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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 2007
Nonfiction
- Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
Author: Gawande, Atul
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 9780805082111 Date: 2007
KirkusPWLJ
The "New York Times" bestselling author examines the complex and risk-filled medical profession and how those involved progress from merely good to great. Gawande provides rare insight and offers an honest firsthand account of his own life as a surgeon.
Updated 3.5.07 - How Doctors Think
Author: Groopman, Jerome
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 26 ISBN: 9780618610037 Date: 2007PWKirkus
A "New Yorker" staff writer, bestselling author, and professor at Harvard Medical School unravels the mystery of how doctors figure out the best treatments--or fail to do so. This book describes the warning signs of flawed medical thinking and offers intelligent questions patients can ask.
Updated 1.27.07 - A Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America
Author: Woolley, Benjamin
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.50 ISBN: 9780060090562 Date: 2007Kirkus
Published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first American colony, A Savage Kingdom presents the bold, even reckless, political adventure driven by a sense of imperial destiny and dogged by official hostility.
Suggested Reading: Jamestown
Updated 2.12.07
Fiction
- Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Author: Bennett, Vanora
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780061251832 Date: 2007KirkusLJ
With a striking sense of period detail, Portrait of an Unknown Woman is an unforgettable story of sin and religion, desire and deception. It is the tale of a young woman on the brink of sensual awakening and of a country on the edge of mayhem.
Updated 3.15.07 - White Night: Dresden Files
Author: Butcher, Jim
Publisher: Roc $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780451461407 Date: 2007BooklistPW
Professional wizard Harry Dresden is investigating a series of deaths when he uncovers a conspiracy within the White Council of Wizards that threatens not only him, but those closest to him.
Updated 3.2.07 - The Camel Bookmobile
Author: Hamilton, Masha
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780061173486 Date: 2007BooklistLJ
Reminiscent of Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Camel Bookmobile is a captivating novel about a young American woman who leaves her everyday life behind, to bring the joy of reading to a small African village.
Updated 3.2.07 - Kalooki Nights
Author: Jacobson, Howard
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 9781416543428 Date: 2007KirkusBooklist
Longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and hailed by "The Times" (London) as a work of genius, Jacobson's exquisitely written, audaciously funny novel explores the countless questions of postwar Jewish identity.
Updated 3.15.07 - The Killing Jar
Author: Monaghan, Nicola
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 9780743299688 Date: 2007PWBooklistKirkus
This outstanding first novel chronicles the story of a girl growing up on a drug-fueled Nottingham housing estate. The young girl recreates a world of unrelenting bleakness and violence, while showing that love and hope can exist in the most poisoned places.
Updated 1.16.07 - Season of the Witch
Author: Mostert, Natasha
Publisher: Dutton $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780525950035 Date: 2007KirkusPW
The Matrix meets Interview with the Vampire in this sexy gothic thriller about two beautiful witch sisters and the love triangle that consumes the information thief who is drawn into their intrigues.
Updated 2.19.07 - Coal Black Horse
Author: Olmstead, Robert
Publisher: Algonquin $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781565125216 Date: 2007Kirkus
When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable. She instructs her only child to retrieve his father from the battlefield and bring him home. Just fourteen and ill-prepared for the journey, Robey sets off wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety: blue on one side, gray on the other. However, it is the gift of an uncommon horse that changes Robey's destiny— a horse that becomes his only companion, guide, and protector.
As they plunge into a world of death and destruction, Robey is cloaked in the invincibility of youth. But the horrors of war, the truth of his own nature, and the inextricable connection between the two turn the boy into the best a man can be— and the worst, irrevocably scarred by all that he has seen and done.
This " powerful, redemptive narrative" in the tradition of The Red Badge of Courage is a brutally honest portrait of what war does to men and how it allows— even compels— them to love what they should hate. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 11.27.06 - Angelica
Author: Phillips, Arthur
Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 9781400062515 Date: 2007KirkusLJ
From bestselling author Phillips comes an accomplished yet entirely surprising new novel. Angelica is a spellbinding Victorian ghost story, an intriguing literary and psychological puzzle, and a meditation on marriage, childhood, memory, and fear.
Updated 3.2.07 - The King of Colored Town
Author: Wimberley, Darryl
Publisher: Toby $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781592641819 Date: 2007Kirkus
Ten years after "Brown v. Board of Education," racial tensions still run high in Laureate, Florida. The realization of that hard truth comes through the parallel stories of two African-American teens caught up in the integration backlash and the long-term effects this has on their adult lives.
Updated 1.31.07 - Blood Matters
Author: Cannon, Taffy
Publisher: Perserverance $ 14.95 ISBN: 9781880284865 Date: 2007
Homicide Detective Roxanne Prescott explores the world of adoption when a compulsive collector/adoption guru is bludgeoned to death in his lavish Rancho Santa Fe mansion. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.30.07 - The Book of Air and Shadows
Author: Gruber, Michael
Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780060874469 Date: 2007KirkusBooklistPW
Hidden in the binding of a charred and ruined book is a cache of letters. They are encrypted and the key to unlocking the mysterious code has been lost for 400 years. If the letters are read, they will lead to one of the most valuable items in the history of the world.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1.27.07 - Killing Che
Author: Pfarrer, Chuck
Publisher: Random $ 26.95 ISBN: 9781400063932 Date: 2007Booklist
A former Navy SEAL pens this gripping, spellbinding thriller, set in 1967. CIA officer Paul Hoyle is a "contractor" sent to Bolivia with a team of Green Berets to stamp out a looming communist insurgency, as well as one Ernesto Che Guevara.
Updated 1.31.07