Readers > New Books > Fiction, February 2009
Fiction, February 2009
General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
General Fiction
- Aira, César
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Known for his experimental stories and plays, Aira creates a compelling novel about a migrant Chilean family living in an apartment house under construction in Buenos Aires.
- Banks, Ray
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Cal Innes is back, visiting the City of Angels for a boxing tournament that turns deadly. With his trademark dark humor, emotional acuity and pulse-pounding action, Banks takes the "P.I. who always pays the price" (Boston Globe) where he has never gone before.
- Barnes, Jonathan
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In an earlier century, Queen Victoria made a Faustian bargain, signing London and all its souls away to a nefarious, inhuman entity. Now, generations later, the bill has finally come due.
- Boyle, T. Coraghessan
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T. C. Boyle's account of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright, as told through the voices of the four women who loved him, is a masterful ode to the creative life in all its complexity and grandeur.
- Chamberlain, Marisha
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In 1975, 25-year-old Rose MacGregor moves to St. Paul, Minnesota, with nothing but a few books, her cello and a temporary professorship at a Midwestern college. The only woman in the music department, the other professors refer to her derisively as "the Girl Composer", but she believes that a brilliant career writing music lies ahead. Struggling with loneliness and ambition, she gets tangled up with a gay colleague, a self-made stonemason, a lesbian cellist and the troubles of her wayward younger sister, before finally finding happiness.
- Daniels, N. Frank Erin
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The transition from youth to adulthood is never a smooth ride. Pour an unstable home life, an abusive stepfather, a copious consumption of drugs and alcohol, and a world where everything seems to be turning upside down into the already frothing and volatile mixture of adolescent hormones and newly-budding sexuality — and you have Futureproof.
- DeWitt, Patrick
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Step into Ablutions and step behind the bar, below rock bottom, and beyond the everyday take on storytelling for a brilliant, new twist on the classic tale of addiction and its consequences.
- Eagleman, David
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A dazzling work of fiction, these brief vignettes present a stunning array of possible worlds awaiting each person in the afterlife.
- Evaristo, Bernardine
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A provocative novel that upends the history of the transatlantic slave trade, Blonde Roots reverses and reexamines notions of savagery and civilization as it follows a young woman's journey to freedom.
- Harwood, John
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From the author of The Ghost Writer comes a haunting tale of apparitions, a cursed manor house and two generations of women determined to discover the truth — even at the cost of their lives.
- Haskell, John
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A would-be movie reviewer looking for romance takes an assignment to write a magazine article about celebrity look-alikes in Los Angeles. Set in the capital of illusion, this is a story of one man's journey into paradise — and his attempt to come out the other side.
- Heitzmann, Kristen
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Claire Boudreaux abruptly walks away from her medical residency, hoping to change the course of her life. But she cannot imagine the brutal nightmare that’s about to tear her world apart. When the earth splits open and swallows her car, Claire becomes trapped in a subterranean maze, the site of a deadly game in which women are ruthlessly used and hunted by men for the voyeuristic entertainment of an unseen audience. Here, right and wrong have no meaning. Only the rules matter.
- Jordan, Toni
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A debut Australian novel features a female character who is obsessed with numbers. Counting rules her life — but instead of it bothering her she's actually quite happy about it. Well, for a while, anyway, until she meets Seamus Joseph O'Reilly, who thinks she might be better off without the counting.
- Kala, Advaita
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A bestseller in India, this debut novel introduces a smart, irreverent young woman searching for independence, love and matrimony in a society bound by tradition.
- Lovely, Stephen
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A bike accident on a windy day changes the course of the lives of four people — Janet, Alex, Bernice and Jasper — in ways they can't imagine.
- Lynch, Brian
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A fictional imagining of the gentle but troubled zealot William Cowper — best known as a precursor to Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Burns — Lynch brings to life the mind and times of an eighteenth-century poet.
- Masello, Robert
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Journalist Michael Wilde travels to Antarctica on assignment, living amid scientists and explorers at a research station at the South Pole. But when two frozen bodies are found at the bottom of the ocean, he discovers that they carry a deadly curse in their blood: one that enables them to rise from their frozen tomb and live again.
- McCarten, Anthony
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When a desperate car dealer advertises a competition with a simple premise — that each contestant must keep one hand on a car at all times, and the last one standing will drive away the owner of a new Land Rover — he sets in motion a chain of events that brings together an oddball group of individuals, each with a desperate need to win.
- Moody, David
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Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Guillermo del Toro, Hater is modern take on the classic apocalyptic novel — one man’s story of his place in a world gone mad.
- Moore, Christopher
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Moore plays homage to one of society's most revered cultural icons: Shakespeare. Treachery, treason and murder most foul are afoot at the Lear castle, and Pocket and his apprentice fool, Drool, are caught in the thick of it.
- Robillard, Gregory Xavier
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"What do you get when you give a metrosexual superhero a sidekick, an identity crisis and the ability to predict the weather? The answer: Captain Freedom, the lovable hero of Robillard's debut novel." Publisher's Weekly
- Ryan, Chris
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Published for the first time in the U.S., this pulse-pounding military thriller set in Iraq is by international best-selling author and real-life SAS hero Ryan.
- Sigel, Efrem
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When Joshua and Nathalie Sandler's only child, 14-year-old Daniel, disappears one flawless summer day in a tiny hamlet in western Massachusetts, their world changes in an instant. With lyrical prose and suspense that builds inexorably toward a resolution, Sigel portrays the anguish of parents, who, despite their crushing burden of uncertainty and grief, must continue to live their lives.
- Simmons, Dan
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Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens' life, Drood explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to his final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
- Unsworth, Cathi
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Punk band Blood Truth had it all — critical acclaim, adoring fans and a promising career. That is, until lead singer Vincent Smith disappeared, his girlfriend was found dead, and the band fell apart. Vincent has not been seen since. That was 1981. Twenty years later, journalist Eddie Bracknell is on the scent. He's got a book contract and a looming deadline — now all he needs to do is figure out what happened to Vincent.
Mysteries
- Atkinson, Deborah
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Storm Kayama has come to Kahului to help a friend set up her new dive shop. A bombing and a suicide-murder lead her to discover a deadly Japanese organized crime group that has ensnared local businesses and politics.
- Cole, Meredith
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"Who's stalking the aspiring photographer and knocking off her models?" Kirkus The winner of the St. Martin’s Minotaur/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, Posed for Murder presents a snapshot of crime in a lasting and memorable story.
- Conant-Park, Jessica
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Part-time student Chloe Carter is glued to her chef boyfriend, Josh, as he competes to star in a new TV series. The premise: Josh hijacks unsuspecting grocery shoppers and prepares them gourmet dinners. Everything's going great — until one shopper drops dead.
- Craven, Michael
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Meet Donald Tremaine, an ex-surfer private investigator who brings the P.I. novel into the 21st century, in this "funny, tense, smart" (James Frey) whodunit.
- Gores, Joe
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In 1921, P.I. Sam Spade tangles with a villain who's planned what he thinks is the perfect crime. And he'll fall in love — though it won't turn out for the best.
- Quinn, Spencer
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Meet Chet, the wise and lovable canine narrator of Dog On It, who works alongside Bernie, a down-on-his-luck private investigator.
- Rees, Matt
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A member of the tiny but ancient Samaritan community has been murdered. The dead man had controlled millions of dollars of government money. If the World Bank cannot locate it, all aid money to the Palestinians will be cut off. Omar Yussef must solve the murder and find the money, or all Palestinians will suffer.
- Rivers, Joan
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From the woman who pioneered the dishy Oscar night interview comes a fabulous red carpet roman à clef that blends the classic whodunit with a dash of celebrity glitz, glamour and, of course, gossip.
- Sansom, C. J.
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The fourth book in the Shardlake mystery series takes place in 1543. When an old friend of Matthew Shardlake's is murdered, he vows to bring the killer to justice. His search leads him back to the dark prophecies of the Book of Revelation — and a series of horrific murders.
- Stone, Joel
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Levin, retired from the security services, lives alone in Jerusalem. Adrift, he agrees to follow a friend's wife and discover her secret lover. When she turns to Levin with an unexpected request, his own moral universe is called into question.
- Winspear, Jacqueline
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Maisie Dobbs, Psychologist and Investigator, must catch a madman before he commits murder on an unimaginable scale.
Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
- Anvil, Christopher
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Science and technology have made our lives easier, cured diseases, with achievements that an earlier age would have considered impossible. But once in a while, the law of unintended consequences breaks loose.
- Briggs, Patricia
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By day, Mercy Thompson is a car mechanic in Eastern Washington. By night, she explores her preternatural side. As a shape-shifter with some unusual talents, Mercy’s found herself maintaining a tenuous harmony between the human and the not-so-human on more than one occasion. This time she may get more than she bargained for.
- Colebatch, Hal
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The plan: wipe out and enslave those weed-eating, monkey-spawn humans and march on toward galactic domination! Easy, right? Not quite. Now the smarter Kzin see the writing on the wall and form alliances of convenience with humans. But the battle rages on! A strange OLD world seemingly settled by pre-Romans is about to have the honor of Kzin enslavemen — unless a human and mercenary-Kzin team can stop it.
- Kress, Nancy
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The aliens appeared one day, built a base on the moon, and put an ad on the Internet, calling for volunteers to visit seven planets. At first, everyone thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t. This is the story of three of those volunteers, and what they found on Kular A and Kular B.
- Lynch, Scott
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The Locke Lamora series continues as the thief extraordinaire's mysterious lost love returns to challenge him for primacy among thieves.
- McDonald, Ian
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Cyberabad Days is a triumphant return to the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, water wars, strange new genders, genetically improved children that age at half the rate of baseline humanity, and a population where males outnumber females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas.
- Meaney, John
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He’s lucky to be alive. That’s what everyone tells him. Except Tristopolitan police lieutenant Donal Riordan doesn’t feel lucky and he isn’t really alive. In one horrific moment not even death can erase from memory, Donal lost the woman he loved even as her ultimate sacrifice saved his life. Now it’s literally her heart that beats in his chest and her murder that Donal “lives” to avenge.
- Melko, Paul
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John Rayburn thought all of his problems were the mundane ones of an Ohio farm boy in his last year in high school. Then his doppelgänger appeared, tempted him with a device that let him travel across worlds, and stole his life from him. John soon finds himself caroming through universes, unable to return home — the device is broken.
- Reed, Kit
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The world is in chaos: war, plague, global ecological collapse. Parents everywhere seek sanctuary for their precious children, the future of mankind. For those who are rich and powerful enough, safety can be found — for a price — at the Clothos Academy. Run by a mysterious man known only as Sarge, set in a former monastery atop a sheer cliff on a tiny island somewhere in the Mediterranean, Clothos will admit only one hundred students before it is sealed off — perhaps permanently — from the terrors outside. But all is not as it seems.
- Sterling, Bruce
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The world of 2060 is divided into three spheres of influence, each fighting with the others over the resources of fallen nations and an environment degraded almost to the point of no return. Products of this monstrous world, the daughters of a monstrous mother, and — according to some — monsters themselves, are the Caryatids: the four surviving female clones of a mad Balkan genius and wanted war criminal now safely ensconced on an orbiting space station. When evidence surfaces of a coming environmental cataclysm, the Dispensation sends its greatest statesman — or salesman — John Montgomery Montalban, to gather the Caryatids together in an audacious plan to save the world.
- Valente, Catherynne
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Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift and a curse — a voyage permitted only to those who have always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night.