Featured Titles New titles - selected on the basis of good reviews. Nonfiction, fiction and mystery titles are included on these lists. Books for kids and teens (fiction and nonfiction) are also listed.

February 2005

Nonfiction

• The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life
  Author: Reiss, Tom
  Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 1400062659 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Part history, part cultural biography, and part literary mystery, The Orientalist traces the life of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a bestselling author in Nazi Germany.
  Updated 12.16.04
• The Sociopath Next Door: How To Recognize and Defeat the Ruthless in Everyday Life
  Author: Stout, Martha
  Publisher: Broadway $ 24.95 ISBN: 076791581x Date: 2005
  KirkusLJ
  Just as you suspected! You neighbor/ex-husband/boss isn't just misunderstood. He's a sociopath. A revelatory look at the 1 in 25 ordinary Americans who secretly possess no conscience, no sense of guilt, shame, or remorse - the sociopath next door.
  Updated 12.27.04

 

• Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat and Camel
  Author: Taylor, Jeffrey
  Publisher: Houghton $ 25 ISBN: 061833467x Date: 2005
  Booklist
  Hailed by Bill Bryson and the New York Times Book Review as a rising star among travel writers, Jeffrey Tayler penetrates one of the most isolated, forbidding regions on earth--the Sahel. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 1.18.05
• Smashed: Growing Up A Drunk Girl
  Author: Zailckas, Koren
  Publisher: Viking $ 21.95 ISBN: 0670033766 Date: 2005
  KirkusPW
  From earliest experimentation to full-blown abuse, 24-year-old Zailckas leads readers through her experience of binge drinking in this vivid cautionary tale.
  Updated 12.6.04

 

Fiction

• Nice Big American Baby
  Author: Budnitz, Judy
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375412425 Date: 2005
  PW
  Budnitz's 12 blazingly original new stories--riveting, seductive, and impossible to forget--take readers from suburban backyards and swimming pools to war-torn streets and fallout shelters.
  Updated 12.6.04
• Sight Hound
  Author: Houston, Pam
  Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393058174 Date: 2004
  PWLJ
  From the bestselling author of Cowboys Are My Weakness comes a very special love story between a woman and her dog, a wolfhound who teaches "his human" that love is stronger than fear.
  Suggested Reading: Dog Stars
  Updated 1.23.05
• Drive Like Hell
  Author: Hudgens, Dallas
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0743251638 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Set in the 1979 outside Atlanta, this "thoroughly enjoyable" ("Publishers Weekly") debut tells the story of 16-year-old Luke Fulmer, who grows up in a difficult family with a stockcar-racing, absentee father, an alcoholic mother, and a delinquent brother.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 11.25.04

 

• The Ninth Life of Louis Drax
  Author: Jensen, Liz
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582345171 Date: 2005
  KirkusPW
  Meet Louis Drax, the Amazing Accident-Prone Boy, in this story of a family falling apart, and told in the vivid voices of its comatose son and of medical specialist, Dr. Pascal Dannachet.
  Updated 11.9.04

 

• Empire Rising
  Author: Kelly, Thomas
  Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374147817 Date: 2005
  PWLJ
  Making 1930s New York the setting for a rich and unforgettable story, Kelly's extraordinary third book is a novel of love and work, of intrigue and jealousy among the people who built the "eighth wonder of the world"--the Empire State Building.
  Updated 1.23.05

 

• As Hot As It Was You Ought To Thank Me
  Author: Kincaid, Nanci
  Publisher: Back Bay $ 12.95 ISBN: 0316009148 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  From a place where you don't have to run away to find yourself, this novel's young heroine, Berry, joins the ranks of other memorable and spirited girl narrators such as Bone in Bastard Out of Carolina, Kaye Gibbon's Ellen Foster, Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees, Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.
  Updated 11.2.04

 

• Sightseeing: Stories
  Author: Lapcharoensap, Rattawut
  Publisher: Grove $ 22 ISBN: 0802117880 Date: 2005
  KirkusPWBooklist
  Set in contemporary Thailand and written with a grace and sophistication that belie the age of its young author, this masterful new collection contains generous, tender tales of family bonds, youthful romance, generational conflicts, and cultural shifts beneath the glossy surface of a warm setting.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 12.27.04

 

• A Thread of Grace
  Author: Russell, Mary Doria
  Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375501843 Date: 2005
  KirkusPW
  Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of The Sparrow and Children of God.
  Updated 11.29.04

 

Mystery & Suspense

• Die a Little
  Author: Abbott, Megan E.
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0743261704 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Shadow-dodging through 1950s Hollywood glamor and its seedy flip-side, Die a Little tells the story of a femme fatale costume girl whose masquerade as the perfect housewife is clever enough to fool her detective husband, but not her suspicious sister-in-law.
  Updated 12.16.04
• Suspense and Sensibility: Or, First Impressions Revisited: A Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery
  Author: Bebris, Carrie
  Publisher: Forge $ 22.95 ISBN: 0765305097 Date: 2005
  PW Fresh from the unsettling matter related in Pride and Prescience," Mr. and Mrs. Darcy intend to enjoy their still newlywed status--until they are confronted with a mysterious mirror, an insidious reprobate from the past, and matters far beyond the social circles around Pemberly.
  Updated 1.29.05

 

• The Geographer's Library
  Author: Fasman, Jon
  Publisher: Penguin $ 24.95 ISBN: 1594200386 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  This brilliant debut novel takes a young reporter from his small town paper to the heart of an international smuggling ring, centuries old, that amasses the alchemical artifacts that lead to eternal life.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 12.16.04
• Good Girl's Guide to Murder
  Author: McBride, Susan
  Publisher: Avon $ 6.99 ISBN: 0060563907 Date: 2005
  Unwillingly dragged back into her upper-crust mama's social whirl, Andy Kendricks sets out to find a killer when a body turns up in the rubble of the torched studio of an intolerable TV show hostess.
  Updated 1.29.05
• The Devil's Right-Hand
  Author: Rhoades, J.D.
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312334192 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  Rhoades combines the vivid atmosphere of Elmore Leonard with the furious pace of Stephen Hunter in his riveting, action-packed debut Southern crime novel.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 11.29.04
• The Suspect
  Author: Robotham, Michael
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385508611 Date: 2005
  LJKirkusBooklist
  Psychiatrist Joe O'Loughlin's comfortable life begins to crumble when he is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and becomes a suspect in a brutal murder case.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 11.29.04

 

Books for Kids, Teens & Readers of All Ages

Age and grade designations are approximate, parental judgement should be used.

• I Am the Messenger
  Author: Zusak, Markus
  Publisher: Knopf $ 16.95 ISBN: 0375830995 Date: 2005
  BulletinBooklistKliattPW
  Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. When Ed inadvertently stops a bank robbery, that's when he becomes the messenger. Winner of the 2003 Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award in Australia.
  Grades: 9-12 Category: Fiction