FICTION
Released: Aug. 28, 2012
"Rising romance star Dahl delivers with this sizzling contemporary romance. (Warning: Steamy situations and straightforward sexual descriptions are well-done and integral to the plot, but some scenes are pretty graphic for a mainstream romance.) "
Hot, contemporary "opposites attract" romance hits the emotional high notes as two struggling people find themselves and each other.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 28, 2012
"Midwives are warriors in this beautifully sweeping tale."
Prohibition, the Ku Klux Klan, unions, Mother Jones--the early-20th century would be a tough world for anyone. Orphan, unwed mother, widow, midwife--Patience Murphy is a worthy adversary.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 28, 2012
"Elliptical and often oracular, but also remarkably penetrating and humane. The most illuminating analogies are not to other contemporary detective fiction but to The Name of the Rose and Murder in the Cathedral."
A prior's murder takes Quebec's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his sidekick, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, inside the walls of the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loupes.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 24, 2012
"Nobel Peace Prize winner Wiesel continues to remind us of the brilliant possibilities of the philosophical and political novel. "
Wiesel takes us on a journey through dream, memory and especially storytelling in his latest novel, which concerns Shaltiel Feigenberg, who in 1975, is captured and imprisoned for 80 hours in a basement by two captors.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"Superb work from an abundantly gifted young writer."
Set in early-20th-century Washington state, Coplin's majestic debut follows a makeshift family through two tragic decades.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"To Disher's usual brisk pacing, add heaps of noir. The result is not for everyone but is a banquet for those who like it uncut and unsparing."
Dirty doings Down Under as Australian superthief Wyatt (
Wyatt, 2011, etc.) returns to steal something he wishes he hadn't.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"Geologist Andrews enhances Em's adventures (Dead Dry, 2005, etc.) with expert detail. A challenging mystery with the added fillip of evocative descriptions of the canyon."
FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"George's all-too-familiar story is so richly observed, subtly characterized, precisely written--her syncopated paragraphs are a special delight--and successful in its avoidance of genre clichés that you'd swear you were reading the first police procedural ever written."
George's Pittsburgh cops (
Hideout, 2011, etc.) investigate a robbery-murder that's a lot less routine and more sordid than it looks.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"A fine thriller that succeeds on every level. How often do you read about a hero who just wants to die in peace?"
FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"Another charming demonstration that it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive--a motto that might stand for every soap opera ever written."
FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"Possibly the best novel yet by one of America's premier storytellers."
His father's past both unsettles and entices Rusty Harry in Doig's latest loving portrait of Montana and its crusty inhabitants (
Work Song, 2010, etc.).
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"By weaving her own imaginative constructions in with actual journal entries of both Flaubert and Nightingale, Shomer skillfully combines historical plausibility and historical truth."
Alternative literary history--the conceit here is that Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert, both of whom traveled to Egypt in 1850, met on the voyage and developed an ardent friendship.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 21, 2012
"A fictional debut for a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, born and raised in West Virginia, whose love for the state, filled with natural beauty and deep poverty, pervades a mystery that has plenty of twists and turns and a shocking conclusion."
A tough prosecutor who's trying to make a difference in the lives of West Virginians suddenly finds her own life in shambles.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 16, 2012
"A powerful, intense and fascinating read."
Hints of time travel haunt this historical and philosophical novel set in early-20th-century Boston and Europe.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 16, 2012
"A complex, politically daring story, much of which will be unfamiliar to Western readers--and that demands to be read for that very reason."
Scenes from the last months in the life of Ho Chi Minh, as imagined by Vietnamese novelist Huong (
Paradise of the Blind, 1993, etc.).
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 14, 2012
"As in Ruth Rendell's books as Barbara Vine, readers are invited to watch helplessly as things go from bad to much, much worse for an unlucky group of basically nice people. If that's your pleasure, you could hardly do better."
Inspector Konrad Sejer's latest quarry is a prankster whose pranks are callous, cruel and ultimately lethal.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 14, 2012
"This is a beautiful exploration of how the heart's irrational responses to love and betrayal can stand in the way of forgiveness."
Everyone hopes that love will last forever, that only other people's loves will fail. But what if the unthinkable happens to you?
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 14, 2012
"For those who have an affinity for metaphysical fiction written with a surgeon's precision, this collection will spur readers to seek out everything else by its author."
Beneath the surface placidity of Swiss life, undercurrents of spiritual turmoil and existential despair charge this powerful collection of provocative stories.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"A polished, cleverly constructed and very precisely calculated first novel."
The miraculous arrival of a child in the life of a barren couple delivers profound love but also the seeds of destruction.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"A little magic, a lot of romance and well-drawn characters make a satisfying read."
FICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"Unique premise, empathetic characters, believable villains, all beautifully played out as a tale of the limits of love and loyalty."
In Cristofano's (
The Girl She Used to Be, 2009) latest, an all-American suburban family stumbles upon Mafioso
justice in New York City's Little Italy.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"Cumming's sixth thriller (The Trinity Six, 2011, etc.) is smart and intricate, with a large cast of cool characters and an authentic feel. "
FICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"Unrelenting in its anger, pain and sorrow, but hard to put down."
The three women personifying the complicated relationship between France and Senegal in French-born NDiaye's tripartite novel, winner of France's Prix Concourt in 2009, need all the strength they can muster as they struggle to survive.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 7, 2012
"World War II Germany may be familiar ground, but Gillham's novel—vividly cinematic yet subtle and full of moral ambiguity, not to mention riveting characters—is as impossible to put down as it is to forget."
In his debut about 1943 Berlin, Gillham uses elements common to the many previous movies and books about World War II—from vicious Nazis to black marketeers to Jewish children hiding in attics to beautiful blond German women hiding their sexuality inside drab coats—yet manages to make the story fresh.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 2, 2012
"One doesn't have to be an Edith Wharton fan to luxuriate in the Wharton-esque plotting and prose Fields so elegantly conjures."
Joining the burgeoning genre of novels concerning famous people's unknown subordinates, Fields (
The Middle Ages, 2003, etc.) offers a fictionalized account of Edith Wharton's troubled love life in large part through the eyes of her former governess and lifelong secretary, Anna Bahlmann.
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