Readers > New Books > Fiction, January 2009
Fiction, January 2009
General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
General Fiction
- Baker, Tiffany
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Since she was born, Truly has suffered constant abuse and humiliation for her enormous size, while her beautiful, feminine sister, Serena Jane, has been pampered and admired. But when Serena Janes beauty attracts a ruthless suitor with a witch in the family, both their destinies change forever.
- Bi, Feiyu
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The debut novel of one of China's rising young literary talents is a gem of a book that takes a piercing look into the world of Chinese opera and its female stars.
- Downie, Leonard, Jr.
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In an electrifying fiction debut, the editor of The Washington Post presents a novel of corruption and cover-ups at the highest levels of Washington politics, while also portraying the morally ambiguous ways in which the press, and Washington politics, really work.
- Early, Gerald
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From stories that depict black life in times gone by to those that address contemporary issues, this inaugural volume gathers the very best recent African-American fiction. Contributors include Edward P. Jones, Walter Dean Myers, Stephen L. Carter, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Junot Diaz.
- Ephron, Hallie
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An innocent house sale jump-starts this disturbingly creepy page-turner about how well we know the people we love, and how far we are willing to go to protect the secrets of our past.
- Henry, Will
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"Five-time Spur Award-winner Henry has been dead since 1991, but his many western novels and stories live on in print and film. These three novellas were previously published in magazines in the 1950s and '60s, and show Henry's great skill in creating colorful racy westerns." Publishers Weekly
- Houghteling, Sara
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Set in a Paris darkened by World War II, Houghteling's sensuous and bracing debut novel tells the story of a son's quest to recover his family's lost masterpieces, looted by the Nazis during the occupation.
- Huston, Charlie
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Webster Filmore Goodhue has found temporary work as one of the mop-up crew for the L.A. county crime division. In other words, he cleans up grisly crime scenes for the cops. But when the beautiful daughter of a recent Malibu suicide asks for his help, every cell in Web's brain tells him to turn her down.
- Klassen, Julie
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As Lilly toils in her father's apothecary, preparing herbs and remedies by rote, she is haunted by memories of her mother's disappearance. Villagers whisper the tale, but her father refuses to discuss it. When a relative offers to host her in London, Lilly discovers the pleasures and pitfalls of fashionable society and suitors, as well as clues about her mother. But will Lilly find what she is searching for — the truth of the past and a love for the future?
- Nunn, Malla
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Screenwriter Nunn draws on her true-life experience growing up in Africa to create this darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa. Detective Emmanuel Cooper is caught up in a time and place where racial tensions and the raw hunger for power make for dangerous times.
- Peffer, Randall
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Southern Seahawk, the first novel in the Seahawk Trilogy, grows from the true story of Confederate naval hero Commander Rafael Semmes and his rise to infamy, becoming the Union's Public Enemy Number One.
- Phillips, Jayne Anne
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Phillips's first novel in nine years is a rich, many-layered work. Set in the 1950s in West Virginia and Korea, it is a story of the power of loss and love, the echoing ramifications of war, family secrets, dreams and ghosts, and the unseen, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain families.
- Romano, Tony
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In a neighborhood on Chicago's outskirts, Fabio and Lucia Comingo have built a new American life — and struggle to comprehend the influences that distract and change their restless young sons.
- Scheinmann, Danny
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Based on real family events, this debut novel paints a dramatic portrait of two apparently unconnected epic love stories.
- Smith, Ali
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From the award-winning author of The Accidental comes this inventive new collection of stories in which Smith portrays a world of everyday dislocation, where people nevertheless find connection, mystery and love.
- Suarez, Daniel
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This high-tech thriller for the wireless age explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running without human control — a daemon — designed to dismantle society and bring about a new world order.
- Torday, Paul
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Mixing humor and emphathy, Torday's second novel is a subtle, sorrowful tale of a man who has mistaken his alcoholism for happy gluttony
- Unsworth, Barry
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Unsworth, a writer with an "almost magical capacity for literary time travel" (New York Times Book Review) has written a thriller set in 1914, in which he brings to life the schemes and double-dealings of Western nations grappling for a foothold in Mesopotamia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.
- Valent, Jennifer Erin
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Jessilyn Lassiter never knew that hatred could lurk in the human heart until the summer of 1932 when she turned 13. When her best friend, Gemma, loses her parents in a tragic fire, Jessilyn's father vows to care for her as one of his own, despite the fact that Gemma is black and prejudice is prevalent in their southern Virginia town. Fireflies in December is the 2007 winner of the Christian Writers Guild's Operation First Novel contest.
Mysteries
- Bruce, Alison
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Gary Goodhew is intelligent, intuitive and the youngest detective at Cambridge's Parkside Station. When Gary discovers the first body in a series of murders involving an eccentric Cambridge family, he gets his chance to work on a homicide investigation. He must use his own initiative to flush out the killer, even though it means risking his job and discovering the truth about the one person he hopes is innocent.
- Fulmer, David
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Taking readers back to his much-loved Storyville series, Fulmer marks a heart-pounding return to the streets of Detective Valentin St. Cyr's New Orleans.
- Fredrickson, Jack
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A Safe Place for Dying, the first in Fredrickson’s Dek Elstrom mystery series, was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. Now, Chicago P.I. Dek Elstrom is back in an exciting new mystery. A lawyer calls Dek with a fast, $700 proposition to settle the estate of a dead woman. No matter that Dek didn’t know her. Dek heads up to a hamlet ten miles north of nowhere. But instead of finding an easy-to-close estate, he finds blood and the markers of a shattered life. And something worse: links to the darkest part of his own past.
- Gage, Leighton
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A playful dog finds a bone at the outset of this mystery set in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the federal police based in Brasilia and his team of investigators, Hector Costa and Arnaldo Nunes, are called in. The bone is human and the investigators soon unearth a clandestine cemetery. Someone has secretly disposed of the bodies of unknown human beings, often interred in family groups. And in Sao Paulo, it turns out, many patrons of a local travel agency have never reached their North American destinations. The motive for these mass murders is completely contemporary and completely appalling.
- Glauser, Friedrich
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"Originally published in 1937, the fifth and final Det. Sgt. Jakob Studer mystery (after The Chinaman) offers just enough eccentricity to support the author's reputation as the Swiss Simenon. The Bern policeman and his wife are on holiday in the town of Schwarzenstein, where their daughter is getting married, when a man, Jean Stieger, is found dead in the Hôtel zum Hirschen, stabbed with a sharpened bicycle spoke. The local police take the obvious suspect, bicycle mechanic Ernst Graf, into custody. Studer, however, isn't convinced they have their man." Publishers Weekly
- Green, Norman
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This sharp series debut introduces Allessandra Martillo, a tough-as-nails P.I. from the Bronx who is trying to catch a mob traitor.
- Jones, J. Sydney
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With an unmatched knowledge of Vienna's history, culture and politics, Jones introduces a gripping new mystery series set in a cosmopolitan city at the height of its artistic and social importance.
- Richards, Linda L.
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Mixing Hollywood glitz with hardboiled grit, Richards brings back the sharp wit and hairpin turns that drew raves for her debut novel, Death Was the Other Woman
- Siger, Jeffrey
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Former Athens homicide detective Andreas Kaldis soon finds himself in a race against time as he tries to catch a serial killer on the lovely Mykonos island.
- Somer, Mehmet Murat
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A male computer technician by day and a transvestite hostess of Istanbul's most notorious nightclub by night, the unnamed hero of The Kiss Murder is the most charming and hilarious sleuth to debut in recent memory.
Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
- Armstrong, Kelley
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As a curious six-year-old, Clayton didn't resist the bite — he asked for it. But surviving as a lone child-werewolf was more than he could manage — until Jeremy came along and taught him how to straddle the human-werewolf worlds, gave him a home and introduced him to the Pack.
- Bear, Elizabeth
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The wampyr has walked the dark streets of the world's great cities for a thousand years. In that time, he has worn out many names — and even more compatriots. Now, so that one of those companions may die where she once lived, he has come again to the City of London. Here he will meet his own ghosts, the remembrances of loves mortal and immortal. And here he will face the Chancellor's secret weapon: a human child.
- Cast, P. C.
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Empousai family roses have bloomed for centuries, thanks to the drops of blood their women sacrifice for their gardens. But Mikki would rather forget this family quirk and lead a normal life. Until she unwittingly performs a ritual, ending up in the strangely familiar Realm of the Rose. As its goddess Hecate reveals, Mikki is a priestess — and the Realm's been waiting for her.
- Hamilton, Peter F.
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On Earth, satanist Quinn Dexter possesses a new army of the damned, using them to initiate The Night's Dawn, the entropic annihilation of all Creation. At the same time, Joshua Calvert, master of the Lady Macbeth, seeks a miracle in a haystack: the truth behind a legend that 15,000 years ago the alien Tyrathca intercepted a single message from unexplored space beyond Orion. Could a God be sleeping somewhere between the stars? And can Joshua possibly find this unknown Deity before The Night's Dawn devours the cosmos?
- Morgan, Richard K.
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The first novel in a planned trilogy, The Steel Remains finds a man named Ringil, hero from a great war, living nearly forgotten and obsolete in a backcountry village. Then he's asked to find a lost cousin, and he is drawn back into a world that he'd thought he left behind long ago.
- Mrausek, David
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The year is 2135, and the international program to seed the galaxy with human colonies has stalled as greedy, immoral powerbrokers park their starships in Earth's orbit and begin to convert them into space condos. Ellen Starke's head, rescued from the fiery crash that killed her mother, struggles to regrow a new body in time to restore her dead mother's financial empire. And Pre-Singularity AIs conspire to join the human race just as human clones, such as Mary Skarland and her sisters, want nothing more than to leave it.
- Roberson, Chris
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Three people. Three eras. One city. Endless possibilities. End of the Century is a novel of the distant past, the unimaginable future and the search for the Holy Grail. Set in the city of London, the narrative is interlaced between three ages, in which a disparate group of heroes, criminals, runaways and lunatics are drawn into the greatest quest of all time.