Fiction, January 2004

Ahern, Cecelia: P.S., I Love You (February 2004)

Nicholas Sparks meets Bridget Jones in this enchanting, poignant and witty novel about moving on after the loss of a loved one.
Arvin, Reed: The Last Goodbye (February 2004)

When a down-on-his-luck attorney gets mixed up with a gorgeous singer with a secret past, it results in a tale of love, betrayal and murder.
Bruen, Ken: The Killing of the Tinkers (February 2004)

When Jack Taylor blew town at the end of Bruen's dazzling novel The Guards, his alcoholism was a distant memory and his sober dreams of a new life in London were shining in his eyes. Now Jack's back in Galway a year later with a new leather jacket on his back and a pint of Guinness on his mind. So much for new beginnings.
Callanan, Liam: The Cloud Atlas (February 2004)

This novel, set against a magnificent Alaskan backdrop, reveals one of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II in a tale that is both a mystery and a unique love story.
Cook, Thomas H.: Peril (February 2004)

Sara Labriola is a married woman haunted by shattering secrets and terrified of the future. Tired of living in fear, Sara does the only thing she can: she makes herself disappear. On the seductive streets of New York City, Sara reinvents herself. But six desperate and dangerous men, each with the power to destroy her, are on her trail.
Dalton, John: Heaven Lake (April 2004)

This lengthy debut novel relates the journey of Vincent Saunders, a recent college graduate from the Midwest who travels to Taiwan to devote himself to Christian ministry. His naive morality and self-righteousness are immediately shattered when he becomes involved in a sexual relationship with a younger student. When the affair is discovered, Vincent must leave his ministry and accept an offer from a businessman named Mr. Gwa to travel to the remote northwest corner of China where his passage from a sheltered, religious life into reality is filled with dramatic episodes and unique characters.
Dorsey, Tim: Cadillac Beach (February 2004)

A diamond heist caper told Dorsey-style and set in Miami Beach in 1964 and 2004 with psycho killer Serge Storms unraveling the mystery surrounding his grandfather's death 40 years ago.
Dunant, Sarah: The Birth of Venus (February 2004)

This a tour de force from one of Britain's most innovative thriller writers that brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, by telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a remarkable heroine with the same vibrancy as her beloved city.
Fforde, Jasper: The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel (February 2004)

Join Thursday Next as she encounters some of the greatest characters in literature and battles deadly villains who literally leap off the page.
Freeman, David: It's All True: A Novel of Hollywood (March 2004)

Veteran Hollywood insider and acclaimed author David Freeman offers a slyly satirical and thoroughly engaging portrait of a screenwriter making his big play to get back on top.
Frey, Stephen: Shadow Account (March 2004)

Investment banker Conner Ashby is doing all right for himself until he receives a wayward e-mail and is plunged into a terrifying nightmare.
Ford, Michael Curtis: The Last King: Rome's Greatest Enemy (March 2004)

Over forty years, Rome sent its greatest generals to contain Mithridates and gained tenuous control over his empire only after suffering a series of devastating defeats at the hands of this cunning and ruthless king. Each time Rome declared victory, Mithridates considered it merely a strategic retreat, and soon came roaring back with a more powerful army than before. Ford has crafted a riveting novel of the ancient world and resurrected one of history's greatest warriors.
Greer, Andrew Sean: The Confessions of Max Tivoli (February 2004)

The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of "Monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which people live and in doing so embodies all that it means to be human.
Klavan, Laurence: The Cutting Room (February 2004)

This tale of the lost, complete version of Orson Welles' film, The Magnificent Ambersons, launches a mystery series about cinemaniacs: people who literally would kill to see, or own, a movie.
O'Reilly, Bill: Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder (February 2004)

One by one, high-level executives and news correspondents are being brutally murdered in the cutthroat world of television journalism. It soon becomes clear that the killings are linked by a common thread. A New York City detective assigned to the case joins forces with a feisty tabloid reporter to root out the killer from the ever growing field of suspects. Their investigation takes them around the globe and into the farthest reaches of one man's obsessional revenge.
Perrotta, Tom: Little Children (March 2004)

The New York Times has described Little Children as an "absorbing, fleshed-out portrait of an American male edging toward adulthood by crossing seemingly rigid social boundaries." And, " an overwhelmingly pleasing book."
Shannon, Ray: Firecracker (February 2004)

A beautiful and resourceful pregnant lady only weeks from her due date; the charming but disingenuous Dallas Cowboy who fathered the baby; a white sadist who thinks he's black; and a Superbowl betting slip worth a potential $1.25 million come together in a roller-coaster ride of dark humor and suspense.
Webb, Sarah: Always the Bridesmaid (March 2004)

Fresh off a successful launch in the UK, Sarah Webb brings her popular novel full of humor and heart to the United States.

Mysteries

Borthwick, J. S.: Intensive Scare Unit (February 2004)

Stubborn old Julia Clancy thought the worst thing about having a heart attack was the hospital's annoyingly perky staff, but she was wrong. Barely there a week, she's already the police department's star witness in a murder, and is nearly strangled to death during what she thought was a late night checkup.
Depoy, Phillip: The Witch's Grave: A Fever Devilin Mystery (February 2004)

When Truevine Deveroe, a local girl reputed to be a witch, goes missing and the local mortician, acknowledged as an unpleasant character, turns up dead near Fever Devilin's home, Able Carter, fiance of the missing girl, is suspected of killing them both. Tied by friendship and long-term enmity to all of the principals, Fever finds himself in the midst of a very difficult situation.
Fossum, Karin: Don't Look Back (US) (February 2004)

Meet Inspector Sejer: smart and enigmatic, tough but fair. Critically acclaimed across Europe, Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing and compulsively readable. They evoke a world that is at once profoundly disturbing and terrifyingly familiar. This is the fifth title in the noted Swedish Inspector Sejer series; the first available in English.
Graves, Sarah: Mallets Aforethought: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery (March 2004)

Do-it-yourself enthusiast Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her friend Ellie White find two bodies behind a hidden trapdoor.
Hills, Kathleen: Hunter's Dance (January 2004)

When the son of summer residents at the exclusive Shawanok Club is found dead after an uproarious dance at the town hall, the sheriff is flummoxed, and everyone is appalled: Bambi was found in the loft over the tool shed, bound, gagged, and inexpertly scalped. Who better to search for the killer than St. Adele's reluctant constable, John McIntire?
Kozak, Harley Jane: Dating Dead Men (January 2004)

Kozak's debut novel is a humorous mystery in the tradition of Janet Evanovich featuring greeting card artist and small business owner Wollie Shelley, a woman who's looking for love in all the wrong places when she literally stumbles across a murder that irrevocably changes her life.
Lee, Chang-Rae: Aloft (March 2004)

Lee burst on the scene with Native Speaker, which won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award. Now, with Aloft, Lee has expanded his range and proves himself a master storyteller, able to observe his charactersU flaws and weaknesses and, at the same time, celebrate their humanity.
Nelscott, Kris: Stone Cribs (February 2004)

It's 1969 in Chicago. Smokey Dalton saves the life of a young woman after a botched illegal abortion, and this act of charity blooms into a more complicated situation when Smokey learns that the woman had been raped.
Rankin, Ian: Question of Blood (February 2004)

When a former soldier and recluse murders two 17-year-old students at a posh Edinburgh boarding school, Rebus immediately suspects there is more to the case than meets the eye.
Thomas, Scarlett: In Your Face: A Lily Pascale Mystery (February 2004)

Lily has received a phone call from Jess who has written a feature on three women who were victims of stalking. On the day of publication, all three woman were found dead. Lily arrives to find Jess missing and has left behind a mysterious trail of clues.
Vanneman, Alan: Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara (February 2004)

In this new novel featuring the world's greatest literary detective, Vanneman extends the boundaries of the Sherlock Holmes canon with a knotty investigation that takes the celebrated sleuth and his cohort, Dr. Watson, far from the cozy Victorian comforts of 221B Baker Street.

Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy

Douglass, Sara: Gods' Concubine: Book Two of the Troy Game (February 2004)

In this title, love and revenge are set against the very fabric of time itself as a warrior waits for his opportunity to finish what was started centuries before.
Holdstock, Robert: The Iron Grail (February 2004)

This is the sequel to the Celtika: the second in the Merlin Codex series.
Norton, Andre: Beast Master's Circus (February 2004)

Since the dreaded Xik destroyed Earth, the corps of Beast Masters and the animal teams with which they have telepathic rapport have served as sentinels against the Xik and other threats to colony worlds throughout the galaxy. Now a conspiracy with ties to the Thieves Guild is trying to kidnap the Beast Masters' team animals.
Strauss, Victoria: The Burning Land (January 2004)

In a time of political turmoil, a mission sent to explore an uncharted wilderness returns with information that threatens the Empire of Arsace.