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| Fiction |
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|  | Ashford, Jeffrey A DANGEROUS FRIENDSHIP
September 15, 2008 - Five days after DC Andy Gregg provides a detailed review of the porous anti-theft protection at Querry Brade, the Irwins' Elizabethan home, the house is broken into by thieves who evidently knew exactly which picture in the bedroom concealed the
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| | Atkinson, Deborah Turrell PLEASING THE DEAD
September 15, 2008 - Storm Kayama has left the Maui airport headed for Lara's Aquatic Adventures, where she's setting up incorporation and liability procedures for her new client Lara Farrell's soon-to-open dive shop, when an exploding restaurant snarls traffic for
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| | Barone, Joe THE BODY IN THE RECORD ROOM
September 15, 2008 - Roy, who insists that he's Roy Rogers, finds the old priest's body in the records room of the Sunrise Mental Hospital. Since he isn't supposed to be there and would be medicated to a fare-thee-well if found out, he gets his buddy Harry to help him
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| | Beahrs, Andrew THE SIN EATERS
September 15, 2008 - As concerned to capture the sound and texture of the past as to tell his story, Beahrs (Strange Saint, 2005, etc.) employs archaic, often poetic language and utilizes a welter of period detail. His England is a busy, often pitiless place, now in
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| | Bear, Elizabeth ALL THE WINDWRACKED STARS
September 15, 2008 - Following Ragnarok, the Norse Twilight of the Gods, the only survivors were the valkyrie (warrior-angel) Muire, Kasimir the valraven (two-headed flying steed) and Mingan, a dark-angel wolf. Civilization eventually rose again, developed advanced
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| | Black, Michael A. DEAD RINGER
September 15, 2008 - Private eye Ron Shade, World Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion, has been hired by an insurance company, out big bucks on what may be a phony claim, when one of their agents spots a man in Vegas who looks suspiciously like the Bob Bayless that
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| | Blecher, Max SCARRED HEARTS
September 15, 2008 - Emanuel, who has been studying chemistry in Paris, is "terrified" and "bewildered" when he gets his medical diagnosis. His doctors, portrayed as decent, kind men, send him to a sanatorium at Berck-sur-Mer. With a dreamlike sense of detail, Blecher
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|  | Bolaýýo, Roberto 2666
September 15, 2008 - Published posthumously in a single volume, despite its author's instruction that it appear as five distinct novels, it's a symphonic envisioning of moral and societal collapse, which begins with a mordantly amusing account ("The Part About the
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| | Brown, Rita Mae SANTA CLAWED
September 15, 2008 - Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen and her equine vet husband Fair are happily shopping for a Christmas tree when they discover a monk with his throat slit. The Brothers of Love, who support themselves by selling trees, do good works in the area. But many
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| | Brownrigg, Sylvia THE DELIVERY ROOM
September 15, 2008 - In contrast with the quirky, wry and surreal notes of her previous novel (Morality Tale, 2008), Brownrigg's latest is a solidly realistic, also minutely considered account of relationships, their anguish, solace and the gaps in between, in Europe in
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| | Church, James BAMBOO AND BLOOD
September 15, 2008 - In the middle of a blizzard in the winter of 1997, North Korean Inspector O and his nervous supervisor, Chief Inspector Pak, bring in for questioning a suspicious foreigner whose playful answers indicate a lack of concern and whose explanation of
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| | Craven, Michael BODY COPY
September 15, 2008 - Donald Tremaine cancels his vacation when pretty, sad-eyed Nina Aldeen asks him to solve a case the L.A. cops have given up on. Her uncle Roger Gale, an advertising megastar, has been found bashed and strangled at his office. No one knows why, and
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| | Deaver, Jeffery THE BODIES LEFT BEHIND
September 15, 2008 - Steven and Emma Feldman retreat from their jobs in Milwaukee to Wisconsin's Marquette State Park. But they haven't retreated far enough to keep two armed and masked men from breaking into their place. Responding to a 911 call Steven made moments
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| | Delany, Vicki VALLEY OF THE LOST
September 15, 2008 - Leaving the Woman's Support Center in Trafalgar, British Columbia, Lucy "Lucky" Smith finds a three-month-old baby whimpering in the woods near the body of his dead mommy, a young woman with needle tracks up her arm and a hypodermic by her side.
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| | De Santis, Pablo THE PARIS ENIGMA
September 15, 2008 - Argentine journalist and comic-strip creator De Santis chooses one of the moments when the Western world leapt further into the modern age to tell a slim and wistful story of a group of detectives. His narrator is Sigmundo Salvatrio, brainy and
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| | Ephron, Hallie NEVER TELL A LIE
September 15, 2008 - In love since high school, Ivy and David Rose are now in their early 30s and expecting their first child. When they hold a yard sale, Melinda White, a former classmate Ivy does not recognize and barely remembers as an unpopular geek, shows up
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| | Fasman, Jon THE UNPOSSESSED CITY
September 15, 2008 - If Fasman (The Geographer's Library, 2005) was worried about the second-novel syndrome, he needn't have been. This adventure of a man who has no business having adventures is a pleasure for most of its length, stumbling only occasionally as the
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| | Flynn, Michael THE JANUARY DANCER
September 15, 2008 - Discovered deep within a nameless planet and subsequently lost by freighter captain Amos January, the mysterious pre-human statue known as the Dancer soon surfaces on New Eireann, a future-Ireland in the midst of its own troubles. Promptly stolen by
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| | Froetschel, Susan ROYAL ESCAPE
September 15, 2008 - To the dismay of Queen Catherine, who's withholding final settlement, Elena, Princess of Wales, has filed for divorce from her husband. Elena's equally fed up with Prince Edward's continuing attachment to his frumpy mistress Kay and the constricted
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| | Greeley, Andrew M. THE ARCHBISHOP IN ANDALUSIA
September 15, 2008 - At home, John Blackwood Ryan, who sits at the right hand of Sean, Cardinal Cronin, is often, with great affection, called Blackie, the little archbishop. In the south of Spain, he's informed by the Archbishop of Seville, whose puckish sense of humor
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| | Havill, Steven F. THE FOURTH TIME IS MURDER
September 15, 2008 - Speaking on behalf of A Woman's World, a national magazine of considerable distinction, respected writer Madelyn Bolles has a proposition. If the undersheriff is amenable, she'll be profiled in depth as a woman whose accomplishments other women are
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| | James, P.D. THE PRIVATE PATIENT
September 15, 2008 - For 34 years Rhoda Gradwyn has carried the legacy of her father's abuse in the form of a disfiguring facial scar. Now a distinguished investigative journalist, she decides to have it removed because, as she tells Harley Street plastic surgeon George
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| | Kehlmann, Daniel ME AND KAMINSKI
September 15, 2008 - Sebastian Zollner is a journalist, a vocation for which he is spectacularly unsuited. His strongest—really, only—character trait is self-absorption, which makes him a thoroughly unperceptive observer. He might be the world's most boorish art critic,
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| | Kelman, James KIERON SMITH, BOY
September 15, 2008 - For Kieron, it's all a matter of size. There are big boys and wee boys, and Kieron is a wee boy. Later, other distinctions emerge. In his native Glasgow, there are Papes (Catholics) and Proddies (Protestants). Members of the rival religions lead
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| | Leigh, Julia DISQUIET
September 15, 2008 - A woman arrives at the gate of a large French estate. She has a suitcase, a broken arm and two children. A stone wall and an electronic security system separate the woman, the boy and the girl from the château inside. Undeterred, the woman leads her
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| | Márai, Sándor ESTHER'S INHERITANCE
September 15, 2008 - Esther tells her story with reflective calm. The middle-aged woman lives simply with Nunu, an older female relative, in their family home in the country. The sale of almonds from their garden keeps them afloat. Some 25 years before, Esther had
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| | Orth, Lucia BABY JESUS PAWN SHOP
September 15, 2008 - Starting with horrific acts of cruelty on page one, Orth's forceful condemnation of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines dominates the book. The hero is Doming, whose stepfather was murdered by the military, forcing the teenager to flee to
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| | Paasilinna, Arto THE HOWLING MILLER
September 15, 2008 - After serving in World War II and the later Lapland wars against the Soviet Union, our picaresque hero Gunnar Huttunen purchases an old mill in northern Finland. Spectacularly skilled and industrious, Gunnar soon has the millworks up and running,
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| | Phillips, Holly THE ENGINE'S CHILD
September 15, 2008 - The plot mostly follows Moth, a young religious apprentice in a society whose inhabitants descend from a race that fled some unspecified catastrophe generations before. The island on which all the remaining people live, surrounded by a vast,
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| | Reaves, Sam MEAN TOWN BLUES
September 15, 2008 - Trying to get his life going after duty in Iraq, Tommy McLain heads to Chicago and lines up a couple of odd jobs. At a party, he's attracted to Lisa DiPietro and they soon begin a passionate affair. So he's catnip when Lisa tells him she's being
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| | Reynolds, Sheri THE SWEET IN-BETWEEN
September 15, 2008 - These days Kenny has just one thing on her mind—what will happen when she turns 18. For years she's lived with Aunt Glo, her father's girlfriend, who is mother to her own brood: oldest Tim-Tim, teenage Quincy and little Daphne (really the child of
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| | Riskin, Boris DEADLY BONES
September 15, 2008 - After disposing of purloined Faberg eggs in Scrambled Eggs (2005), Jake Wanderman, depressed and at loose ends since the sudden death of his wife, succumbs to the call for help from her best friend Toby. Toby's dad Cormac Blather, an antiques
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| | Rowland, Laura Joh THE FIRE KIMONO
September 15, 2008 - Returning to the familiar Japan of her long-running samurai saga after a side trip to 19th-century England, Rowland (The Snow Empress, 2007, etc.) drops her readers in the midst of red-hot court intrigue. Beautiful, clever, part-time detective
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| | Rowlands, Betty SMOKESCREEN
September 15, 2008 - At first it seems obvious that Jennifer Cottrell, found drowned in her bathtub at Woodlands, her ungainly and inconvenient West Country home, was killed by an irate fan. Reynolds even saw said fan, Wendy Downie, verbally assault Cottrell at a book
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| | Runcie, James CANVEY ISLAND
September 15, 2008 - Martin Turner is a mere child in 1953 when a deadly storm ravages his island in the Thames estuary. His home is flooded and his beloved mother killed; his fisherman father Len, out dancing with his Aunt Violet, is spared. Throughout the novel Runcie
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| | Schlesier, Karl H. AURORA CROSSING
September 15, 2008 - Students who have learned anything about American Indian history are likely to have heard the name of Chief Joseph; some may even have encountered his acclaimed words "I will fight no more forever." Anthropologist/novelist Schlesier (Trail of the
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| | Schulze, Ingo NEW LIVES
September 15, 2008 - The postmodernist author maintains he is merely editing the writings of a disgraced businessman whose post-unification newspaper empire collapsed in the late 1990s. Schulze has "discovered" a series of letters written by Enrico (aka Heinrich) Türmer
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| | Shainberg, Lawrence CRUST
September 15, 2008 - In a bizarre near-future narrative accompanied by dozens of faux-scholarly footnotes, critically acclaimed author Walker Linchak (best known for his series "The Completes" —e.g., The Complete Book of 9/11) describes the experience that makes him a
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| | Shannon, Harry ONE OF THE WICKED
September 15, 2008 - Even though he's clean and sober, Mick Callahan's life isn't exactly moonlight and roses. Thanks to AA, he's beaten back the demons loosed on him by Danny Bell, his abusive stepfather. But his radio spot has been snatched by a right-wing demagogue,
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| | Slade, Michael CRUCIFIED
September 15, 2008 - In a time-hopping adventure that's part Indiana Jones and part Da Vinci Code, this latest supernatural mystery from Slade (Kamikaze, 2006, etc.) pits a sinister papal representative, the Legionary of Christ, against lawyer-historian-and-bestselling
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| | Souljah, Sister MIDNIGHT
September 15, 2008 - Fleeing Africa at age seven with his young pregnant mother, Umma, the boy later known as Midnight is not seeking a better life so much as hiding out from the political fallout of his powerful father's role in the Sudanese government. Adrift without
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| | Staudohar, Paul D. MURDER SHORT & SWEET
September 15, 2008 - Arranged in no particular order, these 25, winnowed from an archive of thousands similarly gore-drenched, compose an anthology that had every chance to be better than it is. There's no pesky field-compressing theme to complicate the selection
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| | Steel, Danielle A GOOD WOMAN
September 15, 2008 - Annabelle Worthington, born to a prominent banking family, enjoys an idyllic childhood, until the fateful night when her father and brother go down with the Titanic. Annabelle's mother, Consuelo, worries that the yearlong mourning period might
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| | Stone, Eric FLIGHT OF THE HORNBILL
September 15, 2008 - After a crowded flight to Jakarta, Hong Kong–based investigative journalist and inveterate ladies' man Ray Sharp is diving into an icy vodka when he's accosted by his estranged wife, Sylvia, who has two items on her agenda. First she asks
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| | Tsutsui, Yasutaka SALMONELLA MEN ON PLANET PORNO
September 15, 2008 - The author, much touted in Japan for his surrealist fiction, begins by highlighting the blurred line between dreams and reality. In "The Dabba Dabba Tree," a couple acquires a tree that causes profoundly erotic dreams—dreams about people who may not
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| | Vaz, Katherine OUR LADY OF THE ARTICHOKES
September 15, 2008 - This collection from Vaz (Fado & Other Stories, 1997, etc.) revolves largely around generational differences and cultural assimilation. In the title story, a financially strapped woman fabricates a story about seeing the Virgin Mary in her artichoke
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| | Wagenstein, Angel ISAAC'S TORAH
September 15, 2008 - In an afterword, Bulgarian writer and filmmaker Wagenstein (Farewell, Shanghai, 2007, etc.) acknowledges Jewish jokes as "a source of courage and self-esteem through the most tragic moments," and his discursive novel makes considerable use of them
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| | Washburn, Livia J. FRANKLY MY DEAR, I'M DEAD
September 15, 2008 - Sassy southern divorce Delilah Dickinson has just started up a literary-tour business. Her maiden voyage involves Gone With the Wind—and is nearly gone with the wind itself. Delilah, her son-in-law, Luke, and her teen twin nieces, Amelia and
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| | Webb, Betty THE ANTEATER OF DEATH
September 15, 2008 - Lucy the anteater smells a human interloper in her digs at the Gunn Landing Zoo. Moments later, smelling death, she begins a meal of the ants crawling over the body. When the corpse is discovered the next morning, hotheaded zoo director Barry Fields
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| | Wilson, A.N. WINNIE AND WOLF
September 15, 2008 - There are three strands in the latest narrative from Wilson (Betjeman, 2006, etc.). The first dips into Wagner's life while examining his major operas. The second is the relationship of Winnie and Wolf between 1923 and 1939. The third is the
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| | Wilson, F. Paul BY THE SWORD
September 15, 2008 - Repairman Jack, the resourceful hero last seen in Wilson's Bloodline (2007), takes on his latest assignment at the request of a visitor from Hawaii. Nakanaori Slater is in New York hoping to recover a bit of history. It's a katana, a warrior's sword
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| | Wilson, John Morgan SPIDER SEASON
September 15, 2008 - Long before he returned his Pulitzer for fabricating information in an AIDS feature, Benjamin Justice had already made news as the 17-year-old who shot his father to death when he caught him raping Benjamin's sister. Now he's written Deep
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| | Wing, Jodi THE ART OF SOCIAL WAR
September 15, 2008 - It's the end of 2001 and nice girl Stacey is preparing for Mayor Rudy Giuliani's staff farewell party. What begins as a celebratory evening ends with a bombshell: the conglomerate her fianc works for has acquired a movie company and they're moving
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| Online Exclusive
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| Reader Beware
August 15, 2008 - Eighth-grade grammar is of direct use for very few professions. Copyediting is one of them. Good copyeditors, who remember eighth-grade as well as, or better than, their first kisses, are worth their weight in platinum. And when copyediting is not done well, everybody suffers. Our reputation to the contrary, Kirkus reviewers can be a forgiving lot: We typically review from galleys and have grown accustomed to reading past typos and other errors, confident that the publication team's copyeditors will correct them in the finished books. This doesn't always happen. Consider the case of one of the best young-adult books of the year.
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| Coming Soon |
| BOOKS SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW
Click here for the updated list of the books scheduled for review in one of the upcoming issues of Kirkus Reviews.
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