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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.

September 2009

Nonfiction

• Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat
  Author: Cooper, Gwen
  $ 20 ISBN: 9780385343855 Date: 2009
  LJ
  "Once in nine lives, something extraordinary happens... "The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. Then Gwen's veterinarian called with a story about a three-week-old eyeless kitten who'd been abandoned. It was love at first sight. Everyone warned that Homer would always be an "underachiever," never as playful or independent as other cats. But the kitten nobody believed in quickly grew into a three-pound dynamo, a tiny daredevil with a giant heart who eagerly made friends with every human who crossed his path. Homer scaled seven-foot bookcases with ease and leapt five feet into the air to catch flies in mid-buzz. He survived being trapped alone for days after 9/11 in an apartment near the World Trade Center, and even saved Gwen's life when he chased off an intruder who broke into their home in the middle of the night. But it was Homer's unswerving loyalty, his infinite capacity for love, and his joy in the face of all obstacles that inspired Gwen daily and transformed her life. And by the time she met the man she would marry, she realized Homer had taught her the most important lesson of all: Love isn't something you see with your eyes. Homer's Odyssey is the once-in-a-lifetime story of an extraordinary cat and his human companion. It celebrates the refusal to accept limits--on love, ability, or hope against overwhelming odds. By turns jubilant and moving, it's a memoir for anybody who's ever fallen completely and helplessly in love with a pet.- Publisher Marketing
  Updated 4.22.09
  
• Stitches: A Memoir
  Author: Small, David
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780393068573 Date: 2009
  Kirkus Booklist LJ
  Telling his story in a graphic-novel style, the prize-winning children's author depicts a childhood from hell in this searing yet redemptive memoir.
  Updated 7.20.09
  

Fiction

• Windup Girl
  Author: Bacigalupi, Paolo
  $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781597801577 Date: 2009
  PW
  What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 8.31.09
  
• Homer and Langley
  Author: Doctorow, E.L.
  $ 26 ISBN: 9781400064946 Date: 2009
  Booklist PW LJ
  From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to The Book of Daniel, Doctorow's novels comprise one of the most substantive achievements of modern American fiction. With Homer & Langley, the master novelist has once again created an unforgettable work.
  Updated 8.18.09
• Mathilda Savitch
  Author: Lodato, Victor
  $ 24 ISBN: 9780374204006 Date: 2009
  Kirkus Booklist LJ
  "I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. So begins Mathilda Savitch, a compelling page-turner and the debut of an extraordinary novelistic talent.
  Updated 8.18.09
  
• New World Monkeys
  Author: Mauro, Nancy
  $ 23 ISBN: 9780307461414 Date: 2009
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  A savagely smart, darkly comic literary debut, New World Monkeys exposes the false idols of marital tranquility, small-town idyll, and corporate loyalty.
  Updated 8.13.09
  
• A Gate at the Stairs
  Author: Moore, Lorrie
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780375409288 Date: 2009
  PW Booklist
  Set just after the events of September 2001, Moore's deft, lyrical novel brings readers up against the heart of racism, the shock of war, and the carelessness perpetrated against others in the name of love.
  Updated 8.13.09
  
• Time for Eternity
  Author: Squires, Susan
  $ 6.99 ISBN: 9780312943530 Date: 2009
  PW
  Desire and destiny collide in this first novel of a stunning new series. Donna Poliziano tells a bartender in modern-day San Francisco how to go back in time to Revolutionary France and kill the man who had made her a vampire.
  Updated 7.31.09
  
• Wolfbreed
  Author: Swann, S.A.
  $ 15 ISBN: 9780553807387 Date: 2009
  PW
  In this captivating reinvention of the werewolf novel, S. A. Swann propels readers into the darkest days of the Middle Ages, weaving a rare blend of soaring romance, historical intrigue, paranormal thrills, and spiritual questioning to tell a story that forever changes those who hear it. When a monk inadvertently discovers a lair of werewolf young, he unleashes what will become the Church's most powerful-and secret-weapon. Clandestinely raised by the Teutonic Order, these lupine creatures serve as instruments of God against pagan unbelievers. Trained to slip into villages cloaked in human form, they are all but unstoppable. Only one, called Lilly, has cunningly fled her brutal master. Uldolf is too young to remember the massacre eight years earlier that claimed his village, his arm, and his kin. But he knows the pain of loneliness. When he sees what appears to be a beautiful young woman, injured and cowering in the woods, he races to her aid. Uldolf and his adoptive family will do anything to protect the terrified girl, but the danger is greater than they can possibly imagine. For death is the only life Lilly has ever known-and if their humanity can't pierce the darkness Lilly harbors in her soul, they'll soon come to know it, too. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 7.31.09
  

Crime Fiction

• A Dark Love
  Author: Carroll, Margaret
  $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780061652783 Date: 2009
  PW
  Only Caroline knows the truth about her husband, a brilliant psychoanalyst whose list of patients includes some of Washington, D.C.'s, most celebrated denizens. With only a few precious minutes allotted to her, escape from this cruel psychopath is now or never.
  Updated 7.20.09
  
• Deadly Descent
  Author: Hinger, Charlotte
  $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590586457 Date: 2009
  Kirkus
  In historian Lottie Albright's Western Kansas community, false accusations threaten senatorial candidate Brian Hadley's political career, secrets whispered to her as editor of the county history books spur a personal search for his aunt's murderer.
  Updated 7.18.09
  
• The Rapture
  Author: Jensen, Liz
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780385528214 Date: 2009
  Booklist PW
  "A first-class apocalyptic thriller of futuristic science, geophysics, and religion. It's clever, intelligent, and--most terrifying of all--plausible" --Kate Mosse, author of Labryinth and Sepulchre - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 8.13.09
• Gallows Lane
  Author: McGilloway, Brian
  $ 23.99 ISBN: 9780312384326 Date: 2009
  PW Booklist
  The heart-stopping follow-up to McGilloway's acclaimed debut Borderlands continues the compelling series that captures modern Ireland and showcases a striking new voice in crime writing.
  Updated 8.13.09
  
• Skeleton Hill
  Author: Lovesey, Peter
  $ 24 ISBN: 9781569475980 Date: 2009
  Kirkus
  The author has the gift of making the most ordinary characters interesting and engaging, and knows how to ratchet up the suspense. . . . Nobody can write the modern traditional detective novel as perfectly as Lovesey.--"The Denver Post."
  Updated 7.18.09
  
• The Coral Thief
  Author: Stott, Rebecca
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780385531467 Date: 2009
  PW Kirkus
  In her debut, Ghostwalk, Stott unfolded an extraordinary and true mystery, involving Isaac Newton and set in 17th-century Cambridge. The Coral Thief offers another intriguing mystery, centering on pre-Darwinian theories of evolution, and set in 1815 France.
  Updated 8.13.09
  
• Top Producer: A Novel of Dark Money, Greed and Friendship
  Author: Vonnegut, Norb
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312384616 Date: 2009
  PW
  In a world that moves as fast as finance does, top producers have to think three steps ahead and make snap decisions. Vonnegut has crafted a sharp, dark thriller that will make readers think--and then double-check their investments.
  Updated 8.13.09