Fiction, May 2004

General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy

General Fiction

Bezmozgis, David: Natasha: And Other Stories (June 2004)

The stories in this collection capture the immigrant experience while evoking boyhood and youth and the battle for selfhood in a passionately loving Jewish family.
Bojanowski, Marc: The Dog Fighter (June 2004)

In 1940s Mexico, a young man who becomes involved in a brutally violent spectator sport must choose his loyalties in the fight for a city's future.
Eprile, Tony: The Persistence of Memory (June 2004)

Eprile fuses a political and cultural satire with a haunting coming-of-age story to render South Africa's turbulent past with striking clarity.
French, Nicci: Secret Smile (June 2004)

Miranda's sister has a new boyfriend who isn't the man he claims to be. Miranda should know because she broke off with him a few weeks previously. Like a virus, he starts spreading destruction throughout her life until Miranda realizes that behind Brendan's smile lurks a terrible secret.
Frisby, Mister Mann: Blinking Red Light (May 2004)

Urban, gritty and real, this hip-hop fiction is the debut of a self-published thriller writer from the inner city.
Garcia, Eric: Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys (May 2004)

Sex and the City meets Misery in this original satire of the dating scene in Los Angeles.
Glatt, Lisa: A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That (June 2004)

Rachel Spark is an irreverent, sexually eager, financially unstable 30-year-old college instructor who moves back home when her mother is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. As she tries to ease her mother toward the inevitable, Rachel turns from one man to the next as if her own survival depended upon it.
Goldstein, Naama: The Place Will Comfort You: Stories (May 2004)

This darkly comic debut collection is a detailed, lyrical and at times incendiary vision of the cultural collision between Israel and America.
Guest, Judith: The Tarnished Eye: A Novel of Suspense (June 2004)

Taking as part of her inspiration a baffling true–life crime that has gone unsolved for more than 30 years, bestselling author Judith Guest crafts a gripping, character-driven novel of suspense that explores the fragile dynamics of family in the aftermath of tragedy.
Hagen, George: The Laments (June 2004)

The Laments are an undeniably quirky family. They live by the principle, "anywhere but here" as they move from South Africa to the Persian Gulf to Rhodesia to England, and ultimately suburban New Jersey, in search of their place in the world.
Kunzru, Hari: Transmission (June 2004)

An Indian computer programmer's luxurious fantasies about life in America are shaken when he gets fired from his Silicon Valley job. In an act of desperation, he releases a mischievous and destructive virus which unravels world order, as well as his sanity.
Keneally, Thomas: The Tyrant's Novel (June 2004)

Keneally masters the gripping perspective of a man caught between the unconscionable demands of his government and the meager prospect of running for his life.
Landers, Scott: Coswell's Guide to Tambralinga (June 2004)

In a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, Conrad and Lucy Shermer embark on a second honeymoon in fashionably exotic, and politically volatile, Southeast Asia where they each set out on dangerous expeditions.
Langer, Adam: Crossing California (June 2004)

In this first novel it's middle class vs. upper class across Chicago's California Avenue.
Lindsay, Jeff: Darkly Dreaming Dexter (July 2004)

This is a new kind of suspense novel starring serial killer Dexter Morgan, who only kills bad people and who cringes at the sight of blood.
Lopez, Barry: Resistance (June 2004)

From the National Book Award–winning author of Arctic Dreams comes an original work of fiction and a passionate response to the changes shaping our country today. Telling their stories in nine fictional testimonies are men and women who have resisted the mainstream and who are now suddenly "parties of interest" to the government.
Margolis, Sue: Breakfast at Stephanie's (June 2004)

Single mom Stephanie Glassman's singing career is going badly and her love life is in a rut. When everything spins out of control, she must decide what is really important to her.
McPhee, Jenny: No Ordinary Matter (June 2004)

Veronica Moore writes for a daytime drama while secretly composing a musical and has fallen in love with Alex Drake, who plays a neurologist on her show. Her sister, Lillian Moore, is a neurologist who is pregnant from a one-night stand. Veronica and Lillian have hired Brian Byrd, P. I., to uncover the mystery surrounding their father's death. Before they know it, unexpected answers come crawling out of the woodwork.
Mayle, Peter: A Good Year (June 2004)

Max Skinner is not exactly setting the London financial world on fire and when his supervisor steals his biggest client, it's definitely time to inspect the vineyard in Provence that his recently departed uncle left him.
Napolitano, Ann: Within Arm's Reach (June 2004)

Single, 29 and pregnant, Gracie's decision to keep the baby is just one of a series of events for which her family isn't prepared.
Neate, Patrick: The London Pigeon Wars (May 2004)
Neate's third uproarious novel tells the tale of city-dwelling 30-somethings whose youthful hopes and dreams have dissolved into failing careers, failing relationships and failing health.
Nevai, Lucia: Seriously (June 2004)

In the tradition of Lorrie Moore and Flannery O'Connor, Nevai relishes the comic, the poignant and the sometimes bizarre aspects of her characters' lives.
Reuland, Robert: Semiautomatic (June 2004)

Assistant District Attorney Andrew Giobberti makes a return appearance in this second novel by Reuland in which a ghetto murder is spun into a complex, shadowy courtroom showdown.
Rinaldi, Nicholas: Between Two Rivers (June 2004)

Romanian refugee and concierge Farro Fescu observes the exotic cross-section of the world's population represented in his New York City condominium.
Waiwaiole, Lono: Wiley's Shuffle (June 2004)

In Wiley's world in Portland, violence runs deep and loyalty runs even deeper. So when a prostitute named Miriam gets attached to the wrong guy, Wiley leaves the poker table, grabs his best friend Leon and starts looking for a way to shake her loose. Trouble is, the guy is a sociopathic pimp named Dookie who's on the lucky streak of a lifetime and who is starting to feel invincible.
Weisman, John: Jack in the Box: A Shadow War Thriller (June 2004)

This is a chilling portrait of a highly placed mole and a conspiracy to penetrate and subvert U.S. intelligence.
White, Randy Wayne: Tampa Burn (May 2004)

Marion "Doc" Ford hoped he'd left his violent past behind him long ago, but he knows he has no choice but to return when his son is kidnapped by a thuggish politico set on revenge.
Wright, Edward: While I Disappear (May 2004)

This crime novel takes readers into Hollywood's underbelly during a time when the studio system was crumbling.

Mysteries

Boyle, Gerry: Home Body (June 2004)

In the ninth book in the Jack McMorrow mystery series, Jack befriends a runaway teen, only to find himself caught in the middle of a murder mystery filled with deadly family secrets.
Buchanan, Edna: Cold Case Squad (June 2004)

Legendary Miami crime reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Buchanan launches a gripping new series featuring a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases.
Burke, Alafair: Missing Justice: A Samantha Kincaid Mystery (June 2004)

The second entry in this skillfully plotted mystery series finds Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid back at work after an attempt on her life and a promotion into Major Crimes. Soon the search for a missing judge leads her into Portland politics and a labyrinth of crime, corruption and coverups.
Kerley, Jack: The Hundredth Man (June 2004)

When a pathologist for the Mobile, Alabama, morgue has his fingers blown off by a bomb hidden in a corpse, a disturbing chain of events begins.
Logue, Mary: Bone Harvest (June 2004)

Claire Watkins, the sole female deputy in the small Wisconsin town of Ft. St. Antoine, discovers that an increasingly sinister series of malicious pranks begins to point to a horrific event in the town's history.
Reichs, Kathy: Monday Mourning (June 2004)

Kathy Reichs returns with a riveting new Tempest Brennan novel filled with all the forensic details that readers love. On a trip to Montreal, Tempe recovers three skeletons from shallow graves in the basement of a pizza parlor.
Riggs, Cynthia: Jack in the Pulpit (June 2004)

There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief officially made 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town and a lot about the rest of the Martha's Vineyard year-round population as well.
Smith, Mary-Ann Tirone: She Smiled Sweetly: A Poppy Rice Mystery (June 2004)

When intrepid FBI agent Poppy Rice is asked to solve two cases (separated by 30 years, but connected by DNA) she finds herself snared in a web of political deceit, family intrigue, and out-and-out bad guys.
Strohmeyer, Sarah: Bubbles a Broad (June 2004)

In the newest installment in Strohmeyer's wacky mystery series, Bubbles Yablonsky, amateur sleuth, attempts to solve a sticky homicide and uncover possible corruption at the highest levels of the steel industry.
Tramble, Michelle D.: The Last King: A Maceo Redfield Novel (June 2004)

After being away for two years, Maceo Redfield returns to Oakland to help out an old friend who is accused of murder.
Qiu, Xiaolong: When Red Is Black (July 2004)

Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is taking a vacation, in part because he is annoyed at his boss, the Party Secretary, but also because he has been made an offer he can't refuse by a triad-connected businessman.

Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy

Bear, Greg: Dead Lines (June 2004)

This gripping ghost story for fans of Dean Koontz and Stephen King is the most mainstream novel yet from an author who knows how to mix scientific ideas with gripping narrative.
MacLeod, Ken: Newton's Wake: A Space Opera (June 2004)

In the aftermath of the Hard Rapture (a cataclysmic war sparked by the explosive evolution of Earth's artificial intelligences into godlike beings) a few remnants of humanity managed to survive. Some even prospered. But on a world called Eurydice, a remote planet at the farthest rim of the galaxy, Lucinda Carlyle stumbles upon a forgotten relic of the past that could threaten their way of life.
Reed, Kit: Thinner Than Thou (June 2004)

In the tomorrow of Thinner Than Thou, the cult of the body has become the one true religion. The Dedicated Sisters are a religious order sworn to help anorexic, bulimic and morbidly obese youth. Throughout the land, houses of worship have been replaced by the health clubs of the Crossed Triceps. And through hypnotically powerful evangelical infomercials, the Reverend Earl preaches the heaven of the Afterfat, where you will look like a Greek god and eat anything you want.