Featured Titles 2003 New titles - selected on the basis of good reviews. Nonfiction, fiction and mystery titles are included on the lists

January 2003

Nonfiction

• The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Obsession, Perfume, and the Last Mystery of the Senses
  Author: Burr, Chandler
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507973
  KirkusBooklistLibrary Journal
  This true story profiles a scientific genius with eerie powers of smell who uses his gifts to solve one of the body's last secrets: how the nose works.
  Updated 12.23.02
• Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It
  Author: Dyer, Geoff
  Publisher: Random $ 22 ISBN: 0375422145
  PW
  In Dyer's deft hands, what seems like an abstract idea--the search for the essence of experience--becomes an opportunity for storytelling: for a bracing, riotous, and addictive chronicling of anticipation and expectation as he travels about the globe.
  Updated 12.16.02
• Lost in America
  Author: Nuland, Sherwin B.
  Publisher: Random $ 24 ISBN: 0375412948
  KirkusBooklistPW
  From the author of the National Book Award-winning How We Die comes a deeply moving account of his father's life and the shadow it cast over his own. Nuland reveals what it cost him to live with the specter of his father and to struggle for peace with the man's legacy, and with himself.
  Updated 12.16.02
• Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age
  Author: Watts, Duncan J.
  Publisher: Norton $ 27.95 ISBN: 0393041425
  Kirkus
  Watts, one of the principal architects of network theory, sets out to explain the innovative research that he and other scientists are spearheading to create a blueprint of the connected planet.
  Small World Project Site - Can anyone in the world reach anyone else through a chain of only 6 friends?
  Updated 11.18.02

Fiction

• Gilligan's Wake
  Author: Carson, Tom
  Publisher: Picador $ 25 ISBN: 031229123x
  PWLJ
  In this kaleidoscopic novel about the last American century, an institutionalized shadow man combines twisted histories of six characters (a skipper, a millionaire, a rich woman, an actress, a professor, and one Mary-Ann Kilroy) into a pastiche of this country's history.
  Updated 12.23.02
• I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark
  Author: Hall, Brian
  Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670031895
  KirkusPW
  Presenting the story of Lewis and Clark in an entirely new light, Hall uses the novelist's art to produce a compulsively readable book that fills the gaps and provides a new perspective on this great American story.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
  Links: Lewis and Clark | Lewis and Clark Trail
  Updated 11.27.02
• The Time of Our Singing
  Author: Powers, Richard
  Publisher: Farrar $ 28 ISBN: 0374277826
  KirkusBooklistLJ
  A magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted--and divided--family, set against the backdrop of postwar America. The Time of Our Singing is a story of self-invention, allegiance, race, cultural ownership, the compromised power of music, and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all belonging.
  Suggested Reading: Musical Fiction
  Updated 11.05.02
• Only One Thing Missing
  Author: Ruiz, Luis Manuel
  Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 0802117309
  Kirkus
  Ruiz's English-language debut is a page-turner that takes readers through the streets of contemporary Seville, the walkways of an unmapped urban dreamscape, and to the devil-worshiping underworld of medieval Lisbon. At once a love story, a chilling tale of the occult, and an exploration of the timeless themes of memory, obsession, and loss.
  Updated 9.30.02

Mystery & Suspense

• Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon
  Author: Andrews, Donna
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312277318
  From the author of Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos comes a laugh-aloud adventure where Meg Langslow, working the switchboard temporarily, finds that the company's practical joker really is dead--not just pretending.
  Updated 12.23.02
• The Guards
  Author: Bruen, Ken
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312303556
  KirkusPWLJ
  In this mesmerizing work of crime fiction, Jack Taylor, an ex-member of The Guards--Ireland's police force--is approached in a Galway bar by a dazzling woman with a strange request and a rumor about his talent for finding things.
  Updated 12.23.02
• Old Flames
  Author: Lawton, John
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 24 ISBN: 0871138646
  KirkusPW
  Old Flames is a riveting spy novel sparked by historical events, with a twisting, turning plot that The Sunday Times (London) declares "a strange, thoughtful, quiet, intelligent spellbinder of a book, penetrating the very heart of betrayal."
  Updated 12.16.02
• Man Eater
  Author: Shannon, Ray
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399149767
  KirkusPW
  An Elmore Leonard-style L.A. noir is set in the movie business, featuring themost eclectic cast of dynamic, dangerous characters since Pulp Fiction.
  Updated 12.02.02