Readers > New Books > Fiction, May 2008
Fiction, May 2008
General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
General Fiction
- Barry, Lynda
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"The collages in legendary cartoonist Lynda Barry's What It Is are a bathysphere-like odyssey through the depths of her funky subconscious." - Vanity Fair
- Bohjalian, Chris
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Bohjalian's latest work captures both the power and poignancy of romance and the terror and tragedy of war, putting a face on one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies.
- Coben, Harlan
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The best-selling author of The Woods asks the provocative question: How much do parents really want to know about their kids and how far will they go to find out?
- Coffey, Tom
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In this hard-boiled detective novel, Patrick Grimes, a World War II veteran and reporter, investigates the murder of a young, wealthy woman in a seedy area of New York City. What Grimes uncovers jeopardizes not only his life but also his sanity.
- Delbanco, Nicholas
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On par with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Count Rumford was, among many other things, a politician, a spy, a philanthropist and above all, a scientist. Based on historical documents, including letters and essays by Thompson himself, The Count of Concord brings to life the remarkable career of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.
- Desarthe, Agnes
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Redolent with the sights, smells and tastes of Paris, Chez Moi is a profound and tender novel about a woman's troubled past — and her enduring love of cooking.
- Eng, Tan Twan
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Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, this epic debut tells the story of a young man's perilous journey through the betrayals of war and into manhood.
- Erdrich, Louise
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A senseless and horrific crime in 1911 forever changes the lives of several families living in and around Pluto, North Dakota, a white town on the far western edge of an Ojibwe reservation.
- Hanif, Mohammed
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Teasing, provocative and funny, Hanif's debut novel imagines a connection between the still-mysterious 1988 plane crash that ended the life of the Pakistani dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq and the events of 9/11.
- Hansen, Ron
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Hansen tells the story of a notorious shipwreck that had prompted Gerard Manley Hopkins to break years of silence with an outpouring of dazzling poetry. Combining a thrilling tragedy at sea with the seeming shipwreck of Hopkins's own life, this novel dramatizes a passionate inner search.
- Harris, Joanne
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Joanne Harris revives her characters from the best-selling novel and popular film Chocolat. Cloaked in a new identity, that of widow Yanne Charbonneau, Vianne Rocher opens a chocolaterie on a small Montmartre street, determined to still the wind at last and keep her daughters, Anouk and the baby, Rosette, safe.
- Hawley, Ellen
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"Everything changes for late-night radio talk show host Annette Majoris after she jokingly tells her Twin Cities audience that the Vietnam War was a government hoax." - Publisher's Weekly
- Hemon, Aleksandar
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The much-anticipated novel from the Bosnian-American writer Hemon, winner of a MacArthur "genius grant", is a story of historical sweep and contemporary insight crafted in a dazzlingly original style.
- Hickman, Katie
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Spellbinding and steeped in mystery and sexual intrigue, The Aviary Gate transports readers to exotic 16th century Constantinople, offering the rarest glimpse into the forbidden confines of the sultan's harem.
- Livesey, Margot
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Through four ingeniously interlocking narratives, Livesey skillfully reveals how luck — good and bad — plays a vital role in life, in this work that radiates with compassion, intelligence and mystery.
- Meek, James
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From the author of the acclaimed The People's Act of Love comes the incisive and timeless story of a globe-trotting journalist's perils in the pursuit of love, set against the war zones and dinner parties of today's discordant and bewildering world stage.
- O'Neill, Joseph
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The author of the New York Times Notable Book Blood-Dark Track delivers a mesmerizing novel about a man trying to make his way in an America of shattered hopes and values, and the unlikely occurrences that pull him back into an authentic, passionately engaged life.
- Park, Ed
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In an unnamed New York-based company, the employees are getting restless as everything around them unravels. Rich with Orwellian doublespeak, filled with sabotage and romance, this debut is at once a comic delight and a narrative tour de force.
- Pekearo, Nicholas
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Marlowe Higgins is a werewolf. For years he struggled with his affliction, until he finds a way to use this unfortunate curse for good — he only kills really bad people. Settling at last in a small town, Higgins realizes he isn't the only monster lurking in the area.
- Schilling, Peter
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Hungry for a pennant, young Veeck jettisons the team's white players and secretly recruits the legendary stars of the Negro Leagues, fielding a club that will go down in baseball annals as one of the greatest ever to play the game.
- Smith-Ready, Jeri
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Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, '60s psychedelia, '80s goth and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers just how the DJs maintain their cred: they're vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.
- Swierczynski, Duane
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In this new thriller from the acclaimed author of The Blonde, Jamie DeBroux's boss has called a special meeting to reveal to the employees that their company has been a cover for a branch of the intelligence community. Now it is being shut down, and all of the employees must die.
- Tobias, Michael
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What if you knew the location of the Garden of Eden? To what lengths would you go to protect it? Tobias blends fiction and fact in his environmental thriller set in contemporary Europe.
- Todd, Jack
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"Three generations of the Paint family struggle through 70 years of hardship and heartache on the Western plains in Todd's ambitious fiction debut." - Publisher's Weekly.
- Trouillot, Lyonel
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In its picture of a world in which the heroes and the destroyers — whether fathers or leaders — are often indistinguishable, and where life's poetry and poverty are inextricably linked, Trouillot tells a story of Haiti that is at once intimate, universal and otherworldly.
- Weisgall, Deborah
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A stunning novel about two women and two marriages — George Eliot at the end of her life, and another by a remarkably similar woman a century later — that confronts the eternal dilemma of how to find love and sustain it, without losing one's self and personal ambition in the process.
- Westbrook, Kate
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My heart breaks for James — so begin the explosive, true, private diaries of Miss Jane Moneypenny, personal secretary to Secret Service chief M and colleague and confidante of James Bond. Bound by the Official Secrets Act not to reveal anything about her work, Miss Moneypenny is forced to lead a secretive, clandestine life. But contrary to popular belief, she was not simply a bystander while James Bond saw all the action.
Mysteries
- Akunin, Boris
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This follow-up to the first book in Akunin's Pelagia trilogy, Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog is a mesmerizing — and frightening — foray into Zavolzhsk's spiritual underworld.
- Anable, Stephen
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Mark Winslow, a Boston comic, arrives in the resort of Provincetown with his troupe of actors, ready to join the club circuit. But a public fight makes Mark the suspect in a grisly death and Mark must find the killer or be charged with the crime.
- Barnard, Robert
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Diamond Dagger Award-winner and acclaimed contemporary crime-writer Barnard delivers a tale of murder and intrigue.
- Brophy, Grace
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In the peaceful Umbrian village of Paradiso, the shocking murder and mutilation of an elderly German woman is barely credible. Inspector Alessandro Cenni's boss wants a scapegoat, but he cannot bring himself to close a case without solving the crime and bringing the actual perpetrator to justice.
- Chan, Cassandra
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Detective Sergeant Jack Gibbons has been shot, and his best friend Philip Bethancourt must retrace his investigation to catch the culprit in Chan's irresistible mystery.
- Fate, Robert
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It is May 1957, and Kristin Van Dijk will be 22 soon. She has been a PI and Otis Millett's partner more than two years. When Kristin and Otis are hired to deliver the ransom for redheaded Savannah Smike, a kidnapped piano-playing girlfriend of an Oklahoma bootlegger, it's kill or be killed.
- Frimansson, Inger
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Six years have passed since Justine Dalvik killed a couple of tormentors. Her life has taken a calmer direction and the risk for being discovered should be over. However, the past threatens to catch up with her. Frimansson's second Dalvik thriller was named Best Swedish Crime Novel of 2005.
- Rehder, Ben
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A popular televangelist intends to build a massive religious complex in Blanco County, until a dinosaur fossil spoils his plans, in this twisted tale of greed, corruption — and paleontology.
- Viets, Elaine
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The author of Murder with Reservations reveals the lifestyles of the rich and murdered, in the latest entry in her bestselling series.
- Wolfe, Inger
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When terminally ill patients are found gruesomely murdered in Port Dundas, Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef finds herself tracking a truly terrifying serial killer across the country, while everything she had been barely holding together begins to spin out of control.
Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
- Bujold, Lois McMaster
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Young Fawn Bluefield and soldier-sorcerer Dag Redwing Hickory have survived magical dangers and found, in each other, love and loyalty. But now they will set off on a journey unlike either has known before.
- Dilouie, Craig
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Lawrence Dobbs and Timothy Muldoon, Colonial Marines and thorough rascals, are the last of a dying breed of adventurers. When an old astronaut offers to sell them a map that will take them to a legendary planet promising rivers of gold, Dobbs and Muldoon recruit a crew of misfits for one last great adventure.
- Fallon, Jennifer
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Fallon begins a new series with a routine hanging gone wrong and the murderer somehow surviving the noose. The man announces he is an immortal — and not just any immortal, but Cayal, the Immortal Prince, hero of legend and thought to be only a fictional character.
- Flint, Eric
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Captain Mark Stephens is overseeing the change of shifts at the maximum-security prison when everything changes. The Mississippi River has disappeared, along with all signs of civilization. Something has thrown the prison back in time millions of years.
- Golden, Christopher
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Always assume there's someone after you. That was the paranoid wisdom her mother had hardwired into Jasmine Towne ever since she was a little girl. Now, suddenly on her own, Jazz is going to need every skill she has ever been taught to survive enemies both seen and unseen.
- Harris, Charlaine
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After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, everyone — human and otherwise — is stressed, including Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend Quinn has gone missing. It's clear that things are changing — whether the weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not.
- Harrison, Kim
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Vampires rule the darkness in a predator-eat-predator world rife with dangers beyond imagining — and it's Rachel Morgan's job to keep that world civilized. A bounty hunter and witch with serious sex appeal and an attitude, she'll bring 'em back alive, dead or undead.
- Somers, Jeff
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Avery Cates is a very rich man. He's probably the richest criminal in New York City. But right now, Avery Cates is pissed — because everyone around him has just started to die, in a particularly gruesome way.
- Taylor, Travis S.
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Just days before the presidential election, a CIA operative uncovers a plot to overthrow America that reaches deep into the government. To top it off, the forces planning to revolt have somehow developed a technology that allows them to transport across the gulf between the star systems almost instantaneously. With armored marines, intense space naval battles, fighter planes and high technology wizardry, perhaps the plot to kill the president can be thwarted. But will that be enough to save the land of the free?
- Tarr, Judith
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Alexander the Great ruled the greatest Empire of the ancient world, but he was ruled by his mother, Olympias. Priestess of the Great Goddess, daughter of ruling house of Epiros, witch and familiar of Serpents — she was a figure of mystery, fascination and fear even during her own lifetime.
- Williams, Liz
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When Chen's partner, the demon Seneschal Zhu Irzh, disappears, along with Chen's wife Inari's guardian badger, Chen must enlist all of his allies and assets in order to locate them.