New Books
May 2009
Wanting by Richard Flanagan - One of our most inventive and important international literary voices, Richard Flanagan now delivers Wanting, a powerful and moving tale of colonialism, ambition, and the lusts and longings that make us human. (May 2009)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline. Are the Ayreses haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life? (May 2009) 
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen - It follows twelve-year-old master map maker T.S. Spivet on a cross country adventure. SPIVET has already garnered enormous attention here and abroad, and will be published in an astounding fifteen countries. (May 2009)
Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears - Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and arms dealer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents. Stone’s Fall is a quest to discover how and why John Stone dies, falling out of a window at his London home. Chronologically, it moves backwards–from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890, and finally to Venice in 1867– and in the process the quest to uncover the truth plays out against the backdrop of the evolution of high-stakes international finance, Europe’s first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century’s arms race. (May 2009)
Love and Obstacles : Stories by Aleksandar Hemon - (May 2009)
Anybody Any Minute by Julie Mars - Ellen Kenny has a big mouth and a penchant for telling the truth, which is why she’s just been fired from yet another high-profile NYC job. Determined to make the most of this unexpected free time, she heads to Montreal to visit her sister. On the way, she spots a tumbledown upstate farmhouse—one she’s seen in her dreams for years—and impulsively buys it on a hefty credit card advance. Over her husband’s protests, Ellen decides to drop out of the rat race and spend the summer living out her woman-who-runs-with-the wolves fantasy, communing with nature—her own included—in an effort to confront middle age and figure out how on earth she got there. Rather than peacefully tend her garden and puzzle things out, however, Ellen soon becomes embroiled in the exceedingly unique problems of two redneck, social misfit neighbors—an ex-biker and an aging chainsaw sculptor—while taking care of a narcoleptic dog and a child who doesn’t speak English. (May 2009)
The Pig Comes to Dinner by Joseph Caldwell - (May 2009)
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - About a young immigrant in 1950s Brooklyn torn between her Irish roots and the man who wins her heart. (May 2009)
The Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone - On her seventh birthday, Annie’s con artist father left her behind at his boyhood home, then he raced out of her life. Years later, Annie, now a top Navy jet pilot, returns home on her 26th birthday. But everything changes when Jack calls to say he is dying, and needs her to fly to St. Louis to bring him the airplane he gave her the day he left. And if she does, he will give her the one thing she always wanted, that he always lied to her about the name of her mother. (May 2009)
The Family Man by Elinor Lipman - An hysterical phone call from his ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph up end Henry Archer’s well ordered life. They bring him back into contact with the child he adored, a short-term stepdaughter from a misbegotten marriage long ago. Henry is a lawyer, an old-fashioned man, gay, successful, lonely. Thalia is now twenty-nine, an actress hopeful, estranged from her newly widowed crackpot mother— Denise, Henry’s ex. When Thalia and her complicated social life move into the basement of Henry’s Upper West Side townhouse, she finds a champion in her long-lost father, and he finds new life—and maybe even new love—in the commotion.(May 2009)
Sunnyside by Glen David Gold - A grand entertainment with the brilliantly realized figure of Charlie Chaplin at its center: a novel at once cinematic and intimate, thrilling and darkly comic, that dramatizes the moment when American capitalism, a world at war, and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity. (May 2009)
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk - Pygmy is one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees. It’s a comedy. And a romance. (May 2009)
A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell - Even though hardened crime reporter Hannah Vogel knows all too well how tough it is to survive in 1931 Berlin, she is devastated when she sees a photograph of her brother’s body posted in the Hall of the Unnamed Dead. Ernst, a cross-dressing lounge singer at a seedy nightclub, had many secrets, a never-ending list of lovers, and plenty of opportunities to get into trouble. Hannah delves into the city’s dark underbelly to flush out his murderer, but the late night arrival of a five-year-old orphan on her doorstep complicates matters. Her investigations into Ernst’s murder and Anton’s parentage uncover political intrigue and sex scandals in the top ranks of the rising Nazi party… (May 2009)
Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea - Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn’t the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village–they’ve all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men–her own “Siete MagnĂficos”–to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over. (May 2009)
The PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 edited by Laura Furman - Featuring stories selected from thousands published in literary magazines, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 is studded with great writers such as Junot Diaz, Nadine Gordimer, Ha Jin, and Paul Theroux, as well as new voices. The winning stories feature locales as diverse as post-war Vietnam, a retirement community in Cape Town, South Africa, an Egyptian desert village, and a permanently darkened New York City; the dizzying range of characters include a Russian mail-order bride in Finland, a rebellious Dominican girl in New Jersey, and a hallucinating British Gulf War veteran. The stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the twenty winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines. (May 2009)
Paper Butterfly by Diane Wei Liang - Second installment in the successful Mei Wang detective series — a riveting tale of intrigue, culture clash, and missing persons in modern China. Set in Beijing. (May 2009)
Death of a Pope by Piers Paul Read - a novel of intrigue, church espionage, and an attempt to destroy the longest continuous government in the world-the Papacy. (May 2009)
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris - 9th in the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series. (May 2009)
The Way Home by George Pelecanos - A brilliant new novel about fathers and sons and the dangers of modern life. (May 2009)
Alexandria by Lindsay Davis - The new Falco novel finds Lindsey Davis’s First Century detective Marcus Didius Falco and his partner Helena Justina investigating crime in the famous city of Alexandria. (May 2009) 
Cemetary Dance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, that the assailant was their strange, sinister neighbor-a man who, by all reports, was already dead and buried weeks earlier. While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth. (May 2009)
Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey - Lushly written with rich and vivid characters, SANTA OLIVIA is Jacqueline Carey’s take on comic book superheroes and the classic werewolf myth. (May 2009)Â
Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley - In twelve months between 2007 and 2008, Buckley coped with the passing of his father, William F. Buckley, the father of the modern conservative movement, and his mother, Patricia Taylor Buckley, one of New York’s most glamorous and colorful socialites. As Buckley tells the story of their final year together, he takes readers on a surprisingly entertaining tour through hospitals, funeral homes, and memorial services, capturing the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a fifty-five-year-old orphan. Buckley maintains his sense of humor by recalling the words of Oscar Wilde: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.” (May 2009)
April 2009
The Maple Stories by John Updike - (April 2009)
Yes, My Darling Daughter by Margaret Leroy - Every once in a blue moon, a masterful writer dives into Gothic waters and emerges with a novel that—like Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, or, more recently, Patrick McGrath’s Asylum—simultaneously celebrates and transcends the genre. Welcome Margaret Leroy to the clan. Haunted and haunting, Yes, My Darling Daughter is a wonderfully original, deliciously suspenseful mystery. Impossible though it may seem, Grace has to face the fact that her daughter may be remembering a past life. And not only that: the danger haunting Sylvie from her past life is still very much a threat to her in this one. (April 2009)
Love Stories in This Town by Amanda Eyre Ward - a stunning collection of twelve stories about love in all its complexity, absurdity, and glory. From San Francisco to Savannah, Texas to Montana, Ward’s characters are united in their fervent search for a place where they truly belong. (April 2009)
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley -In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950—and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. (April 2009)
Everything Asian by Sung J. Woo - You’re twelve years old. A month has passed since your Korean Air flight landed at lovely Newark Airport. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable. Your mother isn’t exactly happy, either. You’re seeing your father for the first time in five years, and although he’s nice enough, he might be, well–how can you put this delicately?–a loser. You can’t speak English, but that doesn’t stop you from working at East Meets West, your father’s gift shop in a strip mall, where everything is new. Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim. (April 2009)
The Song is You by Arthur Phillips - Julian Donahue is in love with his iPod. Each song that shuffles through triggers a memory. There are songs for the girls from when he was single; there’s the one for the day he met his wife-to-be, and another for the day his son was born. But when his family falls apart, even music loses its hold on him, and he has nothing. Until one snowy night in Brooklyn, when his life’s soundtrack–and life itself–starts to play again. He stumbles into a bar and sees Cait O’Dwyer, a flame-haired Irish rock singer, performing with her band, and a strange and unlikely love affair is ignited. Over the next few months, Julian and Cait’s passion for music and each other is played out, though they never meet. (April 2009)
Fifty Grand by Adrian McGinty - This knockout punch of a thriller from a critically acclaimed author follows a young Cuban detective’s quest for vengeance against her father’s killer in a Colorado mountain town. (April 2009)
Triple Cross by Mark T. Sullivan - “TRIPLE CROSS is a smart, prescient thriller that makes one wonder why the bottom really dropped out of the stock market. The story snaps and twists like a cracking whip, you can’t help but root for Mickey Hennessey and his kids, and I defy you to guess the ending. Mark T. Sullivan has written a super-charged bestseller and surefire motion picture!”–Robert Crais (April 2009)
Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell - Living on a tiny island entirely surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive. Haunted by memories of the terrible mistake that drove him to this island and away from a successful career as a surgeon, he lives in a stasis so complete an anthill grows undisturbed in his living room. When an unexpected visitor alters his life completely, thus begins an eccentric, elegiac journey–one that shows Mankell at the very height of his powers as a novelist. (April 2009)
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead - The warm, funny, and supremely original new novel from one of the most acclaimed writers in America. (April 2009)
Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz - An ingenious, witty, behind-the-scenes novel about eight hours in the life of an author. (April 2009)
Secret Son by Laila Lalami - Youssef el-Mekki, a young man of nineteen, is living with his mother in the slums of Casablanca when he discovers that the father he believed to be dead is, in fact, alive and eager to befriend and support him. Leaving his mother behind, Youssef assumes a life he could only dream of: a famous and influential father, his own penthouse apartment, and all the luxuries associated with his new status. His future appears assured until an abrupt reversal of fortune sends him back to the streets and his childhood friends, where a fringe Islamic group, known simply as the Party, has set up its headquarters. (April 2009)
Follow Me by Joanna Scott - On a summer day in 1946 Sally Werner, the precocious young daughter of hardscrabble Pennsylvania farmers, secretly accepts her cousin’s invitation to ride his new motorcycle. Like so much of what follows in Sally’s life, it’s an impulsive decision with dramatic and far-reaching consequences. Soon she abandons her home to begin a daring journey of self-creation, the truth of which she entrusts only with her granddaughter and namesake, six decades later. But when young Sally’s father–a man she has never known–enters her life and offers another story altogether, she must uncover the truth of her grandmother’s secret history. (April 2009)
Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz - (April 2009)
No Such Creature by Giles Blunt - Eight years ago, Owen Maxwell was saved from a foster home by the arrival of his uncle Max from England. Once a promising Shakespearean actor, Magnus “Max” Maxwell has since put his dramatic skills to new use: a master of disguise, a virtuoso of foreign dialects, and a performer to his core, he has become an extremely successful gentleman thief. Every summer, Max and Owen take a road trip across the United States, pulling off elaborate robberies along the way. But this year is different. Their first, dazzlingly executed summer heist captures the interest of the Subtractors, a gang of vicious thieves who prey on other thieves, but long believed to be only a myth. (April 2009)
Look Again by Lisa Scottoline - When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a “Have You Seen This Child?” flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops—the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and won’t be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth. And she can’t shake the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up? (April 2009)
Wrongful Death by Robert Dugoni - Just minutes after winning a $1.6 million wrongful-death verdict, attorney David Sloane confronts the one case that threatens to blemish his unbeaten record in the courtroom. Beverly Ford wants Sloane to sue the United States government and military in the mysterious death of her husband, James, a national guardsman killed in Iraq. While a decades-old military doctrine might make Ford’s case impossible to win, Sloane, a former soldier himself, is compelled to find justice for the widow and her four children in what is certain to become the biggest challenge of his career. (April 2009)
A World I Never Made by James LePore - Pat Nolan, an American man, is summoned to Paris to claim the body of his estranged daughter Megan, who has committed suicide. The body, however, is not Megan’s and it becomes instantly clear to Pat that Megan staged this, that she is in serious trouble, and that she is calling to him for help. This sends Pat on an odyssey that stretches across France and into the Czech Republic and that makes him the target of both the French police and a band of international terrorists. Joining Pat on his search is Catherine Laurence, a beautiful but tormented Paris detective who sees in Pat something she never thought she’d find–genuine passion and desperate need. (April 2009)
The Frightened Man by Kenneth Cameron - (April 2009)
Loitering With Intent by Stuart Woods - A new Stone Barrington novel (April 2009)
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith - The tenth installment of this universally beloved and best-selling series finds Precious Ramotswe in personal need of her own formidable detection talents. (April 2009)
Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson (April 2009)
Liars Anonymous by Louise Ure - (April 2009)
The Italian Summer: Golf, Food, and Family at Lake Como by Roland Merullo - (April 2009)
The 8th Confession by James Patterson - Latest Women’s Murder Club book. (April 2009)
First Family by David Baldacci - Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, back from their harrowing and near-fatal adventure in the blockbuster #1 bestseller Simple Genius, return in a mesmerizing new thriller. (April 2009)
Nobody Move by Denis Johnson - A provocative thriller set in the American West. Nobody Move, which first appeared in the pages of Playboy, is the story of an assortment of lowlifes in Bakersfield, California, and their cat-and-mouse game over $2.3 million. Touched by echoes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Nobody Move is at once an homage to and a variation on literary form. (April 2009)
The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King - In a case that will push their relationship to the breaking point, Mary Russell must help reverse the greatest failure of her legendary husband’s (Sherlock Holmes) storied past—a painful and personal defeat that still has the power to sting…this time fatally. (April 2009)
The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick - Scant years after a terrible war that shook empires, a six-hundred-year-old ship sets sail for enemy lands in an attempt to forge an enduring peace between the world’s two greatest monarchies. A vast city afloat, the ancient vessel bears a royal bride-to-be; a stowaway tribe of foothigh warriors; an honest young tarboy with a heritage of treason; a rat with a magical secret; and a dark conspiracy centered around the Red Wolf, a legendary and dangerous artifact. (April 2009)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - (April 2009)
March 2009:
Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett - The year is 1471. Edward IV, who won the throne with the help of his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is restoring law and order after years of war. Under Edward IV, life in England begins to improve. Business is booming once more and the printing and silk industries prosper in London. When silk merchant John Lambert marries off his two beautiful daughters, their fortunes are forever changed. (March 2009)
Singer by Ira Sher - In the early 1980s, Milton Menger, a wealthy art dealer living in New Jersey, is called by an estranged friend, Charles Trembleman, with whom he’s had no contact in years. Charley is a traveling salesman for the Singer Sewing Company and his hands have just been badly burned in a motel fire near Memphis. He needs a driver so he can continue traveling and selling. Milty rises to the occasion. Together they embark on a journey across the South, visiting showrooms and staying in locally owned motels. Is it a coincidence that these motels keep going up in flames? Gorgeously written yet elusive book. (March 2009)
A Man of No Moon by Jenny McPhee - A fictionalized retelling of the tragic post-WWII love affair between Italian writer Cesare Pavese and American noir starlet Constance Dowling. (March 2009)
Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames - James Fitzroy isn’t doing so well. Though his old friends in Buffalo believe his life in New York City is a success, in fact he writes ridiculous taglines for a greeting card company. Now he’s coming home on Thanksgiving to visit his aging father and dying mother, and unlike other holidays, he’s not sure how this one is going to end. Buffalo Lockjaw introduces a fresh new voice in American fiction. (March 2009)
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada - This never-before-translated masterpiece-by a heroic best-selling writer who saw his life crumble when he wouldn’t join the Nazi Party-is based on a true story. It presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple who decides to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their grief and each other against the awesome power of the Reich, they launch a simple, clandestine resistance campaign that soon has an enraged Gestapo on their trail, and a world of terrified neighbors and cynical snitches ready to turn them in. In the end, it’s more than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, even more than literature of the highest order-it’s a deeply stirring story of two people standing up for what’s right, and each other.(March 2009)
Hand of Isis by Jo Graham - Set in Ancient Egypt, Hand of Isis is the story of Charmian, a handmaiden, and her two sisters. It is a novel of lovers who transcend death, of gods who meddle in mortal affairs, and of women who guide empires. (March 2009)
Seven for a Secret by Elizabeth Bear - The sequel to New Amsterdam! The wampyr has walked the dark streets of the world’s great cities for a thousand years. In that time, he has worn out many names–and even more compatriots. Now, so that one of those companions may die where she once lived, he has come again to the City of London. (March 2009)
The Spy Game by Georgina Harding - On a freezing January morning in 1961, eight-year-old Anna’s mother disappears into the fog. A kiss that barely touches Anna’s cheek, a rumble of exhaust and a blurred wave through an icy windshield, and her mother is gone. That same morning a spy case breaks in the news—the case of the Krogers, apparently ordinary people who were not who they said they were; people who had disappeared in one place and reappeared in another with other identities, leading other lives. Obsessed by stories of the cold war and of the Second World War, which is still a fresh and painful memory for the adults around them, Anna’s brother, Peter, begins to construct a theory that their mother. (March 2009)
Paths to Glory by Jeffrey Archer - Some people have dreams that are so magnificent that if they were to achieve them, their place in history would be guaranteed. Francis Drake, Robert Scott, Charles Lindbergh, Amy Johnson, Edmund Hilary, Neil Armstrong, and Lewis and Clark are among such individuals. But what if one man had such a dream, and once he’d fulfilled it, there was no proof that he had achieved his ambition? Paths of Glory, is the story of such a man—George Mallory. Based on a true story. (March 2009)
Long Lost by Harlan Coben - Myron Bolitar hasn’t heard from Terese Collins since their torrid affair ended ten years ago, so her desperate phone call from Paris catches him completely off guard. In a shattering admission, Terese reveals the tragic story behind her disappearance. Now a suspect in the murder of her ex-husband in Paris, Terese has nowhere else to turn for help. Myron heeds the call. But then a startling piece of evidence turns the entire case upside down. (March 2009)
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick - Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for “a reliable wife.” But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she’s not the “simple, honest woman” that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man’s devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt — a passionate man with his own dark secrets —has plans of his own for his new wife. (March 2009)
Fault Line by Barry Eisler - So who would want an inventor, a patent attorney and a patent office official dead? What do they have in common? Fault Line centers on a conspiracy that has spun out of the shadows and onto the streets of America, a conspiracy that can be stopped by only three people– three people with different worldviews, different grievances, different motives. To survive the forces arrayed against them, they’ll first have to survive one another. (March 2009)
This is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams - Once upon a time, there were four of them. And though each was good at a number of things, all of them were very good at games… In this near-future thriller, Walter Jon Williams weaves a pulse-pounding tale of intrigue, murder, and games where you don’t get an extra life. (March 2009)
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell - A fictional memoir of Dr. Max Aue, a former Nazi officer who survived the war and has reinvented himself, many years later, as a middle-class entrepreneur and family man in northern France. Max is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man, we experience the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews in graphic, disturbingly precise detail. Winner of the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award, as well as the Académie Française’s Prix de Littérature. (March 2009)
Honolulu by Alan Brennert - Richly imagined story of Jin, a young “picture bride” who leaves her native Korea - where girls are so little valued that she is known as Regret - and journeys to Hawaii in 1914 in search of a better life. (March 2009)
The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint - On the Day of the Dead, the Solona Music Hall is jumping. That’s where Altagracia Quintero meets John Burns, just two weeks too late. (March 2009)
Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult - (March 2009)
Angels of Destruction by Keith Donohue - (March 2009)
Therapy by Sebastian Fitzek - Josy, a twelve year old girl, has an inexplicable illness and vanishes without trace from her doctor’s office during treatment. Four years later: Josy’s father, well-known psychiatrist Viktor Larenz, has withdrawn himself to an isolated North Sea island in order to deal with the tragedy. Until he’s paid a surprise visit from a beautiful stranger. Anna Glass is a novelist and she suffers from an unusual form of schizophrenia: all the characters she creates for her books become real to her. And in her last novel she has written about a young girl with an unknown illness who has vanished without a trace. (March 2009)
Loser’s Town by Daniel Depp - In this darkly comic thriller set in modern-day Hollywood, an aging private eye is hired by a rising young actor at the center of a scheme gone wrong. (March 2009)
The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer - Milo Weaver used to be a “tourist” for the CIA—an undercover agent with no home, no identity—but he’s since retired from the field to become a middle-level manager at the CIA’s New York headquarters. He’s acquired a wife, a daughter, and a brownstone in Brooklyn, and he’s tried to leave his old life of secrets and lies behind. However, when the arrest of a long-sought-after assassin sets off an investigation into one of Milo’s oldest colleagues and exposes new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who’s holding the strings once and for all. (March 2009)
The Long Hill by Walter Mosley - A brand-new mystery series from one of the country’s best-known, best-loved writers: a new character, a new city, a new era. A new Walter Mosley. (March 2009)
Off Street Parking by Bill James - DC Sharon Mayfield is on routine surveillance when she spots a dead man in a car. The cars locks are sealed with superglue and Claude Huddarts face has been mutilated. As with most murders, theres a puzzle to be solved, but the pieces dont fit. Why is informant Jeremy Dince if thats his real name being so helpful? And theres just something that doesnt feel right about the grieving Alice Huddart. (March 2009)
Through Black Spruce by Joe Boyden - Will Bird is a legendary Cree bush pilot, now lying in a coma in a hospital in his hometown of Moose Factory, Ontario. His niece Annie Bird, beautiful and self-reliant, has returned from her own perilous journey to sit beside his bed. Broken in different ways, the two take silent communion in their unspoken kinship, and the story that unfolds is rife with heartbreak, fierce love, ancient blood feuds, mysterious disappearances, fires, plane crashes, murders, and the bonds that hold a family, and a people, together. (March 2009)
The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles - In 1863, the War Between the States creeps slowly yet inevitably toward its bloody conclusion—and eastern thoughts are already turning to different wars and enemies. A soaring work of the imagination based on oral histories of the post–Civil War years in North Texas, Paulette Jiles’s The Color of Lightning is at once an intimate look into the hearts and hopes of tragically flawed human beings and a courageous reexamination of a dark American history. (March 2009)
Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn - (March 2009)
The Convict and Other Stories by James Lee Burke -A superb collection of stories set in and around the American Deep South and its charismatic people. (March 2009)
Flipping Out by Marshall Karp - Nora Bannister is a bestselling mystery novelist who buys run-down houses in LA. While her business partners turn the house into a showpiece, Nora makes it the scene of a grisly murder in her House To Die For series. As soon as the new book goes on sale, so does the house — and the bidding frenzy begins. Just before Nora’s latest book hits the market, one of her house-flipping partners is murdered. LAPD Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs are assigned the case, but this one is a hot potato – the dead woman is also the wife of one of their fellow cops. (March 2009)
Shatter by Michael Robotham - Joe O’Loughlin is on familiar territory—standing on a bridge high above a flooded gorge, trying to stop a distraught woman from jumping. She is naked, wearing only high-heel shoes, sobbing into a cell phone. Suddenly, she turns to him and whispers, “You don’t understand,” and lets go. Joe is shattered by the suicide and haunted by his failure to save the woman, until her teenage daughter finds him and reveals that her mother would never have committed suicide— not like that. She was terrified of heights. (March 2009)
Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor - If Philippa Penhow hadn’t gone to Bleeding Heart Square on that January day, you and perhaps everyone else might have lived happily ever after . . .(March 2009)
Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates - The family ties that bind (and choke) are the overarching theme of Oates’s grim but incisive story collection. (March 2009)
Pandora in the Congo by Albert Sanchez Pionol - It is 1914 when Marcus Garvey, a bedraggled British manservant, emerges from the depths of the Belgian Congo. He is the sole survivor of an ill-fated mining expedition in which both his masters, William and Richard Craver, died and from which their African porters fled. Garvey returns to London carrying two diamonds of extraordinary size, spinning a story too unspeakably terrifying to be believed. He is promptly arrested. Tommy Thompson, a London ghostwriter for a ghostwriter for a ghostwriter (don’t ask!), is approached by his attorney to document Garvey’s unholy African odyssey.(March 2009)
The Temporal Void by Peter F. Hamilton - The Intersolar Commonwealth is in turmoil as the Living Dream’s deadline for launching its Pilgrimage into the Void draws closer. Not only is the Ocisen Empire fleet fast approaching on a mission of genocide, but also an internecine war has broken out between the post-human factions over the destiny of humanity.Countering the various and increasingly desperate agents and factions is Paula Myo, a ruthlessly single-minded investigator, beset by foes from her distant past and colleagues of dubious allegiance…but she is fast losing a race against time. (March 2009)
The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction by Gene Wolf - From a literary perspective, this will certainly be the best collection of the year in science fiction and fantasy. (March 2009)
A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr - A Quiet Flame opens in 1950. Falsely fingered a war criminal, Bernie Gunther has booked passage to Buenos Aires, lured, like the Nazis whose company he has always despised, by promises of a new life and a clean passport from the Perón government. But Bernie doesn’t have the luxury of settling into his new home and lying low. He is soon pressured by the local police into taking on a case in which a girl has turned up dead, gruesomely mutilated, and another—the daughter of a wealthy German banker—has gone missing.(March 2009)
Oh, Johnny by Jim Lehrer - PBS NewsHour anchor Lehrer mixes baseball, WWII and romance in his 19th novel . (March 2009)
Krapp’s Last Cassette by Anne Argula - Quinn, a sharp-tongued private investigator in Seattle who’s been busy waving goodbye to her philandering husband while fanning her hot flashes with her other hand, has just bumped into a case that threatens to expose the compassionate heart beneath her hard-boiled exterior. (March 2009)
A Date You Can’t Refuse by Harley Jane Kozak - Serial dater and greeting-card artist Wollie Shelley goes undercover in a media-training company suspected of video piracy, but when a dead body appears on the company’s property, she’s caught up in a conspiracy that goes way beyond some stolen DVDs. (March 2009)
Until It’s Over by Nikki French - Astrid Bell has known most of her housemates for years, but while they have a tangled history together—romantic pairings, one-night stands, friendships—each of them also has a past. Astrid is on her way home one day when her neighbor accidentally knocks her off her bike. Bruised but not broken, her roommates help her home. The next day, they learn that same neighbor was beaten to death only hours after the accident. Each of them tells the police what little they know and are dismissed—until Astrid stumbles over another body. Two brutal murders in less than a week is more than just bad luck. (March 2009)
Razor by Amiri Baraka - Intended to cut clean through the oppression imposed upon the mainstream by society’s “intellectual superstructure,” this collection of revolutionary essays by literary and cultural legend Amiri Baraka raises numerous issues concerning contemporary African American life. The socially conscious will appreciate the creative analyses and stimulating critiques on display here, buoyed by Baraka’s distinctive, bold, and aggressive opinions about the ways our culture bestows ignorance upon the ignorant merely to exploit them.(March 2009)
Black Noir edited by Otto Penzler The best mystery and crime fiction ever produced by African-American writers. (March 2009)
The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano - When Melody Grace McCartney was six years old, she and her parents witnessed an act of violence so brutal that it changed their lives forever. The federal government lured them into the Witness Protection Program with the promise of safety, and they went gratefully. But the program took Melody’s name, her home, her innocence, and, ultimately, her family. She’s been May Adams, Karen Smith, Anne Johnson, and countless others–everyone but the one person she longs to be: herself. So when the feds spirit her off to begin yet another new life in another town, she’s stunned when a man confronts her and calls her by her real name. (March 2009)
Shadow and Light by Jonathan Rabb - Berlin, between the two world wars. When an executive at the renowned Ufa film studios is found dead floating in his office bathtub, it falls to Nikolai Hoffner, a chief inspector in the Kriminalpolizei, to investigate. With the help of Fritz Lang (the German director) and Alby Pimm (leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin), Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin’s sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler’s Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. (March 2009)
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