Fiction Stars 2012
January - June
January...
- American Dervish
Author: Akhtar, Ayad
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316183314 Date: 2012
Kirkus
Hayat Shah was captivated by Mina long before he met her: his mother's beautiful, brilliant, and soulfully devout friend is a family legend. When he learns that Mina is leaving Pakistan to live with the Shahs in America, Hayat is thrilled. Hayat's father is less enthusiastic. He left the fundamentalist world behind with reason. What no one expects is that when Mina shows Hayat the beauty and power of the Quran, it will utterly transform the boy.
Updated 1.14.12
- Hope: A Tragedy
Author: Auslander, Shalom
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9781594488382 Date: 2011
PW
Kirkus
The critically acclaimed writer Auslander's debut novel is a hilarious and disquieting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.
Updated 11.4.11
- The Last Nude
Author: Avery, Ellis
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9781594488139 Date: 2012
LJ
Booklist
Inspired by real events in Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Sense of an Ending
Author: Barnes, Julian
$ 23.95 ISBN: 9780307957122 Date: 2011
PW
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.
Updated 11.4.11
- Running the Rift
Author: Benaron, Naomi
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781616200428 Date: 2012
LJ
PW
Kirkus
Winner of the Bellwether Prize, Running the Rift follows Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Rwandan boy, from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life, a 10-year span in which his country is undone by the Hutu-Tutsi tensions.
Updated 1.14.12
- Smut
Author: Bennett, Alan
$ 14 ISBN: 9781250003164 Date: 2011
PW
One of England's finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people's public appearance and their private desires in two tender and surprising stories.
Updated 11.4.11
- Firelight
Author: Callihan, Kristen
$ 5.99 ISBN: 9781455508594 Date: 2012
PW
London, 1881. Miranda Ellis is a woman tormented. Plagued since birth by a strange and powerful gift, she has spent her entire life struggling to control her exceptional abilities. Yet one innocent but irreversible mistake has left her family's fortune ...
Updated 1.14.12
- Bond Girl
Author: Duffy, Erin
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780062065896 Date: 2012
LJ
A fastpaced, hilarious odyssey in fourinch heels, Bond Girl is The Devil Wears Prada meets Wall Street with a touch of Emily Giffen--a novel set in the financial world leading up to the (infamously) tumultuous year of 2008.
Updated 1.14.12
- These Dreams of You
Author: Erickson, Steve
$ 16 ISBN: 9781609450632 Date: 2012
Kirkus
Zan Nordhoc, a failed novelist turned pirate radio DJ, sits before the television with his small, adopted black daughter, watching the election of his country's first black president. In the nova of this historic moment, Zan, his wife, and their son set out to solve the enigma of the little girl's life.
Updated 1.14.12
- Love Lifted Me
Author: Evans, Sara
$ 19.99 ISBN: 9781595544919 Date: 2012
Booklist
Jade Benson embraces unexpected motherhood after her husband Max gains custody of his young son. As she and Max work out their newly formed family, an invitation to coach Texas high school football sends them on a journey. Then a stranger reveals a painful secret, and Jade faces her hardest challenge yet.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction
Updated 1.14.12
- Norumbega Park
Author: Giardina, Anthony
$ 27 ISBN: 9780374278670 Date: 2012
Kirkus
The critically acclaimed author of White Guys delivers a novel about class and parental dreams, sex and spirituality, the way visions conflict with stubborn reality, and a family's ability to open up, for others, a world they could never fully grasp for themselves.
Updated 1.14.12
- Home Front
Author: Hannah, Kristen
$ 27.99 ISBN: 9780312577209 Date: 2012
LJ
The blockbuster bestselling author of Night Road and Firefly Lane delivers a masterful novel that explores the sacrifices of one American family and illuminates the true cost of honor, duty, and love, offering an intimate look at the inner landscape of a disintegrating marriage and a dramatic examination of the price of war.
Updated 1.14.12
- Taft 2012
Author: Heller, Jason
$ 14.95 ISBN: 9781594745508 Date: 2012
PW
He is the perfect presidential candidate. There's just one problem: He is William Howard Taft . . . and he was already U.S. president a hundred years ago. So what on earth is he doing alive and well and considering a running mate in 2012?
Updated 11.8.11
- The Map and the Territory
Author: Houellebecq, Michel
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780307701558 Date: 2012
Kirkus
Booklist
By the most celebrated and controversial French novelist of our time, this Goncourt-winning masterpiece--about art and money, love and friendship and death, fathers and sons--is sure to bring Houellebecq the broad readership in America that he has long enjoyed internationally.
Updated 1.15.12
- A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty
Author: Jackson, Joshilyn
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780446582353 Date: 2011
Booklist
Jackson (Gods in Alabama) delivers a novel that follows a young woman's search for the truth about who her mother really is.
Updated 11.4.11
- Writer, M.D.
Author: Kaminsky, Leah (edt)
$ 15 ISBN: 9780307946867 Date: 2012
Booklist
With contributions from such physician-writers as Oliver Sacks, Abraham Verghese, and Pauline Chen, this is a unique and eye-opening collection of fiction and nonfiction on medicine and mortality and everything in between.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Translation of Bones
Author: Kay, Francesca
$ 24 ISBN: 9781451636819 Date: 2012
Kirkus
Kay's follow-up to her prize-winning An Equal Stillness is at once a profound meditation on the nature of faith and motherhood and a riveting story of passion gone tragically wrong.
Updated 1.14.12
- Flea Circus: A Brief Bestairy of Grief
Author: Keifetz, Mandy
$ 26 ISBN: 9781936970049 Date: 2011
LJ
Kirkus
Pascals Wager and performing fleas. The Haunted Mansion of Long Branch and an old dockside bar. Raceway Park and a pristine 1971 Plymouth Road Runner. A cat named Altamont. These are all that stand between a young mathematician and madness as she attempts to make sense of her lovers suicide. Narrow margins, you say? Not much to place between a slip of a broken-hearted Jersey Girl and the Abyss? Indeed, it is a treacherous twelve seconds on the quarter mile, hilarious and harrowing by turn. Blink and you'll miss it.
Updated 1.14.12
- Mr G: A Novel About Creation
Author: Lightman, Alan
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307379993Date: 2012
Booklist
"As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe." So begins Lightman's playful and profound new novel, Mr G, the story of Creation as narrated by God.
Updated 1.14.12
- How It All Began
Author: Lively, Penelope
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780670023448 Date: 2012
Booklist
LJ
A vibrant new novel from Man Booker Prize winner Lively--a wry, wise story about the surprising ways lives intersect. When Charlotte Rainsford, a retired schoolteacher, is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Flight of Gemma Hardy
Author: Livesey, Margot
$25.99 ISBN: 9780062064226 Date: 2012
PW
An acclaimed author and first-rate storyteller (USA Today) delivers her breakout novel: the captivating tale of a young Scottish orphan who sets out on a journey to escape her oppressive upbringing, and finds independence--and love--on her own terms.
Updated 11.8.11
- The Flame Alphabet
Author: Marcus, Ben
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307379375 Date: 2012
PW
Booklist
From one of the most innovative and important writers of his generation comes a brilliant, mesmerizing, dark new novel in which the speech of children is killing their parents. Marcus's nightmarish vision is both completely alien and frighteningly familiar.
Updated 1.14.12
- Perlmann's Silence
Author: Mercier, Pascal
$ 26 ISBN: 9780802119575 Date: 2012
Booklist
A tremendous international success and a huge favorite with booksellers and critics, Pascal Mercier's "Night Train to Lisbon" has been one of the best-selling literary European novels in recent years. Now, in "Perlmann's Silence," the follow up to his triumphant North American debut, Pascal Mercier delivers a deft psychological portrait of a man striving to get his life back on track in the wake of his beloved wife's death.
Philipp Perlmann, prominent linguist and speaker at a gathering of renowned international academics in a picturesque seaside town near Genoa, is struggling to maintain his grip on reality. Derailed by grief and no longer confident of his professional standing, writing his keynote address seems like an insurmountable task, and, as the deadline approaches, Perlmann realizes that he will have nothing to present. Terror-stricken, he decides to plagiarize the work of Leskov, a Russian colleague. But when Leskov's imminent arrival is announced and threatens to expose Perlmann as a fraud, Perlmann's mounting desperation leads him to contemplate drastic measures.
An exquisite, captivating portrait of a mind slowly unraveling, "Perlmann's Silence" is a brilliant, textured meditation on the complex interplay between language and memory, and the depths of the human psyche.
-Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.16.12
- Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events
Author: Moffett, Kevin
$24.99 ISBN: 9780062069214 Date: 2012
PW
A dazzling new story collection from a brilliant, young, award-winning writer, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events explores the intimate experiences of characters caught between aspiration and achievement, uncertainty and illumination, inertia and discovery, the past and the future.
Updated 11.8.11
- Heft
Author: Moore, Liz
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780393081503 Date: 2012
Booklist
Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kels mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthurs. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlenes unexpected phone call to Arthur a plea for help that jostles them into action. Through Arthur and Kels own quirky and lovable voices, Heft tells the winning story of two improbable heroes whose sudden connection transforms both their lives. Like Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House, Heft is a novel about love and family found in the most unexpected places.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.14.12
- The Odds
Author: O'Nan, Stewart
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780670023165 Date: 2012
Booklist
Valentine's weekend, Art and Marion Fowler flee their Cleveland suburb for Niagara Falls, desperate to recoup their losses. Jobless, with their home approaching foreclosure and their marriage on the brink of collapse, Art and Marion liquidate their savings and book a bridal suite at the Falls' ritziest casino. While they sightsee like tourists during the day, at night they risk it all at the roulette wheel to fix their finances--and save their marriage.
Updated 11.4.11
- The Invisible Onesr
Author: Penney, Stef
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780399157714 Date: 2012
LJ
PW
Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a traveling Gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier. Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware that he's been chosen more for his blood than his investigative skills.
Updated 11.8.11
- The Street Sweeper
Author: Perlman, Elliot
$ 28.95 ISBN: 9781594488474 Date: 2012
PW
Booklist
LJ
The worlds surrounding two men, their families, their pasts, their potential futures, swirl in and out of history as the forces of the Holocaust, the American civil rights movement, Chicago unions, and New York City racial politics combine in a thrilling cross-generational literary symphony.
Updated 1.14.12
- Come In and Cover Me
Author: Phillips, Gin
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9781594488443 Date: 2012
LJ
When Ren was only 12 years old, she lost her older brother, Scott, to a car crash. Since then, Scott has been a presence in her life, appearing as a snatch of song or a reflection in the moonlight. Now, 25 years later, her talent for connecting with the ghosts around her has made her especially sensitive as an archaeologist.
Updated 1.14.12
- Breaking and Entering
Author: Pollack, Eileen
$ 18.95 ISBN: 9781935536123 Date: 2012
Kirkus
Set against the tragic events of the Oklahoma City bombings, Breaking and Entering follows Christian/Jewish couple Louise and Richard Shapiro as they move from California to rural Michigan with their daughter Molly in an attempt to save their marriage. They find their core beliefs about life and love tested as school counselor Louise's students blame Satan for their homosexuality while Richard's new buddies gather arms to defend themselves against enemies at home and abroad. Pollack's America is divided and splintered, yet she writes with hope and humor...Breaking and Entering challenges the stereotypes we hold about our fellow Americans, reminding us of the unexpected bonds that can form across the divide between so-called Red and Blue states.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.14.12
- A Secret in Her Kiss
Author: Randol, Anna
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9780062025807 Date: 2012
PW
Debut author Randol tells the exotic, sultry, and adventurous romance of a fiercely independent heroine determined to live life on her own terms and the handsome soldier who will break the rules he has lived his life by to realize a love he never believed possible.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Lure of Song and Magic
Author: Rice, Patricia
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9781402255748 Date: 2012
Booklist
Workaholic TV producer Dylan Ives believes former singing sensation Syrene Malcolm holds the clue to finding his kidnapped son. A lost child herself, Syrene cares about the missing boy even though Dylan's personality is nothing short of rude. But Syrene refuses to unleash her dangerous siren's voice, even for a man who is impossible to deny.
Updated 11.4.11
- Heir of Danger
Author: Rickloff, Alix
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9781439170380 Date: 2012
Booklist
A man too dangerous to live . . .
After seven years outrunning enemies, friends, and his own soulcrushing memories, Brendan Douglas is risking everything on a desperate mission. He has vowed to thwart the evil mage Maelodor's plans to unlock the past ...
Updated 1.16.12
- The Little Russian
Author: Sherman, Susan
$ 25 ISBN: 9781582437729 Date: 2012
Booklist
LJ
The novel tells the story of Berta Alshonsky, who revels in childhood memories of her time spent with a wealthy family in Moscow--a life filled with salons, balls, and all the trappings of the Upper Class--very different from her current life as a grocer's daughter in the Jewish townlet of Mosny. So when a mysterious and cultured wheat merchant walks into the grocery, Berta's life is forever altered.
Updated 11.4.11
- Glaciers
Author: Smith, Alexis M.
$ 12.95 ISBN: 9781935639206 Date: 2012
PW
Isabel is a single, twentysomething thrift-store shopper and collector of remnants, things cast off or left behind by others. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska.
Glaciers unfolds internally, the action shaped by Isabel's sense of history, memory, and place, recalling the work of writers such as Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Virginia Woolf. For Isabel, the fleeting moments of one day can reveal an entire life. While she contemplates loss and the intricate fissures it creates in our lives, she accumulates the stories--the remnants--of those around her and she begins to tell her own story.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 11.8.11
- The Patrick Melrose Novels
Author: St Aubyn, Edward
$ 20 ISBN: 9780312429966 Date: 2012
PW
This single volume brings together the first four Patrick Melrose novels by Booker Prize Finalist Aubyn. The collection includes Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope. and Mother's Milk.
Updated 1.14.12
- At Last
Author: St. Aubyn, Edward
$ 25 ISBN: 9780374298890 Date: 2012
PW
A powerful reflection on pain, acceptance, and the treacheries of family, At Last is the stunning culmination of the Melrose books, a work of glittering dark comedy and profound emotional truth.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Winter Palace
Author: Stachniak, Eva
$ 26 ISBN: 9780553808124 Date: 2012
Booklist
From an award-winning author comes this passionate novel that illuminates, as only fiction can, the early life of one of history's boldest women. The Winter Palace tells the epic story of Catherine the Great's improbable rise to power--as seen through the ever-watchful eyes of an all-but-invisible servant close to the throne.
Updated 1.14.12
- Monstress
Author: Tenorio, Lysley
$ 13.99 ISBN: 9780062059567 Date: 2012
PW
Monstress is a collection of heartbreaking, vivid, original stories set amongst the Filipino-American communities of California and the Philippines by a breathtaking new talent--a winner of a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Writer's Award.
Updated 1.14.12
- Don't Let Me Go
Author: Trumble, J.H.
$ 15 ISBN: 9780758269270 Date: 2012
PW
Some people spend their whole lives looking for the right partner. Nate Schaper found his in high school. In the eight months since their cautious flirting became a real, heart-pounding, tell-the-parents relationship, Nate and Adam have been inseparable. Even when local kids take their homophobia to brutal levels, Nate is undaunted. He and Adam are rock solid. Two parts of a whole. Yin and yang. But when Adam graduates and takes an off-Broadway job in New York at Nate's insistence- that certainty begins to flicker.
Updated 11.8.11
- The World We Found
Author: Umrigar, Thrity
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780061938344 Date: 2012
LJ
Booklist
The acclaimed author of The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven returns with a breathtaking new novel--a skillfully wrought, emotionally resonant story of four women and the indelible friendship they share.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Quality of Mercy
Author: Unsworth, Barry
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780385534772 Date: 2012
Booklist
In this stirring sequel to the Booker Prize-winning Sacred Hunger, a dramatic clash between haves and have-nots plays out against the vivid backdrop of 18th-century England.
Updated 1.16.12
- An Available Man
Author: Wolitzer, Hilma
$ 25 ISBN: 9780345527547 Date: 2012
Booklist
In this tender and funny novel, award-winning author Wolitzer mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the chaos and joys of falling in love the second time around.
Updated 11.4.11
- Best Erotic Romance
Author: Wright, Kristina
$ 14.95 ISBN: 9781573447515 Date: 2012
PW
This inaugural collection of erotic romance features the very best of the genre. In erotic romance, the sexual component is critical to the development of the romantic relationship. Each of these masterfully written tales contains the essence of true romance: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying, optimistic ending. What sets Best Erotic Romance apart is the scorching hot sex and the happily-ever-after (or happy-for-now) ending. Award-winning romance writer and editor Kristina Wright and her cast of terrific romance writers have crafted stories that touch the hearts and minds of readers, and linger in the memory for a long, long time.
Updated 11.8.11
February...
- The Dressmaker
Author: Alcott, Kate
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780385535588 Date: 2012
LJ
Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes a vivid, romantic, and relentlessly compelling historical novel about a spirited young seamstress who survives the disaster only to find herself embroiled in the media frenzy left in the wake of the tragedy.
Updated 1.16.12
- My Wicked Little Lies
Author: Alexander, Victoria
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9781420117066 Date: 2012
PW
A #1New York Times-bestselling author presents a captivating new English Victorian romance in which a daring young woman must choose between her past and future.
Updated 1.14.12
- Me and You
Author: Ammaniti, Niccolo
$ 14 ISBN: 9780802170903 Date: 2012
PW
From internationally best-selling author Niccolo Ammaniti, comes a funny, tragic, gut-punch of a novel, charting how an unlikely alliance between two outsiders blows open one family's secrets.
Lorenzo Cumi is a fourteen-year-old misfit. To quell the anxiety of his concerned, socially conscious parents, he tells them he's been invited on an exclusive ski vacation with the popular kids. On the morning of the trip, Lorenzo demands that his mother drop him off before they arrive at the train station, insisting that his status will be compromised if he shows up accompanied by his mother. Reluctantly, she agrees, and as soon as she is safely out of the vicinity, he turns around and makes his way back to his neighborhood, to put his real plan in motion: for one blessed week, Lorenzo will retreat to a forgotten cellar in his family's apartment building, where he will live in perfect isolation, keeping the adult world at bay.
But when his estranged half-sister, Olivia, shows up in the cellar unexpectedly, his idyll is shattered, and the two become locked in a battle of wills--forced to confront the very demons they are each struggling to escape.
Updated 11.8.11
- Pure
Author: Baggott, Julia
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9781455503063 Date: 2012
PW
Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet, she thinks about what is lost--how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies.
Updated 1.14.12
- A Scandalous Countess
Author: Beverley, Jo
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9780451236043 Date: 2012
Booklist
Lady May is back. And so is the scandal that sent her tumbling from her position as the toast of London, when her husband, the Earl of Maybury, was killed in a duel. Even a year of mourning hasn't quieted the rumors of her infidelity. Georgia Maybury is determined to regain her position in the beau monde, but a scarred former naval officer threatens her plans.
Updated 1.16.12
- Accidents of Provence
Author: Brown, Stacia
$ 25 ISBN: 9780547490809 Date: 2012
Kirkus
The story of an unmarried tradeswoman in London during the Puritan Revolution(1649-1650) whose passionate love affair leads to a trial for murder.
Updated 1.14.12
- Before She Dies
Author: Burton, Mary
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9781420110210 Date: 2012
PW
Romantic suspense star Burton infuses every sentence with suspense in Before She Dies, her chilling new thriller in which a serial killer obsessed with the occult plays judge, jury, and executioner.
Updated 1.14.12
- Ragnarok: The End of the Gods
Author: Byatt, A.S.
$ 24 ISBN: 9780802129925 Date: 2012
PW
Booklist
LJ
Booker Prize winner Dame Antonia Byatt breathes life into the Ragnorak myth, the st" retells the finale of Norse mythology. A story of the destruction of life on this planet and the end of the gods themselves: what more relevant myth could any modern writer choose? Just as Wagner used this dramatic and catastrophic struggle for the climax of his Ring Cycle, so AS Byatt now reinvents it in all its intensity and glory. As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on Britain, one young girl is evacuated to the countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life. Then she is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods - a book of ancient Norse myths - and her inner and outer worlds are transformed.
War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that AS Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark.
Updated 1.14.12
- Into the Free
Author: Cantrell, Julie
$ 12.99 ISBN: 9780781404242 Date: 2012
PW
Young Millie Reynolds must confront the past and overcome her family's long history of destructive choices before finding her own path to freedom.
Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction
Updated 1.14.12
- Stay Awake
Author: Chaon, Dan
$ 25 ISBN: 9780345530370 Date: 2012
LJ
PW
Before the critically acclaimed novels Await Your Reply and You Remind Me of Me, Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer of dazzling short stories. Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award.
Updated 1.14.12
- Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman
Author: Delius, Fredrich Christian
$ 13 ISBN: 9780374533298 Date: 2012
Booklist
In Rome one January afternoon in 1943, a young German woman is on her way to listen to a Bach concert at the Lutheran church. The war is for her little more than a daydream, until she realizes that her husband might never return. Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman, winner of the prestigious Georg Buchner prize, is a mesmerizing psychological portrait of the human need to safeguard innocence and integrity at any cost--even at the risk of excluding reality. More than just the story of this single woman, it is a compelling and credible description of a typical young German woman during the Nazi era.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.16.12
- Half-Blood Blues
Author: Edugyan, Esi
$ 15 ISBN: 9781250012708 Date: 2012
PW
Booklist
Man Booker Prize Finalist 2011 Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction
Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris cafe. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black.
Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, both African Americans from Baltimore, have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film's premier, Sid's role in Falk's fate will be questioned and the two old musicians set off on a surprising and strange journey.
From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk's incarceration in Sachsenhausen. Half-Blood Blues is a story about music and race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.16.12
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
Author: Englander, Nathan
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307958709 Date: 2012
Booklist
Kirkus
PW
The author of the sensational national bestseller For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and"The Ministry of Special Cases returns with a commanding new collection of short stories.
Updated 1.14.12
- Delicacy
Author: Foenkinos, David
$ 14.99 ISBN: 9780062004369 Date: 2012
PW
Reminiscent of the work of Nick Hornby and Muriel Barbery, Delicacy is a funny, sweet-as-candy story about a young widow who comes to find love with the unlikeliest of people--her clumsy and unassuming coworker.
Updated 1.14.12
- Friends LIke Us
Author: Fox, Lauren
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307268112 Date: 2012
Booklist
From the author of Still Life with Husband comes a heartbreaking, honest, deliriously funny new novel about what happens when the perfect balance of a friendship is upended by love.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Lost Saints of Tennessee
Author: Franklin-Willis, Amy
$ 25 ISBN: 9780802120052 Date: 2012
LJ
With enormous heart and dazzling agility, Amy Franklin-Willis expertly mines the fault lines in one Southern working-class family. Driven by the soulful voices of forty-two-year-old Ezekiel Cooper and his mother, Lillian, The Lost Saints of Tennessee journeys from the 1940s to 1980s as it follows Zeke's evolution from anointed son, to honorable sibling, to unhinged middle-aged man.
After Zeke loses his twin brother in a mysterious drowning and his wife to divorce, only ghosts remain in his hometown of Clayton, Tennessee. Zeke makes the decision to leave town in a final attempt to escape his pain, throwing his two treasured possessions--a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and his dead brother's ancient dog--into his truck, and heads east. He leaves behind two young daughters and his estranged mother, who reveals her own conflicting view of the Cooper family story in a vulnerable but spirited voice stricken by guilt over old sins and clinging to the hope that her family isn't beyond repair.
When Zeke finds refuge with cousins in Virginia horse country, divine acts in the form of severe weather, illness, and a new romance collide, leading Zeke to a crossroads where he must decide the fate of his family.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 11.8.11
- Miss Hillary Schools a Scoundrel
Author: Grace, Samantha
$ 6.99 ISBN: 9781402258312 Date: 2012
PW
An exciting debut in a series that introduces the first of four debonair Regency bachelors who have it all: wealth, influence, and women swooning at their feet.
Updated 1.14.12
- These Days Are Ours
Author: Haimoff, Michelle
$ 13.99 ISBN: 9781455500291 Date: 2012
Booklist
Six months after September 11th, New Yorkers are instructed to get on with their lives despite the terror advisories, streets filled with 9/11 merchandise, and mail that may contain Anthrax.
But for Hailey, still jobless after college and living in her family's Fifth Avenue penthouse, getting on with life means getting closer to Michael Brenner, the Princeton graduate and future human rights lawyer who seems to have it all. The city feels as if it's on the brink of apocalypse, and seeking out any sort of future seems pointless. So Hailey and her friends - Katie, already working at Morgan Stanley; Randy, a trust-fund kid who wears sweaters with holes in them; and Jess, confident of her future success regardless of her present inertia - stay out all night, dream up get rich quick schemes and aspire to greatness while questioning how much that greatness really matters.
But when Hailey meets Adrian, a transplanted Pennsylvanian and recent Brown graduate who doesn't belong to Hailey's privileged mileu, she begins to realize that her view of the world might not be the only one there is, and soon she is questioning everything she thought she knew.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.16.12
- Girlchild
Author: Hassman, Tupelo
$ 24 ISBN: 9780374162573 Date: 2012
PW
In this heart-stopping, original debut, Hassman tells the story of young Rory Hendrix, who is determined to get out of the Reno trailer park where she lives with her bartender mother and prove she's not the feeble-minded imbecile she's been labeled.
Updated 1.14.12
- Contents May Have Shifted
Author: Houston, Pam
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780393082654 Date: 2012
Booklist
Heart-stopping prose and crackling observations on a spiritual journey toward a life rich in love and freedom.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Snow Child
Author: Ivey, Eowyn
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316175678 Date: 2012
LJ
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead--and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall
Updated 1.14.12
- Five Bells
Author: Jones, Gail
$ 15 ISBN: 9781250003737 Date: 2012
PW
Told over the course of a single Saturday in Sydney, Five Bells, by the author of Black Mirror, describes four lives that come to share not only a place and time, but also mysterious patterns and ambiguous symbols, including a barely glimpsed fifth figure, a young child.
Updated 1.14.12
- Sweet Stuff
Author: Kauffman, Donna
$ 14 ISBN: 9780758266361 Date: 2012
PW
In the second novel of her irresistibly delicious Cupcake Club series, USA Today-bestselling author Kauffman combines the delights of baking, cupcakes, and falling in love.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Lord of Illusion
Author: Kennedy, Kathryne
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9781402236549 Date: 2012
PW
Booklist
Rebel Drystan Hawkes dreams of freeing England and discovers the key to opening the door to Elfhame lies with Camille, a young slave woman. Drystan sets off to rescue her and find the key that will send the dreaded elf lords away forever. But who is rescuing whom?
Updated 1.16.12
- I've Got Your Number
Author: Kinsella, Sophie
$ 26 ISBN: 9780385342063 Date: 2012
Booklist
Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, but in one afternoon her "happily ever after" begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect! Well, perfect except that the phone's owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn't agree. He wants his phone back and doesn't appreciate Poppy reading his messages and wading into his personal life.
Updated 1.16.12
- Drifting House
Author: Lee, Krys
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780670023257 Date: 2012
PW
LJ
Kirkus
An unflinching portrayal of the Korean immigrant experience from an extraordinary new talent in fiction.
Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present.
In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants' unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter.
In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.
Updated 1.14.12
- Watergate
Author: Mallon, Thomas
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780307378729 Date: 2012
Booklist
From one of our most esteemed historical novelists comes a remarkable retelling of the Watergate scandal, as seen through a kaleidoscope of its colorful perpetrators and investigators. Mallon conveys the drama and high comedy of the Nixon presidency through the urgent perspectives of seven characters we only thought we knew before now.
Updated 1.14.12
- Rust
Author: Mars, Julie
$ 26 ISBN: 9781579622268 Date: 2012
Booklist
Updated 1.16.12
- History of a Pleasure Seeker
Author: Mason, RIchard
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307599476 Date: 2012
LJ
An opulent, romantic novel, set at the height of Europe's belle epoque, about a handsome young man in his mid-20s who secures a position as a tutor in the household of one of the most prominent bourgeois families in Amsterdam and his entry into a world of moneyed glamour and dangerous temptations.
Updated 1.14.12
- Diary of a Mad Fat Girl
Author: Mcafee, Stephanie
$ 15 ISBN: 9780451236494 Date: 2012
LJ
The New York Times-bestselling e-book is now available in an expanded print edition. With a sharp and distinctive voice, McAfee delivers a hilarious and fast-paced tale about Ace Jones and her two best friends--thick as thieves and tough as nails--navigating Southern small-town politics and prejudices, finding love, and standing up for each other all the way.
Updated 1.14.12
- What Happened to Hannah
Author: McComas, Mary Kay
$ 14.99 ISBN: 9780062084781 Date: 2012
LJ
As a teenager, Hannah Benson ran away from home in order to save herself. Now, twenty years later, the past comes calling and delivers life-changing news: her mother and sister have passed away, leaving Hannah the guardian of her fifteen-year-old niece.
Returning home to bitter memories and devastating secrets, Hannah must overcome her painful past to pave a future with her niece, the last best chance at a family for both of them. She begins to create a new, happier life with her niece and rekindles a relationship with Grady Steadman, one of the few people she's ever called a friend.
But she can't forget what she cannot forgive, or lay to rest those ghosts that will not die. Will love and trust--and the truth--give her the strength to stand her ground and fight for what she deserves?
Updated 1.14.12
- Secrets of Last Summer
Author: Neggers, Carla
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9780778313113 Date: 2012
Booklist
New York Times- and USA Today-bestselling author Neggers returns to her contemporary romance roots with a heartwarming tale of riches lost and found on the storied Quabbin Reservoir.
Updated 1.16.12
- The Healing
Author: Odell, Jonathan
$ 26 ISBN: 9780385534673 Date: 2012
LJ
Troubled by his wife's disturbing mental state and concerned about a mysterious plague that is sweeping through the plantation in the pre-Civil War South, Master Satterfield purchases a slavewoman known as a healer. But the master gets more than he bargained for when Polly's sharp tongue and troubling predictions cause unrest throughout the plantation.
Updated 11.8.11
- The Man from Primrose Lane
Author: Renner, James
$ 26 ISBN: 9780374200954 Date: 2012
PW
With a deft and singular blend of suspense, literature, and horror, The Man from Primrose Lane boasts as many twists and turns as a roller coaster. It's a spellbinding journey of redemption and a reflection on the roles of fate, destiny, and obsession when it comes to matters of the heart.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Mirage
Author: Ruff, Matt
$25.95 ISBN: 9780061976223 Date: 2012
PW
From the beloved cult author of Bad Monkeys comes an unprecedented, mind-bending psychological thriller, in which an alternate history of 9/11 uncovers startling and harrowing truths about America and the Middle East.
Updated 11.21.11
- Outlaws of Brasada: A Western Duo
Author: Savage, Les
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9781432825584 Date: 2012
Booklist
Updated 1.16.12
- In-Flight Entertainment: Stories
Author: Simpson, Helen
$ 24 ISBN: 9780307595584 Date: 2012
Booklist
PW
Updated 1.14.12
- By Blood
Author: Ullman, Ellen
$ 27 ISBN: 9780374117559 Date: 2012
Kirkus
An award-winning writer returns with a major, absorbing, atmospheric novel that takes on the most dramatic and profoundly personal subject matter--San Francisco in the 1970s. With ferocious intelligence and an enthralling, magnetic prose, Ullman weaves a dark and brilliant, intensely personal novel that feels as big and timeless as it is sharp and timely.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Quiet Twin
Author: Vyleta, Dan
$ 16 ISBN: 9781608198085 Date: 2012
Booklist
Vienna, 1939. Professor Speckstein's dog has been brutally killed, the latest victim in a string of unsolved murders. Speckstein wants answers-but these are uncharitable times, and one must be careful where one probes ...
When an unexpected house call leads Dr. Beer to Speckstein's apartment, he finds himself in the bedroom of Zuzka, the professor's niece. Wide-eyed, flirtatious, and not detectably ill, Zuzka leads the young doctor to her window and opens up a view of their apartment block that Beer has never known. Across the shared courtyard, there is nine-year-old Anneliese, the lonely daughter of an alcoholic. Five windows to the left lives a secretive mime who comes home late at night and keeps something-or someone-precious hidden from view. From the garret drifts the mournful sound of a trumpet player, and a basement door swings closed behind the building's inscrutable janitor.
Does one of these enigmatic neighbors have blood on their hands?
Dr. Beer, who has his own reasons for keeping his private life hidden from public scrutiny, reluctantly becomes embroiled in an inquiry that forces him to face the dark realities of Nazi rule. By turns chilling and tender, The Quiet Twin explores a dystopian world of social paranoia, mistrust, and fear-and the danger of staying silent.
Updated 1.14.12
March...
- Carry the One
Author: Anshaw, Carol
$ 25 ISBN: 9781451636888 Date: 2012
PW
This stunning, breakout achievement has already been hailed by Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of Room, for presenting "passion and addiction, guilt and damage, all the beautiful mess of family life." Carry the One will lift readers off their feet and bear them along on its eloquent tide."
Updated 11.8.11
- Kingdom Come
Author: Ballard, J.G.
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780871404039 Date: 2012
PW
A violent novel filled with insidious twists, "Kingdom Come" follows the exploits of Richard Pearson, a rebellious, unemployed advertising executive, whose father is gunned down by a deranged mental patient in a vast shopping mall outside Heathrow Airport. When the prime suspect is released without charge, Richard's suspicions are aroused.
Updated 1.14.12
- City of Bohane
Author: Barry, Kevin
$ 25 ISBN: 9781555976088 Date: 2012
Booklist
Thirty or so years in the future, the once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. For years it has all been under the control of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air.
Updated 11.8.11
- Schmidt Steps Back
Author: Begley, Louis
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307700650 Date: 2012
Booklist
At once darkly funny and deeply poignant, Schmidt Steps Back is the most emotionally nuanced installment of the drama that began with the acclaimed About Schmidt.
Updated 1.16.12
- The O'Briens
Author: Behrens, Peter
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307379931 Date: 2012
PW
An unforgettable saga of love, loss, and exhilarating change spanning half a century in the lives of a restless family, The O'Briens is the story of a marriage and a family moving through history--from the first flying machines, through two world wars, to the election of JFK--told with epic precision and wondrous imagination.
Updated 1.14.12
- Birds of a Lesser Paradise
Author: Bergman, Megan Mayhew
$ 24 ISBN: 9781451643350 Date: 2012
PW
From a prizewinning young writer whose stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South comes a heartwarming and hugely appealing debut collection that explores the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world.
Updated 1.14.12
- Forgotten Country
Author: Chung, Catherine
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9781594488085 Date: 2012
PW
Booklist
On the night Janie waits for her sister, Hannah, to be born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, so Janie is charged with keeping Hannah safe. As time passes, Janie hears more stories, while facts remain unspoken. Her father tells tales about numbers, and in his stories everything works out. In her mother's stories, deer explode in fields, frogs bury their loved ones in the ocean, and girls jump from cliffs and fall like flowers into the sea. Within all these stories are warnings.
Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie embarks on a mission to find her sister and finally uncover the truth beneath her family's silence. To do so, she must confront their history, the reason for her parents' sudden move to America twenty years earlier, and ultimately her conflicted feelings toward her sister and her own role in the betrayal behind their estrangement.
Weaving Korean folklore within a modern narrative of immigration and identity, Forgotten Country is a fierce exploration of the inevitability of loss, the conflict between obligation and freedom, and a family struggling to find its way out of silence and back to one another.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.16.12
- Whatever You Love
Author: Doughty, Louise
$14.99 ISBN: 9780062094667 Date: 2012
LJ
Updated 1.14.12
- A Partial History of Lost Causes:
Author: Dubois, Jennifer
$ 26 ISBN: 9781400069774 Date: 2012
PW
In duBois's mesmerizing and exquisitely rendered debut novel, a long-lost letter links two disparate characters, each searching for meaning against seemingly insurmountable odds.
Updated 11.8.11
- The Gods of Gotham
Author: Faye, Lyndsay
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780399158377 Date: 2012
LJ
1845. New York City forms its first police force. The great potato famine hits Ireland. These two seemingly disparate events will change New York City. Forever.
Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, fantasizing about the day he has enough money to win the girl of his dreams. But when his dreams literally incinerate in a fire devastating downtown Manhattan, he finds himself disfigured, unemployed, and homeless. His older brother obtains Timothy a job in the newly minted NYPD, but he is highly skeptical of this new "police force." And he is less than thrilled that his new beat is the notoriously down-and-out Sixth Ward-at the border of Five Points, the world's most notorious slum.
One night while making his rounds, Wilde literally runs into a little slip of a girl-a girl not more than ten years old-dashing through the dark in her nightshift . . . covered head to toe in blood.
Timothy knows he should take the girl to the House of Refuge, yet he can't bring himself to abandon her. Instead, he takes her home, where she spins wild stories, claiming that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of 23rd Street. Timothy isn't sure whether to believe her or not, but, as the truth unfolds, the reluctant copper star finds himself engaged in a battle for justice that nearly costs him his brother, his romantic obsession, and his own life.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.14.12
- Another Piece of My Heart
Author: Green, Jane
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312591823 Date: 2012
LJ
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Jemima J and The Beach House comes her most emotional and powerful novel yet: a story that explores the complications of a woman marrying into a ready-made family, and the true meaning of motherhood.
Updated 1.14.12
- Arcadia
Author: Groff, Lauren
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9781401340872 Date: 2012
PW
Booklist
A mesmerizing second novel from the bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia is the lyrical and haunting story of a great American dream--the progress of a utopian community and its lasting impact on a gifted young man.
Updated 1.16.12
- Enchantments
Author: Harrison, Kathryn
$ 26 ISBN: 9781400063475 Date: 2012
Booklist
From one of America's most admired literary voices comes a gorgeously written, enthralling novel set in the final days of Russia's Romanov Empire. Mesmerizing, haunting, and told in Harrison's signature crystalline prose, Enchantments is a love story about two people who come together as everything around them is falling apart.
Updated 1.14.12
- The Good Father
Author: Hawley, Noah
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780385535533 Date: 2012
PW
First-time author Hawley delivers an intense, psychological novel about one doctor's suspense-filled quest to unlock the mind of a suspected political assassin: his 20-year old son. Told alternately from the point of view of the guilt-ridden, determined father and his meandering, ruminative son, The Good Father is a powerfully emotional page-turner that keeps one guessing until the very end.
Updated 11.21.11
- Gods Without Men
Author: Kunzru, Hari
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780307957115 Date: 2012
Kirkus
Gods Without Men is a branching and multilayered novel by one of the world's most acclaimed young writers that centers on a couple searching for their young son, lost in the brutal, strangely powerful landscape of the Mojave Desert.
Updated 1.14.12
- Touch of a Rogue
Author: Marlowe, Mia
$ 14 ISBN: 9780758263544 Date: 2012
PW
Updated 1.16.12
- The Song of Achilles
Author: Miller, Madeline
$ 25 ISBN: 9780062060617 Date: 2011
LJ
PW
A thrilling and unique retelling of the legend of Achilles: a tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart--a dazzling feat of the imagination that is sure to be one of the most unusual debuts of the season.
Updated 11.8.11
- Mudwoman
Author: Oates, Joyce Carol
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780062095626 Date: 2011
Booklist
From the author of the New York Times bestseller A Widow's Story comes a riveting novel that explores the high price of success in the life of one woman--the first female president of a lauded Ivy League institution--and her hold upon her self-identity in the face of personal and professional demons.
Updated 11.4.11
- Perla
Author: De Robertis, Carolina
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307599599 Date: 2012
Booklist
Set in Buenos Aires, Perla is a coming-of-age story, based on a recent shocking chapter of Argentine history, about a young woman who makes a devastating discovery about her origins with the help of an enigmatic houseguest.
Updated 1.16.12
- Flatscreen
Author: Wilson, Adam
$ 14.99 ISBN: 9780062090331 Date: 2012
Booklist
From a rising indie-lit star comes the gleefully absurd, heartwarming story of a young man's struggle to become a new person in a world where nothing is new.
Updated 1.16.12
April
- Waiting for Sunrise
Author: Boyd, William
$ 26.99 ISBN: 9780061876769 Date: 2012
PW
Updated 1.16.12
- The Story of Us
Author: Caletti, Deb
$ 16.99 ISBN:9781442423466 Date: 2012
Booklist
Updated 1.16.12
- The Red Book
Author: Kogan, Deborah Copaken
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781401340827 Date: 2012
PW
Updated 1.16.12
- The Last Warner Woman
Author: Miller, Kei
$ 16 ISBN: 9781566892957 Date: 2012
PW
The American debut of a Caribbean literary talent often compared to Orange Prize winner Andrea Levy and Alexander McCall Smith.
Updated 1.14.12
- Enraptured
Author: Naughton, Elizabeth
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9781402262128 Date: 2012
PW
Orpheus may have joined the elite protectors known as Eternal Guardians, but they've never trusted whose side he's really on. And the half-daemon couldn't care less. Orpheus has only one goal: rescue his brother from the Underworld. He's not expecting a woman to get in the way, especially not one sent by Zeus to seduce, entrap, and then ultimately destroy him. A woman who will dredge up a past he doesn't remember, a love that once condemned him, and a dark and deadly secret as old as the Eternal Guardians themselves.
- Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.14.12
- The Cove
Author: Rash, Ron
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780061804199 Date: 2012
LJ
PW
Updated 1.15.12
May
- No Longer a Gentleman
Author: Putney, Mary Jo
$ 7.99 ISBN:9781420117233 Date: 2012
PW
Updated 1.16.12