books tagged “2000s”

books tagged “2000s”

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  • All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye
    by Christopher Brookmyre
    ISBN 0316725234 (0-316-72523-4)
    Hardcover, Little, Brown

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    Book summary:

    As a teenager Jane Bell had dreamt of playing in the casinos of Monte Carlo in the company of James Bond, but in her punk phase she'd got herself pregnant and by the time she reaches forty-six she's a grandmother, her dreams as dry as the dust her Dyson sucks up from her hall carpet every day. Then her son Ross, a researcher working for an arms manufacturer in Switzerland, is forced to disappear before some characters cut from the same cloth as Blofeld persuade him to part with the secrets of his research. But they are not the only ones desperate to locate him. A team of security experts is hired by Ross's firm: headed by the enigmatic Bett, his staff have little in common apart from total professionalism and a thorough disregard for the law. Bett believes the key to Ross's whereabouts is his mother, and in one respect he is right, but even he is taken aback by the verve underlying her determination to secure her son's safety as she learns the black arts of quiet subterfuge and violent attack. The teenage dreams of fast cars, high-tech firepower and extreme action had always promised to be fun and games, but in real life it's likely someone is going to lose an eye... [via]

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  • Another View
    by Rosamunde Pilcher
    ISBN 0312961316 (0-312-96131-6)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    When you read a novel by Rosamunde Pilcher you enter a special world where emotions sing from the heart. A world that lovingly captures the ties that bind us to one another-the joys and sorrows, heartbreaks and misunderstandings, and glad, perfect moments when we are in true harmony. A world filled with evocative, engrossing, and above all, enjoyable portraits of people's lives and loves, tenderly laid open for us...

    There were only two men in Emma's life-her father, a remote artist who left her in boarding school and saw her every few years, and Christo, who had been her stepbrother for a few months, and now wanted to get to know her. But until Emma can understand what she means to them, there will never be room for love.
    [via]

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  • Banks, L. A.: The Awakening
    The Awakening
    by L. A. Banks
    ISBN 0312987021 (0-312-98702-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Bet Me
    by Jennifer Crusie
    ISBN 0312987854 (0-312-98785-4)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Setting: small city in Ohio

    Thirty-three-year-old Minerva Dobbs is annoyed when her current boyfriend dumps her three weeks before her sisters' wedding. But she's downright furious a few moments later when she overhears her now "ex" boyfriend bet hunky Calvin Morrisey that he can't take her home and bed her. In fact, she's so angry at them both that she lets Cal take her to dinner and decides to string him along until after her sisters' wedding. Minerva pegs Cal as a handsome "used car salesman of seducers." Cal thinks Minerva is a "cranky, starving, risk-averse statistician." But Minerva's hormones keep whispering "this one," although she knows the gorgeous Cal isn't the man for her practical, white-cotton-bra, several-pounds-over-thin, self. And Cal is blindsided by the lust he feels for the voluptuous, sensual woman he glimpses behind Min's actuary exterior. While Cal and Min struggle to deal with their mutual distrust and attraction, their friends and families try their best to interfere and direct the progression of the unlikely romantic connection.

    Bet Me is unabashedly, irrepressibly romantic. In the wacky, wonderful world of Min and Cal, author Jennifer Crusie leaves no humorous situation unexplored--no potential comedic cauldron left unstirred--no hysterically funny complication left undeveloped. The reader is treated to a seemingly mismatched hero and heroine who fling caution to the winds to explore their unexpected attraction. The sexual tension is hot, the dialogue witty and wickedly sarcastic, and the supporting cast of secondary characters hilarious. Like Min's favorite Krispy Kreme donuts, this novel is rich and sinfully delicious. Indulge. Enjoy. --Lois Faye Dyer [via]

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  • The Birth of Venus
    by Sarah Dunant
    ISBN 0316725498 (0-316-72549-8)
    Hardcover, Little, Brown

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    The Birth of Venus is all the more fascinating a historical novel for the author's inability to make up her mind what it is about. Is it a novel about the limited choices available to a woman with talent in Renaissance Florence--marriage or the convent? Or is it a novel about the choices you make to survive in a totalitarian society? As Savonarola takes Florence closer and closer to being an ascetic theocracy, Alessandra, her gay brother and his lover whom she has married for mutual protection find themselves in more and more peril. It could also be a detective story--Allesandra is in love with a painter whose religious mania and fascination with the body makes him a plausible suspect for a series of killings and dismemberments. Some historical novels wear their research too heavily--Dunant's is light, fluent and pacy, but her fascination with the possibilities revealed by research leaves her failing to make choices.

    The Birth of Venus is a highly intelligent novel kept from incoherence mostly by the intensely imagined Alessandra, through whose eyes we see the tragic end of a key moment in human culture and whose lively sensibility constantly sparks ideas about art and her time. --Roz Kaveney [via]

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  • The Black Book
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312976755 (0-312-97675-5)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Five years ago, a mysterious fire burned Edinburgh's seed Central Hotel to ashes. Long-forgotten and unsolved, the case reappears when a charred body--with a bullet in its head--is found amongst the ruins. Inspector John Rebus knows that his superiors would rather he let sleeping dogs lie. He knows that part of the answer lies somewhere in a cryptic black notebook. Ane he knows that to solve the case, he'll have to peel back layer upon layer of unspeakable secrets to arrive at the truth. . .
    [via]

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  • Black Notice
    by Patricia Cornwell
    ISBN 0316646385 (0-316-64638-5)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • Auster, Paul: The Book of Illusions
    The Book of Illusions
    by Paul Auster
    ISBN 0312990960 (0-312-99096-0)
    Softcover, Picador USA

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  • Cat & Mouse
    by James Patterson
    ISBN 0316693294 (0-316-69329-4)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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    That monstrous villain Gary Soneji is back in Cat & Mouse, the fourth book in James Patterson's series about Alex Cross, a police forensic psychologist, but he's not alone. In seeming support of the premise that you can never have too much of a bad thing, Patterson has thrown a second serial killer into the mix: Mr. Smith, a mysterious killer terrorizing Europe while Soneji practices his own brand of evil along the Eastern Seaboard. With two killers to track, Cross has his hands full--and Patterson has another hit. [via]

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  • Wickham, Madeleine: Cocktails for Three
    Cocktails for Three
    by Madeleine Wickham
    ISBN 0312984995 (0-312-98499-5)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Coming Home
    by Rosamunde Pilcher
    ISBN 0312958129 (0-312-95812-9)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this involving story tells of an extraordinary young woman's coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming home... In 1935, Judith Dunbar is left behind at a British boarding school when her mother and baby sister go off to join her father in Singapore. At Saint Ursula's, her friendship with Loveday Carey-Lewis sweeps her into the privileged, madcap world of the British aristocracy, teaching her about values, friendship, and wealth. But it will be the drama of war, as it wrenches Judith from those she cares about most, that will teach her about courage...and about love. [via]

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  • The Day of the Storm
    by Rosamunde Pilcher
    ISBN 0312961308 (0-312-96130-8)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    When you read a novel by Rosamunde Pilcher you enter a special world where emotions sing from the heart. A world that lovingly captures the ties that bind us to one another-the joys and sorrows, heartbreaks and misunderstandings, and glad, perfect moments when we are in true harmony. A world filled with evocative, engrossing, and above all, enjoyable portraits of people's lives and loves, tenderly laid open for us...

    On the last day of her mother's life, Rebecca learns she has a family in Cornwall, and sets out to find the grandfather and cousin she has never known. But only the enigmatic Joss Gardner, the outsider who seems to be the apple of her grandfather's eye, can help her understand the dark currents that lie behind her family's loving reception.
    [via]

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  • Dead Souls
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312974205 (0-312-97420-5)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    When an author as successful as Rankin has been with his tough and idiomatic Scottish thrillers, a problem sets in after several books: how to keep the formula fresh.

    Rankin has delivered a powerful series of books featuring his beleaguered Detective Inspector John Rebus, and while never less than gripping, a certain tiredness seemed to be setting in. Thankfully, Dead Souls is a resounding return to form, with a plot as enjoyably labyrinthine as any Rankin enthusiast could wish for, and pithy dialogue that fairly leaps off the page. Stalking the streets of Edinburgh on the trail of a poisoner, Rebus hits upon a freed pedophile and his subsequent outing of the man leaves him with very mixed feelings. But another problem develops for Rebus: a convicted murderer has him in his sights for some lethal games. And the tabloid press lionizing of Rebus won't help him in this situation.

    As always, Rankin is perfectly ready to tackle contentious issues--precisely the thing that gives his books their powerful sense of veracity. And Rebus, no longer in danger of having a soap opera-like accumulation of personal problems, seems as fresh and well-observed a character as in those first exhilarating books. Rankin has caught his form again, with even more assurance. --Barry Forshaw, Amazon.co.uk [via]

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  • Digital Fortress: A Thriller
    by Dan Brown
    ISBN 0312995423 (0-312-99542-3)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    In most thrillers, "hardware" consists of big guns, airplanes, military vehicles, and weapons that make things explode. Dan Brown has written a thriller for those of us who like our hardware with disc drives and who rate our heroes by big brainpower rather than big firepower. It's an Internet user's spy novel where the good guys and bad guys struggle over secrets somewhat more intellectual than just where the secret formula is hidden--they have to gain understanding of what the secret formula actually is.

    In this case, the secret formula is a new means of encryption, capable of changing the balance of international power. Part of the fun is that the book takes the reader along into an understanding of encryption technologies. You'll find yourself better understanding the political battles over such real-life technologies as the Clipper Chip and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software even though the book looks at the issues through the eyes of fiction.

    Although there's enough globehopping in this book for James Bond, the real battleground is cyberspace, because that's where the "bomb" (or rather, the new encryption algorithm) will explode. Yes, there are a few flaws in the plot if you look too closely, but the cleverness and the sheer fun of it all more than make up for them. There are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and a lot of high, gee-whiz-level information about encryption, code breaking, and the role they play in international politics. Set aside the whole afternoon and evening for it and have finger food on hand for supper--you may want to read this one straight through. [via]

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  • The Dogs of Babel
    by Carolyn Parkhurst
    ISBN 0316778508 (0-316-77850-8)
    Softcover, Back Bay Books

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    The quirky premise of Carolyn Parkhurst's debut novel, The Dogs of Babel, is original enough: after his wife Lexy dies after falling from a tree, linguistics professor Paul Iverson becomes obsessed with teaching their dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Lorelei (the sole witness to the tragedy), to speak so he can find out the truth about Lexy's death--was it accidental or did Lexy commit suicide?

    In short, accelerating chapters Parkhurst alternates between Paul's strange and passionate efforts to get Lorelei to communicate and his heartfelt memories of his whirlwind relationship with Lexy. The first 100 pages or so bring to mind another noteworthy debut, Alice Sebold's brilliant exploration of grief, The Lovely Bones. Unfortunately, the second half of The Dogs of Babel takes too many odd twists and turns--everything from a Ms. Cleo-like TV psychic to an underground sect of abusive canine linguists--to ever allow the reader to feel any real sympathy for the main characters. Parkhurst's Paul Iverson can certainly be appealing at times, and his heartbreak is often quite palpable ("...for every dark moment we shared between us, there was a moment of such brightness I almost could not bear to look at it head-on."). But his mask-maker wife Lexy--Paul's driving inspiration--is a character whose spur-of-the-moment outbursts, spontaneous fits of anger, and supposedly charming sense of whimsy (on their first date, they drive from Virginia to Disney World, eating only appetizers and side dishes along the way), become so annoying and grating that it's hard to believe anyone could ever put up with her, let alone teach their dog to speak for her.

    Despite its cloying tone, The Dogs of Babel marks a notable debut. Parkhurst possesses a wealth of inspired ideas, and no doubt many readers will respond to the book, but one hopes that the author's future efforts will be packed with richer character development and less schmaltz. --Gisele Toueg [via]

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  • Eleven On Top
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312985347 (0-312-98534-7)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Stephanie Plum, Trenton's favorite bondswoman, is having a career crisis, which gives Janet Evanovich plenty of opportunities to showcase her series heroine in a variety of alternative vocations, from dry cleaner to factory worker. Most of them don't last a full working day, which is good for the reader, since it plunges Stephanie back into the always seedy, often dangerous, and always colorful world of fugitives who'd rather flee than face their day in court. She may be tired of having her life threatened, her cars torched or blown up, and her apartment broken into, but one thing she can say about her job is that it's never boring... and neither is she. Despite her intentions of going straight at a job with a little more security and a bit less excitement, an old client won't let her--he keeps leaving her threatening notes, stalking and scaring her, and making sure she needs the protection of the two men in her life--Joe Morelli, the sexy cop who's been bedding her since high school, and Ranger, the even sexier tough guy who can take down the meanest fugitive around but has a tender spot in his heart for the plucky Ms. Plum. All Evanovich fans' favorite characters people this sprightly caper novel, including Lula, the fast-food-chomping former hooker who's hot to take over Stephanie's job but really belongs in a WWE Takedown; Grandma Mazur, who'd rather go to a wake than a fancy-dress ball; Grandma Bella, the matriarch of the Corelli family whose evil eye frightens even the indomitable Stephanie; and Valerie, Stephanie's sister, who's about to embark on another trip to the altar. A great beach read, Eleven on Top is a guilty pleasure that will delight readers of the author's 10 earlier novels and should win her even more fans. --Jane Adams

    Amazon Exclusive Content


    Amazon's Significant Seven
    Janet Evanovich kindly agreed to take the life quiz we like to give to all our authors: the Amazon Significant Seven.

    Q: What book has had the most significant impact on your life?
    A: Uncle Scrooge adventures by Carl Barks. They gave me a lifelong love of the adventure story both in film and literature. And I wouldn't mind pushing my quarters around with a bulldozer in real life, either.

    Q: You are stranded on a desert island with only one book, one CD, and one DVD--what are they?
    A: Book: The Neiman Marcus holiday catalog (I can pretend I'm shopping.)
    CD: MTVs Grind, Volume 1 (Happy music and I love the samba.)
    DVD: Shrek 2 (Happy movie.)

    Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?
    A: "No. Your butt doesn't look big in those pants." Said to myself.

    Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.
    A: No phone. Locked door. Room service. Silence. My cat (Gus) on my lap.

    Q: If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?
    A: "Later, Dudes!"

    Q: Who is the one person living or dead that you would like to have dinner with?
    A: Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets)

    Q: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
    A: The ability to eat Cheez Doodles and Krispy Kremes and never get fat.


    The Stephanie Plum Series


    One for the Money
    Two for the Dough
    Three to Get Deadly

    Four to Score
    High Five
    Hot Six

    [via]

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  • Emma Brown
    by Charlotte Bronte, Clare Boylan
    ISBN 0316725471 (0-316-72547-1)
    Hardcover, Little, Brown

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    Clare Boylan's expansion of Bronte's scrap of plot into Emma Brown is powerfully imagined and stylish, with enough melodramatic twists to keep the momentum going until the end. She is distinctly successful in recreating faithfully an idiom both familiar yet obsolete. Charlotte Bronte left a fragment of a novel at her death, subsequently published under the title Emma, concerning the placement by a rich father of a haughty and unresponsive daughter at a school for young ladies. As with Jane Austen's Sanditon or Dickens' Edwin Drood it has offered later writers the challenge of guessing a dead author's intentions.

    Paradoxically, one of the opportunities that such an enterprise offers is the possibility of subverting the apparent direction of a plot-line, or undermining the perceived character of participants in the story and Clare Boylan takes extensive--perhaps too extensive--advantage of her freedom in this regard. A modern author's preoccupations are unlikely to be the same as those of a mid-Victorian and Boylan's story takes Charlotte Bronte's characters into darker milieu, and with a greater explicitness of social detail, than their creator is likely to have permitted herself. Rather like Charles Palliser did with Dickens in The Quincunx, Boylan seems to be trying to strip away the euphemism and restraint required of the great 19th-century novelists to show the reality of the world they mirrored. Students of Victorian social history will recognise elements drawn from Mayhew and WT Stead, among others: indeed Stead and the incident for which he is now best remembered--the purchase of a child--has clearly influenced a key character and plot element.

    There is much of Dickens, and perhaps even more of Wilkie Collins, in the plotting, which survives a tendency to the schematic or mechanical to deliver a story that ranges widely through 19th-century England and society. This is a remarkable achievement in many ways. While clearly not the novel that Charlotte Bronte would have written, it is a successful resuscitation of the forms of high Victorian fiction as a vessel for 21st-century concerns. --Robin Davidson [via]

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  • Forever
    by Peter Hamill
    ISBN 0316735698 (0-316-73569-8)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    This is the magical, epic tale of Cormac O'Connor, who arrives in New York City from Ireland in 1741 and remains, well, forever. For Cormac has been given the gift of immortality, but only on the condition that he never leave the island of Manhattan. Through Cormac's eyes, we watch the city transform from a burgeoning settlement on the tip of an untamed wilderness to the romantic, gaslit world of Edith Wharton's time, and finally to the pulsing, thriving metropolis of the present day. But this is also Cormac's story, as he explores the mysteries of time and immortality, death and loss, sex and love. Though his life is proof of enduring magic, the living of it takes place in a world that can be gloriously, or terribly, real. [via]

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  • The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf
    by Kathryn Davis
    ISBN 0316735035 (0-316-73503-5)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    A young woman in flight from her past, and an old woman whose secrets are contained in the grave--with this configuration, Davis begins a novel of true bravura about opera, adultery, and murder. [via]

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  • A Good Hanging
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312980000 (0-312-98000-0)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Penzler Pick, January 2002: Ian Rankin is now the United Kingdom's bestselling crime writer. His 15 police procedurals featuring the dour Scottish Detective Inspector John Rebus are beginning, at last, to attract a devoted--and deserved--following in this country. St. Martin's has just published this, Rankin's 1992 collection of short stories, and I can't think of a better way to be introduced to John Rebus and his creator.

    Dubbed "Tartan Noir" by James Ellroy, Rankin's tales are set in Edinburgh. Not in the beautiful streets that tourists see (those cobbled sidewalks leading up to Edinburgh Castle), but in its dark, damp recesses where crime flourishes. That's where Rebus works. The crime and criminals there make Rebus's job a tough one, and they also offend his sense of decency and order.

    These 12 stories tell of mystery, suffering, and mayhem, which Rebus alone of all the detectives on the force, with his remarkable deductive skills, can solve. In "Being Frank," a homeless man, from his unique perspective on the park bench, is able to give Rebus the information he needs to break up a scam by local ne'er-do-wells. Crimes gone unsolved for 20 years, religious sightings, lovers crossed, and tales of revenge all come under the jaundiced eye of the very talented Rebus.

    Even 10 years ago, when he was writing these stories, Rankin was a writer of great gifts. Time has borne out this promise. So it is easy to predict that, once you have sampled these short cases, you will become one of the many readers eagerly awaiting another Rebus novel from this sensitive and enormously talented young writer. --Otto Penzler [via]

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  • De Kretser, Michelle: The Hamilton Case
    The Hamilton Case
    by Michelle De Kretser
    ISBN 0316010812 (0-316-01081-2)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • The Hanging Garden
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312969139 (0-312-96913-9)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Ian Rankin's ninth book about Inspector John Rebus of the Edinburgh police is so full of story that it seems about to explode into shapeless anarchy at any moment. What keeps it from doing so is Rankin's strong heart and even stronger writing skills. When a Bosnian prostitute refuses to testify against a crime boss who has threatened her family, he says this about the cops trying to pressure her: "Silence in the room. They were all looking at her. Four men, men with jobs, family ties, men with lives of their own. In the scheme of things, they seldom realised how well off they were. And now they realised something else: how helpless they were."

    Rebus is trying to help the young woman--renamed Candice by the young, slick, brutal thug Tommy Telford, who is into everything from drugs and prostitution to aiding a Japanese business syndicate in acquiring a local golf course--because she's about the same age and physical aspect as his own daughter, Sammy. He's also conducting the investigation of a suspected Nazi war criminal, an old man who spends his time tending graves in Warriston cemetery. "A cemetery should have been about death, but Warriston didn't feel that way to Rebus. Much of it resembled a rambling park into which some statuary had been dropped," Rankin writes with the icy clarity of cold water over stone.

    Add to this Rebus's involvement with an imprisoned crime boss in a plan to bring Telford down; his continuing battle with drink; the strong possibility that people high up in the British government don't want the old Nazi exposed; danger to Sammy and her journalist lover because of her father's work; and a somewhat strained metaphor of Edinburgh as a new Babylon and you have an admittedly large pot of stew. But Rankin's high art keeps it all bubbling and rich with flavor. Others in the Rebus series include his 1997 Edgar Award-nominated Black and Blue, as well as Hide and Seek, Knots and Crosses, Let It Bleed, Mortal Causes, Strip Jack, and Tooth and Nail. --Dick Adler [via]

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  • Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
    by Daniel Goleman, Jesse Browner
    ISBN 0316167258 (0-316-16725-8)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    A molecular biologist turned Buddhist monk, described by scientists as "the happiest man alive," demonstrates how to develop the inner conditions for true happiness. [via]

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  • Ricard, Matthieu: Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
    Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
    by Matthieu Ricard, Jesse Browner
    ISBN 0316057835 (0-316-05783-5)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • Hard as Nails
    by Dan Simmons
    ISBN 0312994680 (0-312-99468-0)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Mystery. On the day he was shot in the head, things were going stangely well for Joe Kurtz. [via]

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  • Hard Eight
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312983867 (0-312-98386-7)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    In Hard Eight, Stephanie Plum picks up a case a little nastier than anything the wisecracking bounty hunter's seen before. Evelyn Soder and her young daughter have gone on the run, leaving an angry ex-husband who's planning to collect on a child custody bond that will leave Evelyn's grandmother homeless. Stephanie's first clue that there's more to it than that comes in the form of Eddie Abruzzi, a shady local businessman who warns her to butt out of the case. Stephanie doesn't scare easily, but when Abruzzi's henchmen leave a bag of snakes on her doorknob and tarantulas in her car, she has no choice but to call Ranger, the hunky man of mystery whom she already owes too many favors. Steph knows that Ranger will soon be calling in his marker, but with her ex- fiancé Joe Morelli out of the picture, that should be OK--shouldn't it? In the meantime, she's got other fugitives to catch, aided by the usual band of misfits, plus a bumbling correspondence-school lawyer who's developed the hots for Stephanie's sister, Valerie. And Steph's in for a surprise from her mother, who proves she's not above wielding a dangerous weapon to save her daughter's life.

    Author Janet Evanovich has made a bold move in using a soupçon of child jeopardy to pull this series out of the comfortable but formulaic pattern it was threatening to fall into. It's still funny, and yes, some cars are destroyed, but now there's a real edge of darkness under the humor. Fans needn't fear, though: Jersey girl Stephanie is still full of sass and Tastykakes. --Barrie Trinkle [via]

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  • Hard Freeze
    by Dan Simmons
    ISBN 0312989482 (0-312-98948-2)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Having proven he can write hard-nosed noir with 2001's Hardcase, prolific genre-crossing author Dan Simmons reintroduces his gritty protagonist Joe Kurtz and promptly pitches him into the icy waters of Hard Freeze. Two pages into the book, the ex-private investigator is just minding his business on the frozen streets of Buffalo and already he's got a contract on his head. As Kurtz says, "It was shaping up to be an especially tough winter." When he finds out who the money behind the hit is, Joe's already outgunned and outmanned but never outsmarted. This wily warrior is always one step ahead of whoever is chasing him, be they crooked cops, calculating serial killers, corpulent mob bosses, or not-so-distressed damsels.

    Simmons has crafted a perfectly ruthless crime novel with a relentless pace that doesn't let up until the final page. The single-minded Joe Kurtz is a wonderfully flawed and deliciously soiled noir icon. He's smart, salty, literate, smushy in all the right places, and not somebody to cross. In all, Hard Freeze is a fast-paced thriller that successfully interweaves amazingly disparate plot threads in an explosive--really explosive--climax. --Jeremy Pugh [via]

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  • Simmons, Dan: Hardcase
    Hardcase
    by Dan Simmons
    ISBN 0312980167 (0-312-98016-7)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Wiltse, David: Heartland
    Heartland
    by David Wiltse
    ISBN 0312982879 (0-312-98287-9)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Hide and Seek
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312963971 (0-312-96397-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    At night the summer sky stays light over Edinburgh. But in a shadowy, crumbling housing development, a junkie lies dead of an overdose, his bruised body surrounded by signs of Satanic worship. John Rebus could call the death and accident--but won't. Instead, he tracks down a violent-tempered young woman who knew the dead boy and heard him cry out his terrifyng last words: "Hide! Hide!" Now, with the help of a bright, conflicted young detective, Rebus is following the girl through a brutal world of bad deals, bad dope and bad company. From a beautiful city's darkest side to the private sanctums of the upper crust, Rebus is seeking the perfect hiding place for a killer.
    [via]

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  • Evanovich, Janet: Hot Six
    Hot Six
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312976275 (0-312-97627-5)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Patterson, James: Jack & Jill: A Novel
    Jack & Jill: A Novel
    by James Patterson
    ISBN 0316693715 (0-316-69371-5)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • Kiss the Girls
    by James Patterson
    ISBN 0316693707 (0-316-69370-7)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    In Los Angeles, a reporter investigating a series of murders is killed. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a beautiful medical intern suddenly disappears. Washington D.C.Us Alex Cross is back to solve the most baffling and terrifying murder case ever. Two clever pattern killers are collaborating, cooperating, competing--and they are working coast to coast. [via]

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  • Knots and Crosses
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312956738 (0-312-95673-8)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Detective John Rebus: His city is being terrorized by a baffling series of murders...and he's tied to a maniac by an invisible knot of blood. Once John Rebus served in Britain's elite SAS. Now he's an Edinburgh cop who hides from his memories, misses promotions and ignores a series of crank letters. But as the ghoulish killings mount and the tabloid headlines scream, Rebus cannot stop the feverish shrieks from within his own mind. Because he isn't just one cop trying to catch a killer, he's the man who's got all the pieces to the puzzle...

    Knots and Crosses introduces a gifted mystery novelist, a fascinating locale and the most compellingly complex detective hero at work today.
    [via]

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  • Shreve, Anita: The Last Time They Met
    The Last Time They Met
    by Anita Shreve
    ISBN 0316713732 (0-316-71373-2)
    Softcover, Lb Books

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    Book summary:

    The Last Time They Met opens with two old lovers, both poets, running into each other at a writer's conference. Well, Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes aren't old, actually--just middle-aged, with a lifetime's worth of history between them. In the first section, Anita Shreve only suggests what that history contains: there was adultery, we gather, and a car accident, plus some illicit encounters under a pitiless Kenyan sun. Presumably the rest of the book will lead back to the beginnings of this grand passion, right? We think we know where this is going--but that's the tricky part, because we don't.

    The novel does get off to a slow start, with an unnecessarily drawn-out description of a luxury hotel. But it picks up speed as it moves backward in time, from the lovers' vividly evoked interlude in Africa, to their adolescent years in the Massachusetts village of Hull, and finally to Linda's deepest, darkest secret. Only then does the author unveil her final revelation, which should leave most readers somewhat out of breath, and possibly even obliged to turn back to the first page and read the book over again. Shreve is a canny storyteller, and she knows her characters inside and out. (As well she might: Thomas is the husband of Jean, the photographer in The Weight of Water.) And The Last Time They Met is yet another example of the kind of book she does best--one that's as skillfully plotted as a thriller, but with writing that lingers long after the last plot twist is unfurled. No matter whether people actually have affairs like these. Reading this book only makes you wish that they did. --Mary Park [via]

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  • Let It Bleed
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312966652 (0-312-96665-2)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    In the dark days and biting windstorms of an Edinburgh winter, two drop-out kids dive off the towering Forth Road Bridge. A civic office is spattered by a grisly gun-blast. Two suicides and a murder that just don't add up, unless John Rebus can crunch the numbers. Following a trail that snakes through stark alleys and sad bars, shredded files and lacerated lives, Rebus finds himself up against an airtight, murderous conglomerate on the make in every arena of power. It's leeching the life and soul out of his city and, if it can, him too...
    [via]

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  • Shreve, Anita: Light on Snow
    Light on Snow
    by Anita Shreve
    ISBN 0316010677 (0-316-01067-7)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    What makes a family? That's what twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon wonders after she and her widowed father discover a wailing abandoned baby in the snow-filled woods near their New Hampshire home. Through the days that follow, the Dillons and an unexpected visitor who soon turns up at their door-a young woman evidently haunted by her own terrible choices-face a thicket of decisions, each seeming to carry equal possibilities of heartbreak and redemption. Writing with all the emotional resonance that has drawn millions of readers around the world to her fiction, Anita Shreve unfolds in Light on Snow a tender and surprising novel about love and its consequences. [via]

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  • Mosley, Walter: The Man in My Basement
    The Man in My Basement
    by Walter Mosley
    ISBN 031615931X (0-316-15931-X)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • Me Talk Pretty One Day
    by David Sedaris
    ISBN 0316776963 (0-316-77696-3)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    David Sedaris became a star autobiographer on public radio, onstage in New York, and on bestseller lists, mostly on the strength of "SantaLand Diaries," a scathing, hilarious account of his stint as a Christmas elf at Macy's. (It's in two separate collections, both worth owning, Barrel Fever and the Christmas-themed Holidays on Ice.) Sedaris's caustic gift has not deserted him in his fourth book, which mines poignant comedy from his peculiar childhood in North Carolina, his bizarre career path, and his move with his lover to France. Though his anarchic inclination to digress is his glory, Sedaris does have a theme in these reminiscences: the inability of humans to communicate. The title is his rendition in transliterated English of how he and his fellow students of French in Paris mangle the Gallic language. In the essay "Jesus Shaves," he and his classmates from many nations try to convey the concept of Easter to a Moroccan Muslim. "It is a party for the little boy of God," says one. "Then he be die one day on two... morsels of... lumber," says another. Sedaris muses on the disputes between his Protestant mother and his father, a Greek Orthodox guy whose Easter fell on a different day. Other essays explicate his deep kinship with his eccentric mom and absurd alienation from his IBM-exec dad: "To me, the greatest mystery of science continues to be that a man could father six children who shared absolutely none of his interests."

    Every glimpse we get of Sedaris's family and acquaintances delivers laughs and insights. He thwarts his North Carolina speech therapist ("for whom the word pen had two syllables") by cleverly avoiding all words with s sounds, which reveal the lisp she sought to correct. His midget guitar teacher, Mister Mancini, is unaware that Sedaris doesn't share his obsession with breasts, and sings "Light My Fire" all wrong--"as if he were a Webelo scout demanding a match." As a remarkably unqualified teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sedaris had his class watch soap operas and assign "guessays" on what would happen in the next day's episode.

    It all adds up to the most distinctively skewed autobiography since Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia. The only possible reason not to read this book is if you'd rather hear the author's intrinsically funny speaking voice narrating his story. In that case, get Me Talk Pretty One Day on audio. --Tim Appelo [via]

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  • Banks, L. A.: Minion
    Minion
    by L. A. Banks
    ISBN 0312987013 (0-312-98701-3)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Mortal Causes
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312960948 (0-312-96094-8)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    In Edinburgh you're never far from a peaceful spot, or from a hellish one either. Now, in the heart of summer, in the midst of a nationalist festival, Inspector John Rebus is on the murder case of a young man left hanging in a spot where his screams would never be heard. To find the victim's identity--and his killer--Rebus searches from Edinburgh's most violent neighborhood to Belfast, Northern Ireland--amongst petty thugs, gunrunners, and heavyweight criminals. But before Rebus can get to the truth, he's bloodied by the dream of society's madmen--and staring into the glint of a killer's eyes.
    [via]

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  • Museum Shapes
    by Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
    ISBN 0316056987 (0-316-05698-7)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    Introducing children to basic and complex shapes through the Metropolitan Museum's extensive and varied collections, this book features the work of a diverse range of artists. Each shape has two spreads. Full color. [via]

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  • Rankin, Ian: The Naming of the Dead
    The Naming of the Dead
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0316057576 (0-316-05757-6)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • The Night Before Christmas
    by Clement Clarke Moore, Ruth Sanderson
    ISBN 0316579637 (0-316-57963-7)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    Clement Clarke Moore's classic Christmas story is illustrated in traditional oil paintings by renowned artist Ruth Sanderson. A small town New England setting serves as the backdrop for Saint Nick's visit on the night everyone dreams of sugar plums and Christmas joy. Sanderson's stunning paintings make this a gift book to be found under every Christmas tree. [via]

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  • Wallace, David Foster: Oblivion: Stories
    Oblivion: Stories
    by David Foster Wallace
    ISBN 0316010766 (0-316-01076-6)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • One for the Money
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312990456 (0-312-99045-6)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Stephanie Plum is so smart, so honest, and so funny that her narrative charm could drive a documentary on termites. But this tough gal from New Jersey, an unemployed discount lingerie buyer, has a much more interesting story to tell: She has to say that her Miata has been repossessed and that she's so poor at the moment that she just drank her last bottle of beer for breakfast. She has to say that her only chance out of her present rut is her repugnant cousin Vinnie and his bail-bond business. She has to say that she blackmailed Vinnie into giving her a bail-bond recovery job worth $10,000 (for a murder suspect), even though she doesn't own a gun and has never apprehended a person in her life. And she has to say that the guy she has to get, Joe Morelli, is the same creep who charmed away her teenage virginity behind the pastry case in the Trenton bakery where she worked after school.

    If that hard-luck story doesn't sound compelling enough, Stephanie's several unsuccessful attempts at pulling in Joe make a downright hilarious and suspenseful tale of murder and deceit. Along the way, several more outlandish (but unrelentingly real) characters join the story, including Benito Ramirez, a champion boxer who seems to be following Stephanie Plum wherever she goes.

    Janet Evanovich shares an authentic feel for the streets of Trenton in her debut mystery (she developed her talents in a string of romance novels before creating Ms. Plum), and her tough, frank, and funny first-person narrator offers a winning mix of vulgarity and sensitivity. Evanovich is certainly among the best of the new voices to emerge in the mystery field of the 1990s. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]

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  • Shortz, Will: Pocket Sudoku: 150 Fast, Fun Puzzles
    Pocket Sudoku: 150 Fast, Fun Puzzles
    by Will Shortz
    ISBN 0312940467 (0-312-94046-7)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Patterson, James: Pop Goes the Weasel
    Pop Goes the Weasel
    by James Patterson
    ISBN 0316693286 (0-316-69328-6)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • Public Displays of Affection
    by Susan Donovan
    ISBN 0312992327 (0-312-99232-7)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    A perfect blend of humor, highly charged sexual tension and emotional intensity. [via]

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  • Hanff, Helene: Q's Legacy
    Q's Legacy
    by Helene Hanff
    ISBN 0316343404 (0-316-34340-4)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • Rankin, Ian: A Question of Blood
    A Question of Blood
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0316159182 (0-316-15918-2)
    Softcover, Grand Central Pub

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    Book summary:

    Given his contempt for authority, his tendency to pursue investigative avenues of his own choosing, and his habitually ornery manner, it's a wonder that John Rebus hasn't been booted unceremoniously from his job as an Edinburgh cop. He certainly tempts that fate again in A Question of Blood, which finds him and his younger partner, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, trying to close the case of a withdrawn ex-soldier named Lee Herdman, who apparently shot three teenage boys at a Scottish private school, leaving two of them dead, before turning the pistol on himself.

    "Theres no mystery," Siobhan insists at the start of this 14th Rebus novel (following Resurrection Men). "Herdman lost his marbles, thats all." However, the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Rebus, who'd once sought entry into the same elite regiment in which Herdman served (but ultimately cracked under psychological interrogation), thinks there's more motive than mania behind this classroom slaughter. Perhaps something to do with the gunman's role in a 1995 mission to salvage a downed military helicopter, or with Teri Cotter, a 15-year-old "Goth" who broadcasts her bedroom life over the Internet, yet keeps private her relationship with the haunted Herdman. Rebus's doubts about the murder-suicide theory are deepened with the appearance of two tight-lipped army investigators, and by the peculiar behavior of James Bell, the boy who was only wounded during Herdman's firing spree and whose politician father hopes to use that tragedy as ammo in the campaign against widespread gun ownership. But the detective inspector's focus on this inquiry is susceptible to diversion, both by an internal police probe into his role in the burning death of a small-time crook who'd been stalking Siobhan, and by the fact that Rebus--who shies away from any family contacts--was related to one of Herdmans victims.

    Now middle-aged and on the downward slope of his pugnacity (the high point may have come in 1997's Black and Blue), Rebus has become the engine of his own obsolescence. Overexposure to criminals has left him better at understanding them than his colleagues, and he only worsens his career standing by fighting other people's battles for them, especially Siobhan, who risks learning too many lessons from her mentor. To watch Rebus subvert police conventions and fend of personal demons (that latter struggle mirrored in A Question of Blood by Herdman's own) is worth the admission to this consistently ambitious series. --J. Kingston Pierce [via]

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  • Resistance
    by Anita Shreve
    ISBN 0316166588 (0-316-16658-8)
    Softcover, Grand Central Pub

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    Book summary:

    A story of forbidden passion in Nazi-occupied Belgium, by the author of "Eden Close", "Strange Fits of Passion" and "Where or When". A young American pilot crash-lands behind enemy lines and is tended by a young housewife who, with her husband, is working for the Resistance. [via]

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  • Resurrection Men: Inspector Rebus Novel
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0316608491 (0-316-60849-1)
    Softcover, Grand Central Pub

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    Book summary:

    Rebus is back. Resurrection Men, the 13th DI Rebus novel, finds Ian Rankins doughty detective off the case. He explodes at his superior DCS Gill Templar over the increasingly frustrating murder inquiry into the savage killing of an Edinburgh art dealer and his punishment is a spell cooling his heels at the Scottish Police College in central Scotland. Rebus balks at his "retraining" but hes not alone: hes part of an ill-assorted group of similar officers--all with an attitude problem and a dislike of the institution they find themselves in. Given an old unsolved case to work on the group is obliged to polish up their teamwork while supervisors assess the reprobates. But some of the team have secrets not unconnected to the case theyve been handed and Rebus finds that anything goes when it comes to keeping the past obscured.

    This is Rankin in top form with Rebus rejuvenated by the edgy new milieu hes dropped into. Complicating things, the Scottish Crime Squad asks Rebus to act as a link to someone who can deliver the inside dirt on an old nemesis, gangster "Big Ger" Cafferty. In Edinburgh, Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke has to take over the case of the murdered art dealer and, like Rebus, finds herself getting closer to the unpleasant Mr Cafferty. Forget the miscast John Hannah in the TV movies, this is the real Rebus: gritty, idiomatic and etched in prose that wastes nae a word in its redefining of the crime novel. --Barry Forshaw [via]

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  • Right As Rain
    by George P. Pelecanos
    ISBN 0316695262 (0-316-69526-2)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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    George Pelecanos's Washington, D.C., is a far cry from the upwardly mobile, tourist-attraction-speckled enclave of Margaret Truman (Murder at the National Cathedral, Murder in Georgetown). Pelecanos's capital is a haunting terrain of drugs and death, a no man's land of posturing dealers and skeletal warehouses that shelter their buyers:

    A rat scurried into a dim side room, and a withered black face receded into the darkness. The face belonged to a junkie named Tonio Morris. He was one of the many bottom-of-the-food-chain junkies, near death and too weak to cut out a space of their own on the second floor; later, when the packets were delivered to those with cash, they'd trade anything they had, anything they'd stolen that day, or any orifice on their bodies for some rock or powder.
    When PI Derek Strange is hired by Chris Wilson's mother to find out why her son, a black cop, was killed by a white cop, Terry Quinn, on a dark night in that no man's land, Strange figures that the answer is painfully clear: a typical case of mistaken identity, fueled by the assumptions and preconceptions of Quinn's innate racism. But what Strange finds is a tentative kinship with Quinn, who is desperate to proclaim himself "color-blind." Kicked off the force and convinced that there's more to his own story, Quinn asks to join Strange in his investigation. As the two pry into the past, drifting through the neighborhoods both men have known all their lives, they find themselves enmeshed in a tangle of cold-blooded competition and heated personal enmity.

    Pelecanos generally has a light touch with the treacherous quagmire of -isms, veering only occasionally into sententious meanderings about the consequences of an economically and racially divided society. His wry humor, particularly in his descriptions of Earl and Ray, the heroin middlemen who bring the concept of white trash to a depressingly low level, leavens the novel's noir bleakness. And Strange himself is a compelling character: a middle-aged black man who has seen more of life's callousness than he cares to admit, and whose jitteriness about personal commitment speaks volumes about his own expectations for happiness. A strong character and a good read--Pelecanos fans can settle in and look forward to Strange's next appearance. --Kelly Flynn [via]

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  • Patterson, James: Roses Are Red
    Roses Are Red
    by James Patterson
    ISBN 0316693251 (0-316-69325-1)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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  • Sea Glass
    by Anita Shreve
    ISBN 0316001449 (0-316-00144-9)
    Softcover, Grand Central Pub

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    Book summary:

    From its opening pages, Anita Shreve's Sea Glass surrounds the reader in the surprisingly rich feeling of the New Hampshire coast in winter. Vividly evoking the life of the coastal community at the beginning of the Great Depression, Sea Glass shifts through the multiple points of view of six principal characters; it's a skillfully created story of braided lives that bounces easily (even inevitably) from character to character. We learn how these lives come together following the stock market crash of 1929 and about the struggles of mill workers on the starkly beautiful New Hampshire coast during the following year. At the novel's center is the story of Honora Beecher, a young newlywed who compulsively collects sea glass along the beach as she collects unexpected friendship in her new beachside community, and Francis, a boy who discovers a father figure in the towering character of McDermott, an Irish mill worker, at a time when he most needs direction. Each character finds unexpected new purpose beyond the struggle to survive during that turbulent year among the dunes. First their lives barely touch, then they intersect, and finally they become inextricably bound. By the powerful and unexpected final scenes of the story, every point of view, every brilliant shard of life depends deeply on all the others. It is a very satisfying read--confidently told and deeply felt--with as many subtle colors and reflections as the sea glass that permeates the narrative. --Paul Ford [via]

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  • Set in Darkness
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312977891 (0-312-97789-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Edinburgh police inspector John Rebus's obsession--rock & roll--seems odd for a man whose dark, depressed side is so central to his character, but Ian Rankin always manages to work it gracefully into his noirish novels featuring Rebus. In Set in Darkness, Rebus has a fling with Lorna Grieve, a faded rock muse who's the sister of Roddy Grieve, an up-and-coming politico who turns up dead on the grounds of the boarded-up hospital that's being torn down to make way for the new Scottish Parliament. Grieve's body is the second in the space of days found at Queensberry House; the first was a skeleton bricked up in the fireplace. That decades-old murder seems to be tied to the suicide of a mysterious homeless man whose hefty bank balance is revealed well before his true identity.

    'So what's the story with Mr Supertramp anyway?'

    'He had all this money he either couldn't spend or didn't want to. He took on a new identity. My theory is that he was hiding.'

    'Maybe.' He was rifling through the scraps on the desk. She folded her arms, gave him a hard look which he failed to notice. He opened the bread bag and shook out the contents: disposable razor, a sliver of soap, toothbrush. 'An organized mind,' he said. 'Makes himself a wash bag. Doesn't like being dirty.'

    'It's like he was acting the part,' she said.

    There are always plenty of subplots in a Rankin mystery. This time he adds a stalker who happens to be one of Rebus's colleagues, a couple of toughs who hang out in singles clubs and finish their evenings with a rape or two, and the ongoing story of Rebus's tortured past--a bitter divorce, a daughter still recovering from a terrible accident, and a drinking problem. Set in Darkness hit the bestseller list in Great Britain and should enjoy the same success in its U.S. edition. Rankin's ability to keep finding new dimensions in Rebus, handle intricate plot details brilliantly, and evoke the gloom and darkness of his setting keep winning him new admirers, with just cause. --Jane Adams [via]

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  • Seven Up
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312980140 (0-312-98014-0)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum's got a lot on her mind. How does cigarette smuggler Eddie DeChooch, a fugitive so geriatric that even the hot-to-trot Grandma Mazur won't go out with him a third time, keep giving her the slip? How did a woman who died of a heart attack end up in DeChooch's garden shed with five bullet holes in her chest? Who stole a rump roast from Dougie and Mooner, the two lovable potheads who have decided to be crime fighters in Spandex bodysuits? Can Stephanie's perfect sister Valerie make it as a lesbian single mother without driving her family crazy? And--oh yeah--what should Stephanie do about that damn wedding dress on hold at Tina's Bridal Shoppe, waiting for her to decide whether vice cop Joe Morelli's really the one for her?

    I did look good in the gown. I looked like Scarlett O' Hara getting ready for a big wedding at Tara. I moved around a little to simulate dancing.

    "Jump up and down so we can see how it'll look when you do the bunny hop," Grandma said.

    "It's pretty but I don't want a gown," I said.

    "I can order one in her size at no obligation," Tina said.

    "No obligation," Grandma said. "You can't beat that."

    "As long as there's no obligation," my mother said.

    I needed chocolate. A lot of chocolate. "Oh gee," I said, "look at the time. I need to go."

    To complicate matters further, Stephanie's made a reluctant deal with the devil: if she can't bring in DeChooch by herself, her sexy but dangerous cohort Ranger is willing to help--for a price that a girl who's not-exactly-engaged is uncertain whether she should pay. But when Dougie and Mooner disappear, Grandma is kidnapped, and a crazy widow starts taking pot shots, no one who hides her .38 in a cookie jar is going to turn down a little friendly assistance.

    In Seven Up, Janet Evanovich serves up her usual bubbly fare: a totaled car, raucous viewings at Stiva's Funeral Parlor, buffoonish bad guys, and down-and-dirty mud wrestling, all stirred up with some snappy Jersey repartee and a few tart, new twists that will keep her fans impatient. Heaven can't wait for number eight. --Barrie Trinkle [via]

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  • Pilcher, Rosamunde: The Shell Seekers
    The Shell Seekers
    by Rosamunde Pilcher
    ISBN 0312961324 (0-312-96132-4)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Sleeping Tiger
    by Rosamunde Pilcher
    ISBN 0312961251 (0-312-96125-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Rankin, Ian: Strip Jack
    Strip Jack
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312965141 (0-312-96514-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Donovan, Susan: Take a Chance on Me
    Take a Chance on Me
    by Susan Donovan
    ISBN 0312983751 (0-312-98375-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
    by Malcolm Gladwell
    ISBN 0316346624 (0-316-34662-4)
    Softcover, Back Bay Books

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    Book summary:

    "The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.

    For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.

    Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan [via]

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  • To the Nines
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312991460 (0-312-99146-0)
    Softcover, St. Martin's Press

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    Book summary:

    Stephanie Plum's got rent to pay, people shooting at her, and psychos wanting her dead every day of the week (much to the dismay of her mother, her family, the men in her life, the guy who slices meat at the deli...oh, the list goes on). An ordinary person would cave under the pressure.

    But hey, she's from Jersey.

    Stephanie Plum may not be the best bounty hunter in beautiful downtown Trenton, but she's pretty darn good at turning bad situations her way...and she always gets her man. In
    To The Nines, her cousin Vinnie (who's also her boss) has posted bail on Samuel Singh, an immigrant who becomes an illegal alien by violating his Visa and extending his stay in the United States. When the elusive Mr. Singh goes missing, Stephanie is on the case. But what she uncovers is far more sinister than anyone imagines and leads to a group of killers who give new meaning to the word "hunter..."

    In a race against time that takes her from the Jersey Turnpike to the Vegas strip, Stephanie Plum is on the chase of her life.
    [via]

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  • Tooth and Nail
    by Ian Rankin
    ISBN 0312958781 (0-312-95878-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Sent to London to help catch a vicious serial killer, Inspector John Rebus teams up with a beautiful psychologist to piece together a portrait of a depraved psychopath bent on painting the town red-with blood...
    [via]

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  • Two for the Dough
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312948964 (0-312-94896-4)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum, No. 2) [Paperback] Janet Evanovich Janet Evanovich (Author) ? Visit Amazon's Janet Evanovich Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central (Author) [via]

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  • The Unexpected Guest
    by Agatha Christie, Charles Osborne
    ISBN 0312975120 (0-312-97512-0)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time with her works outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible. She is regarded by generations of fans as the greatest mystery writer ever, and her novels are read and cherished the world over.

    Clarissa, the young wife of a Foreign Office Diplomat, delights in tweaking the sensibilities of her more serious friends and for playing a game she calls "supposing" - imagining a difficult situation and figuring out how people would respond. But Clarissa's lighthearted game becomes deadly serious when she discovers the dead body of an unknown person in her own drawing room. If that wasn't bad enough, her husband is on the way home with an important foreign politician and the attendant scandal of the dead body would irrevocably damage his career at the very least. Therefore, Clarissa decides to dispose of the body and persuades her three houseguests to help.

    But before she can get the body off the premises, a policeman arrives at her front door. The police received an anonymous tip about a murder in the house and have shown up to investigate. Now Clarissa must keep the body hidden, convince the skeptical police inspector that there has been no murder, and, in the meantime, find out who has been murdered, why, and what the body is doing in her house.
    [via]

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  • A Wedding in December
    by Anita Shreve
    ISBN 0316154512 (0-316-15451-2)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    At an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, seven former schoolmates gather to celebrate a wedding--a reunion that becomes the occasion of astonishing revelations as the friends collectively recall a long-ago night that indelibly marked each of their lives. Written with the fluent narrative artistry that distinguishes all of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels, A Wedding in December acutely probes the mysteries of the human heart and the endless allure of paths not taken. [via]

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  • Shreve, Anita: The Weight of Water
    The Weight of Water
    by Anita Shreve
    ISBN 0316780375 (0-316-78037-5)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    Book summary:

    A newspaper photographer, Jean, researches the lurid and sensational ax murder of two women in 1873 as an editorial tie-in with a brutal modern double murder. (Can you guess which one?) She discovers a cache of papers that appear to give an account of the murders by an eyewitness. The plot weaves between the narrative of the eyewitness and Jean's private struggle with jealousies and suspicions as her marriage teeters. A rich, textured novel. [via]

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  • Crusie, Jennifer: Welcome to Temptation
    Welcome to Temptation
    by Jennifer Crusie
    ISBN 0312974256 (0-312-97425-6)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Pilcher, Rosamunde: Wild Mountain Thyme
    Wild Mountain Thyme
    by Rosamunde Pilcher
    ISBN 0312961235 (0-312-96123-5)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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  • Winter Solstice
    by Rosamunde Pilcher
    ISBN 0312978383 (0-312-97838-3)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Book summary:

    Rosamunde Pilcher's novel, despite its chilly setting, will warm the hearts of her growing army of loyal fans. Winter Solstice has all the familiar trademarks of a Pilcher saga, spun in her inimitable, homey, beguiling style. The story is told, chapter by chapter, from the perspectives of an eclectic array of characters. Former actress Elfrida--not very good by her own admission--leaves London for a geriatric bolthole in the country where she meets retired schoolmaster and organist, Oscar. Meanwhile, Carrie (Elfrida's second cousin), returns to London from Austria where she had a brilliant career in the tourist industry, only to find her niece, 14-year-old Lucy, sadly neglected by her selfish mother and equally spoiled grandmother. Finally, handsome Sam is recalled from New York by his company chairman to revive an ailing Scottish textile mill.

    As one character after another must learn to live with their losses, they find themselves collectively spirited northwards, from Sussex to Scotland, by way of Cornwall. And, as events unfurl, slowly, surely, but inevitably, those in need find solace in unexpected places. While her characterizations are generally carefully crafted and entirely rounded, Pilcher's greatest strengths lie in her natural, easy narratives of everyday life and her thoroughly researched and captivating descriptions of scenery and surroundings. --Carey Green [via]

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  • Miller, Debbie S.: A Woolly Mammoth Journey
    A Woolly Mammoth Journey
    by Debbie S. Miller, Jon Van Zyle
    ISBN 0316572128 (0-316-57212-8)
    Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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