Fiction, June 2005

General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy

General Fiction

Arvin, Reed: Blood of Angels (July 2005)

From the author of the The Last Goodbye comes another thriller — the story of a Nashville prosecutor whose office is rocked to its core by the case of a Sudanese refugee charged for killing a white woman.
Bagshawe, Tilly: Adored (July 2005)

This tale of a larger-than-life Hollywood dynasty — peopled with characters who give new meaning to the words ruthless, romantic and glamorous — is by a first-time author who revives the genre of the blockbuster novel.
Berry, Bertrice: When Love Calls, You Better Answer (June 2005)

Bernita Brown's appalling luck with men is legendary. Will the wisdom of a dearly departed aunt break the curse?
Campbell, Bebe Moore: 72 Hour Hold (July 2005)

In this novel of family and redemption, Campbell draws on the powerful emotions of her own experience and African-American roots in this story of a mother who struggles to save her 18-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental illness by forcing her to deal with her bipolar disorder.
Campbell, Bruce: Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way (June 2005)

Written with the same energy, wry humor and Hollywood skewering that filled his If Chins Could Kill, the author gives his fans a follow-up they could not have expected — a laugh-out-loud novel starring (who else?) Bruce Campbell.
Chadwick, Charles: It's All Right Now (June 2005)

This debut novel, written by a 72-year-old retired civil servant, spans three decades in the life of its narrator, beginning with his complicated relationships with his wife and children, his neighbors, his parents, girlfriends, colleagues and friends, and his ongoing search for moral and practical certainties.
Child, Lee: One Shot (June 2005)

This new thriller takes Jack Reacher on his most relentless quest for justice yet. The case isn't what it seems; lives are tangled in baffling ways; and the killer missed one shot — giving Reacher one shot at the truth.
Crowley, John: Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (June 2005)

Spanning three centuries, Lord Byron's Novel interweaves three separate strands into one tale: the stories of a lost novel by Lord Byron, the daughter who tried to save it and the woman who discovered her secret.
Dai, Sijie: Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch (June 2005)

From the author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress comes a tale of East meets West, an adventure both wry and uplifting, about a love of dreams and the dream of love.
Doyon, Stephanie: The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole (July 2005)

Cedar Hole is the armpit of fictional Gilford County, a town full of apathetic underachievers trapped by a defunct railroad, distrust of the outside world, and their own lack of imagination. During the annual Train Festival, the citizens are called to declare the "greatest man" in town, and a fierce rivalry ensues.
Early, Pete: Lethal Secrets (June 2005)

It was thought that during the height of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, the KGB may have smuggled a nuclear bomb into the heart of Washington, D.C. This bomb is in the hands of a band of Chechen rebels, led by an insane terrorist, Movladi "The Viper" Islamov, who's threatening to detonate it unless his demands are met.
Eisler, Barry: Killing Rain (June 2005)

Japanese-American assassin John Rain returns in this new novel of international intrigue. Now employed by the Mossad to remove "problems" in Asia, John also has a new partner in former Marine sniper Dox. But when John botches an assignment, he finds himself on the run from both the Mossad and the CIA.
Farley, Christopher John: Kingston by Starlight (June 2005)

Irish-born Anne Bonny is only a teenager when she is left destitute by her mother's death. Abandoned by her father, she chooses to seek her fortune in the colonial West Indies, where she passes herself off as a young man named Bonn and finds work as a ship's hand.
Hemmings, Kaui Hart: House of Thieves (June 2005)

These unique stories of upper-class Hawaiian families reveal with unsentimental insight and straightforward prose the complex forces that bind family members together in love and hate.
Hull, Jeff: Pale Morning Done (June 2005)

A first novel about Montana, fly fishing and finding home.
Kostova, Elizabeth: The Historian (June 2005)

A young girl discovers her father's darkest secret and embarks on a harrowing journey across Europe to complete the quest he never could — the quest to find history's most legendary fiend: Dracula.
Kun, Michael: You Poor Monster (June 2005)

A young Baltimore lawyer thrown into an ugly divorce proceeding finds himself befriending his charming, generous client. The more he is drawn to the client, the more he wants to ask: Is a lie a lie if you know it's untrue, or is it just a story?
Lennon, Maria: Making It Up As I Go Along (June 2005)

Newly jobless and single at 38, Saffron Roch discovers that she's pregnant with her cheating boyfriend's child. She moves to Los Angeles and joins a trendy breast-feeding support group, where she meets a group of mothers who seem overly superficial and egocentric at first, but turn out to have quite a bit to teach Saffron.
Mamdouh, Alia: Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad (June 2005)

Seen through the eyes of a strong-willed and perceptive young girl, Naphtalene captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s. Alia Mamdouh vividly recreates a city of public steam baths, roadside butchers and childhood games played in the same streets where political demonstrations against British colonialism are beginning to take place. This is the first novel by an Iraqi woman to be published in English in the United States.
McCarthy, Cormac: No Country for Old Men (July 2005)

Set in west Texas in 1980, No Country for Old Men focuses on the intersecting lives of a hunter who discovers 2.4 million dollars in abandoned drug money, a Texas county sheriff who must protect an innocent couple, and heavily armed men who are determined to reclaim the money at any cost.
Nicholson, Joy: The Road to Esmeralda (June 2005)

From the author of The Tribes of Palos Verdes comes a compelling new novel about a couple's getaway to a Mexican paradise that goes horribly wrong.
Oyeyemi, Helen: The Icarus Girl (June 2005)

Drawing on Nigerian mythology to present an original variation on a classic literary theme — the existence of doubles, both real and spiritual, who play havoc with one's perceptions and life — this debut novel is the story of twins and ghosts, and a little girl growing up between cultures and colors.
Parker, Robert B.: Appaloosa (June 2005)

When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has taken supplies, horses and women for his own and left the city marshal and a deputy for dead.
Quinn, Peter: Hour of the Cat (June 2005)

On the eve of World War II, a simple New York City homicide draws two vastly different men — an American and a German — into a case that stretches far beyond the crime scene into a conspiracy of a scope that defies imagination.
Sacco, Joe: War's End: Profiles from Bosnia 1995–96 (June 2005)

War cartoonist Sacco visits the Bosnian conflict to uncover the stories that are often ignored or uncovered by traditional media and gives the reader an inside look at the darkly humorous news process.
Shuker, Carl: The Method Actors (June 2005)

A young woman heads to Tokyo to search for her missing brother. There, she discovers that he's been investigating Japanese war crimes, going back to China in World War II to the quarantining of Dutch merchants on manmade islands during Japan's period of isolationism in the 17th century.
Tyree, Omar: Boss Lady (July 2005)

Shot through with Tyree's urban style, Boss Lady finds the author's best-loved character at the top of her game, thoroughly in charge and taking life strictly on her own terms.
Visman, Janni: Yellow (June 2005)

Stella is an agoraphobic aromatherapist in a relationship with the seemingly decent Ivan, but as doubts about his past and present creep in, her shut-in status makes for a perfect theatrical evocation of claustrophobia and paranoia.

Mysteries

Airth, Rennie: The Blood-Dimmed Tide (July 2005)

It is 1932, and former Inspector John Madden leads a quiet life in rural England with his wife and children until a young village girl is savagely murdered. Along with his former colleagues at Scotland Yard, Madden soon finds himself enlisting the help of the British secret service and the German police. Together they use the burgeoning science of criminal psychology in order to grasp the workings of the twisted mind of a cunning murderer.
Blunt, Giles: Blackfly Season (June 2005)

A beautiful young woman stumbles into a rough Algonquin Bay tavern covered in black fly bites and with bits of leaves stuck in her hair. A full examination reveals that her woozy behavior isn't due to drugs or diminished mental capacity. She has a bullet in her brain and no memory of how it got there or who she is.
Bowker, David: How to Be Bad (June 2005)

Mark is a mild-mannered 23-year-old bookseller who makes endless lists about stupid things. His life changes when he reestablishes contact with his old girlfriend, Caro. Caro, who has nothing but contempt for Mark's lists and his choirboy attitude, asks him to prove his love by giving him a list of her own: a list of people she wants him to kill for her. As things begin to spiral out of control and the bodies pile up, Mark himself becomes a target and realizes that to survive, he needs to be as ruthless and decisive as his enemy.
Buchanan, Edna: Shadows (June 2005)

The Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad works to unravel a 45-year-old murder case and discovers that the murderer is still out there — and the cold case is still hot.
Cousins, Caroline: Marsh Madness (June 2005)

Three South Carolina cousins return for their sophomore effort to solve the murder of an ex-beauty queen who returns to Indigo Island take part in the wedding of the year.
Fossum, Karin: He Who Fears the Wolf (July 2005)

Inspector Sejer is hard at work again, investigating the brutal murder of a woman who lived alone in the woods. The chief suspect is another loner, a schizophrenic recently escaped from a mental institution. The only witness is a 12-year-old boy, overweight, obsessed with archery and a resident at a home for delinquents.
Jenkins, Emyl: Stealing with Style (June 2005)

Antiques appraiser Jenkins turns her talents to fiction in the first of a series of mysteries that follow the heroine behind the scenes of the sometimes murky world of antiques, sophisticated scammers and shifty associates.
King, Laurie R.: Locked Rooms (June 2005)

As Mary Russell and her husband, the eminent Sherlock Holmes, attempt to settle their affairs in the City by the Bay, Mary's past isn't the only thing that catches up with them: a mysterious stranger is waiting for the pair, and may be the only one who holds the key to the locked rooms that have been haunting Mary's dreams.
Spiegelman, Peter: Death's Little Helpers (June 2005)

Hired to find a missing Wall Street analyst, private investigator John March soon unearths a rat's nest of family strife, business betrayals and deceptions. Spiegelman is the winner of the 2004 Shamus Award for Best First Novel, Black Maps.

Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy

Finley, Charles Coleman: Prodigal Troll (June 2005)

A female troll finds an abandoned human infant in the remains of a destroyed castle. Having lost her baby daughter, the troll adopts the human child as her own. Christened "Maggot" by a hostile stepfather, the boy grows up amid the crude but democratic trolls, before finally leaving their tribe to discover the world of humanity. But the human world is a complex and capricious place, and Maggot must master its strange ways if he is to survive, let alone win the heart and hand of Lady Portia.
Frost, Gregory: Attack of the Jazz Giants (June 2005)

Beginning with a midnight odyssey to a shadowland where vehicles feast on vagrants, this compilation includes stories in which Poe's final days are revealed, factory workers are exploited by an apparition of the Virgin Mary, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart pinwheels through the corridors of time. Behind-the-stories notes by the author are also included.