Readers > New Books > Fiction, May 2009
Fiction, May 2009
General Fiction |Mysteries |Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
General Fiction
- Baruth, Philip
-
The year is 1763. Twenty-two-year-old James Boswell of Edinburgh is eager to advance himself in London society. Today his sights are set on furthering his acquaintance with Dr. Samuel Johnson, famed for his Dictionary; they are going to take a boat across the Thames to Greenwich Palace. Watching them secretly is John Boswell, James’ younger brother. He has stalked his older brother for days. Consumed with envy, John is planning to take revenge on his brother and Johnson for presumed slights. He carries a pair of miniature pistols that fire a single golden bullet each, and there is murder in his heart.
- Boncompagni, Tatiana
-
In this timely story about what the wealthy do when Wall Street lays an egg, the author of Gilding Lily delivers a witty and insightful treatment of today's woman, as she explores the sacrifices they make, the bargains they strike, the rules they follow and what happens when it all starts to fall apart.
- Briant, Shane
-
After an award-winning author receives an unfinished manuscript in his mail, he slowly begins to realize that the novel may not be entirely fictional, that the poor characters may have perished at the hands of a twisted torturer.
- Chenoweth, Emily
-
A heartbreaking, beautifully crafted debut novel about friendship, loyalty and growing up, Hello Goodbye follows a dying woman's final vacation with her family at a lavish New England resort.
- Clements, Rory
-
Introducing John Shakespeare, master sleuth in the service of the Elizabethan queen, Matyr is rich with tension and historical immediacy as it builds to an explosive finale.
- Drake, John
-
Set in the Caribbean and South Atlantic during the mid-1700s, Flint and Silver finds John Silver at the height of his power — charismatic, ebullient and intimidating — and with both his legs. Packed with bloody battles, mutinous crews, sexual rivalry and women as treacherous as the storms at sea, Flint and Silver is an engaging historical tale that plunges headfirst into greed, power and the draw of life on the high seas.
- Flynn, Gillian
-
"Libby Day's mother and two younger sisters were viciously slaughtered when she was seven, and her brother, Ben, against whom she testified, has been incarcerated ever since. Twenty-five years later, Libby is still suffering from the after effects of the notorious murders. When she finds out that the trust fund set up in her name is about to run out of money, she starts gouging money from members of the Kill Club, a group of true-crime fans obsessed with the Day murders. Dark Places is a gritty, riveting thriller with a one-of-a-kind, tart-tongued heroine. " Booklist
- Gold, Glen David
-
From the author of the bestseller Carter Beats the Devil comes a novel that dramatizes the moment when American capitalism, a world at war and the emerging mecca of Hollywood intersect to spawn an enduring culture of celebrity.
- Hoffman, Eva
-
In this story of contemporary love and conflict, Hoffman illuminates the currents and undercurrents of modern times, as she explores the luminous and dark faces of romanticism.
- Kirshenbaum, Binnie
-
Divorced, alone and unexpectedly unemployed, Sylvia Landsman flees to Italy, where she meets Henry, a wistful, married, middle-aged expatriate. Taking off on a grand tour of Europe bankrolled with his wife's money, Henry and Sylvia follow a circuitous route around the continent. When the opportunity arises for Sylvia and Henry to do something small but brave, the refrain "if only" returns to haunt her, leaving Sylvia with one more story of love lived and lost.
- Konstantinou, Lee
-
A fresh and intelligent debut that imagines the world of 2029, where many of the crises faced today — from celebrity mania to reckless foreign policy and ubiquitous government surveillance — have escalated to ridiculous new heights.
- Littell, Robert
-
The legendary spy novelist presents a luminous historical novel that chronicles the famous Russian poet Osip Mandelstam's defiance of Stalin's regime, his subsequent exile and tragic death.
- Mandanipour, Shahriar
-
From one of Iran's most controversial contemporary writers comes his first novel to appear in English — a dazzlingly inventive work of fiction that opens a revelatory window onto what it's like to live, love and be an artist in today's Iran.
- Martin, Clancy
-
Bobby Clark is just 16 when he drops out of school to follow his big brother Jim into the jewelry business. What follows is the story of a young man's education in two of the oldest human passions: love and money.
- Mayo, C. M.
-
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is a sweeping historical novel of Mexico during the short, tragic, at times surreal, reign of Emperor Maximilian and his court. This lush, grand read is based on the true story and illuminates both the cultural roots of Mexico and the political development of the Americas.
- McElhatton, Heather
-
Approaching 30, single and still unsatisfied with her career as a copywriter, Jennifer Johnson obsesses about finding a boyfriend, losing weight and chasing her dream job. In her revealing and raucous story, every thought, flaw and neurosis is on display.
- Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia
-
"In this highly entertaining novel about Nigerian Internet scammers, Kingsley Ibe is an engineering school graduate who can't find a job and still lives at home with his family. After his girlfriend rejects him and his father dies, Kingsley is taken on by his Uncle Boniface (aka Cash Daddy), who is in the business of Internet scams, otherwise known as 419s. Soon, Kingsley is writing e-mail solicitations to the gullible of cyberspace, and any qualms he may have had about ripping off innocent people evaporate as he steps into the good life with a big new house, a Lexus and a new girlfriend." Publishers Weekly
- Olmstead, Robert
-
Set in 1916, Far Bright Star follows Napoleon Childs, an aging cavalryman, as he leads an expedition of inexperienced soldiers into the mountains of Mexico to hunt down Pancho Villa and bring him to justice.
- Palahniuk, Chuck
-
Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of Pygmy, a thoroughly indoctrinated little killer who hates America with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire.
- Rosales, Guillermo
-
A halfway house is ostensibly a refuge for the mentally ill and those abandoned to poverty by their respective families. However, Rosales writes about a particular house — ruled by an abusive supervisor who sees the house as his personal kingdom and occasionally uses its residents for his sexual pleasures. Sad, tender and dark, The Halfway House introduces an important Cuban writer to American readers.
- Sandford, John
-
Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home, in the new thriller by the bestselling author of Phantom Prey
- Sellers, Susan
-
In this exquisite debut novel, Virginia Woolf scholar Sellers imagines her way into the heart of the complex relationship between Woolf and her sister.
- Sutin, Lawrence
-
Spanning over two centuries, this inventive novel follows fictional writer Hector de Saint-Aureole and his novel, and includes imaginary responses from his imaginary readers.
- Thrasher, Travis
-
After Dennis Shore is stricken by a paralyzing case of writer's block and a looming deadline, he claims someone else's writing as his own. He thinks he's gotten away with it until he's greeted by the true author of the stolen manuscript. Dennis finds himself on the brink of losing his career, his sanity and even his life.
Mysteries
- Cantrell, Rebecca
-
This suspenseful first novel follows an undercover crime reporter in Berlin in 1931 as she searches for her brother's killer, a trail that leads from the city's dark underbelly to the top ranks of the rising Nazi party.
- Clemens, Judy
-
After surviving a serious car accident, Casey Maldonado packs up and hits the road. She stops in Clymer, where the town is in shock over the suicide of a single mother. Many don't believe it was suicide, and Casey decides to investigate.
- Connelly, Michael
-
Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paper to write the definitive murder story of his career.
- Egan, K J
-
Jenny Chase loves her job as assistant pro at the Harbor Terrace Country Club. But her idyllic lifestyle is threatened when she discovers the body of a greenskeeper hanging from a rafter in the cart barn. The police rule the death a suicide, but Jenny has her doubts. As evidence of foul play mounts, so does Jenny's fear for her own life.
- Frimansson, Inger
-
Tobias, an author of mystery novels, must return to the family farm after his father became incapacitated. Tobias resents his father’s judgmental attitude, but he finds the allure of his father’s young wife Sabina hard to resist. The rural life becomes increasingly claustrophobic, but before he can return to the city, death strikes a hard blow and chaos ensues.
- Greenwood, Kerry
-
If there's one thing that Corinna Chapman, baker extraordinaire and proprietor of the Earthly Delights Bakery, can't abide, it's people not eating well — particularly when there are delights like her very own, just-baked, freshly buttered sourdough bread to enjoy. So when a strange cult which denies the flesh and eats only famine bread turns up, along with a body which is found in a park, dead of malnutrition, Corinna is very disturbed indeed.
- Harwood, Seth
-
Jack Palms cashes in on his former celebrity by showing out-of-towners around San Francisco. When people start turning up dead, Jack realizes he's been playing tour guide to a pack of former KGB agents. Soon he's got too many gunmen after him to count.
- Hayes, J. M.
-
Attending tribal ceremonies in Tucson, Mad Dog, the Cheyenne wannabe shaman, is accused of being a witch and a cop killer. Heather English, Mad Dog's niece and a part-time deputy, must comb Tucson's mean streets to clear her uncle's name.
- Knopf, Chris
-
Sam Acquillo is getting to be a lot more sociable. People are constantly dropping by, including guys in black outfits with .45 automatics breaking into his cottage in the middle of the night.
- Padura, Leonardo
-
Mario Conde has retired from the police force and makes a living trading in antique books. In the book collection of a rich Cuban who fled after the fall of Batista, Conde discovers an article about Violeta del Rio, a beautiful bolero singer of the 1950s who disappeared mysteriously. A murder soon follows.
- Thomas, Donald
-
In these five tales, Sherlock Holmes is shown at the height of his powers: he co-operates with a young Winston Churchill in the famed Siege of Sydney Street; helps defeat a plan for a German invasion outlined in the Zimmerman Telegram; establishes a link between two missing light-house keepers and the royal treasures of King John; contends with a supernatural curse placed upon an eccentric aristocrat; and discovers a lost epic of Lord Byron.
- Tyler, L. C.
-
Ethelred Tressider is a mystery writer with problems, not the least of which is his incurably nosy agent, who couldn't give two toffees for mystery novels. She does, however, have a passion for real-life mysteries, and that passion gets stirred up when Ethelred's ex-wife goes missing and Ethelred — none too tightly wound at the best of times — starts behaving in an extremely peculiar fashion.
Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy
- Asaro, Catherine
-
Del is a rising rock singer. He is also the renegade son of the Ruby Dynasty, which makes his career choice less than respectable. But with his life entangled in the politics of three interstellar civilizations, talent might not be enough.
- Baker, Kage
-
When the British Arean Company founded its Martian colony, it welcomed any settlers it could get. Outcasts, misfits and dreamers emigrated in droves to undertake the grueling task of terraforming the cold red planet — only to be abandoned when the BAC discovered it couldn't turn a profit on Mars.
- Beckett, Bernard
-
Anax thinks she knows her history. She'd better. She's now facing three Examiners and her grueling all-day Examination has just begun. If she passes, she'll be admitted into the Academy — the elite governing institution of her utopian society. But Anax is about to discover that for all her learning, the history she's been taught isn't the whole story. And that the Academy isn't what she believes it to be.
- Carey, Jacqueline
-
Loup Garron was born and raised in Santa Olivia, an isolated, disenfranchised town next to a U.S. military base inside a DMZ buffer zone between Texas and Mexico. After her mother dies, Loup goes to live among the misfit orphans at the parish church, where they seethe from the injustices visited upon the locals by the soldiers. Eventually, the orphans find an outlet for their frustrations.
- Foster, Alan Dean
-
Flinx is the only one with even the tiniest chance of stopping the evil colossus barreling in to destroy the Humanx Commonwealth (and everything else in the Milky Way).
- Gilman, Laura Anne
-
Valerie's job as Manhattan's most sought-after Retriever is driving her crazy and she wants a break. However, her next assignment puts her on the wrong side of a child-snatcher — and on a collision course with her past.
- Kasai, Kirsten Imani
-
Sorykah Minuit is a scholar, an engineer and the sole woman aboard an ice-drilling submarine in the frozen land of the Sigue. What no one knows is that she is also a rare Trader, who can switch genders without warning. When a wealthy, reclusive madman known as the Collector abducts Sorykah's infant twins to use in his dreadful experiments, Sorykah and her male alter ego, Soryk, must cross icy wastes and a primeval forest to get them back.
- Martinez, A. Lee
-
Pest Control isn't just for the raccoon in your attic, it's also for the yeti gobbling down ice cream in the freezer of your local grocery store. When Judy has a run in with her first yeti, she calls Monster, the only pest control specialist qualified to handle such a situation. But Monster has his own home-grown problems, like his new workload, a hectoring assistant and a succubus girlfriend from Hell — literally.
- Mieville, China
-
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger.
- Preston, Douglas J.
-
William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, that the assailant was their strange, sinister neighbor — a man who, by all reports, was already dead and buried weeks earlier.
- Rucker, Rudy
-
After the Singularity, everyone and everything is sentient and telepathic. The most intimate moments of your life can be experienced by anyone who cares to pay attention, or by hundreds of thousands of anyones if you are one of the Founders who helped create the Singularity. But now alien races that have already gone through this transformation notice Earth for the first time, and begin to arrive to exploit both the new environment and any available humans. Some of them are real estate developers, some are slavers and some just want to help. But how to tell the difference?
- Sawyer, Robert J
-
Caitlin Decter is young, pretty, feisty, a genius at math — and blind. Still, she can surf the net with the best of them, following its complex paths clearly in her mind. But Caitlin's brain long ago co-opted her primary visual cortex to help her navigate online. So when she receives an implant to restore her sight, instead of seeing reality, the landscape of the World Wide Web explodes into her consciousness, spreading out all around her in a riot of colors and shapes. While exploring this amazing realm, she discovers something — some other — lurking in the background. And it's getting more and more intelligent with each passing day.
- Snyder, Maria V.
-
As a glassmaker and a magician-in-training, Opal Cowen understands trial by fire. Now it's time to test her mettle. Someone has sabotaged the Stormdancer clan's glass orbs, killing their most powerful magicians.
