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|  | Akunin, Boris SISTER PELAGIA AND THE RED COCKEREL
July 01, 2009 - The leader who in life called himself Manuila is revered by the Foundlings, a messianic Jewish sect, and reviled by both Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews as a false prophet. But the biggest surprise about the man beaten to death aboard the
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| | Alfieri, Annamaria CITY OF SILVER
July 01, 2009 - Two young ladies of Potos", jewel in the crown of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, have retreated to the Convent of Santa Isabella de los Santos Milagros. Beatriz intends to remain there until her father relents and lets her marry the man of her
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| | Andrews, Donna SWAN FOR THE MONEY
July 01, 2009 - They're all part of a crime wave engulfing the Caerphilly Rose Show in Virginia. Meg's latest comic nightmare begins with her father's discovery that two of the blooms he's bred for the Winkleson Trophy, given to the darkest rose, have been eaten by
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| | Atkinson, Michael HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS
July 01, 2009 - When law enforcement comes calling on Ernest Hemingway in Key West, it gets a welcome warmer than it might have expected. Relatively sober at this moment in 1956, between projects and without an important woman in his life, the 58-year-old author is
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| | Baker, Nicholson THE ANTHOLOGIST
July 01, 2009 - Narrator Paul Chowder is a published poet of more renown than many. He has accepted a commission to compile and write the introduction for an anthology of rhymed verse entitled—perhaps with a nod toward E.M. Forster—Only Rhyme. Otherwise, Paul is
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| | Bilston, Sarah SLEEPLESS NIGHTS
July 01, 2009 - After the birth of baby Samuel, whose gestation mandated the aforementioned rest, his colicky nonstop screaming threatens to rob his power-lawyer parents, Brit transplant Q (short for Quinn) and husband Tom, of the minimal downtime not already
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| | Brown, Sandra SMASH CUT
July 01, 2009 - When ace defense attorney Derek Mitchell meets stunning Julie Rutledge on a transatlantic flight, he's far too distracted by her considerable charms to question his good fortune. Back on the ground, he discovers that his mile-high-club partner was
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| | Carter, Stephen L. JERICHO'S FALL
July 01, 2009 - Rapidly aging Jericho Ainsley, retired from successive tenures as Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor and CIA Director, is stricken with cancer and believed to be about to reveal numerous incriminating secrets. That's what's understood,
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|  | Casares, Oscar AMIGOLAND
July 01, 2009 - In a Texas border town, two estranged brothers live mere miles apart. Don Fidencio, in his 90s, is the quintessential cantankerous old man. His grumbling provides comic relief from the pain he experiences at Amigoland, the nursing home in which his
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| | Chaon, Dan AWAIT YOUR REPLY
July 01, 2009 - Ohio's Dan Chaon, whose two collections established him as one of America's most promising short story writers, returns this fall with a second novel, Await Your Reply, easily his most ambitious work to date. As in his stories and previous novel
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| | Clare, Alys OUT OF THE DAWN LIGHT
July 01, 2009 - In a small Fenland village, Lassair, who has the uncanny ability to find lost objects and dowse for water, is thrilled to be learning healing skills from her aunt Edild, who's skilled in the ways of the old Gods. Lassair is celebrating the wedding
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| | Cohen, Robert AMATEUR BARBARIANS
July 01, 2009 - These barbarians aren't anything terribly special—they are, after all, amateurs—but they do have their quirks, caprices and hang-ups. Teddy Hastings is the principal of a New England middle school. He has health problems—could it be cancer?—and he
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| | Conroy, Pat SOUTH OF BROAD
July 01, 2009 - The title refers, meaningfully, to a section of Charleston, S.C., and, as with so many Southern tales, one great story begets another and another. This one starts most promisingly: "Nothing happens by accident." Indeed. The Greeks knew that, and so
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| | Cooke, Darwyn RICHARD STARK'S PARKER THE HUNTER
July 01, 2009 - Donald E. Westlake, who died last year, was known mainly for his humorous caper tales, but he also wrote—under the pseudonym Richard Stark—a famous hard-boiled series featuring a stoic and brutal professional thief named Parker. The Hunter (1952)
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| | de Castrique, Mark THE FITZGERALD RUSE
July 01, 2009 - Fresh from solving a murder whose origin stretched back nearly a century (Blackman's Coffin, 2008, etc.), Iraqi war veteran Sam Blackman has a new lease on life despite having lost a leg in combat. Nakayla Robertson, the victim's sister, who roused
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| | De Robertis, Carolina THE INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN
July 01, 2009 - On the first day of every new century, the village of Tacuarembž witnesses a miracle. Jan. 1, 1900, brings a baby found in the treetops; as she flies down to the arms of her grandmother she also finds her name: Pajarita, little bird. A few years
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| | Dexter, Pete SPOONER
July 01, 2009 - Warren Spooner arrives in unpromising circumstances, after his mother labored for 53 hours and his "better-looking" twin brother was born dead. On the very same day (Dec. 6, 1956), Congressman Rudolph Toebox coincidentally and conveniently dies,
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| | Diamant, Anita DAY AFTER NIGHT
July 01, 2009 - In August 1945, however, they're stuck in Atlit, a British detention center for illegal immigrants to the Palestinian mandate. "Not one of the women in Barrack C is 21, but all of them are orphans," the author tells us on the first page. Zorah lost
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| | Dunant, Sarah SACRED HEARTS
July 01, 2009 - In 16th-century Italy, convents were not home merely to women who felt called to Christ. They were also repositories for ugly, unconventional or otherwise unmarriageable daughters. Many of these discarded young women were from noble families, and
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| | Elmore, J. Saunders THE AMATEUR AMERICAN
July 01, 2009 - Everyone wants a piece of young Jeffrey Delanne. He's pushed into sinister black limos; hauled off to undisclosed locations; and forced into behavior that can only be described as reprehensible. And it's all shrouded in mystery. Jeffrey's been
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| | Erickson, Carolly THE MEMOIRS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
July 01, 2009 - This swift, spare account is told in the plangent voice of Mary Stuart (1542–87). She begins her diary at age 15 with her marriage to the French dauphin, soon to be King Francis II. Her sickly husband is never able to father the heir Mary needs to
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| | Ghelfi, Brent THE VENONA CABLE
July 01, 2009 - Many questions dog Russian Special Forces agent Alexei Volkovoy, or "Volk," in his third adventure. What is the meaning of the Venona Cable, a decrypted World War II missive he's acquired that details Churchill and Roosevelt's discussion about a
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| | Goodkind, Terry THE LAW OF NINES
July 01, 2009 - In the process, he will encounter an Alex he never would have believed possible, discovering things about himself, his lineage, the world he inhabits—and the alternative one he doesn't—that will prove dramatically transformative. Consider his name.
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| | Gower, Iris BOMBERS' MOON
July 01, 2009 - When their home is destroyed in a bombing raid, Meryl Jones is evacuated to Carmarthen, though older sister Hari continues her war work in Swansea. Housed with an abusive family, Meryl runs off. She's found by Michael Euler, a half-German young man
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| | Greenwood, Kerry TRICK OR TREAT
July 01, 2009 - Corinna (Devil's Food, 2008, etc.) is understandably upset when a "hot bread shop" opens just down the street in Melbourne from Earthly Delights. The chain store's product is inferior to hers, but its prices much cheaper. Even more upsetting is the
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| | Haig, Brian THE HUNTED
July 01, 2009 - At the age of 22, Alex Konevitch has it made. By dint of being the smartest entrepreneur in a not very entrepreneurial country—perestroika and Russian capitalism are still in their infancy in 1991—he's parlayed his modest start-up funds into a major
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| | Harlan, Thomas LAND OF THE DEAD
July 01, 2009 - In a galaxy brimming with hostile and inscrutable alien races, the Imperials have discovered another dangerous, immensely powerful First Sun artifact in a remote region of space; it will shred any object that approaches too close. Intelligence
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| | Hart, Josephine THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE
July 01, 2009 - Like most of their compatriots in a country torn by dissension and shrunken by emigration, Tom and Sissy O'Hara have never had an easy time of it. But nothing in their lives has prepared them for the way their world shivers and contracts on the June
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| | Herbert, Brian THE WINDS OF DUNE
July 01, 2009 - Chronologically, this one picks up immediately following Dune Messiah. The Mentat Emperor and omniscient Kwisatz Haderach Paul Atreides, blinded by an atomic weapon and no longer commanding his oracular vision, has walked off into the sands and is
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| | Hicks, Robert A SEPARATE COUNTRY
July 01, 2009 - Tennessee-based Hicks, who debuted with a Civil War novel (The Widow of the South, 2005), ventures here into Reconstruction-era New Orleans. His hero is real-life Confederate warrior John Bell Hood (for whom the Texas fort is named), who settled
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| | Hinger, Charlotte DEADLY DESCENT
July 01, 2009 - Lottie Albright has married an older man and moved to his home in a small western Kansas town, much to the disgust of her twin sister, clinical psychologist Josie. Lottie finds plenty to occupy her time as director of the Carlton County Historical
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| | Hyland, M.J. THIS IS HOW
July 01, 2009 - Protagonist and narrator Patrick Oxtoby, 23, is a failed university student who has recently been dumped by his fiance Sarah and subsequently moved to a lonely seacoast village. Only partially registering the life around him, Patrick finds lodgings
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| | Keating, H.R.F. INSPECTOR GHOTE'S FIRST CASE
July 01, 2009 - Hours after learning on March 15, 1960, of his promotion from Assistant Inspector to the dizzying heights of the Detection of Crime Branch, Ganesh Ghote is snatched from the side of his loyal wife Protima, pregnant with their first child, whom he'd
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| | Kellerman, Faye BLINDMAN'S BLUFF
July 01, 2009 - Nothing is routine for Rina Lazarus, not even a call to jury duty. Even though husband Peter Decker is with the LAPD, she's impaneled anyway. During a lunch break the court translator, who's blind, asks Rina to describe two men he's been
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| | Kiely, Tracy MURDER AT LONGBOURN
July 01, 2009 - Facing New Year's Eve alone, newly single Elizabeth Parker is just as ready as Bridget Jones to give up hope of finding her Mr. Darcy. An invitation to help at quirky Aunt Winnie's bed and breakfast on Cape Cod seems like her best option to ring in
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| | Kiernan, Caitl"n R. THE RED TREE
July 01, 2009 - Portrayed as the posthumously published memoir of a suicide, the narrative is introduced and commented upon by a fictional editor. In the story proper, that suicide, novelist Sarah Crowe, tells of moving into a rural Rhode Island house. There she
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| | Kinsella, Sophie TWENTIES GIRL
July 01, 2009 - Between relationship woes, work dramas and the day-to-day life of a city gal, Lara could probably be excused for having minimal contact with Great-Aunt Sadie during the last years of her life. The woman was, after all, 105 and confined to a nursing
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| | Koryta, Michael THE SILENT HOUR
July 01, 2009 - While his partner Joe is in Florida considering retirement, Linc drifts around their Cleveland office ignoring mail and phone calls until the door opens to admit Parker Harrison, who's been trying to reach him for months. Parker, paroled 13 years
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| | Ledger, Kate REMEDIES
July 01, 2009 - Simon Bear is a towering man filled with confidence and good will. His patients adore him (he proudly keeps a file of their thank-you letters) and refer to him as Dr. Feelgood for his willingness to prescribe narcotics. The novel opens as he gives
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| | Lindskold, Jane NINE GATES
July 01, 2009 - When the first emperor of China ordered the destruction of texts and the deaths of hundreds of scholars, most of that country's magic split off into another universe, the Lands Born of Smoke and Sacrifice. One hundred years ago, 12 imperial advisors
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| | Lourey, Jess SEPTEMBER FAIR
July 01, 2009 - The 54th Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy, is having her likeness sculpted in butter when the lights go out and the tourists panic. Two minutes later, the lights come back on, but Milkfed Mary doesn't. She's been fatally poisoned with cyanide.
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| | Maron, Margaret SAND SHARKS
July 01, 2009 - While her new husband, sheriff's deputy Dwight Bryant, and his son Cal clear out belongings from his first marriage, Judge Deborah Knott (Death's Half Acre, 2008, etc.) heads to Wrightsville Beach for the annual conference of North Carolina district
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| | May, Peter CHINESE WHISPERS
July 01, 2009 - Li Yan, head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Beijing Municipal Police, is appalled when four prostitutes are murdered in a manner exactly replicating that of the Ripper 120 years ago. The mastermind even sends him precisely worded
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| | Maynard, Joyce LABOR DAY
July 01, 2009 - Shifts of tone mark the progression of Maynard's latest (Internal Combustion, 2006, etc.). In an unlikely opening, 13-year-old Henry and his mother Adele agree to take home Frank, the bleeding man they meet while shopping at Pricemart. Frank turns
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| | McMurtry, Larry RHINO RANCH
July 01, 2009 - Now in his late 60s, Duane has been with us since The Last Picture Show (1966). That was many volumes ago, McMurtry (Books: A Memoir, 2008, etc.) being a prolific chap, and Duane has had his ups and downs. This book catches him on a down. His friend
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| | Moody, Martha SOMETIMES MINE
July 01, 2009 - Highly educated, highly competent, almost irritatingly self-deprecating cardiologist Genie Toledo is the workaholic partner in a three-doctor practice in Columbus, Ohio. Only Thursday nights are sacrosanct and beeperless. For 12 years Genie, now in
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| | Moriarty, Laura WHILE I'M FALLING
July 01, 2009 - Veronica Von Holten's father, a lawyer who raided his retirement when times grew lean, and her mother Natalie, a stay-at-home mom who had once been a teacher, separate after Dad catches a strange man asleep in his own bed. After the family house is
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| | Myers, Beverle Graves HER DEADLY MISCHIEF
July 01, 2009 - Tito Amato, the principal castrato at Venice's main opera venue, is midway through the debut performance of Armida when a spectator tumbles into the pit from the fourth tier. Zulietta Giardino, a much-admired courtesan, had been sitting in the box
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| | Neofotis, Peter CONCORD, VIRGINIA
July 01, 2009 - The main character in these 11 linked short stories is, without a doubt, the town of Concord, Va., which seems to protest the signs of encroaching modernity. In "The Vultures," for instance, a grief-stricken man who has accidentally shot his wife to
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| | Nugent, Andrew SOUL MURDER
July 01, 2009 - St. Isidore's, with all the secret doorways and hidden staircases proper to a haunted castle, houses seven boarding students in a dormitory tower. Almost caught by a shadowy figure as they return from a late-night barbecue (a St. Isidore's rite of
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| | O'Brien, Charles DEADLY QUARREL
July 01, 2009 - Anne goes to visit her ailing grandfather; Beverly hopes to persuade her estranged husband Thomas to a divorce so that she can continue living in Nice with her lover. There's a checkered history behind her quest. In 1773, the Parker family's dying
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| | Parker, I.J. THE CONVICT'S SWORD
July 01, 2009 - The brutal murder of Tomoe, a blind street singer, offers a stark contrast to the beautiful morning that greets Lord Sugawara Akitada and his beloved wife Tamako. Akitada, who serves as Senior Secretary in the Ministry of Justice, has recently been
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| | Parkin, Gaile BAKING CAKES IN KIGALI
July 01, 2009 - Angel and her husband Pius tragically buried both of their grown children, son Joseph and daughter Vinas. Now the Tanzania-born couple are raising five grandchildren (two girls and three boys) in Rwanda's capital city. Angel does her part to keep
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| | Pynchon, Thomas INHERENT VICE
July 01, 2009 - A psychedelic beach book, of course: It's hippie-era Los Angeles, and our hero smokes marijuana the way others smoke cigarettes, which is something of an occupational hazard in a profession that requires deductive abilities. About a third the length
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| | Reich, Christopher RULES OF VENGEANCE
July 01, 2009 - Dr. Jonathan Ransom, who's left Africa to address a conference in London, is conveniently on hand when Lord Robert Russell is murdered in his Mayfair penthouse by a wraithlike intruder, available to meet his wife Emma when she unexpectedly pops up
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| | Rickman, Phil TO DREAM OF THE DEAD
July 01, 2009 - The city council and planning commission agree to excavate the ancient buried stones beneath Coleman's Meadow and develop luxury housing and a highway, making it easy for posh weekenders to commute to London from Ledwardine, on the Welsh border. But
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| | Rosenfelt, David NEW TRICKS
July 01, 2009 - The shooting of pharmaceutical semi-titan Walter Timmerman in a seedy New Jersey neighborhood way outside his orbit has landed the Passaic County justice system with two problems: identifying and convicting his killer, and resolving a custody battle
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| | Rosoff, Meg THE BRIDE'S FAREWELL
July 01, 2009 - There's a flavor of Thomas Hardy to the British novelist's story of survival and suffering in mid-19th-century southern England. Rosoff, author of several books for children and young adults, plunges readers straight into the story of Pell Ridley,
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| | Rowson, Pauline DEAD MAN'S WHARF
July 01, 2009 - There's nothing like a murder to make a trivial matter assume more weight. Take Mr. Kingsway's complaint that someone assaulted his mother at the Rest Haven Nursing Home. Sounds like the ramblings of a senile old bat—except that Irene Ebury, the
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| | Russo, Richard THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC
July 01, 2009 - In contrast to his acclaimed novels about dying towns in the Northeast, the author's slapstick satire of academia (Straight Man, 1997) previously seemed like an anomaly. Now it has a companion of sorts, though Russo can't seem to decide whether his
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| | Schlink, Bernhard SELF'S MURDER
July 01, 2009 - Bertram Welker's history of Weller & Welker, his family's private bank, won't be complete without an account of the silent partner who pumped an undisclosed amount of cash into the firm a century ago. Since Welker's never identified this savior, he
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| | Shuman, George D. SECOND SIGHT
July 01, 2009 - Sherry was five when an accidental blow to her head managed to jar, jumble and rearrange the wiring in her brain. Though the health of her eyes was unaffected, she's been blind for 32 years, a handicap with one astonishing compensation. She's a
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| | Starr, Jason PANIC ATTACK
July 01, 2009 - Even though his wife Dana has already dialed 911 and the police are on their way, Dr. Adam Bloom chooses to grab his Glock and confront the stranger his daughter Marissa warns him has broken in. Their face-off lasts only seconds. When it's over,
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| | Stockbridge, Sara HAMMER
July 01, 2009 - The story, set amid the filth and color of 19th-century London, concerns Grace Hammer, a young mother and veteran thief. Stockbridge was a model in the 1980s for designer Vivienne Westwood, and there is an echo of Westwood's playful, punk-Victorian
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| | Straka, Andy KITTY HITTER
July 01, 2009 - Separating felines from their rightful owners is the crime in shamus Frank Pavlicek's latest case, and Frank's not happy about it. He's a modern-day Sam Spade, not Ace Ventura. Still, the obligations of friendship are pressing, and Darla Barnes had
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| | Tobin, Betsy ICE LAND
July 01, 2009 - The author juggles multiple narrative strands, sometimes confusingly or predictably. Freya, Norse goddess of love, falls under the spell of a miraculous, "too precious" golden necklace fashioned by the Brising dwarves (shades of Tolkien). Meanwhile,
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| | Todd, Charles A DUTY TO THE DEAD
July 01, 2009 - Relinquishing for the moment Inspector Ian Rutledge (A Matter of Justice, 2008, etc.), the Todd writing partnership presents Bess Crawford, invalided home when the hospital ship she nursed on is shot out from under her. She's bent on relaying a
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| | Trofimuk, Thomas WAITING FOR COLUMBUS
July 01, 2009 - Trofimuk (Doubting Yourself to the Bone, 2005, etc.) creates all kinds of mysteries to surround the man brought to the Institute for the Mentally Ill in Seville: his perplexing appearance at the Strait of Gibraltar, his hallucinatory incoherence,
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| | Tucker, Lisa THE PROMISED WORLD
July 01, 2009 - Tucker (The Cure for Modern Life, 2008, etc.) begins with Lila Cole, a literature professor with an unusually strong attachment to stories and characters, whose life has just been wrested from its calm by her brother Billy's suicide. We retrace
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| | Tyler, Anne NOAH'S COMPASS
July 01, 2009 - Noah's Compass, her 18th novel, is one of Tyler's more deceptively rich and enigmatically titled (there is no character named Noah, and the evocation of the Bible story lasts less than a page). Set as usual in her native Baltimore, the novel
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| | Vásquez, Juan Gabriel THE INFORMERS
July 01, 2009 - In 1988, journalist Gabriel Santoro published A Life in Exile, the story of a Jewish refugee who fled to Colombia in the years preceding the war. Gabriel wrote the book, he tells us, to give some perspective on the struggles of such emigrants. His
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| | Walls, Jeannette HALF BROKE HORSES
July 01, 2009 - Because she uses a first-person narrative voice to capture Lily's scrappy voice and imaginatively fills in some of the missing details of Lily's life, Walls calls the work "A True-Life Novel," but it follows the straightforward linear path of
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| | Weiner, Jennifer BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
July 01, 2009 - Addie Downs can't catch a break. Fat and friendless as a child, she enjoys a few years' respite from isolation when awkward, neglected Valerie Adler moves in across the street in the Chicago suburb of Pleasant Ridge. Val doesn't care that Addie's
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| | Welsh, Irvine REHEATED CABBAGE
July 01, 2009 - While the characters who populate his novels are aging far from gracefully, fans will still likely be happy to see their familiar faces in this collection of 1990s work rescued from various anthologies and now-defunct magazines. Welsh also
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| Online Exclusive
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| More from Moore
June 30, 2009 - In How Fiction Works, the tutorial by the New Yorker critic and Harvard professor, James Wood writes, "Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life. And so on and on."...Contemporary fiction has produced few noticers with a better eye and more engaging voice than Tassie Keltjin, the narrator of Lorrie Moore's deceptively powerful A Gate at the Stairs.
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