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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.
April 2006
Nonfiction
- Our Town: A Lynching, the Town It Haunted, and My Search for the Truth and Reconciliation
Author: Carr, Cindy
Publisher: Crown $ 25.95 ISBN: 0517705060 Date: 2006
KirkusLJ
Intensely compelling, Our Town is Carr's epic account of a brutal lynching that took place in 1930 in Marion, Indiana, and the town's struggle to forget the events of that terrible night.
Updated 2.14.06 - Sweet and Low
Author: Cohen, Rich
Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374272298 Date: 2006LJ
Sweet and Low is the amazing, bittersweet, hilarious story of an American family and its patriarch, a short-order cook named Ben Eisenstadt who, in the years after World War II invented the sugar packet and Sweet 'N Low, converting his Brooklyn cafeteria into a factory and amassing the great fortune that would destroy his family.
Updated 2.28.06 - My Life in France
Author: Child, Julia & Alex Prud'Homme
Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 1400043468 Date: 2006KirkusPW
This delightful memoir of Julia's years in Paris, Marseille, and Provence opens with Paul and Julia--a tall, wide-eyed girl from Pasadena who can't cook and doesn't speak a word of French--disembarking in Le Havre, and ends with the launching of the two "Mastering" cookbooks and Julia winning the heart of America as "The French Chef."
Suggested Reading: Memoirs | Cooked Books
Updated 2.13.06 - Poet's Choice
Author: Hirsch, Edward
Publisher: Harcourt $ 25 ISBN: 015101356X Date: 2006Booklist
Edward Hirsch began writing a column in the "Washington Post Book World" called "Poet's Choice" in 2002. This book brings together those enormously popular columns to present a minicourse in world poetry. More than 130 poets from ancient times to the present represent cultures from all around the globe.
Updated 3.16.06
Fiction
- Saving the World: With Don Francisco
Author: Alvarez, Julia
Publisher: Algonquin $ 24.95 ISBN: 156512510x Date: 2006LJ
A stunning tour de force--"about a contemporary bestselling Latina novelist, obsessed by the life of a 19th-century Spanish spinster--"that probes the depths of politics, medicine, activism, and love.
Updated 1.18.06 - The Lightning Keeper
Author: Lawrence, Starling
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060825243 Date: 2006LJ
Sparks fly in Lawrence's blend of romance and historical fiction, set against the struggle to harness electricity in the early 20th century. Skillfully intertwining fact and fiction, the author generates an electric history of ideas, kindled by the flames of capital and passion.
Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction
Updated 1.18.06 - The Duchess of Nothing
Author: McGowan, Heather
Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 22.95 ISBN: 1596910666 Date: 2006KirkusPW
The author of the critically acclaimed Schooling returns with a darkly comic novel about a mentally unpredictable woman intent on giving a young boy a proper education.
Updated 2.7.06 - Black Swan Green
Author: Mitchell, David
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400063795 Date: 2006
PW KirkusBooklist
From award-winning writer Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for 13-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 2.21.06 - Suite Francaise
Author: Nemirovsky, Irene
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 1400044731 Date: 2006PWKirkusBooklist
An extraordinary novel of life under Nazi occupation--discovered and published 62 years after the author's tragic death at Auschwitz. Subtle, often fiercely ironic, and deeply compassionate, Suite Franaise is both a piercing record of its time and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.27.06 - Once Upon a Day
Author: Tucker, Lisa
Publisher: Pocket $ 24 ISBN: 0743492773 Date: 2006PW
From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of Shout Down the Moon and The Song Readers comes a wise, humorous, and deeply compassionate story about the risks and rewards of loving when a single day can change one's life.
Overbooked Reading Group Best Bet Selection
Updated 12.2.05
Crime Fiction
- End of Story: A Novel of Suspense
Author: Abrahams, Peter
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060726652 Date: 2006PW
While teaching writing skills to prison inmates, Ivy Seidel discovers Vance Harrow, convicted of a terrible crime, shows tremendous talent. Ivy sets out to investigate his past and to correct an injustice, but someone doesn't want the past disturbed.
Updated 2.28.06 - Witch Cradle
Author: Hills, Kathleen
Publisher: Poisoned Pen $ 24.95 ISBN: 1590582543 Date: 2006Booklist
From the author of Hunter's Dance comes the newest mystery featuring Township Constable John McIntire, ever reluctant to police his neighbors in St. Adele, Michigan, of the 1950s. When two skeletons are discovered buried in a cistern, McIntire struggles to solve the two-decades-old murders.
Suggested Reading: Cold Cases
Updated 2.16.06 - Death Without Company
Author: Johnson, Craig
Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670034673 Date: 2006KirkusBooklist
This riveting tale of the unspeakable viciousness that can lurk in the most unlikely of places is a new Sheriff Walt Longmire mystery from the author of the acclaimed The Cold Dish.
Suggested Reading: Hard-Boiled | Noir Stars
Updated 3.6.06 - City of Tiny Lights
Author: Neate, Patrick
Publisher: Riverhead $ 14 ISBN: 1594481865 Date: 2006Booklist
From an award-winning novelist comes a literary mystery that introduces a new kind of British detective, Ugandan-Indian Tommy Akhtar, and a side of London that the mystery world has never seen.
Updated 1.21.06 - Cripple Creek
Author: Sallis, James
Publisher: Walker $ 23 ISBN: 0802733824 Date: 2006PWKirkusBooklist
In the sequel to Cypress Grove, deputy sheriff Turner returns to Memphis, the city that formed him, and confronts his ghosts and sets in motion a tempest that threatens to destroy his newfound sanctuary.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Hard-Boiled\Noir
Updated 2.8.06 - Beautiful Lies
Author: Unger, Lisa
Publisher: Crown $ 23 ISBN: 0307336689 Date: 2006
PW Booklist
In this sexy, fast-paced literary thriller, Unger takes readers on a breathtaking ride in which a young New York writer's good deed has terrible consequences and leaves her running for her life.
Updated 12.27.05 - Mercy Seat: Joe Donovan
Author: Waites, Martyn
Publisher: Pegasus $ 25 ISBN: 1933648007 Date: 2006PWLJ
His heart broken by the disappearance of his six-year-old son two years earlier--a case that remains unsolved--former investigative journalist Joe Donovan is wrested from seclusion in Newcastle and finds his destiny entwined with that of a streetwise but vulnerable and frightened teenager.
Updated 3.20.06
Books for Kids, Teens & Readers of All Ages
Age and grade designations are approximate, parental judgement should be used.- Stay With Me
Author: Freymann-Weyr, Garret
Publisher: Houghton $ 16 ISBN: 0618605711 Date: 2006
Booklist Kirkus
Sixteen-year-old Leila Abranel loves her older half-sisters--from her father's first marriage--but does not know them well. When her sister Rebecca commits suicide, Leila wants to know why and begins navigating her family's breakdown.
Ages: 12-17 Category: Fiction - Firebirds Rising
Author: November, Sharyn (edt)
Publisher: Puffin $19.95 ISBN: 0142405493 Date: 2006
Kirkus
This star-studded follow-up to the acclaimed Firebirds contains riveting, original stories by some of today's masters of science fiction and fantasy, including Fancesca Lia Block, Alan Dean Foster, Diana Wynne Jones, and Tanith Lee.
Ages: 12-17 Category: Speculative Fiction - Bella at Midnight
Author: Stanley, Diane
Publisher: $ ISBN: 0060775734 Date: 2006
Booklist SLJ Kirkus
Loosely based on Cinderella, this fairy tale features a memorable heroine who embarks on a stirring adventure when she discovers her surprising destiny.
Ages: 10-14 Category: Fiction