Readers > New Books > Fiction, June 2007
Fiction, June 2007
General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
General Fiction
- Allen, Woody
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Here, in his first collection since his classics Getting Even and Side Effects, Woody Allen has managed to write a book that not only answers the most profound questions of human existence but is the perfect size to place under any short table leg to prevent wobbling.
- Alsanea, Rajaa
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A new voice from Saudi Arabia spins a fascinating tale of four young women attempting to navigate the narrow straits between love, desire, fulfillment and Islamic tradition as the hidden world of today's upper-class Saudi women is revealed by an insider.
- Belle, Jennifer
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An offbeat and hilarious story of voyeurism, obsession and relationships — both real and imaginary — from the bestselling author of High Maintenance and Going Down.
- Brashares, Ann
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Gracie Martin is a New Yorker who has a gift for returning lost objects to their rightful owners. Wise and enchanting, with a heroine as endearing as the four young women in the author's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Brashares' first novel for adults marks her debut as a writer of perceptive, engaging women's fiction.
- Carlson, Ron
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Award-winning short story writer Carlson's first novel in 30 years delivers a stirring tale about three men confronting their pasts and their purpose.
- Echenoz, Jean
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A bestseller in France, Ravel is a beguiling and original evocation of the last ten years in the life of a musical genius, written by the novelist Jean Echenoz, winner of the Prix Goncourt. The book opens in 1927 as Maurice Ravel — dandy, eccentric and curmudgeon — voyages across the Atlantic aboard the luxurious ocean liner the France to begin his triumphant grand tour across the United States.
- Ganek, Danielle
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Just as The Devil Wears Prada demystified the world of high fashion, Ganek's delightfully funny and insightful first novel paints the captivating New York City art scene as it exists today.
- Ghelfi, Brent
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A firefight reverberates through Moscow's dark, rain-soaked streets; shattered glass and screams echo in the air. In the lawless ways of Russia's capital city, the gunmen melt away into the night. Two men are dead, the targets not what they seem. A shadowy figure lopes along the riverbank outside the Kremlin walls. Known to all as Volk, a battle-hardened veteran of Russia's brutal war in Chechnya, he prowls Moscows grim alleyways, a knife concealed in his prosthetic foot at all times. As both a major player in the black market and a covert agent for the Russian military, Volk serves two masters: Maxim, a psychotic Azeri mafia kingpin with hordes of loyal informers; and a man known only as the General, to whom Volk is mysteriously indebted.
- Hagen, George
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Born in a shabby tenement in Victorian London, young Tom Bedlam is employed stoking the furnaces in a massive porcelain factory; he is son to a father he has never met, and sibling to a baby who vanished at birth. After Tom’s mother dies, a mysterious family benefactor appears who offers to pay for the boy’s education. For a factory urchin this is good luck indeed, and Tom is whisked away to an exclusive private boarding school called Hammer Hall. The school is a crucible of variously privileged, predatory, meek, and noble boys, and although Tom gathers crucial clues there about his lost brother, he finds himself caught between warring forces and makes a Faustian pact that will haunt his adult life.
- Leung, Brian
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A novel of dignity and power, Lost Men is the story of a father and a son each confronting his past. After more than two decades apart, Westen is invited by his father to travel with him to China — a promise Xin made decades earlier when he left Westen with relatives after the death of Westen's Caucasian mother. And in the end, their relationship may just hinge on the contents of a sealed letter written by Westen’s mother before her death — one that threatens to answer the lifelong question neither of them has dared to ask.
- Lively, Penelope
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Consequences is a multilayered love story that opens on the eve of the Second World War, with a chance meeting in St. James's Park, London. Told in Lively's incomparable prose, it is a powerful story of growth, death,and rebirth and a study of the previous century — its major and minor events, its shaping of public consciousness and its changing of lives.
- Maupin, Armistead
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The author of Tales of the City revisits his gay Everyman from the series, allowing the 55-year-old Michael Tolliver to tell his story in his own voice. Brimming with gentle insights about the human condition, this is a novel about the act of growing older joyfully.
- McEwan, Ian
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A novel of depth and poignancy, McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of a newly married couple — both virgins — in 1962, when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence.
- Oates, Joyce Carol
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In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet — but very "American" — triumph.
- O'Hagan, Andrew
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Father David's presence ignites the suspicions and smoldering hatred of a town that resents strangers, which brings him to a reckoning with the tensions of his past. O'Hagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age.
- Prasad, Chandra
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Impeccably researched and vividly written, Prasad's imaginative debut novel transports readers to the male-dominated world of 1930s Yale, through the eyes of an unlikely female narrator in a tale that is part social history, part coming-of-age story.
- Wiggins, Marianne
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Wiggins turns her literary imagination to the American West, where the life of legendary photographer Edward S. Curtis is the basis for a resonant exploration of history and family, landscape and legacy.
- Winkler, Anthony
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In a new and original take on Jamaican life (on the island and in the United States), Winkler introduces the estimable Precious, a large-bottomed, meltingly juicy Christian Jamaican woman with unshakable ideas on the right and proper behavior for Christian Jamaican women, their husbands, and men and dogs in general.
Mysteries
- Burdett, John
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Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective, has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok’s District 8, but nothing like the video he’s just been sent anonymously — a snuff movie. His investigation will lead him through the office of the ever-scheming police captain, Vikorn; in and out of the influence of a perhaps psychotic wandering monk; and eventually into the gilded rooms of the most exclusive men’s club in Bangkok, whose members will do anything to protect their identities, and to explore their most secret fantasies.
- Cousins, Caroline
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Southern manners again meet mystery as three South Carolina heroines try to solve a cold case — even as someone tries to beat them to it.
- Deaver, Jeffery
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Deaver is back with a dark and multilayered psychological thriller about a vicious killer's escape from a California super-prison and the mysterious and deadly quest he embarks on once he's free.
- Finch, Charles
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When a servant girl is found dead, a supposed suicide, Victorian gentleman and amateur sleuth Charles Lenox is called in by his old friend, Lady Jane, to investigate. As he begins to suspect that the girl has fallen victim to a rare and deadly poison, the case is complicated by the discovery of a second body in the middle of London's most fashionable ball.
- Gagliano, Anthony
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Ex-cop Jack Vaughn, the best thing to happen to crime fiction since Chandler's Philip Marlowe hung up his holster, moved from the gritty streets of New York to Miami to work as a personal trainer. The sun, sand and tanned bodies of Miami are a welcome distraction from the haunting memory of another cop's death in New York. But when he becomes involved with millionaire businessman Colonel Patterson, he realizes his newfound peace is short-lived.
- Lehane, Con
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Tensions are high and the dangers multiply as New York City bartender and man-about-the-mean-streets Brian McNulty — always a sucker for the plight of the little guy — joins forces with a motley crew of workers from the old Savoy Hotel.
- Levine, Laura
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Levine's beloved heroine, wisecracking freelance writer and part-time sleuth, Jaine Austen, uncovers a ruthless killer who's proving that standup comedy is no laughing matter.
- Lovesey, Peter
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In the tenth mystery of the series, set in Bath, England, widowed Inspector Peter Diamond is being pursued by a secret admirer as he pursues a serial killer who murders his victims by hanging.
- Padura, Leonardo
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Lieutenant Mario Conde is suffering from a New Year's Eve hangover. Though it's the middle of a weekend, he is asked to urgently investigate the mysterious disappearance of Rafael Morin, a high-level business manager in Cuban society. Conde remembered Morin from their student days: good-looking, brilliant, a "reliable comrade'' who always got what he wanted, including Tamara, the girl Conde was after. But Rafael Morin's rise from a poor barrio and picture-perfect life hides more than one suspicious episode worthy of investigation. While pursuing the case in a decaying but adored Havana, Conde confronts his lost love for Tamara and the dreams and illusions of his generation.
- Schlink, Bernhard
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Gerhard Self, the dour private detective, returns in this crime novel about terrorism, governmental cover-up and the treacherous waters where they mix.
- Thompson, Victoria
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The ninth title in the Edgar Award-nominated series features midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Malloy in turn-of-the-century New York City.
- Trinchieri, Camilla
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Having taken a young Chinese woman under her wing, ESL teacher Emma Perotti finds herself on trial for the girl's murder.
- Zito, Chuck
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After a disastrous stint as stage manager at a Catholic college, Nicky D'Amico moves back to New York to get his life in order. The Good Company's all-male production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is a little unorthodox, but he's thrilled about working with some of his old college friends. But the production soon becomes a nightmare when one of the actors is found dead behind the theater. Everyone is a suspect, and Nicky must figure out who the killer isbefore its curtains for another cast member.
Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
- Bradley, Marion Zimmer
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The long-awaited continuation to the popular science fiction saga is the story of Darkover's ruling class, the comyn, and their struggles to reclaim their realm from the devastating effects of the Terran Federation.
- Buckell, Tobias S.
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For years, the Benevolent Satraps have tolerated the Ragamuffins, but no longer. Now they have embarked on a campaign of extermination, determined to wipe out the unruly humans once and for all. But one runaway woman — more machine than flesh — may complicate their plans.
- Gilman, Laura Anne
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Wren Valere finds herself tied to the fortunes of the entire Cosa Nostradamus as part of the Truce Board overseeing the Lonejack, Council and Fatae. But someone outside the Cosa is trying to break the Truce — and the Cosa itself.
- Green, Simon R.,
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Eddie Drood is a secret agent, out to protect humanity from all the forces of darkness, protected by a torc that turns into a suit of nearly impervious gold armor. He faces arcane dangers with a healthy dose of wry self-confidence and sarcasm until betrayed by his family's matriarch.
- Hammond, Warren
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Juno is a cop on Lagarto, a planet that's fallen into despair. Promised a bright future on a new colony world, all hope was crushed when an Earth-based company discovered a cheaper way to produce Lagarto's main export. Growing up on post-boom Lagarto, Jago lives in despair and begins taking bribes from a powerful crime syndicate, but he has not entirely given up hope. Juno risks everything to expose a cabal that would enslave his planet for its own profit.
- Huff, Tanya
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Sergeant Kerr's goal is to keep her officers and her troops alive as they face missions throughout the galaxy. She jumps at the chance to go to Crucible — the Marine Corps training planet. But she is barely on the planet when someone starts blasting the training scenarios to smithereens.
- Lake, Jay
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In Lake's first trade novel, he has envisioned a clockwork solar system, where a young clockmaker's apprentice is visited by the Archangel Gabriel. He is told that he must take the Key Perilous and rewind the Mainspring of the Earth. It is running down, and disaster will ensue if it is not rewound.
- Morgan, Richard K.,
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In the future, governments have created genetic subhumans built to fit specialized tasks. Normal people are both intrigued and repulsed by these creations but they dread variation thirteen, an aggressive, ruthless throwback to a time before civilization.
- Palwick, Susan
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In the late 21st century, compassion is a crime. Memories can get wiped out just for trying to help. But Meredith Preston needs protection from the monsters in her mind, in her history and in her family. And the great storms of a changing climate have made shelter imperative.
- Stackpole, Michael A.
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Time is running out. Nalenyr is besieged on all sides by those who would save the fabled land — and those who would enslave it. Soon the realm will be ravaged by the scourge of magical warfare — overrun by terrifying forces created by an ancient enemy, and soaked in the blood of champions and gods. It is the moment of final conflict, and the grandchildren of the Royal Cartographer are at the center of the climactic struggle.
- Van Name, Mark L.
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Finding allies and enemies among terrorist groups and elite mercenaries, gun-runners and the only kind of government possible, Jon and Lobo fight to a climax with a corporate army that can't afford to leave any witnesses in this first novel of a new series.
- Weldon, Phaedra
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Zoe Martinique has turned her unusual ability into a career: when she's traveling, she can't be seen. However, one night she witnesses a murder and soul stealing and discovers the ghostly killer can see — and hurt — her in this new and different paranormal series.
- Wilson, Robert Charles
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In the sequel to the Hugo Award-winning Spin, Wilson takes readers to the "world next door" — the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life. But as humans colonize this new world they, predictably, begin exploiting its resources.