September 2000

Nonfiction

• The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story
  by Bourke, Angela
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 067089270x
  Kirkus
  When 26-year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her cottage in rural Ireland in 1895, the townspeople claimed she was "away with the fairies". But the real Bridget was lying in a shallow grave after being burned to death by her husband and nine of his friends and neighbors. This true story is a fascinating account of a harrowing murder that would become an international scandal.
  
• The Island of Lost Maps
  by Harvey, Miles
  Publisher: Random House $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375501517
  Kirkus
  The Island of Lost Maps tells the story of a curious crime spree: the theft of scores of valuable, centuries-old maps from some of the most prominent research libraries in the United States and Canada. When all was said and done, Gilbert Joseph Bland, Jr., had become the Al Capone of cartography, the most prolific American map thief in history.
• Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein's Brain
  by Paterniti, Michael
  Publisher: Dial $ 18.95 ISBN: 0385333005
  Booklist PW
  A brilliant young writer, an 84-year-old pathologist, and Albert Einstein's brain rocket across the country through the palpable zeitgeist of contemporary America. Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique road trips in modern literature.
  

Fiction

• Blind Assassin
  Author: Atwood, Margaret
  Publisher: Bantam $ 26 ISBN: 0385475721
  Booklist Kirkus PW Library Journal
  Containing a novel within a novel, The Blind Assassin is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. Told in a style that magnificently captures the colloquialisms of the 1930s and 1940s, it unfolds layer by astonishing layer and concludes in a brilliant and wonderfully satisfying twist.
  
• Jayber Crow: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, As Written By Himself
  Author: Berry, Wendell
  Publisher: Counterpoint $ 25 ISBN: 1582430292
  Kirkus Booklist
  In his latest story about the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky, Berry introduces readers to Jayber Crow, his love for his community, and his abiding and unrequited love for one special woman.
• Friend of the Earth
  Author: Boyle, T. C.
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670891770
  Booklist
  The bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain and Riven Rock takes a provocative new turn with a timely and darkly funny novel about love, activism, and the future of the planet. In 2025, a former ecoterrorist is trying to survive in a bleak world but finds new hope when his wife comes back into his life.
• Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
  Author: Chabon, Michael
  Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 0679450041
  PW Booklist
  This brilliant novel by the "young star of American letters", in the words of Jonathan Yardley, is a literary triumph in which two misfit young men make it big creating comic-book superheroes.
• Winter Range
  Author: Davis, Claire
  Publisher: Picador $ 23 ISBN: 0312261403
  Kirkus Booklist
  Ike Parsons is the sheriff of a small Montana ranching town, and when he hears that hard times have fallen on Chas Stubblefield, he heads out to the rancher's spread. What he finds is horrific - cattle freezing solid or starving in the fields. When Ike and several men mercy-kill the remaining cattle, Stubblefield, enraged, begins to plot his revenge.
• Family Orchard
  Author: Eve, Nomi
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375410767
  PW Kirkus
  A rich tapestry of Jewish life, this mesmerizing debut is a magical, multigenerational novel spanning 200 years of an unforgettable family of immigrants in Jerusalem. From Esther, the family matriarch, who was lured by the smell of baking bread into the baker's arms, to her great-granddaughter Miriam, a seamstress of intoxicating beauty, this novel captures six generations of love affairs, legends, and family secrets.
• The Sugar Island
  Author: Lamazares, Ivonne
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 23 ISBN: 0395860407
  PW Library Journal
  Set in 1960s Cuba, as Castro's revolution begins, a girl named Tanya, her mother, and band of other refugees board a makeshift raft bound for Florida. When Tanya and her mother reach shore, they find the American Dream may not be within reach.
• The Diagonsis
  Author: Lightman, Alan
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 25 ISBN: 0679436154
  PW Booklist
  The author of the bestselling Einstein's Dreams now gives readers the story of Bill Chalmers, an ordinary man who loses his memory and can only recall his company's motto. Worse still, when his memory returns, he descends into a Kafkaesque nightmare in which the more he discovers, the more he realizes what he has already lost.
• Louisa
  Author: Zelitch, Simone
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399146598
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  Following the holocaust, Nora and her German daughter-in-law, Louisa, enter an Israeli absorption camp for immigrants to await an uncertain future. Stranded in a new land, both women are forced to face the past and the responsibility each bears for what they have lost.

Mystery & Suspense

• Cold Steel Rain
  Author: Abel, Kenneth
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399146628
  Booklist
  A gripping mystery set in New Orleans features an idealistic attorney reduced to political gopher who's set up to take the fall--posthumously--to ward off a breaking political scandal.
• Amnesia
  Author: Ephron, G.H.
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 031226867x
  Kirkus
  Sylvia Jackson was shot in the head and left for dead, her boyfriend murdered. Waking from a coma after six weeks, she remembers nothing, until three months later, when she begins to recall details of the crime and the killer. It's up to forensic psychologist Dr. Peter Zak to determine how reliable Syl's memory really is and use those memories to uncover the truth.
• The Big Thaw
  by Harstad, Donald
  ISBN: Doubleday $ 23.95
  Harstad fans and new initiates alike are in for a wild ride as Carl and Hester unsuspectingly step into a scheme to pull off a million-dollar siege of Iowa's biggest economic asset -- the Colonel Beauregard riverboat casino.
• Strawberry Tattoo
  Author: Henderson, Lauren
  Publisher: Crown $ 12.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0609806858
  Booklist
  Sam Jones comes to the Big Apple to exhibit her work at a gallery featuring young British artists. Shortly after her arrival, a gallery employee is found strangled in Central Park's Strawberry Fields. Will the strawberry tattoo give away the murderer's identity before Sam herself becomes a target?
• Fall of a Cosmonaut
  by Kaminsky, Stuart M.
  ISBN: 0892966688 $ 24.95
  When a Russian cosmonaut goes missing, his last words on the space station were instructions to contact Inspector Porfiry Rosnikov if something went wrong with the mission. Now his fellow Mir cosmonauts are turning up dead and the Inspector must discover why before another murder can take place.
• Sugar House: Tess Monaghan
  Author: Lippman, Laura
  Publisher: Avon $ 24 ISBN: 0380978172
  Kirkus
  After killing a teenage girl, a glue-sniffing boy barely spends a month in prison before he is killed, too. The boy's sister hires Tess to find out why. What Tess finds drags her down into a fetid and deadly swamp of power, dirty money, high-level political corruption, and sordid secrets.
  
• The Vault
  Author: Lovesey, Peter
  Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569472084
  PW Kirkus
  Peter Diamond investigates a murder at the house in Bath where Mary Shelley completed Frankenstein. It all begins when the skeleton of a hand turns up in the vault room and the skull is excavated. Solving this mystery will require Diamond's knowledge of history, 19th century art, and literature.
• Road Kill
  by Macdonald, Marianne
  ISBN: 0312242344 $ 22.95
  From the moment when Dido--a single mother and antique book dealer--releases her friend Phyllis from a locked closet, she is swept into a world where nobody is what he or she seems and every motive is obscure.
• A Place of Execution
  by McDermid, Val
  ISBN: 0312266324 $ 24.95
  When a 13-year-old girl vanishes from her insular village in 1963, a newly promoted inspector must face a murder with no body and an investigation filled with dead ends. Decades later, the inspector finds new information that threatens the very foundations of his existence.
• Cold Front
  by Taylor, Kathleen
  ISBN: 0380812045 $ 5.99
  Handsome Ian O'Hara is in town less than a day when he makes a love connection with Tory Bauer's roommate on New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, Ian's stay is cut short by his murder. The sharp-tongued waitress is ready to start hunting down loverboy's slayer. But she might be sleuthing herself into an early grave.
• Street Level
  Author: Truluck, Bob
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 031226626x
  PW Booklist
  Duncan Sloan is a private eye who works when he feels like it. Now he's been hired to find an as-yet unborn baby in the grimy pockets of Orlando, Florida. What he discovers instead is the three murdered bodies of the mother's relatives. Now, he must find the bad guys or the killing will continue.

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