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Featured Titles 2009

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 sometimes listed.

August 2009

Nonfiction

Fiction

• Sacred Hearts
  Author: Dunant, Sarah
  $ 25 ISBN: 9781400063826 Date: 2009
  PW LJ
  The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina, in the Italian city of Ferrara, noblewomen find space to pursue their lives under God's protection. But any community, however smoothly run, suffers tremors when it takes in someone by force. And the arrival of Santa Caterina's new novice sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core. Ripped by her family from an illicit love affair, sixteen-year-old Serafina is willful, emotional, sharp, and defiant-young enough to have a life to look forward to and old enough to know when that life is being cut short. Her first night inside the walls is spent in an incandescent rage so violent that the dispensary mistress, Suora Zuana, is dispatched to the girl's cell to sedate her. Thus begins a complex relationship of trust and betrayal between the young rebel and the clever, scholarly nun, for whom the girl becomes the daughter she will never have. As Serafina rails against her incarceration, others are drawn into the drama: the ancient, mysterious Suora Magdalena-with her history of visions and ecstasies-locked in her cell; the ferociously devout novice mistress Suora Umiliana, who comes to see in the postulant a way to extend her influence; and, watching it all, the abbess, Madonna Chiara, a woman as fluent in politics as she is in prayer. As disorder and rebellion mount, it is the abbess's job to keep the convent stable while, outside its walls, the dictates of the Counter-Reformation begin to purge the Catholic Church and impose on the nunneries a regime of terrible oppression. Sarah Dunant, the bestselling author of The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan, brings this intricate Renaissance world compellingly to life. Amid Sacred Hearts is a rich, engrossing, multifaceted love story, encompassing the passions of the flesh, the exultation of the spirit, and the deep, enduring power of friendship. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 7.20.09
  
• Big Machine
  Author: Lavalle, Victor
  $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780385527989 Date: 2009
  PW
  A fiendishly imaginative comic novel, Big Machine is a mind-rattling literary adventure about sex, race, and the eternal struggle between faith and doubt.
  Updated 6.17.09
  
• Once on a Moonless Night
  Author: Sijie, Dai
  $ I25 SBN: 9780307271587 Date: 2009
  LJ Booklist PW
  From the author of the beloved best seller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress comes a haunting tale of love--and the beguiling power of a lost language--in this story that carries readers across the breadth of China's past.
  Updated 6.30.09
  

Crime Fiction

• Down in the Flood
  Author: Abel, Kenneth
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312377199 Date: 2009
  LJ
  Following the critically acclaimed works Cold Steel Rain and The Burying Field, this third volume is part of a crime series that has been declared among the best to appear this year ("Booklist").
  Updated 7.15.09
  
• City of Silver
  Author: Alfieri, Annamaria
  $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312383862 Date: 2009
  PW LJ
  The silver-rich, Spanish-ruled city of Potos, Peru, faces brutal upheaval in this intricate mystery debut.
  Updated 7.18.09


• Delhi Noir
  Author: Sawhney, Hirsh (edt)
  $ 15.95 ISBN: 9781933354781 Date: 2009
  PW
  Brand new stories by: Irwin Allan Sealy, Omair Ahmad, Radhika Jha, Ruchir Joshi, Nalinaksha Bhattacharya, Meera Nair, Siddharth Chowdhury, Mohan Sikka, Palash K. Mehrotra, Hartosh Singh Bal, Hirsh Sawhney, Tabish Khair, Uday Prakash, and Manjula Padmanabhan. The eyes of the world are gazing at India--the world's largest democracy. But the books you read about this Asian giant only show part of the picture. Delhi Noir offers bone-chilling, mesmerizing takes on the country's chaotic capital, a city where opulence and poverty are constantly clashing, where old-world values and the information age wage a constant battle. Delhi Noir's fourteen original stories are written by the best Indian writers alive today--the ones you haven't yet heard of but should have. They are veteran authors who have appeared on the Booker Prize short list and budding geniuses who your grandchildren will read about in English class. Delhi Noir is a world of sex in parks, male prostitution, and vigilante rickshaw drivers. It is one plagued by religious riots, soulless corporate dons, and murderous servants. This is India uncut, the one you're missing out on because mainstream publishing houses and glossy magazines can't stomach it. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 7.20.09
  
• Panic Attack
  Author: Starr, Jason
  $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312387068 Date: 2009
  PW
  An intruder, a desperate struggle, a family under siege: Panic Attack is Starr's most provocative and suspenseful novel to date. This is the ultimate page-turner--a thriller that brilliantly blends psychological and physical suspense.--Michael Connelly.
  Updated 6.1.09