April 2004

Nonfiction

• A Thousand Sighs, a Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan
  Author: Bird, Christiane
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 25.95 ISBN: 0345468929
  Kirkus
  Celebrated journalist Bird offers a fascinating, illuminating and very personal glimpse into an exotic land and people of increasing global significance: Kurdistan.
  Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
  Updated 3.11.04
• Blue Blood
  Author: Conlon, Edward
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 26.95 ISBN: 1573222666
  KirkusBooklistPW
  With brio and a thrilling literary style, Conlon depicts his life on the force--from his first days walking a beat in the South Bronx to his ascent to detective. The pace is relentless, the stories hypnotic, the scope nothing less than grand.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 3.29304
• The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: How Penicillin Began the Age of Miracle Cures
  Author: Lax, Eric
  Publisher: Holt $ 25 ISBN: 0805067906
  KirkusBooklist
  In this compelling history, Lax reveals the untold story of the discovery of penicillin--the first wonder drug--the men who led the way, and how it changed the modern world.
  Updated 3.22.04
• The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
  Author: Whitaker, Robert
  Publisher: Basic $ 25 ISBN: 0738208086
  KirkusBooklist
  In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. This is the story of Isabel Grames, who became stranded in the Amazon--an epic love story that unfolds against the backdrop of the greatest expedition the world has ever known.
  Suggested Reading: Travel Tales
  Updated 4.21.04

Fiction

• The Skinner
  Author: Asher, Neal
  Publisher: Tor $ 25.95 ISBN: 0765307375
  Kirkus
  Neal Asher, whom Tor introduced to the American audience with Gridlinked, takes us deeper into his unique universe with an even more remarkable second novel, The Skinner.
  On the planet Spatterjay arrive three travelers: Janer, acting as the eyes of the hornet Hive mind, on a mission not yet revealed to him; Erlin, searching for Ambel -- the ancient sea captain who can teach her how to live; and Sable Keech, on a vendetta he cannot abandon, though he himself has been dead for 700 years. As the visitors' paths converge, major hell is about to erupt in a chaotic waterscape where minor hell is already a remorseless fact of everyday life . . . and death. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 12.10.03
• Plain Heathen Mischief
  Author: Clark, Martin
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400040965
  KirkusPW
  Of Martin Clark's spectacular first novel, the New York Times Book Review wrote, Like Nick Hornby in High Fidelity and Thomas McGuane in Nothing but Blue Skies, Clark has produced an oddly stirring portrait of a man in existential disarray." Which--wrote Malcolm Jones in Newsweek--made me laugh so hard I fell off the sofa." Plain Heathen Mischief ups the ante in existential hilarity; as Joel King (a defrocked Baptist minister) finds life even more bedeviling once he's served six months for a highly implausible crime. Now he's being sued for a cool $5 million, his wife wants divorce, the refuge provided by his sister turns as vicious as his parole officer, and a fresh start in Montana offers no hope for ex-cons of any religious persuasion. On the upside, a kindly former parishioner soon involves the hapless Joel in a flock of con men, crooked lawyers, conniving youth, and authorities bent on prosecution and harassment. In a bravura feat of storytelling Clark ranges from the cross to the double cross from Virginia to Las Vegas, from jail cells to trout streams, as he follows his Job-like hero to a redemption that no reader could possibly predict. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Black Humor
  Updated 3.29.04
• The Jane Austen Book Club
  Author: Fowler, Karen Joy
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399151613
  KirkusBooklist
  Nothing ever moves in a straight line in Fowler's fiction, and in her latest, the complex dance of modern love has never been so devious or so much fun. In this newest work, six Californians join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens.
  Updated 3.22.04
• With
  Author: Harington, Donald
  Publisher: Toby $ 19.95 ISBN: 1592640508
  KirkusPWBooklist
  The newest novel from the master of Stay More, Harington's mythical village in the Arkansas Ozarks, in which a peaceable kingdom is created in isolation from a most bizarre abduction gone wrong.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 3.22.04
• Caramba: A Tale Told in Turns of the Card
  Author: Martinez, Nina Marie
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375413758
  LJBooklist
  This fast-paced, feisty tale of female friendship is the debut of a fresh and enchanting new literary voice. By turns a soap opera and a honky tonk spiritual guide, Caramba! combines romance with adventure and rolls them into one big hot tamale.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 3.11.04
• My Sister's Keeper
  Author: Picoult, Jodi
  Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743454529
  Booklist
  Written with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity, this novel is about a teen who was conceived as a bone marrow match for her sister Kate, and what happens when she begins to question who she really is.
  Updated 1.10.04
• Like the Red Panda
  Author: Seigel, Andrea
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 13 (paperback) ISBN: 0156030241
  LJ
  This amazing first novel, written by a 22 year old, is the record of a teenage girl who embraces death as a viable alternative to adulthood.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 2.2.04
• Shout Down the Moon
  Author: Tucker, Lisa
  Publisher: Downtown $ 13 (paper) ISBN: 074346446X
  Her acclaimed debut, The Song Reader, won her praise as a "brilliant new literary talent" ( The Albuquerque Tribune). Now, Lisa Tucker returns with a starkly lyrical novel of page-turning intensity and rare emotional power.
  Updated 3.25.04

Mystery & Suspense

• Caught Stealing
  Author: Huston, Charlie
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 21.95 ISBN: 034546477x
  Booklist
  Huston's debut novel is "Tarantino meets Hitchcock meets Westlake meets Bukowski in a wild, relentlessly entertaining ride." -- Wallace Strobe, author of The Barbed-Wire Kiss.
  Updated 4.6.04
• Shadow Men: Max Freeman
  Author: King, Jonathon
  Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525948074
  BooklistPW
  It begins with an 80-year-old mystery. Three men--a father and his two sons--vanished while working as laborers on a dangerous project to build the first road through the Florida Everglades. Now, years later, a series of letters are unexpectedly discovered by a descendant of these men.
  Updated 2.23.04
• Earthquake Weather
  Author: Lankford, Terrill Lee
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345467779
  Kirkus
  Mark Hayes goes from aspiring movie producer to murder suspect in the blink of an eye in veteran filmmaker Lankford's sizzling Hollywood noir.
  Updated 3.11.04
• The Full Cupboard of Life: More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
  Author: McCall Smith, Alexander
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 19.95 ISBN: 0375422188
  PW
  Here is the fifth novel in the internationally bestselling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency hit series. Once again we are transported to Gaborone, capital city of Botswana, and into the world of Mma Ramotswe and her friends. - Book Jacket.
  Updated 3.29.04
• Five for Silver
  Author: Reed, Mary and Eric Mayer
  Publisher: Poisoned Pen $ 24.95 ISBN: 1590581121
  PW
  The year is 542. While plague stalks Constantinople, an angel sets John the Eunuch on the trail of a human killer. Peter, John's elderly servant, claims a heavenly visitor revealed a murder to him. It transpires Peter's old army friend has indeed been stabbed, but then John discovers that Gregory was not what he appeared to be. Is the solution to the mystery to be found in a hidden identity, in the will made by a dying ship owner with a wayward son, or perhaps even amid the oracles in the merchant's garden? John's quest leads him to churchmen and whores, lawyers and bear trainers. Suspects include a dealer in dubious antiquities, a resourceful bookseller, a court poet fixated on bereavement, and a holy fool who outrages the city by dancing with the dead and invading the empress' private bath. Only a man of unbending principle could hope to find justice in a terrified city where the good and the bad are struck down indiscriminately, where disorder rules, and where witnesses may die before they can be questioned. A city, in short, where death is the murderer's accomplice. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 3.22.04

Books for Kids, Teens & Readers of All Ages

• Nothing To Lose
  Author: Flinn, Alex
  Publisher: Harper Tempest $ 15.99 ISBN: 0060517506
  Kirkus
  This haunting novel from the acclaimed author of Breathing Underwater looks at one of the most devastating realities for teenagers today--domestic violence.
  Category: Fiction Grades 8-12