chronicled his transformative years working at Starbucks after losing his high-powered job, his marriage, and...
more
Advice
I, Sniper: Bob Lee Swagger Novel #6
by
Stephen Hunter
Simon & Schuster, 12/29/2009
Four famed '60s radicals are gunned down at long range by a sniper. Under
enormous media scrutiny, the FBI quickly concludes that Marine war hero ...
more
Kisser: A Stone Barrington Novel
by
Stuart Woods
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 12/29/2009
Stone Barrington is back in New York, and after a rather harrowing sojourn in Key West, he's looking to stay closer to home and work on some simple ...
more
The 13th Hour: A Thriller
by
Richard Doetsch
Atria Books, 12/29/2009
Nick Quinn is being held in jail, accused of the murder of his beloved wife, Julia. He knows she's dead; he saw her bloody corpse, shot in the head at...
more
The Honor of Spies: An Honor Bound Novel
by
W. E. B. Griffin
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 12/29/2009
August 6, 1943: In his brief career in the Office of Strategic Services, twenty-four-year-old Cletus Frade has already been involved in a lot of ...
more
The Listener: A Novel
by
Shira Nayman
Simon & Schuster, 12/29/2009
Two years after the end of World War II, a mysterious figure, Bertram Reiner, appears at Shadowbrook, a private asylum whose elegant hallways, vaulted...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Kingdom of Ohio
by
Matthew Flaming
Penguin Books, 12/31/2009
After discovering an old photograph, an elderly antiques dealer living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has struggled to...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
