Fiction All Stars 2011

Books that received at least three starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, LJ, and PW. The journal assigns the star. All genres are included.

• Last Man in Tower
  Author: Adiga, Aravind
  $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780307594099 Date: 2011
  LJ Booklist Kirkus
  Searing. Explosive. Lyrical. Compassionate. Here is the astonishing new novel by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger, a book that took rage and anger at injustice and turned it into a thrilling murder story. Now, with the same fearlessness and insight, Aravind Adiga broadens his canvas to give us a riveting story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, set in the booming city of Mumbai. At the heart of this novel are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a building named the Shanghai, which promises to be one of the city's most elite addresses. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in a retired schoolteacher called Masterji. Shah offers Masterji and his neighbors--the residents of Vishram Society's Tower A, a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah's luxury high-rise would be built--a generous buyout. They can't believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home. As the demolition deadline looms, desires mount; neighbors become enemies, and acquaintances turn into conspirators who risk losing their humanity to score their payday. Here is a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore--and expose--it. Vivid, visceral, told with both humor and poignancy, Last Man in Tower is his most stunning work yet. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 9.21.11
• The Keeper of Lost Causes
  Author: Adler-Olsen, Jussi
  $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780525952480 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  The Keeper of Lost Causes features a deeply flawed chief detective who's been selected to run Department Q, a new special investigations division that turns out to be a department of one. With a stack of Copenhagen's coldest cases to keep him company, Carl's been put out to pasture. So he's as surprised as anyone when a case actually captures his interest.
  Updated 8.16.11
• Millenium People
  Author: Ballard, J.G.
  $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780393081770 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  In this novel, an explosion at Heathrow takes the life of psychologist David Markham's ex-wife. In response, he infiltrates the antigovernment group responsible for the bombing--and begins to fall under its sway.--Library Journal.
  Updated 7.8.11
• Now You See Me
  Author: Bolton, S.J.
  $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312600525 Date: 2011
  Kirkus PW LJ
  From the author of Blood Harvest. An enigmatic London police officer finds herself at the heart of a serial-killer investigation with uncanny ties to Jack the Ripper.
  Updated 4.18.11
• The Black Hawk
  Author: Bourne, Joanna
  $ 7.99 ISBN: 9780425244531 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  Someone is stalking agent Justine DeCabrillac through London's gray streets. Under cover of rain, the assassin strikes--and Justine staggers to the door of the one man who can save her. The man she once loved. The man she hated. Adrian Hawkhurst.
  Updated 11.4.11
• When the Killing's Done
  Author: Boyle, T. Coraghessan
  $ 27 ISBN: 9780670022328 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  Principally set on the wild and sparsely inhabited Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, Boyle's powerful new novel combines pulse-pounding adventure with a socially conscious, richly humane tale about endangered animals and those who protect them.
  Updated 12.28.10
• Guilt by Association
  Author: Clark, Marcia
  $ 26 ISBN: 9780316129510 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  With her tremendous expertise in the nuances of L.A. courts and crime, and with a vibrant ensemble cast of characters, Clark, the lead prosecutor in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, combines intimate detail, riotous humor, and visceral action in a debut thriller that marks the launch of a major new figure on the crime-writing scene.
  Updated 4.15.11
• Red on Red
  Author: Conlon, Edward
  $ 26 ISBN: 9780385519175 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus LJ Booklist
  The author of the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling memoir Blue Bloods delivers his first novel--the story of two NYPD detectives with radically different approaches to life and work.
  Updated 3.27.11
• The Fifth Witness
  Author: Connelly, Michael
  $ 28 ISBN: 9780316069359 Date: 2011
  PW LJ PW
  Falling on tough times, Mickey Haller expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home. Mickey puts his team into high gear to exonerate Lisa Trammel, even though the evidence and his own suspicions tell him his client is guilty. Connelly proves again why he "may very well be the best novelist working in the United States today" (San Francisco Chronicle).
  Updated 2.14.11
• Kiled at the Whim of a Hat: Jimm Juree
  Author: Cotterill, Colin
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312564537 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  Set in rural Thailand, Killed at the Whim of a Hat is the launch of a brand-new series by the internationally bestselling, critically acclaimed author of The Coroner's Lunch.
  Updated 5.15.11
• The Trinity Six
  Author: Cumming, Charles
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780312675295 Date: 2011
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  From the author of the New York Times Notable Book Typhoon comes his most accomplished and compelling thriller yet--the story of the search for the mysterious, long-rumored sixth man of the Cambridge Spy Ring.
  Updated 3.27.11
• Broken Irish
  Author: Delaney, Edward J.
  $ 18.50 ISBN: 9781933527505 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus Booklist LJ
  A passionate, heartbreaking story of authority and revenge, alcoholism and futile redemption set in south Boston in the late 1990s.
  Updated 11.4.11
• Wyatt
  Author: Disher, Garry
  $ 25 ISBN: 9781569479629 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist LJ
  Disher's cool, enigmatic anti-hero Wyatt has a job--a jewel heist. Wyatt prefers to work alone, but this is Eddie Oberin's job. Eddie's very smart ex-wife Lydia has the inside information. Add Wyatt's planning genius and meticulous preparation, and what could possibly go wrong?
  Updated 7.25.11
• The Forgotten Waltz
  Author: Enright, Anne
  $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780393072556 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW LJ
  A haunting story of desire: a recollection of the bewildering speed of attraction, the irreparable slip into longing.
  Updated 7.25.11
• The Marriage Plot
  Author: Eugenides, Jeffrey
  $ 28 ISBN: 9780374203054 Date: 2011
  Kirkus Booklist PW LJ
  It's the early 1980s--the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. But real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes.
  Updated 8.29.11
• West of Here
  Author: Evison, Jonathan
  $ 25 ISBN: 9781565129528 Date: 2010
  PW Booklist LJ
  Set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, on Washington State's rugged Pacific coast, West of Here is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience. Harkening back to the work of such masters of Americana as Bret Harte, Edna Ferber, and Larry McMurtry, West of Here is a bold novel by a writer destined to become a major force in American literature.
  Updated 2.17.11
• Ranchero
  Author: Gavin, Rick
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312583187 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  Repo man Nick Reid will do anything to retrieve his landlady's stolen Ranchero in a wild race across the Mississippi Delta in this unforgettable series debut. Ranchero is a fantastic read for fans of Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, and Carl Hiaasen.
  Updated 10.14.2011
• Say Her Name
  Author: Goldman, Francisco
  $ 24 ISBN: 9780802119810 Date: 2011
  LJ Kirkus PW Booklist
  In 2005, celebrated novelist Francisco Goldman married a beautiful young writer named Aura Estrada in a romantic Mexican hacienda. The month before their second anniversary, during a long-awaited holiday, Aura broke her neck while body surfing. Francisco, blamed for Aura's death by her family and blaming himself, wanted to die, too. Instead, he wrote Say Her Name, a novel chronicling his great love and unspeakable loss, tracking the stages of grief when pure love gives way to bottomless pain. Suddenly a widower, Goldman collects everything he can about his wife, hungry to keep Aura alive with every memory. From her childhood and university days in Mexico City with her fiercely devoted mother to her studies at Columbia University, through their newlywed years in New York City and travels to Mexico and Europe--and always through the prism of her gifted writings--Goldman seeks her essence and grieves her loss. Humor leavens the pain as he lives through the madness of grief and creates a living portrait of a love as joyous as it is deep and profound. Say Her Name is a love story, a bold inquiry into destiny and accountability, and a tribute to Aura, who she was and who she would've been. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 3.7.11
• Faith
  Author: Haigh, Jennifer
  $ 26 ISBN: 9780060755805 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  One woman's search for the truth after scandal rocks her family, and the explosive family secrets she uncovers, in this complex, moving fourth novel from a bestselling and award-winning author.
  Updated 3.27.17.11
• Iron House
  Author: Hart, John
  $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312380342 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW LJ
  A New York Times-bestselling author delivers his most devastating novel yet--the remarkable story of two orphaned brothers separated by violence at an early age. When a boy is brutally murdered in their orphanage, one brother runs and takes the blame ...
  Updated 6.15.11
• The Devotion of Suspect X
  Author: Higashino, Keigo
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312375065 Date: 2011
  LJ PW Kirkus
  Yasuko Hanaoka thought she had escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. When he shows up one day, the situation quickly escalates and Togashi ends up dead. Yasuko's next-door-neighbor Ishigami offers his help, not only disposing of the body, but plotting the cover-up as well.
  Updated 12.14.10
• The Woodcutter
  Author: Hill, Reginald
  $ 25.99 ISBN:9780062060747 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Kirkus
  From the acclaimed author of the Dalziel and Pasco mysteries comes a stand-alone psychological thriller about a mysterious jailed man who is paroled and returns to his quaint hometown looking for vengeance.
  Updated 7.1.11
• The Inheritance and Other Stories
  Author: Hobb, Robin & Megan Lindholm
  $ 15.99 ISBN: 9780061561641 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  From New York Times-bestselling master storyteller Robin Hobb--a.k.a. MeganLindholm--comes a new collection of short stories.
  Updated 7.1.11
• Nanjing Requiem
  Author: Jin, Ha
  $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307379764 Date: 2011
  Booklist LJ Kirkus
  The award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in a searing new novel that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century: the Rape of Nanjing. In 1937, with the Japanese poised to invade Nanjing, Minnie Vautrin--an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women's College--decides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on behalf of the hapless victims. Even when order and civility are eventually restored, Vautrin remains deeply embattled, and she is haunted by the lives she could not save. With extraordinarily evocative precision, Ha Jin re-creates the terror, the harrowing deprivations, and the menace of unexpected violence that defined life in Nanjing during the occupation. In Minnie Vautrin he has given us an indelible portrait of a woman whose convictions and bravery prove, in the end, to be no match for the maelstrom of history. At once epic and intimate, Nanjing Requiem is historical fiction at its most resonant. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 9.22.11
• Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
  Author: Kennedy, William
  $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780670022977 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW LJ
  When journalist Daniel Quinn meets Ernest Hemingway at the Floridita bar in Havana, Cuba, in 1957, he has no idea that his own affinity for simple, declarative sentences will change his life radically overnight. So begins Kennedy's tale of revolutionary intrigue, heroic journalism, crooked politicians, drug-running gangsters, Albany race riots, and the improbable rise of Fidel Castro.
  Updated 9.21.11
• Field Gray: Bernie Gunther
  Author: Kerr, Philip
  $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780399157417 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  Kerr delivers a novel with the noir sensibility of Raymond Chandler, the realpolitik of vintage John le Carr, and the dark moral vision of Graham Greene. "A thriller that will challenge preconceptions and stimulate the little grey cells."--The Times (London), selecting Field Gray as a Thriller of the Year.
  Updated 3.30.11
• The Cypress House
  Author: Koryta, Michael
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316059723 Date: 2011
  Kirkus LJ PW
  A journey to Florida's coast becomes an inescapable nightmare in the newest supernatural thriller from international bestseller Koryta (So Cold the River).
  Updated 11.29.10
• Turn of Mind
  Author: LaPlante, Alice
  $ 24 ISBN: 9780802119773 Date: 2011
  LJ PW Booklist Kirkus
  A startling portrait of a disintegrating mind clinging to bits of reality through anger, frustration, shame, and unspeakable loss, Turn of Mind is a remarkable debut that examines the deception and frailty of memory and how it defines our very existence.
  Updated 7.1.11
• Dream of Ding Village
  Author: Lianke, Yan
  $ 24 ISBN: 9780802119322 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Ding village is ground zero for an AIDS epidemic that mushrooms after villagers are coerced into selling their blood and are subsequently infected by contaminated plasma injections.
  Updated 1.4.11
• Sister
  Author: Lupton, Rosamund
  $ 24 ISBN: 9780307716514 Date: 2011
  LJ PW Booklist
  As one woman risks everything to uncover the truth about her sister's last moments, this debut novel with a knockout twist shows that nothing is as durable--and as exceptional--as the bond between sisters.
  Updated 5.15.11
• The Troubled Man
  Author: Mankell, Henning
  $ 26 ISBN: 9780307593498 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW LJ Kirkus
  From a master of Swedish noir (New York Times) comes the first Kurt Wallender mystery in more than a decade: the much-anticipated return of the brilliant, brooding detective.
  Updated 2.7.11
• The Paris Wife
  Author: McLain, Paula
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780345521309 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus LJ
  A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 1.20.11
• Tracker
  Author: Meyer, Deon
  $ 24 ISBN: 9780802119933 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist Kirkus
  Lemmer's first rule is: "Don't get involved." A highly skilled bodyguard with a violent, criminal past, he has settled into a quiet life in Loxton, South Africa, where the rural tranquility has helped to calm his explosive temper. But when a wealthy farmer asks for his help in smuggling a pair of rare black rhinos out of Zimbabwe (where they are murdered for their horns), he has a hard time saying no. Before he knows it, Lemmer is on a small airplane, zipping across the border, an airsickness bag in his hand and a military-grade shotgun at his feet. Soon, he will regret the trip very much. In Trackers, internationally-acclaimed thriller writer Deon Meyer expertly weaves together Lemmer's story with a missing person investigation and the machinations of a top intelligence agency. Wielding a phenomenal cast of characters, Meyer delves deep into the people, the breathtaking landscapes, and the politics and problems of this fascinating country. A #1 best-seller in South Africa, Trackers is an insightful novel that will take your breath away.
  `- Publisher Marketing
  Updated 8.15.11
• The Night Circus
  Author: Morgenstern, Erin
  $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780385534635 Date: 2011
  Kirkus PW Booklist LJ
  The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Reves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway--a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love--a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands. True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per-formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead. Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 6.15.11
• 1Q84
  Author: Murakami, Haruki
  $ 30 ISBN: 9780307593313 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 --Q is for 'question mark.' A world that bears a question." Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As Aomame's and Tengo's narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector. A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell's--IQ84 is Haruki Murakami's most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 9.22.11
• The Call
  Author: Murphy, Yannick
  $ 14.99 ISBN: 9780062023148 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Murphy presents a beautifully written novel about a family of five in rural New England, told through the charming, witty, and loving voice of the veterinarian father.
  Updated 8.18.11
• The Snowman
  Author: Nesbo, Jo
  $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307595867 Date: 2011
  Booklist LJ Kirkus
  Internationally acclaimed, bestselling Norwegian writer Nesbo appears on the Knopf list for the first time with a bone-chilling new thriller about a serial killer who takes Harry Hole--Nesbo's irascible police investigator--to the brink of insanity.
  Updated 7.1.11
• The Tiger's Wife
  Author: Obreht, Tea
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780385343831 Date: 2011
  LJ Booklist LJ
  Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker's 20 best American fiction writers under 40, spins a timeless novel about a young doctor who confronts the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death.
  Updated 3.27.11
• The Cat's Table
  Author: Ondaatje, Michael
  $ 26 ISBN: 9780307700117 Date: 2011
  Kirkus LJ PW Booklist
  In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table"--as far from the Captain's Table as can be--with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator's elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself "with a distant eye" for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat's Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever. As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story--by turns poignant and electrifying--about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 9.21.11
• Love and Shame and Love
  Author: Orner, Peter
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316129398 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  Alexander Popper is four years old when his father throws him into Lake Michigan, telling him to sink or swim. The rest of the family also struggles to stay afloat. Covering four decades of Alexander's life, from childhood to romance to unexpected fatherhood, Orner illuminates the intricacies of love and shame that sometimes follows.
  Updated 9.21.11
• The Buddha in the Attic
  Author: Otsuka, Julie
  $ 22 ISBN: 9780307700001 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist LJ
  Finalist for the 2011. National Book Award Julie Otsuka's long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divineis a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as 'picture brides' nearly a century ago. In eight incantatory sections, "The Buddha in the Attic" traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war. In language that has the force and the fury of poetry, Julie Otsuka has written a singularly spellbinding novel about the American dream. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 8.16.11
• The Map of Time
  Author: Palma, Felix J.
  $ 26 ISBN: 9781439167397 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist LJ
  Palma delivers a page-turner in which a skeptical H.G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time-travel and save lives.
  Updated 4.15.11
• State of Wonder
  Author: Patchett, Ann
  $ 26.99 ISBN: 9780062049803 Date: 2011
  Kirkus LJ PW
  Award-winning New York Times-bestselling author Patchett (Bel Canto, The Magician's Assistant) returns with a provocative novel of morality and miracles, science and sacrifice set in the Amazon rainforest--a gripping adventure story and a profound look at the difficult choices we make in the name of discovery and love
  Updated 11.8.11
• The Informant
  Author: Perry, Thomas
  $ 27 ISBN: 9780547569338 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus LJ
  A professional killer betrayed by the Mafia finds his peaceful life threatened when a hit team finally catches up with him. He knows they won't stop coming and decides to take the fight to their door. Soon Justice Department official Elizabeth Waring, the only one who believed in the assassin's existence years ago, receives a surprise late-night visit from him, and a new assault on organized crime, and an uneasy alliance between opposite sides of the law begins.
  Updated 5.15.11
• The Officer's Club
  Author: Peters, Ralph
  $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780765326805 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist LJ
  Set in 1981, The Officers' Club captures the passions and confusion of the times, the reckoning due after a decade of indulgence--and the commitment of those who stayed in uniform through the bad years.
  Updated 12.10.10
• The Quantum Thief
  Author: Rajanierni, Hanyu
  $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780765329493 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Kirkus
  A brilliant first novel. The Quantum Thief, like so much of the best space opera of this century, is a prodigy house, where propositions are instant heritage, and arguments are eyeclick.--John Clute.
  Updated 3.27.11
• The Complaints
  Author: Rankin, Ian
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780316039741 Date: 2011
  Booklist Kirkus LJ
  Nobody likes The Complaints--they're the cops who investigate other cops. It's where Malcolm Fox works. He's a serious man with frustrating problems about which he cannot seem to do anything. Then the reluctant Fox is given a new case.
  Updated 4.15.11
• American Masculine: Stories
  Author: Ray, Shannon
  $ 15 ISBN: 9781555975883 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Winner of the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Fiction, a muscular debut that reconfigures the American West The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washedup basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions, and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these men. A son struggles to accept his father's apologies after surviving a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball hoops on a snowy night, hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider skips town and rides herd on an unruly mob of passengers as he searches for a thief on a train threading through Montana's Rocky Mountains. In these stories, Ray grapples with the terrible hurt we inflict on those we love, and finds that reconciliation, if far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the contours of the American West, American Masculine is a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 5.31.11
• The Brothers of Baker Street
  Author: Robertson, Michael
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780312538132 Date: 2011
  PW LJ Booklist
  Reggie Heath's latest client is the driver of one of London's famous Black Cabs, accused of murdering two American tourists. But the letters to Sherlock Holmes are piling up--including one from someone who claims to be the descendant of Professor James Moriarty.
  Updated 4.15.11
• On Borrowed Time
  Author: Rosenfelt, David
  $ 25 ISBN:9780312598365 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus LJ
  After an accident on the way to Kendrick Falls, Richard Kilmer's fiance Jennifer Ryan vanishes. However, no one in Richard's life will even confirm Jen's existence. But where could she have gone? Has Richard lost his mind or is someone else behind it all?
  Updated 4.15.11
• Bent Road
  Author: Roy, Lori
  $ 26 ISBN: 9780525951834 Date: 2011
  Kirkus LJ PW
  In her promising debut novel ... Roy proves that dark secrets hide even in the most wide-open places. Set in the beautifully rendered Kansas plains, Bent Road is a family story with a suspenseful gothic core.''--Michael Koryta, author of Tonight I Said Goodbye.
  Updated 2.14.11
• Swamplandia
  Author: Russell, Karen
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780307263995 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW LJ
  The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, its island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a competitor. To save her family, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld.
  Updated 12.14.10
• Some Time in the Sun
  Author: Sayles, John
  $ 24 ISBN: 9780425240519 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  Denver journalist Natalie Benoit and Deputy U.S. Marshal Zach McBride find themselves captives of a bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel. Working together, they escape through the desert toward the border, the attraction between them flaring hotter than the Sonoran sun.
  Updated 7.1.11
• Echoes of the Dead: DCI Monica Paniatowski
  Author: Spencer, Sally
  $ 29 ISBN: 9780727869807 Date: 2011
  Kirkus Booklist LJ
  The third book in the new series featuring DCI Monika Paniatowski - When a recently released prisoner claims in a deathbed confession that he is innocent of the rape and murder of a young girl for which he was convicted twenty-two years earlier, DCI Monika Paniatowski is tasked to lead an unofficial investigation into his claims. At first she is reluctant, but when she learns that her old mentor Charlie Woodend was the lead detective in the case, she knows she must do everything she can to protect his reputation . . .
  Updated 2.14.11
• Thick as Thieves
  Author: Spiegelman, Peter
  $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307263179 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  Carr--ex-CIA--is the reluctant leader of an elite crew planning a robbery of such extraordinary proportions that it will leave them set for life. His cohorts are seasoned pros, but they're wound drum-tight--months before, the man who brought them together was killed in what Carr suspects was a setup. But bigger problems are yet to come, because few on his crew are what they seem to be, and even his own past is a lie.
  Updated 7.25.11
• Lucifer's Tears
  Author: Thompson, James
  $ 25 ISBN: 9780399157004 Date: 2011
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  Inspector Kari Vaara returns, more haunted than ever, in the follow-up to Snow Angels. Kari is pushed into investigating a 90-year-old national hero for war crimes committed during World War II. Soon, the past and present collide in ways no one could have anticipated.
  Updated 3.27.11
• Rain Falls LIke Mercy
  Author: Todd, Jack
  $ 25 ISBN: 9781416598510 Date: 2011
  Booklist Kirkus PW
  Set against the sweeping backdrop of World War II, Rain Falls Like Mercy is a gripping depiction of a family and a country touched by the grand violence of war, the senseless violence of crime, and the intimate violence of the heart.
  Updated 11.8.11
• The Empty Family: Stories
  Author: Toibin, Colm
  $ 24 ISBN: 9781439138328 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus LJ
  Updated 11.22.10
• Sanctus
  Author: Toyne, Simon
  $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780062038302 Date: 2011
  Booklist PW LJ
  One man's sacrifice shocks the world . . . One woman's courage threatens a conspiracy as old as humankind . . . And some will do anything--anything--to keep their secrets in the dark. Sanctus A man climbs a cliff face in the oldest inhabited place on earth, a mountain known as the Citadel, a Vatican-like city-state that towers above the city of Ruin in modern-day Turkey. But this is no ordinary ascent. It is a dangerous, symbolic act. And thanks to the media, it is an event witnessed by the entire world. Few people understand its consequence. But for foundation worker Kathryn Mann and a handful of others, it's evidence that a revolution is at hand. For the Sancti, the cowled and secretive monks who live inside the Citadel, it could mean the end of everything they have built. They will stop at nothing to keep what is theirs, and they will break every law in every country and even kill to hold it fast. For American reporter Liv Adamsen, it spurs the memory of the beloved brother she lost years before, setting her on a journey across the world and into the heart of her own identity. There, she will make a discovery so shocking that it will change everything. . . . - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 9.19.11
• The Submission
  Author: Waldeman, Amy
  $ 27 ISBN: 9780374271565 Date: 2011
  PW Booklist LJ
  Cool, eloquent, raising two fatherless children, Claire has emerged as the most visible of the widows who became a potent political force in the aftermath of the catastrophe. She longs for her husband, but she has found her mission: she sits on a jury charged with selecting a fitting memorial for the victims of the attack.
  Updated 7.25.11
• Zone One
  Author: Whitehead, Colson
  $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780385528078 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus Booklist LJ
  In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild-ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern-ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street--aka Zone One--but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety--the "malfunctioning" stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work-ing in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz's desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world. And then things start to go wrong. Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One brilliantly subverts the genre's conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 8.28.11
• The Family Fang
  Author: Wilson, Kevin
  $ 23.99 ISBN: 9780061579035 Date: 2011
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  The Family Fang is a comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family. Like everything else Kevin Wilson does, I have never seen anything like it before. The best single word description would be brilliant.--Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto.
  Updated 6.15.11
• The Gentlemen's Hour
  Author: Winslow, Don
  $ 25 ISBN: 9781439183397 Date: 2011
  LJ Kirkus Booklist
  P.I. Boone Daniels risks the wrath of his fellow boarders after he agree to defend a young man accused of murdering a beloved surfer and local legend.
  Updated 8.15.11