All Stars List - Fiction & Nonfiction

Try something new - First Novels List Have some fun - Humor List

Genre Fiction Lists: Romance & Romantic Suspense , Speculative, Inspirational, Mystery & Suspense, General Fiction

Book a Trip - Travel Tales List Short on Time? - Short Story List

Links - more summer reading suggestions

More Overbooked summer reading lists

All Star Fiction (all genres) - titles with 3 or more stars from the following review sources:
Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly

• The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
  Author: Erdrich, Louise
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0060187271
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  From the bestselling author of Tracks comes a dramatic sequel--a story of suspect miracles, tests of faith, and the corrosive and redemptive power of secrecy. Over the years, Father Damian has seen the reservation through its most severe crises, yet he is more than a heroic priest. He has lived with and served the Objibwa people as a man of the cloth, and also as a woman. However, where does fact end and reality begin?
  

• The Corrections
  Author: Franzen, Jonathan
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374129983
  Kirkus PW Booklist LJ
  A comic, tragic masterpiece of an American family breaking down in an age of easy fixes, Franzen's third novel brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty into wild collision with the era of home surveillance and New Economy speculation.
  

• Undercurrents
  Author: Fyfield, Frances
  Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670896365
  Kirkus LJ PW
  For 20 years, Henry Evans has been haunted by a blurred but shining memory of his lost love, Francesca Chisholm. Now this shy American has come looking for her in her hometown on the English coast. What he finds there is not what he expects.
  

• Juno and Juliet
  Author: Gough, Julian
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385501722
  PW LJ Booklist
  Written by the fresh, new Irish voice of Julian Gough, Juno & Juliet is an intelligent and lighthearted tale of two beautiful sisters who experience university life in Galway and the radiance of newfound love.
  

• How to Be Good
  Author: Hornby, Nick
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573221937
  Kirkus PW LJ Booklist
  In a humorous yet uncompromising look at what it takes to have the courage of one's convictions, Hornby reinvents himself as Katie--the consummate liberal, urban mom--whose world is being turned on its ear by the outrageous spiritual transformation of her husband, David.
  

• Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale
  Author: Kinder, Chuck
  Publisher: Farrar Straus $ 24 ISBN: 0374172587
  Kirkus PW LJ
  Kinder's book is a rueful, comi-tragic juggernaut of two couples who have spent the best years of their lives raising bad judgment to an art.
  

• Clerical Errors
  Author: Isler, Alan
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743210603
  LJ Kirkus PW
  From the award winning author of The Prince of West End Avenue comes an irreverent tale of a formerly Jewish--and now decidedly errant--Catholic priest.
  

• Dreamcatcher
  Author: King, Stephen
  Publisher: Scribner $ 28 ISBN: 0743211383
  PW Kirkus LJ
  America's most thrilling storyteller is at the height of his powers in this page-turning epic of haunted memories, heroism, and stark survival. Once upon a time in the haunted city of Derry (the site of It and Insomnia), four boys stood together and did a brave thing. Twenty-five years later, these men are plunged into a horrifying struggle with a creature from another world. Their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past--and in the Dreamcatcher.

• The Grand Complication
  Author: Kurzweil, Allen
  Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 0786866039
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  The anticipated new novel from the author of A Case of Curiosities, Kurzweil returns with another work narrated by Alexander Short, a reference librarian who takes on an unusual research assignment when he feels his passions--both professional and personal--waning.
  

• Kit's Law
  Author: Morrissey, Donna
  Publisher: Mariner $ 13 (trade paper) ISBN: 0618109277
  PW Kirkus Booklist
  Kit Pitman lives with her unstable mother in a cottage on the outer banks of Newfoundland. Her life is compounded by the mystery that surrounds her illegitimate birth. Morrissey depicts the way the lines between mother and daughter, although blurred, are deeply felt. Kit's Law marks the debut of a new talent.
  

• Empire Falls
  Author: Russo, Richard
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 0679432477
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  Richard Russo, author of The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool, takes readers back to the small-town, blue-collar heart of the country. - Publisher marketing.
  

• Shape of Snakes
  Author: Walters, Minette
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399147330
  Kirkus LJ PW
  

• John Henry Days
  Author: Whitehead, Colson
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385498195
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  From the author of The Intuitionist comes a retelling of the legend of John Henry that sweeps across generations and cultures in a stunning, hilarious, and unsettling portrait of American society.
  Suggested Reading List: Historical Fiction Stars
  

• American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood
  Author: Arana, Marie
  Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385319622
  Kirkus PW LJ Booklist
  In the tradition of Richard Rodriguez's A Hunger of Memory comes a rich, emotionally resonant portrait of a child who must come to terms with being neither North nor South American, but a mixture of both.

• Ava's Man
  by Bragg, Rick
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375410627
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  No one writes about the South like Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg (All Over But the Shoutin). Once again, he lends his voice to the working people of the Deep South, and tells the story of a memorable figure in a singular time--a man on a lost stretch of dirt road along the Alabama/Georgia border.

• The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples
  Author: Flannery, Tim
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 27.50 ISBN: 0871137895
  Kirkus LJ PW Booklist
  Offering a wealth of scientific details, one of the world's foremost paleontologists has undertaken a sweeping, multiple disciplinary history of the geological and ecological development of North America.
• John Adams
  Author: McCullough, David
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 35 ISBN: 0684813637
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  In his first book since Truman, one of America's most distinguished and popular biographers breathes life into history with this compelling look at the second president of the United States, John Adams. More than just a biography, this book looks at the birth of a young republic and explores the extraordinary factors that transformed 13 colonies into a united nation.
  John Adams information from IPL

First Novels

• The Salt Letters
  Author: Balint, Christine
  Publisher: Norton $ 12 (trade paper) ISBN: 0393321606
  Kirkus
  This beautifully crafted debut novel is the sensuous evocation of a young woman's sea journey in 1854 from refined England to the wilds of Australia.
  

• Open Season
  Author: Box, C.J.
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147489
  Kirkus Booklist
  Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden -- especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way---is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. - Publisher marketing.
  

• The Muse Asylum
  Author: Czuchlewski, David
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147454
  Kirkus PW
  In this breath-snatching first novel of love, madness and artistic identity, a young genius's obsession with a reclusive writer consumes those around him, as they begin to learn the dark truths that lurk beneath the surface of the relationship.
  Who is Horace Jacob Little? Check out the Muse Asylum web site.
  

• The Ten Thousand: A Novel of Ancient Greece
  Author: Ford, Michael Curtis
  Publisher: Thomas Dunne (St Martins) $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312269463
  LJ
  In the spring of 400 B.C., ten thousand battered Greek soldiers stagger out of the frozen mountains of Armenia into a small Hellenic trading post on the eastern Black Sea. Their stunning tale of survival is the source of this epic debut in the tradition of Gates of Fire.
• Staircase of a Thousand Steps
  Author: Hamilton, Masha
  Publisher: Blue Hen $ 23.95 ISBN:039914725x
  Kirkus
  In a remote desert village of storytellers and seers, the accidental revelation of long-held secrets, including a forbidden love affair, unravels a young girl's world.
  

• Bread Alone
  Author: Hendricks, Judith Ryan
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0060188952
  A mouth-watering novel from new author Hendricks rises to the occasion as a woman devastated by divorce finds redemption working at a small-town bakery.
  

• Justus Girls
  Author: Lambright, Slim
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24 ISBN: 0060184760
  In her debut novel, Lambright spins an engaging tale about four African-American pre-teens who band together to form the Justus Girlz, a crack drill team in the 1960s. Decades later, the sudden death of one reunites the others to investigate what happened to their fallen friend.
  

• Juniper Tree Burning
  Author: Long, Goldberry M.
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743202031
  LJ PW
  This debut novel captures the unadulterated legacy of the 1960s counter-culture as it is lived three decades later by the flower children's children.
  

• The Mind Game
  Author: MacDonald, Hector
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345440226
  LJ
  When Ben Ashurst agrees to participate in a study of the biology of human emotions for his charismatic Oxford tutor, he can't begin to imagine what lies ahead. With a luxury resort on a beach in Kenya as the site of the experiment and his beautiful new girlfriend along for company, it seems the perfect way to spend the Christmas holidays. But paradise starts to lose its luster when, without warning, Ben finds the experiment veering from abstract scientific theory into terrifyingly real danger.
  

• Grand Ambitions
  Author: Michaels, Lisa
  Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393050475
  LJ
  A first novel about love, adventure, and one couple's reckless daring. A pair of young newlyweds sets out to run the rapids of the Grand Canyon in a homemade boat. A month later they vanished without a trace.
  

• The Dark Room
  Author: Seiffert, Rachel
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421041
  Kirkus LJ
  A debut work of major importance, this novel retells the history of 20th-century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans before, during and after World War II.
  Suggested Reading Lists: Historical Fiction Stars & World Wars Stars
  

• Grift Sense: Tony Valentine
  Author: Swain, James
  Publisher: Pocket $ 23.95 ISBN: 0743406222
  Kirkus
  With a knack for sly sucker punches in the tradition of Elmore Leonard, Swain makes the scene with a comic, crackerjack debut mystery set in Las Vegas, the first in a series starring ex-cop Tony Valentine.
  

• The Huntsman
  Author: Terrell, Whitney
  Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670894656
  Kirkus PW
  When a young debutant's body washes up in the Missouri River, her death--and the ensuing investigation--forces the Kansas City's inhabitants to examine their own buried history. This debut novel is authored by a writer-in-residence at Rockhurst University.
  

• The Catsitters
  Author: Wolcott, James
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060194146
  LJ
  Renowned for his barbed wire wit, Vanity Fair literary critic Wolcott turns his wicked eye on the vagaries of romance in this viciously funny debut novel about the ways men and women communicate--and don't--in the never-ending search for a soulmate.

  Also: The Salt Letters by Christine Balint, Cane River by Lalita Tademy, The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall, Punk's War by Ward Carroll, Mirabilis by Susann Cokal and Field Guide by Gwendolen Gross.

Romance & Romantic Suspense

• The Marriage Lesson
  Author: Alexander, Victoria
  Publisher: Avon $ 5.99 (paper) ISBN: 0380818205
  PW
  Lady Marianne Shelton pens a scandalous book based on the exploits of real life nobleman, Thomas Effington. Now Thomas is going to teach the forward country miss a lesson in love she's never going to forget.
  Suggested Reading List: Historical Fiction Stars
  

• Fast Women
  Author: Crusie, Jennifer
  Publisher: St Martin's $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312252617
  Kirkus
  Nell Dysart brings calamity to her job at a detective agency, but even her boss has to admit that no matter how much he hates the confusion she's brought into his life, Nell shares his passion for making things right. It's not long before they share another passion--one they can't ignore--even in the face of distractions like adultery, blackmail, arson, murder, and really bad business cards.
  

• Second Thyme Around
  Author: Fforde, Katie
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312273045
  LJ
  British bestseller Fford serves up a delicious romantic comedy about cherished friends, despised ex-husbands and life's greatest joys--sex and cooking.
  

• Plantation: A Low Country Tale
  Author: Frank, Dorothea Benton
  Publisher: Jove $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 0515131083
  PW
  Caroline Wembly Levine always swore she'd never go home again. But she's returned to South Carolina at her brother's behest to see about their mother. Miss Lavinia is as maddenly eccentric as ever, and absolutely will not suffer the questionable advice of her children. Caroline soon discovers that this trip home is different.
  

• Indiscretion
  Author: Ivory, Judith
  Publisher: Avon $ 6.50 (paper) ISBN: 0380812967
  PW
  When her coach crashes on the treacherous Dartmoor, the sheltered Lady Lydia Bedford-Brown is stranded with wealthy Texas cowboy, Sam J. Cody. Being marooned on the English moor causes Cody to miss his own wedding to an unforgiving bride. But Liddy starts to reveal her hidden passions and courageous spirit that dare Sam to pursue even further what his heart desperately desires.
  Suggested Reading List: Historical Fiction Stars
  

• Thursdays at Eight
  Author: Maccomber, Debbie
  Publisher: Mira $ 22.95 ISBN: 1551668114
  In this uplifting tale, four women are bound together through their experiences, triumphs, and tragedies. The one thing that brings them together and allows them to escape life's hardships is their weekly meeting--Thursdays at eight.
  

• A Kiss to Remember
  Author: Medeiros, Teresa
  Publisher: Bantam $ 21.95 ISBN: 0553802097
  In Regency-era England, Laura Fairleigh is in her beloved woods, praying for a husband, when she stumbles right over Sterling Harlow, injured and unconscious after a riding accident. The bestselling author of The Bride and the Beast delivers a new variation on a much-loved classic, featuring a Sleeping Beauty of a guy.
  

• Fox River
  Author: Richards, Emilie
  Publisher: Mira $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 1551668068
  PW
  Julia Warwick grew up in a world where foxhunting and Thoroughbreds are passions. But Christian Carver, a talented horse trainer, awakens the artist--and passions--within Julia. When Christian is convicted of murder, Julia suddenly loses her sight. Though blindness darkens her world, it opens Julia's eyes to hidden truths.
  

• Brazen Virtue
  Author: Roberts, Nora
  Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell $ 18.95 ISBN: 0553802127
  When Grace McCabe's sister is killed after she moonlights on the phone lines of Fantasy, Inc., Grace is determined to bait the murderer with the same seductive voice that triggered his deadly lust.

Also: No Man's Mistress by Mary Balogh (Aug), Mercy by Julie Garwood (Sept).

Speculative Fiction

• Priestess of Avalon
  Author: Bradley, Marion Zimmer & Diana L. Paxson
  Publisher: $ ISBN:
  Booklist
  In this long-awaited new epic of the beloved Avalon series, myth, ancient lore, and the cult of the goddess fuse in a spectacular unfolding of one woman's role in the making of history. Priestess of Avalon tells the story of Helena, a daughter of the Holy Isle who became a Christian saint and the heroine of Welsh legend.

• Kushiel's Dart
  Author: Carey, Jacqueline
  Publisher: Tor $ 25.95 ISBN: 0312872380
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  High intrigue and a fantastic heroine make for a tale of pagan splendor in Kushiel's Dart. Phedre is sold into slavery as a child, but she possesses a secret that can topple a kingdom and bring warlords to their knees.

• The Ill-Made Mute
  Author: Dart-Thornton, Cecilia
  Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446528323
  Kirkus
  This debut novel begins as the inhabitants of Isse Tower find a mute, starving girl outside their gates. Unable to remember her past, her only hope lies in distant Caermalor, where a wise woman could restore her memories. To get there, she must survive a wilderness of endless danger.

• American Gods
  Author: Gaiman, Neil
  Publisher: Avon $ 26 ISBN: 0380973650
  Kirkus LJ
  A master of inventive fiction pens the story of an ex-con who is offered a job as a bodyguard for Mr. Wednesday, a trickster and a rogue. Shadow soon learns that his role in the man's schemes are far more dangerous and dark than he could have ever imagined.
  American Gods website
  

• Probability Sun
  Author: Kress, Nancy
  Publisher: Tor $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312874073
  Kirkus
  In an intense novel of war and science, Kress returns to the future of Probability Moon in which the human race is losing an interstellar war against the mysterious alien Fallers.
• Passage
  Author: Willis, Connie
  Publisher: Bantam $23.95 ISBN: 0553111248
  Kirkus LJ
  Multi-award-winning author Willis delivers a story that examines one of the toughest issues of all: death. Part medical thriller, part literary exploration, Willis plunges readers into a bizarre and fascinating world.

More Speculative Fiction

Inspirational Fiction

• The Prodigy
  Author: Gansky, Philip
  Publisher: Zondervan $ 12.99 ISBN: 0310235561
  A strangely gifted six-year-old boy has the whole world wondering about the source of his powers in this suspenseful novel by the author of A Ship Possessed and Vanished.
  

• The Note: A Story of Second Chances
  Author: Hunt, Angela
  Publisher: Word $ 12.99 ISBN: 0849942845
  In the wake of a tragic plane crash, a reporter's life is turned upside-down by the last words of an anonymous passenger.
  

• A Dangerous Silence
  Author: Palmer, Catherine
  Publisher: Tyndale $ 11.99 ISBN:0842336176
  Dr. Marah Morgan returns to run the family farm for her cantankerous old father who is recovering from a broken hip. Marah discovers that her father has given government agents permission to search the farm for an old Indian burial ground, a search that Marah begins to find suspicious. The destructiveness of bitterness and "dangerous silence" about family secrets parallels the damage of a silent killer hidden in the burial ground.
  

• Singsation
  Author: Thomas, Jacquelin
  Publisher: Warner $ 21.95 ISBN:044652798x
  Deborah Anne Peterson knows her voice is a gift from God and she intends to use it. A hometown rapper introduces her to the right people. Suddenly she is on tour singing backup for one of the country's top R & B artists. Her prayers have been answered, but success exacts a steep price, and with her beliefs challenged, she comes to realize the true purpose of her gift.
  

Mystery & Suspense

• Little America
  Author: Bromell, Henry
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375406840
  Booklist LJ
  Little America opens in Boston today and tells the story of a man searching for the truth about his father's past, the key to which is locked away in the CIA code of silence.
  

• You Only Die Twice: Britt Montero
  Author: Buchanan, Edna
  Publisher: Morrow $ 26 ISBN: 0380976552
  Kirkus
  A murdered woman, drowned off Miami Beach, is positively identified through fingerprints to be Lily Jordan, a mysterious lady who was thought dead years ago. Her husband--tried, convicted, and sentenced to die for the crime--resides on Death Row, only a few short weeks away from his execution. For the insatiably curious newspaperwoman Britt Montero, it looks like a killer story. Now all she has to find out is where Lily Jordan has been for the past decade . . . and who killed her for real.
  

• Tell No One
  Author: Coban, Harlan
  Publisher: Dell $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385335555
  LJ
  She was his great love, the woman he'd adored since they were children. But a few months into their marriage, Elizabeth Beck was abducted, then found dead, the brutalized victim of a serial killer. Now, eight years later, Beck receives a mysterious e-mail suggesting that Elizabeth may still be alive.
  

• Maggody and the Moonbeams
  Author: Hess, Joan
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0743202295
  Booklist
  Arly Hanks--the wiliest chief of police in the Ozarks--is back on the case in Joan Hess's latest comedy-filled whodunit. And this time around, the intrepid sleuth just may have met her match: to her horror, she's been pressed into service as camp chaperone for the church youth group.
  

• Pipe Dream
  Author: Jones, Solomon
  Publisher: Villard $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375756604
  Booklist Kirkus
  Debut novelist Jones plumbs the depths of the drug world as four addicts are pursued for a murder they didn't commit. The story winds through the streets of Philadelphia as the four struggle to escape not only from the police but from the hungers that have all but swallowed them whole.
  

• Uncommon Clay
  Author: Maron, Margaret
  Publisher: Mysterious $ 23.95 ISBN: 089296720x
  PW Booklist
  Judge Deborah Knott of Seagrove, North Carolina, must unearth a local family's tragic past to find a vengeful killer in the eighth installment of the award-winning mystery series by Maron.
  

• Silent Joe
  Author: Parker, T. Jefferson
  Publisher: Hyperion $ 23.95 ISBN:0786867280
  LJ PW
  In an intelligent mystery that will satisfy the mind as well as the heart, the bestselling author of Red Light and The Blue Hour returns with a moody, sexy, suspenseful novel about a scarred man, the father he idolized, and the secret he uncovered.
  

• Ring of Truth
  Author: Pickard, Nancy
  Publisher: Pocket $ 23.95 ISBN: 0671887971
  PW
  From the award-winning author of The Whole Truth comes a chilling new story featuring her gutsy heroine, Marie Lightfoot. This time Lightfoot can't make the pieces of a Florida murder--involving a priest and his lover--fit together. And the missing piece could be fatal.
  

• The Devil Went Down to Austin
  Author: Riordan, Rick
  Publisher: Bantam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553110977
  PW Booklist
  Garrett is a computer genius and a fool, a long-haired, wheelchair-bound Jimmy Buffet fan who's accused of killing his oldest friend. Garrett doesn't want to ask his private eye brother for help, but Navarre has never been one to take no for an answer. All too soon, he's about to ride the high tech wave in a one-way dive to betrayal and death.
  

• Black Water Transit
  Author: Stroud, Carsten
  Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385335784
  Kirkus PW
  Acclaimed nationally bestselling author Stroud pens a novel of suspense that draws on the NYPD and that city's meanest streets. A tough, gritty look at what happens when a pretty good guy takes on the really bad ones.

More Mystery & Suspense Stars ~ More Mystery & Suspense Best Bets: Hardcover or Paperback

General Fiction

• The Devil's Oasis
  Author: Bull, Bartle
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786708441
  PW
  The master storyteller and author of A Cafe on the Nile presents a new tale of swaggering adventure, romance, and espionage set in war-torn North Africa. There, against the massive force of Rommel's Afrika Korps, a young English hussar named Wellington Rider fights beside the French Foreign Legion.
  Suggested Reading Lists: Historical Fiction Stars & World Wars Stars
  

• Sharpe's Trafalgar
  Author: Cornwell, Bernard
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060194251
  PW LJ
  This number one international bestseller sends Richard Sharpe into a breathtaking sea chase and a savage battle off Cape Trafalgar in 1805.
  Suggested Reading Lists: Historical Fiction Stars & Sea Stories
  

• The Dearly Departed
  Author: Lipman, Elinor
  Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679463127
  When Sunny returns to New Hampshire after the accidental death of her mother, she begins to think she wasn't as beleaguered as she had felt she was; that her mother's life was richer than anyone suspected; and that maybe the familiar-looking man at the funeral is the half-brother she doesn't know she needs.
  

• Bel Canto
  Author: Patchett, Ann
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060188731
  Kirkus
  From the bestselling author of The Magician's Assistant comes a marvelous novel of love, opera, and terrorism set in South America. Two couples, complete opposites, fall in love; sexual identities become confused; and a horrific imprisonment is transformed into an unexpected heaven on earth.
  

• Back When We Were Grownups
  Author: Tyler, Anne
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375412530
  Kirkus PW
  At 53, Rebecca Davitch--mistress of the Open Arms, a crumbling 19th-century row house in Baltimore where giving parties is the family business--suddenly asks herself whether she has turned into the wrong person. But can she really recover the woman she has left behind?
  

• The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
  Author: Udall, Brady
  Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393020363
  Kirkus PW
  Half Apache and "mostly orphaned", Edgar's trials begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head. Through it all, readers will root for this irresistible innocent who never truly loses heart, and whose quest for the mailman leads him to an unexpected home.
  

• The Death of Sweet Mister
  Author: Woodrell, Daniel
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147519
  Booklist PW
  A southern gothic tale of the events that tear at a dysfunctional family when a slick stranger comes to visit.
  

• Visible Spirits
  Author: Yarbrough, Steve
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375411593
  PW
  In Loring, Mississippi, circa 1902, the tenure of a black postmistress is compromised by the prodigal son of a once proud planting family. So when President Roosevelt intervenes, this local, even personal dispute inevitably erupts, fueled by all the dark, brutal memories of slavery, war, and emancipation.
  Suggested Reading List: Historical Fiction Stars
  

Short Stories

• Honeymoon and Other Stories
  Author: Canty, Kevin
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 21 ISBN: 0385491611
  Kirkus
  Canty's masterful collection about reckless love reveals the hidden longings and quirky needs of both men and women with sensitivity and humor. The author brings his strengths as a stylist and acute observer to these ten stories that explore unlikely alliances and unconventional expressions of love.
  

• Among the Missing
  Author: Chaon, Dan
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 22 ISBN: 0345441621
  Kirkus Booklist
  In this haunting, bracing new collection, Chaon shares stories of down-and-out people who live outside the American Dream, while wondering which decision, path, or accident brought them to this place.
  

• Come Up and See Me Sometime: Stories
  Author: Krouse, Erika
  Publisher: Scribner $ 22 ISBN: 0743202449
  Kirkus PW
  Each of the 13 stories in this collection is underscored by the brassy spirit of Mae West. Come Up and See Me Sometime is a thought-provoking rant, surprising readers with mirror images of the fears, foibles, and facades of their own lives.
  

• Big as Life: Three Tales for Spring
  Author: Howard, Maureen
  Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 067089978x
  Booklist
  The second book in a series, Howard presents three tales of moral resonance and magical enchantment--"Children with Matches, The Magdalene", and "Big As Life".
  

• Yellow
  Author: Lee, Don
  Publisher: Norton $ 22.95 ISBN: 0393025624
  PW Booklist
  Superb, unpredictable stories capture Asian-American lives with mordant with and unsentimental sympathy. A literary descendant of Dubliners and Winesburg, Ohio, Don Lee's Yellow is set in the fictional California coastal town of Rosarita Bay, whose inhabitants face not only fears of being ethnically "yellow" but also the universal terrors of love, failure, and abandonment.
  

• In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd
  Author: Menendez, Ana
  Publisher: Grove $ 23 ISBN:0802116884
  Booklist
  This debut collection of tales about Cuban immigrants attempting to make new lives in America is presented by a Pushcart Prize winner, touching on themes of the hopes and disappointments of post-revolutionary Castro Cuba, cultural ties that bind family, and more.
  

• The Mysterious Press Anthology
  Author: Mysterious Press (ed)
  ISBN: 0892967390 $ 25
  Celebrating the silver anniversary of America's first mystery imprint, this special anniversary collection of original short stories is packed with a who's who of the mystery world, including Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, M.C. Beaton, and others.
• The Collected Stories of Richard Yates
  Author: Yates, Richard
  Publisher: Holt $ 28 ISBN: 0805066934
  PW
  Yates's short fiction is collected in a single volume, featuring the stories of his classic works "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" and "Liars in Love", plus nine new stories.
  

Also: After the Plague by T.C. Boyle (Aug), Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail by Bobbie Ann Mason. (Sept).

Humor

• I Don't Want to Got to Jail
  Author: Breslin, Jimmy
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN:0316118451
  Kirkus
  Pulitzer Prize winner Breslin is at the top of his form with this comic, wry novel about the downfall of a modern mob family, a new spin on a tale he learned from a life "lived on the streets".
  

• Loving Pedro Infante
  Author: Chavez, Denise
  Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374184114
  PW
  Teresina Avila is a divorced, thirty-something Chicana working in Cabritoville, New Mexico. Her lover will never leave his wife and ties Tere's heart in knots. Her diversions center around her best friend, Irma, and her membership in the Pedro Infante Fan Club. A hilarious and heartrending story about the fictions women weave to justify loving the wrong mate, this novel confirms Denise Chavez's reputation as one of our most engaging novelists.
  

• A Mulligan for Bobby Jobe
  Author: Cullen, Robert
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0060185546
  Kirkus
  Hilarious and heartwarming, Cullen's novel is an unforgettable tale in which the most humbling of sports--golf--illuminates the human capacity for both heartbreak and joy. As a blind man sets out to win the PGA Championship, lessons will be learned about the true meaning of "vision" in competition, friendship, and love.
  

• Orange Crush
  Author: Dorsey, Tim
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0060185775
  When gubernatorial candidate Marlon Conrad suffers a traumatic experience, he jumps on a campaign bus garishly decorated with the "Orange Crush" logo and ditches his security detail. The author of Florida Roadkill and Hammerhead Ranch Motel returns with another laugh-out-loud novel that delves into the dark side of the Sunshine State.
  

• The Columnist
  Author: Frank, Jeffrey
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 22 ISBN:0743212533
  In a ribald memoir of betrayal, seduction, scandal, and, ultimately, a dim recognition of failure, The Columnist is a dark comedy about a somewhat delusional political columnist looking back on his life and times.
  

• The Rich Part of Life
  Author: Kokoris, Jim
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312274793
  PW
  After Teddy loses his mother to a car accident, his father plays the lottery, with his wife's old numbers, and wins $190 million, immediately transforming their lives forever. For the first time, the family must learn what "the rich part of life" really is.
  

• Walk of Fame
  Author: Krum, Sharon
  Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 031227310x
  The bet: Tom Webster has 30 days to make himself famous. The catch: At the end of 30 days he has to reveal that his fame is all just a sham and that the culture of celebrity is manufactured and force fed to the American public. The pay-off: fame, glory, and $100,000.
  

• A Few Corrections
  Author: Leithauser, Brad
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375411496
  Kirkus
  This clever, humorous novel opens with the obituary of Wesley Sultan, a respectable, Midwestern businessman, riddled with errors. The book's narrator corrects the errors, piling correction upon correction until the original has been so altered it reveals Wesley lived a far more tangled and ambiguous life.
  

• Niagara Falls All Over Again
  Author: McCracken, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Dial $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385318375
  PW Kirkus
  Two young men, Carter & Sharp, become the most famous comedy team of their era, conquering vaudeville, the movies, radio and television. Their 30 year partnership prevails--until Carter commits one desperate act of betrayal.
  

• Fixer Chao
  Author: Ong, Han
  Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 24.95 ISBN: 0374155755
  LJ Kirkus
  A novel about love, revenge, art, and Feng Shui, as a Filipino street hustler assumes the persona of Master Chao, a revered Feng Shui practitioner from Hong Kong. Distorting the Eastern concept of Feng Shui to accommodate Western demands, he peddles his peculiar brand of holistic philosophy among New York City's elite. Fixer Chao raises questions of race and privilege, character and identity, and of what it means to be Asian at the turn of the 21st century.
  

• Hotel Honolulu
  Author: Theroux, Paul
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 26 ISBN: 0618095012
  Booklist LJ
  Like the Canterbury pilgrims, every guest in the 88-room Hotel Honolulu has come in search of something and everyone has a story. In this unforgettable novel, Theroux reveals a funny, languid, louche floating world, island style--the essence of Hawaii as it has never been depicted.
  

• Big Cherry Holler
  Author: Trigiani, Adriana
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN:0375506179
  In a hilarious and heartwarming sequel to the bestselling Big Stone Gap, Ave Maria and Jack MacChesney find their marriage strained by a summer spent apart.
  

• Good in Bed
  Author: Weiner, Jennifer
  Publisher: Pocket $ 24.95 ISBN: 0743418166
  Kirkus PW
  The day pop-culture journalist Cannie Shapiro reads her ex-boyfriends' published story about their sex life is the day her life changes. Embarking on a journey through her past she confronts her ex, deals with her lesbian mother and sifts through the answer to how she got where she is--single, angry and exposed.
  

• As Long as She Needs Me
  Author: Weinstock, Nicholas
  Publisher: Cliff St $ 22 ISBN: 0060198249
  This sparkling comedy is also a hilarious behind-the-scenes satire on the wedding industry and the world of publishing. For ten years, Oscar Campbell has worked for his explosive boss, Dawn, the head of Dawn Books. But then he receives an unwelcome and daunting task--to plan her wedding.
  

Book a Trip - Travel Tales

• Far Appalachia: Following the New River North
  Author: Adams, Noah
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385320108
  Booklist
  The host of NPR's All Things Considered and author of the beloved national bestseller Piano Lessons returns to the memoir format--and to the land of his forebears--as he follows an ancient river into the heart of contemporary Appalachia.
  

• Sheba: Through the Desert in Search of the Legendary Queen
  Author: Clapp, Nicholas
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 26 ISBN: 0395952832
  In an adventure that is part history, part travelogue, Clapp sets out on a quest to find the Queen of Sheba one of the most mysterious figures of the past. Everyone knows her name, but few know more about her than that she journeyed to see wise King Solomon.
  

• Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
  Author: Feiler, Bruce S.
  Publisher: Morrow $ 26 ISBN: 0380977753
  LJ PW
  In the tradition of Thomas Cahill and Bruce Chatwin, this fascinating book takes readers on a firsthand journey through the greatest stories ever told, drawing from the latest archaeological research about each site and exploring how geography affects the larger narrative of the Bible.

• Playing the Moldovans at Tennis
  Author: Hawks, Tony
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312280106
  Booklist
  A bestseller in England, this work by the author of Round Ireland with a Fridge finds Hawks on an extraordinary travel adventure in an attempt to beat all 11 members of the Moldovan soccer team at tennis.
  

• The Grand Tour: The European Adventures of a Continental Drifter
  Author: Moore, Tim
  Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312281560
  Moore traces the origins of the Grand Tour to a bumbling but determined 17th century courtier, and then hilariously follows in his unsteady footsteps across the Old World.
  

• Sorcerer's Apprentice
  Author: Shah, Tahir
  Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559705809
  Kirkus Booklist
  As a child, Tahir Shah learned the secrets of illusion from an Indian magician. This is the story of his apprenticeship to one of India's master conjurors and his initiation into the brotherhood of godmen. Learning to unmask and practice illusion, he seeks out the subcontinents sadhus, sages, sorcerers, hypnotists, and humbugs. His quest exposes a side of India that most writers never imagine exists.
  

Also: Any Clear Thing That Binds Us With Surprise: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich (Sept), 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account by Peter Carey (Sept).

More Travel Tales

Links

New York Times Book Review Summer Reading

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