• The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland (Hardcover - January 2002)

• Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls by Rae Lawrence, Jacqueline Susann (Hardcover - June 2001)

• Temptation by Jude Deveraux (Mass Market Paperback - May 2001)

• The Blue Last: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes (Hardcover - September 2001)

• Watermelon by Marian Keyes

• Dark Fire by Christine Feehan (Mass Market Paperback - October 2001)

• Vengeance in Death by J. D. Robb (Mass Market Paperback - April 1999)

• Thief of Hearts by Victoria Taylor Murray (Paperback)

• Hearts by Stef Ann Holm (Mass Market Paperback - February 2001)

• Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder by Ann Rule (Hardcover - December 2001)

FLIGHT, Burke, Jan (Simon & Schuster, $24.00). Flight is really the story of two men, Harriman and Philip Lefebvre. Ten years ago, when businessman Trent Randolph and his daughter were murdered, Lefebvre was the officer in charge of the case. Moody and isolated, he became not only investigator but guardian angel to Randolph's young son Seth, left clinging to life after the attack. His colleagues and the community were convinced Whitey Dane, a local mobster with grand ambitions, was behind the murders, but when Seth was killed in his hospital bed and both Lefebvre and all the evidence against Dane disappeared, the department was left reeling in the wake of crooked-cop iniquity. But now Lefebvre's apparently sabotaged plane has been discovered in the mountains, along with his bones. Frank Harriman must ease through a maze of anger and recrimination as he pursues the possibility of Lefebvre's innocence. But if this cop was innocent, that means another one wasn't--and that individual will stop at nothing to protect his guilty secret. DP

ECHO BURNING, Child, Lee (Putnam, $18.95). Jack Reacher is hitchhiking and is picked up by a beautiful (what else?) Hispanic woman who wants him to kill her abusive husband who is just getting out of prison. Vintage Lee Child. Kirkus, PW and DP

TELL NO ONE, Coben, Harlan (Dell, $22.95, Orion, £12.00). Dr. David Beck has still to get over the death of his beloved wife some eight years before. Suddenly he begins getting cryptic emails that indicated by their language that they are coming from his deceased wife. But what scenario could one conjure up to explain how she could still be alive and why she hasn't contacted her husband (whom she loved as much as he loved her) in all of these years? DP & LJ

ANGEL IN BLACK, Collins, Max Allen (NAL $21.95). The newspaper dubbed her The Black Dahlia. Nathan Heller knew her--intimately--as Elizabeth Short. To discover the identity of the fiend who destroyed her, Heller must lay bare the terrifying truth behind Hollywood's make-believe facade. Booklist & DP

A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT, Connelly, Michael (Little Brown $24.95) Terrence McCaleb, the retired FBI agent featured in the bestselling Blood Work, is asked by the LAPD to help them investigate a series of murders. They are the kind of ritualized killings that McCaleb specializes in solving, and he is reluctantly drawn from his peaceful new life back into the excitement of tracking down a homicidal maniac. More horrifying still, the suspect who seems to fit the profile that McCaleb develops is someone he has known and worked with in the past: Detective Harry Bosch. Kirkus, PW & DP

HOSTAGE, Crais, Robert (Doubleday, $24.95). Small-time crooks attempt to rob a convenience store and the robbery goes bad. Attempting to flee the area, their truck breaks down. They go on foot to a near-by upscale neighborhood and attempt to steal a car, but before they can even get out of the garage, police are approaching the house. Escape is thwarted so they take a family hostage, but they aren't aware that the dad is the accountant for a big-time crime boss. Talk about a gang with bad luck!

A FINER END, Crombie, Deborah (Bantam $23.95).

A tale of mysteries--one old, one modern. Worker Jack Montford's office overlooks a mysterious castle and graveyard. He begins hearing cries of help from a monk who died 1,000 years ago. He appeals to Scotland Yard for help, and unleashes a fatal chain of events. PW & DP

**UNDERCURRENTS, Fyfield, Frances (Viking $23.95). For 20 years, Henry Evans has been haunted by a blurred but shining memory of his lost love, Francesca Chisholm. Now this shy American has come looking for her in her hometown on the English coast. What he finds there is not what he expects. Kirkus, LJ & PW

THE SURGEON, Gerritsen, Tess (Ballantine, $24.95). Murdering women in the most obscene way imaginable, a sadistic killer--called "The Surgeon"--terrorizes Boston. A victim of a similar crime, Dr. Catherine Cordell, has created a careful facade that is about to crack as the unknown killer cuts ever closer. "Deep, dark, and very disturbing".--Tami Hoag. Kirkus & DP

SIX-POUND WALLEYE, Gunn, Elizabeth (Walker $23.95) Jake Hines is back on the case, only this time there are two cases that may--or may not--be connected when a child is shot in his front yard at the same time a brawl breaks out at the high school. DP, Kirkus & PW

THE HUNTING WIND, Hamilton, Steve (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95). It's April in Paradise, a small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Alex McKnight is contacted by an old baseball minor league teammate--Randy Wilkins--who is on a quest to find Maria, his old true love. The only problem: Randy walked away from her in 1971 and hasn't seen or heard from her since. Booklist, PW & DP

DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS, James, P.D. (Knopf $ 25.00). Commander Dalgliesh, P.D. James's great detective, returns after four years. An untimely death brings him to the East Anglian coast where a young man has fallen from a cliff at the small theological college of St. Anselm's. He agrees to investigate, but no sooner does Dalgliesh arrive than he finds himself drawn into the labyrinth of a violent mystery. DP, Kirkus & PW

PURGATORY RIDGE, Krueger, William Kent (Pocket, $23.95) The story centers around the wealthy owner of a lumber mill Karl Lindstrom. Someone is trying to sabotage his operations because he is seeking to cut down an area of forest held sacred by the Anishinaabe Indians. A native American is found dead in a blast that was meant to stop Linstrom's operations. Former police chief Cork O'Connor doesn't believe that the dead man had anything to do with sabotage and looks into the matter out of curiosity. Events start to spin out of control and the last 100 pages give the reader a wild ride. DP

**THE CONSTANT GARDNER, LeCarre, John (Scribner $28.00) Featuring his strongest heroine since The Russia House, Le Carre's The Constant Gardener combines the international suspense of his Cold War thrillers with the exotic romanticism of The Little Drummer Girl. This is a masterful novel by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. PW & Booklist

MYSTIC RIVER, Lehane, Dennis (Morrow $22.00) When Jimmy Marcus's daughter is found dead, his childhood friend Sean Devine is assigned the case. Sean's personal life begins to unravel as his investigation takes him back into a world of violence and pain he thought he'd left behind. His quest also leads him on a collision course with Marcus--a man with his own dark past--and David Boyle, a man who hides monstrous secrets beneath a bland facade. Booklist, PW, LJ & DP

**THE REAPER, Lovesey, Peter (Soho $23.00) Otis Joy is the handsome young rector of St. Bartholomew's Church in Foxford, England. His bishop has just accused him of embezzling church funds and ordered him to resign. But before that can happen, the bishop commits suicide. How opportune. One sudden death seems to lead to another. But then Otis Joy finds his soul mate. PW & DP

THE CHALON HEADS, Maitland, Barry (Arcade, $24.95). Detectives Brock and Kolla are summoned to Cabot’s, a store in the Strand that specializes in rare stamps, on what they assume is a routine matter. There they encounter Sammy Starling, an old nemesis of Brock. It seems that Starling’s beautiful young wife has been kidnapped. The ransom demanded is the rarest of Chalon Heads, which is going to be auctioned at Cabot’s in a few days. Nominated last year for Barry Award for Best British Novel. Kirkus & DP

UNCOMMON CLAY, Maron, Margaret (Mysterious $23.95). Judge Deborah Knott of Seagrove, North Carolina, must unearth a local family's tragic past to find a vengeful killer in the eighth installment of the award-winning mystery series by Maron. PW, Booklist & DP

UNDER THE COLOR OF LAW, McGarrity, Michael (Dutton $23.95) Kevin Kearney has recently been hired as police chief of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Working with a skeptical staff, he tries to solve the murder of the wife of a U.S. ambassador. He smells cover-up when a team of antiterrorist FBI agents attempt to shut the local police out of the investigation. Kirkus & DP

**MURDER ME NOW, Meyers, Annette (Mysterious $23.95) Greenwich Village is decked with snow and mistletoe in December of 1920. Prohibition may be the law, but the speakeasies are crowded with writers and artists, friends and lovers. In the midst of all this conviviality, poet-sleuth Olivia Brown once again finds herself drawn into murder; this time it is the mysterious death of a young nanny, who is employed by one of Olivia's friends. PW & Booklist

FEARLESS JONES, Mosley, Walter (Little Brown $24.95). Mosley returns to mysteries at last with his most engaging hero since Easy Rawlins. When Paris Minton meets a beautiful new woman, before he knows it he has been beaten up, slept with, shot at, robbed, and his bookstore burned to the ground. He's in so much trouble he has no choice but to get his friend, Fearless Jones, out of jail to help him. Kirkus

SMOKE-FILLED ROOMS, Nelscott, Kris (St. Martin’s Minotaur $23.95). Leaving behind Memphis and the aftermath of Dr. King's murder, Nelscott's complicated hero, Smokey Dalton, has resurfaced a few months later in Chicago as he protects a young boy who knows the assassins' true identities. Kirkus, Booklist & DP

MUTE WITNESS, O'Brien, Charles (Poisoned Pen $23.95) Set in 1787, the novel relates the adventures of a young actress and aerialist, Anne Cartier. Working in England, she becomes interested in teaching the deaf. By chance she halts a crime and is herself arrested and charged. Freed by friends, she decides to go to France to study new methods of teaching the deaf. There she tries to find the truth about her father’s recent death, he being presumed a murderer and suicide. PW & DP

SILENT JOE, Parker, T. Jefferson (Hyperion $23.95) In an intelligent mystery that will satisfy the mind as well as the heart, the bestselling author of Red Light and The Blue Hour returns with a moody, sexy, suspenseful novel about a scarred man, the father he idolized, and the secret he uncovered. LJ, PW & DP

**PROTECT AND DEFEND, Patterson, Richard North (Knopf $26.95) In a compelling new novel, Patterson makes a major departure that confirms his place among the most important writers at work today. A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court, but the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal. What results is the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century.

Kirkus, PW & Booklist

PARALLEL LIES, Pearson, Ridley (Hyperion, $23.95) Pearson's latest novel brings together all his incomparable talents and more in a riveting story about a grieving man's mission to bring down the railroad company he blames for his wife and children's deaths--no matter who else dies in the process. Tyler, the ex-cop who is looking to redeem himself after being suspended from the force, will stop at nothing to catch the perpetrator. LJ & DP

RIGHT AS RAIN, Pelecanos, George (Little Brown $24.95) Derek Strange, a private detective, is hired to clear the lingering doubts about a young black police officer killed in the line of duty. After Strange interviews Terry Quinn, the officer who pulled the trigger, Quinn joins the investigation and helps seek answers in the darkest sectors of Washington, D.C., where racism and ruthless capitalism create a lawless world. Kirkus, Booklist, PW & DP

**THE WHITECHAPEL CONSPIRACY, Perry, Anne (Ballantine $25.00) Bow Street Superintendent Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, return in an intricately plotted and highly atmospheric novel of murder and political conspiracy that moves from elegant drawing rooms to the most desperate slums in late Victorian London.. PW & Booklist

DEATH BENEFITS, Perry, Thomas (Random $24.95) With writing that is "sharp as a sushi knife" ("Los Angeles Times"), Perry crafts a story of insurance fraud that explodes and overtakes the life of John Walker, a young data analyst who has no idea what he's getting into when he joins a deadly investigation Booklist, PW & DP

LORD OF THE SILENT, Peters, Elizabeth (Morrow $25.00) In the newest "Amelia Peabody Mystery", the intrepid Egyptologist risks life, limb, and her second-best hat in 1915 Cairo. Amelia and her handsome archeologist husband defy German submarines and warring Senussi to embark on another season of exploration and crime solving. PW & DP

RING OF TRUTH, Pickard, Nancy (Pocket $23.95) From the award-winning author of The Whole Truth comes a chilling new story featuring her gutsy heroine, Marie Lightfoot. This time Lightfoot can't make the pieces of a Florida murder--involving a priest and his lover--fit together. And the missing piece could be fatal. PW & DP

FATAL VOYAGE, Reichs, Kathy (Scribner $25.00) World-class forensic anthropologist and bestselling author of Deja Dead and Deadly Decisions, Kathy Reichs goes behind the scenes of a devastating plane crash in an electrifying new thriller starring Dr. Temperance Brennan. LJ & DP

REFLECTING THE SKY, Rozan, S.J. (Minotaur $24.95) Lydia Chin is hired by Grandfather Gao, one of the most respected figures in New York City's Chinatown, for what seems to be a simple task. Lydia, along with her professional partner Bill Smith, is to fly to Hong Kong to deliver a family heirloom to the young grandson of a recently deceased colleague. They arrive in Hong Kong safely, but before they can deliver the heirloom, the grandson is kidnapped and two separate ransom demands are made. While the family of the kidnapped boy tries to freeze them out, Lydia and Bill must quickly learn their way around a place where the rules are different, the stakes are high, and the cost of failure is too dire to imagine. Kirkus, Booklist, PW & DP

NATURAL LAW, Schanker, D.R. (St. Martin's, $2 ). The sequel to the Edgar and Barry Award-nominated A CRIMINAL APPEAL. Public defender Nora Lumsey (self described as "big boned") is hired by a drug-addicted young prostitute to defend her on the charge of murder of a well-known law professor. As evidence accumulates Nora catches wind of a police cover-up. DP

UNFINISHED BUSINESS by Barbara Seranella (Scribner, $24.00). Munch’s quiet life is shattered when one of her limousine customers is found murdered and a patron at the gas station where she works is viciously raped. When she starts looking into these matters in order to help her cop friend Mace St. John, she is ominously warned to stop. And of course she doesn’t, which leads to danger for herself and Asia. DP

**THE ORANGE CURTAIN, Shannon, John (Carrol & Graf $24.00). Former aerospace engineer Jack Liffey tracks down lost children, and the case of a missing young woman takes Jack deep into Los Angeles' Vietnamese community where he must contend with the realities and complex alliances of Little Saigon, and a sad young man named Billy, who likes to watch people and has a very strange relationship with his mother. Booklist & PW.

THE KILL ARTIST, Silva, Daniel (Random, $25.95). The bestselling author of The Unlikely Spy and The Mark of the Assassin returns with a new hero and a thrilling story of Middle East political intrigue and terrorism that covers three continents and shows the peace process in jeopardy. The story, by an author who was praised by Newsday for "bringing new life to the international thriller", features a colorful supporting cast and fascinating background detail about the Palestinian situation and the cutthroat art world. PW & DP

IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR, Spring, Michelle (Ballantine, $23.00; Orion, £9.99). A four-year-old boy disappears on a Norfolk beach and is never found. Twelve years later the mother sees a young man on a street in Cambridge and she becomes convinced that he may be her long-lost son. Laura Principal is hired by the Cable family to find out if Liam is theirs. But Laura may not specifically confront Liam for fear of his running off. So she has to go about it surreptitiously. As she spends more time at the Cable home, strange happenings occur. The handyman’s hand is slashed by a booby-trapped door handle and one of the rooms is completely turned over. Laura finds herself going back over the original investigation of the disappearance and turns up surprising facts not found by the police. DP

THE SINGING OF THE DEAD, Stabenow, Dana (Minotaur $23.95). The heady gold rush days of Alaska's past are reborn on the present-day campaign trail in Stabenow's new Kate Shugak mystery. The Aleutian PI must delve into the past--in particular, the grisly murder of a "good-time girl" during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1915--to track a modern killer. PW & DP

DEAL WITH THE DEAD, Standiford, Les (Putnam $24.95) Attempting to resurrect the Miami building firm that his late father ruined, John Deal is elated to be awarded part of a major project, only to find that the project has strings. The result: Deal's life is immediately torn apart, as he is caught in the middle of a vicious personal vendetta, his family threatened, his friends hunted, his own existence hanging by a thread. PW & Booklist

HEAT OF LIES, Stone, Jonathan (St. Martin's Minotaur $23.95). The sequel to last year's THE COLD TRUTH. And just as the titles are the exact opposites of each other, the author, early on in the second book, turns the reader's universe completely upside down with a revelation that bears on what happened in the second book. This series must be read in order. PW & DP

**BLACK WATER TRANSIT, Stroud, Carsten (Norton $24.95). Acclaimed nationally best-selling author Stroud pens a novel of suspense that draws on the NYPD and that city's meanest streets. A tough, gritty look at what happens when a pretty good guy takes on the really bad ones. Kirkus & PW

SHAPE OF SNAKES, Walters, Minette (Putnam $24.95) November, 1978 – a Mad Annie, an eccentric black woman is found dead in the gutter not far from her home. No one seems to care except a neighbor – a young woman who believes that Annie was murdered. It isn’t until many years later that the truth is revealed. Kirkus, PW , LJ & DP

BAD NEWS, Westlake, Donald (Mysterious $23.95) John Dortmunder doesn't like manual labor. So when he gets the offer of money to dig up a grave, he balks . . . then he wonders why Fitzroy Guilderpost, criminal mastermind, wants to pull a switcheroo of two 70-years-dead Indians. Kirkus & PW

**THE DEATH OF SWEET MISTER, Woodrell, Daniel (Putnam $23.95)A southern gothic tale of the events that tear at a dysfunctional family whena slick stranger comes to visit. Booklist & PW

IN THE FOREST OF HARM, Bissell, Sallie (Bantam, $21.95). Mary Crowe is an Assistant District Attorney in Georgia. She has just won a difficult murder case. To unwind, she and two of her friends go to her home town, Little Jump Off, North Carolina. Mary wants to visit her mother's grave. Her mother was a victim of a vicious murder that has haunted Mary most of her life: If she had come directly home from school the day of the murder, could she have prevented the slaughter? Following Mary and her friends is the brother of the man she just convicted for murder. He is seeking revenge for what he perceives to be the lack of justice his brother received. DP

OPEN SEASON, by Box, C.J. (Putnam, July 2001, $23.95). Joe Pickett is a Wyoming game warden. Someone is killing hunters (poachers?) and he takes it upon himself to find out who is responsible. Kirkus, Booklist & DP

THE FOURTH ANGEL, by Chazin, Suzanne (Putnam, 2001). THE FOURTH ANGEL is another debut featuring a female protagonist, Georgia Skeehan, a fire marshal in the Fire Department of New York. It is the story of this rookie fire-marshal’s role in attempting to solve a string of arsons involving fires that are very unusual in that they burn much hotter than should be possible. Central to the story are the hierarchy and politics defining the upper echelon of the FDNY, the trials and tribulations of a female fire marshal entering the realm of what traditionally has been an all-men’s affair, and, of course, a budding and unlikely romance. DP

THIRD PERSON SINGULAR, Erickson, K. J. (St. Martin's Minotaur $24.95) What appears to be a homicide of a homeless drunk turns out to be much more for Minneapolis Special Detective Mars Bahr. PW & DP

PERHAPS SHE'LL DIE, Preston, M.K. (Intrigue Press, $23.00) Chantalene Morrell returns to Tetumka, Oklahoma to face the demons of her past and confront her father's killers. DP

HOLLOWPOINT, Reuland, Rob (Random $24.95). It's been a year since his daughter died, but the loss carves away at him still. Then, a case much like others crosses the desk of Assistant District Attorney Andrew Giobberti: young girl, dead from a gunshot wound, crackhead mother, very guilty looking boyfriend. Something in this ordinary if tawdry case uncovers a vast well of grief and rage in him, and it's unclear who will be the target of his urge to avenge a pointless death. PW & DP

BOY STILL MISSING, Searles, John (Morrow, $25.00) A typical night in the life of 15-year-old Dominick Pindle would find him and his mother searching for his father's truck and then dragging his drunken father home. One night his father's truck is nowhere to be found - until they look for it at the father's girlfriend's place. What happens when Dominick goes into the house to retrieve his father sets this coming-of-age story in motion. DP

BLINDSIGHTED, by Slaughter, Karin (Morrow, September 2001) Dr. Sara Linton is a pediatrician and part-time coroner in a small town in rural Grant County, Georgia. Her ex-husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, is the town’s chief of police. One afternoon, Sara runs from her office to the local diner to meet her sister for lunch. When Sara goes into the diner’s bathroom to wash her hands, she finds Sibyl Adams, a local resident, raped and bleeding to death from knife wounds. Sara’s efforts to save Sibyl are futile. Sara’s ex-husband, Chief Tolliver, leads the murder investigation, which is particularly sensitive given that his only female detective, Lena Adams, happens to be the victim’s sister. DP

**GRIFT SENSE, Swain, James (Pocket $ 23.95) With a knack for sly sucker punches in the tradition of Elmore Leonard, Swain makes the scene with a comic, crackerjack debut mystery set in Las Vegas, the first in a series starring ex-cop Tony Valentine. Kirkus & DP

OVER TUMBLED GRAVES, by Walter, Jess (Regan Books--HarperCollins, 2001, $25.00). Spokane, Washington police detective Caroline Mabry is in search of a serial murderer known as the Southbank Strangler. But while she is hunting the killer, he may be hunting her. DP

BLOOD JUNCTION, Carver, Caroline (Orion, £9.99). The cover says it all: "Her car broke down on this road. Then she's arrested for murder..." The Australian Outback is the setting, the pace is non-stop, the protagonist is investigative reporter India Kane. The writing is excellent.

ECHO BURNING, Child, Lee (Putnam, $18.95). Jack Reacher is hitchhiking and is picked up by a beautiful (what else?) Hispanic woman who wants him to kill her abusive husband who is just getting out of prison. Kirkus, PW and DP

THE KILLING KIND, Connolly, John (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99). Did Grace Peltier commit suicide? When a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the final resting place of a religious group that disappeared almost forty years earlier, private detective Charlie Parker, hired to investigate the circumstances of Grace's death, realizes that their deaths and the death of Grace Peltier are a part of the same mystery.

COLD TOWN by Diamond, Sarah (Orion, 2001, £ 9.99). Tony Fielding has a troubled past and a troubled future. As a child, he found his younger four-year-old sister dead. It is an episode that continues to haunt him and has affected his own life and relationships since then. Now married to Marie, he works for an advertising agency but sees little future in it. He seeks solace in a bordello with a beautiful "hostess", Rosina. As his relationship with Rosina progresses, his marriage to the hapless Marie deteriorates. Tony’s behavior becomes increasingly self destructive as his past begins to overwhelm his future.

THE TREATMENT, by Hayder, Mo (Bantam Press [UK], July, 2001)DI Jack Caffery becomes involved in an investigation in which the Peaches, a family of three, has been held captive for days in their own home. When a shopkeeper comes to the home and notices that something is awry, the police are summoned. What they find: the mother, locked in a small closet, dehydrated, and far beyond the ability to provide any coherent information about the crime or the person responsible; the father, lying on the floor in a coma, his head battered in; and the young son of the family missing from the home.

DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD, Hill, Reginald (HarperCollins, £16.99). A man drowns. Another dies in a moterbike crash. Two accidents -- yet in a pair of Dialogues sent to the Mid-Yorkshire Gazette, apparently as entries in a short story competition, someone seems to be claiming responsibility for the deaths. It takes a while for Dalziel and Pascoe to take the Wordman seriously. Reginald Hill is nothing short of brilliant.

**RIPTIDE, Lawton, John (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £16.99). John Lawton takes his series back in time to about three years before the setting of the first book in the series, BLACKOUT. Murder Squad Sergeant Frederick Troy gets involved in a chase of an Abwehr officer and a British spy. Worth buying for the cover alone, but the writing is solid as well.

EAGER TO PLEASE, Parsons, Julie (Macmillan, £16.99). Rachel Beckett has just been released from prison for a murder she claims she didn’t commit. Will she seek revenge on the man who she testified was the murderer?

THE FALLS, Rankin, Ian (Orion,£16.99). A student has gone missing in Edinburg. Not just any student, but the daughter of an influential banker. And DI John Rebus has the gut feeling that there's more to this than just another rebel, high on daddy's money and more. To find her, Rebus and his team must enter the cyberspace and learn all they can about a roll-playing game run by a mysterious cyber guru.

MY BEST FRIEND, Wilson, Laura (Orion, £ 9.99). This is a narrative told through the eyes of several people. Principal among them is Gerald Haxton, who, as a young teenager in 1944, finds the body of his beloved older sister in a shallow grave. A U.S. service man is hanged for the crime. But for Gerald, already disturbed and unpopular, this event proves a defining moment in his life and he sinks into a hard shell where he regards his still-born brother Jack his only true friend. Skip forward to 1995. By chance, Gerald spies a young girl who bears a remarkable resemblance to his dead sister. He sees her walking about at night and decides to find out about her and become her protector. She turns out to be Mel, the daughter of a co-worker Jo (the big coincidence of the book) and Gerald's interest in Mel is misinterpreted by Jo and her boyfriend. Then Mel disappears.

THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS, Wilson, Robert (HarperCollins, £12.99). From the Gold Dagger Winner of last year, comes this tale (also set in Lisbon, Portugal). Andrea Aspinall, a fledgling spy for Britain, is sent to Lisbon to ingratiate herself with the movers and shakers there and keep her ears open to what the Germans are doing. There she meets and falls in love with a German, who unbeknownst to her is a double agent. Events come to a boil about half-way through the book and then the time switches to several years later. Some day Wilson will be considered a master, if he isn't already.

DEATH RIDES AN ILL WIND, Grilley, Kate. Kelly Ryan returns in her second adventure. Kelly, to those of you who haven't yet read Grilley, is a radio station manager on the Island of St. Chris. The weather is sweltering and Kelly and her gang are trying to keep cool. One thing sure to make tempers boil is the return to St. Chris of Leila Mae Turner. Leila caused havoc everywhere she went in her previous stay on St. Chris. Now she returns, claiming to be married to a Danish Baron. Her husband has business on the island, but is it monkey business? The other catastrophe to hit the island is Hurricane Gilda, reeking havoc and destruction all over, much like Leila. A body is found after the worst of the storm, a homeless woman nicknamed the spitter.

THE FOURTH WALL, Saulnier, Beth.The pending demolition of the historic Starlight Theater in the college town of Gabriel, New York brings out the S.O.S. (Save Our Starlight) contingent. The group gains some unexpected publicity when Barry Marsh, the head of the Gabriel Arts Coalition, meets an untimely end. His passing causes dissension among the ranks but S.O.S. continues to fight the good fight. Reporter Alex Bernier is assigned this less-than-thrilling story, but soon finds herself in the middle of a couple of murder investigations when supporters fail to raise the cash to preserve the historic past and a skeleton is uncovered when the building is razed.

STRAW MEN, Smith, Martin J. (Jove, $6.99). He is a madman known as the Scarecrow. For eight years he has languished in prison, convicted of a vicious attack that left a rookie cop near death – and unable to remember her past. When DNA evidence surfaces that frees him, Teresa Harnett must face the possibility that her flawed memory put the wrong man behind bars.

Editors' Choice

When it comes to best books of the year, the editors of the Book Review continue to find it easier to choose than find. Two years ago the number of books nominated by the editors, which had been declining by two a year for several years, fell to 20, the lowest total in a couple of decades. Last year it was 16, this year 15. Customarily the editors agree to keep in mind that the judgment is only about one year and thus to vote on the curve, but the curve has flattened into a line: last year the editors chose 9 of the 16 nominees, and this year 7 of the 15.

Truth be told, this year it was seven of 14. One nominee was a ringer tossed in by the fossil of the pack in a fit of mischief. The others, being civil, did not run him out of the building. In fact, civility failed only once during the discussion. It was a fine moment: one book divided the group, principally by sex, and a battle raged for a quarter of an hour among four combatants, "some," in Robert Burton's resonant phrase, "with hoofs, horns, tusks, teeth, nails."

The 2002 best books include three novels and a biography, a memoir, a history and a journalist's salute to astronomy and its addicts. One of the novelists is British and two are Americans; all are men. The biography and the memoir are by British women and the history by a Canadian woman. The science journalist is an American man. Two of the writers, a novelist and the journalist, have appeared on the best books list in the past. The biography is the author's first book. And the memoirist died early last year, shortly after her book was first published in London.

The best books were chosen from among those reviewed here since the 2001 Holiday Books issue, and the summaries of them given below are drawn from those reviews. Best books are not included among the Notable Books of the Year, a roster that begins on Page 60.

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Fiction

In a year filled to the brim with pointless deaths, the loss of W.G. Sebald in an automobile accident in December seems a cruelly excessive final note. It has become common to describe his much-praised novels as indescribable, but they are actually very much like having hours of the loveliest, most fascinating conversation of your life with a soft-spoken gentlemen met by chance on a train traveling from Vienna to Paris. Only after he gets off at his stop and leaves you to lean back in your seat and contemplate the seemingly aimless wanderings of his talk do the pieces fall into place and you realize he's given you a portrait of a man, his life and, in some miraculous way, the soul of Europe itself. "Austerlitz," which traces the friendship of two men who meet in just such a way, unspools the history of its title character, an art professor of mysterious parentage raised in Britain. That Austerlitz's investigation into the riddle of his past leads him into the darkness at the center of his lost homeland doesn't keep the novel from being suffused with an uncanny and unforgettable light.

Never underestimate the skill required to execute a perfect entertainment. And don't think that's all Ann Patchett has done in writing "Bel Canto." It's the story of a motley international group -- 57 men plus one woman, an operatic soprano with an incandescent voice -- and the guerrillas who hold them hostage for months in the vice-presidential mansion of an unnamed Latin American nation, and in it Patchett weds a preposterously extravagant plot to her own mordant view of human nature. It shouldn't work, but it does, and the alchemy found in the combination of opera's overblown passions with the kind of sensibility that can't ignore such practical matters as the need for clean underwear gives "Bel Canto" a glimmering tartness. Even the novel's unlikeliest minor characters -- a music-mad priest, a cranky Swiss hostage negotiator, the homebodyish vice president -- breathe. With opera mixed up in the proceedings there has to be love here, and death as well, but the sum of those two elements is heartbreakingly unpredictable to the very end.

The Lamberts sont nous, if by "us" you mean the average American family trying to figure out a way to live honorably in a world of leveraged buyouts, pharmaceutically engineered moods, dot-com scams, mix-and-match lifestyles and sexual identities, and the cult of Christmas. In this saga of a befuddled Midwestern family, Franzen manages to achieve something remarkable and possibly unprecedented: a merciless satirical look at contemporary life that's also fundamentally generous and human. Epic yet intimate, smart but not cold, "The Corrections" is also a piece of mesmerizing prose, virtuosic enough to cause a reader to pause in admiration of a sentence or passage, but never so flashy that you feel the book is slowing down to let the author show off. Sure, we've heard cranky skeptics complain about the publicity surrounding this novel, but aside from a little contretemps with a certain talk show host, the "hype" mostly consists of lots and lots of radiant reviews. Why so many good reviews, the suspicious ask? Um, get over yourselves. The reason why so many people love this book is simple enough: It's terrific.

John Henry was a late 19th-century folk hero, a hammer-wielding railroad worker of towering strength who challenged a steam drill to a steel-driving race and won. J. Sutter is a hack journalist halfheartedly going for the "junketeering" record by racking up the most consecutive days of scamming free food, drink and other perks. John Henry inspired a legendary ballad. J. gets hired by travel Web sites to write up festivals celebrating commemorative stamps -- in this case, one honoring John Henry. Colson Whitehead's brilliant, restless novel is about what happens when a cynical, opportunistic, media-steeped product of the Information Age gets rubbed up against the mythic dignity of America's past. What does it mean to strive for something bigger than yourself in a world where one of your friends loses his eye to another writer's finger in "a tragic ironic quotes accident"? The fact that both the old-time hero and the present-day freelancer are black only complicates and enriches the novel's wit. Yes, Whitehead writes about race in a way that feels entirely fresh, but then, he writes about everything else that way, too.

An intrepid young woman described only as the Girl Detective, seeks her long-lost mother by paying a visit to the Underworld. A woman whose boyfriend went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and was last seen getting into the Snow Queen's sleigh embarks on a bloody-minded journey with the intention of dragging him back -- or at least of giving him a piece of her mind. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose parents, between the two of them, have a wooden nose, a wooden leg and a barnful of sinister black dogs. A not very good husband who can't quite remember his wife's name writes her woebegone letters from the deserted seaside hotel he's beginning to suspect might be a waystop on the path to the next world. Besotted newlyweds watch a televised beauty pageant whose contestants seem not entirely human (especially Miss New Jersey, who has horns and a tail). Kelly Link's exquisite stories mix the aggravations and epiphanies of everyday life with the stuff that myths, dreams and nightmares are made of. Some of them are very scary, others are immensely sad, many are funny and all of them are written in prose so flawless you almost forget how much elemental human chaos they contain.

It's a hard-knock life novelist Paula Fox recounts in this memoir, from being farmed out to a series of foster homes (in New York, Cuba, Hollywood) by her feckless parents to enduring the implacable enmity of her baffling mother to struggling as a young woman to survive in crummy jobs during the 1940s and '50s, but this is no tale of woe. In fact, the tale is almost beside the point; "Borrowed Finery" consists of some of the most perfect prose published last year, as pristine and silvery as a mountain brook in the moonlight. It's sometimes tempting just to let Fox's pure sentences wash over you and rinse away the trashy, ephemeral jangle of contemporary life, but then you'd miss the author's sly, ruthless wit and the way the young Paula's subterranean rages build slowly to a conclusion all the more terrible for its understatement.

The unlikely runaway success of this biography has drawn a host of quibblers and revisionists out of the woodwork. So be it; when it comes to interpreting the facts, history is really a matter of dueling stories, and whether or not our second president can be fairly called a "hypercritical pedant" or "narcissist" as some have claimed, without a doubt David McCullough tells the best story. He picks a tough row to hoe, seeking to make an appealing hero out of a rotund little Puritan who preferred his Massachusetts farm to the hurly-burly of the city. Even the celebrated matrimonial devotion of Adams and his wife, Abigail, while endearing and inspiring to some, lacks the tortured romanticism that makes the emotional lives of leaders like Jefferson so fascinating. Fortunately, Adams was right at the center of the greatest adventure of the past 300 years -- the founding of the American republic -- and McCullough makes you feel the precarious nature of the whole enterprise: the crushing odds, the desperate military retreats, the hazardous journeys by sea and land, the seeming impossibility of getting all the squabbling colonial ducks in a row, the vision demanded of those who seek to invent a government from scratch.

Everyone had more or less given up on him, this homely racehorse with stubby legs from the wrong side of the Mississippi, and the two men who pledged to make a champion out of him were a couple of hard-luck cases themselves. By the time all three were done, Seabiscuit was the most famous living creature in America; in 1938 his name was mentioned more frequently in the newspapers than FDR's. Damned if this isn't about the corniest story in the world, but just try to resist Hillenbrand's tale of the triumph of sheer equine gumption over adversity and the hoity-toity East Coast racing establishment with its favorite thoroughbred, the exquisitely beautiful War Admiral. (War Admiral's contest with Seabiscuit is generally considered one of the greatest horse races of all time.) A dash of realism comes in the form of bleak tales of the grueling, risky lives of jockeys as well as their phenomenal athleticism. And then there are Hillenbrand's accounts of the races themselves, fleet, lean and thrilling. You can almost feel your toes in the stirrups as the unstoppable Seabiscuit makes his fierce bid for the finish line.

With a premise that makes it sound like one of publishing's typical throwaway books about a sexy topic -- a former stripper about to be wed makes one final ecdysiastic road trip across America -- this memoir never stoops to clichés or easy choices. Burana keeps pushing herself to unearth the fundamental nature of her mercurial love-hate relationship with the work that helped her survive in her first years away from home, gave her a renegade subculture to satisfy her yen for rebellion and rattled her to the core by exposing her to the raw edge of human neediness. Like all rigorously honest works, "Strip City" is unlikely to suit anyone's political agenda, but it's so full of rowdy energy and unaffected soul-searching that only a hopeless ideologue could object to it. Furthermore, Burana can really write -- her descriptions of the truck stops, dives and swank joints she travels through have all the slangy eloquence required by great American road stories.And she's hilarious, a brainy, brassy dame with a penchant for heavy metal who sheds wisecracks left and right with an insouciance the rest of us can only envy.

An account, as its subtitle explains, of a 10-minute argument between two great thinkers, this elegant little volume compresses a remarkable amount of history, psychology and philosophy into its 340 petite pages. The quarrel, between Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, took place in a meeting room in Cambridge, England, in 1946, and Wittgenstein may or may not have shaken a fireplace poker at his adversary (eyewitnesses differ on this point). It's the personalities of the two men -- the preoccupied, quasi-aristocratic Wittgenstein and the scrappy, ambitious Popper; one worshipped by his followers, the other perceiving himself as snubbed -- that leave the most powerful impression. Edmonds and Eidinow show us how the two men rose out of the peculiar milieu of assimilated Jewry in pre-War Vienna, a world of dizzying brilliance and culture now irretreivably lost. As for the subject of their fight -- the question "Are there philosophical problems?" -- the authors use it to limn one of the fundamental philosophical divides of the day with crystal clarity. While those who find reading Wittgenstein's notoriously difficult "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" a snap may scorn this little exposition as unforgivably simplistic, for the rest of us it offers a delightful entrée into daunting territory, and perhaps an invitation to venture further in, as well.

And that's the thing: Excluding, say, the Dark Ages, every year has been a pretty good one for readers.

That's why the Book Review is happy to inaugurate its annual listing of the Top 100 titles. Through the year, an avalanche of works comes tumbling out of the high-rise (and even dining-room) offices of publishers, and though a tiny percentage of it might make a person think that literacy can be a curse, the majority of those books deliciously sizzle the mind.

What follows then are some of those books of 2002 that caught our eye and that we think are worth your time -- histories, biographies, novels, stories, essays and more that are important, erudite, challenging, lovely or just plain cool. The titles are listed in alphabetical order, and we've avoided assigning any sort of ranking. (That would be like saying fudge is better than Nutella because you prefer fudge.) It's all good.

-- Oscar Villalon

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE by Haruki Murakami (Knopf; 181 pages; $21): Japanese author Murakami's story collection plays off the disastrous 1995 Kobe earthquake. In six stories, he explores how lives exposed to catastrophe can succumb to philosophical speculation as well as psychological disruption, and how mythologies and prophecies can arise from the rubble. Both mysterious and eerily familiar, Murakami's writing has a special urgency, given how we find ourselves these days living with the possibility of imminent disaster.

THE AGE OF GOLD: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream by H.W.

Brands (Doubleday; 547 pages; $29.95): Brands' principal thesis that the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill was a seminal event in human history at first looks like hype, but after 500 pages of masterfully sketched historical figures; subtly developed themes; witty, athletic prose; and epically well- braided stories, readers may just come around to Brands' way of thinking.

AMERICAN GROUND: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche (North Point; 256 pages; $23): Langewiesche's accounts of the World Trade Center cleanup that appeared in the Atlantic magazine over the summer have been gathered into this book. It's clear that the real accomplishment of Langewiesche's work wasn't his unrestricted access to the scene but the craft with which he constructs his saga of how people on Sept. 11 and afterward rose to a long challenge, doing what was needed at any given moment, no matter how their motives and emotions might change from day to day.

THE AMERICAN SOUL: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders by Jacob Needleman (Tarcher/Putnam; 371 pages; $25.95): Needleman, a longtime professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, takes on the question of our national identity: What does it mean to be a true American at the beginning of this new millennium? Examining the deepest values of such overly familiar figures as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Lincoln, he provides a searching and ultimately adoring reconsideration of our original and still central values.

ANYTHING GOES by Madison Smartt Bell (Pantheon; 320 pages; $24): In Bell's 13th work of fiction, he tells the deliciously entertaining story of an unexceptional blues and rock band and its newest member -- a con-man guitarist who slides through life doing pretty much whatever he wants. Narrated by the band's youngest member, a talented kid burdened by problems with his father, "Anything Goes" uses the fun of a rock 'n' roll background to keep the pages turning, yet it also stays with you, hauntingly and beautifully.

Atonement by Ian McEwan
This brilliant novel is the story of an insulated upper-class family living in the British countryside in the years before and during World War II, to whom accidents and unanticipated occurrences happen in tragic-comic proportions. At each turn, a new surprise reassures us that we are in the hands of a masterful manipulator. In this great exploration of accident versus moral choice, there are surely no accidental word choices. McEwan's writing is lush, detailed, brilliantly colored and intense.

BLUE LATITUDES: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz (Henry Holt; 480 pages; $26): In his earlier, riveting book, "Confederates in the Attic," Horowitz journeyed through the South to explore the rich and thorny legacy of the Civil War. With the same keen insight, open- mindedness and laugh-out-loud humor, he undertakes another daunting quest in "Blue Latitudes" -- to travel across the globe in search of the memory of Capt.

James Cook, the 18th century English explorer, discovering along the way that the truth about the navigator is more complex than most would like to believe.

BLUE SHOE by Anne Lamott (Riverhead; 291 pages; $24.95): Mattie Ryder, the hapless Marin heroine of Lamott's new novel, has problems: Her estranged husband has a new girlfriend, her house has rats, her kids have issues and her mom's health is worsening. With an unrivaled gift of empathy for characters, and with unerring descriptions of how they act around one another, Lamott has created a work full of shaggy, truthful charm.

BREAKING CLEAN by Judy Blunt (Knopf; 303 pages; $24): The unforgiving terrain of northeastern Montana, where poet and essayist Blunt was born and raised, haunts her. And though she has since moved away from there, she has turned the memories of her childhood and young adulthood into a beautifully written memoir that is a meditation on how that land and her life will always be intertwined. It's a complicated relationship Blunt has with her birthplace, but that's what gives her book its power.

BROTHERHOOD OF THE BOMB: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller by Gregg Herken (Henry Holt; 448 pages; $30): There's real drama in Herken's book as he looks at the lives of the three major figures in the development of nuclear weapons during World War II, and the intrigues of the Cold War that followed. Everything's here: loyalty, disloyalty, sex, spies, atomic war, intrigue, obsessive hatred and White House politics -- plus three highly complex characters, each in varying degrees imperious, noble, self-serving, power-seeking, patriotic, foolish, vain and vengeful.

BROWN: The Last Discovery of America by Richard Rodriguez (Viking; 232 pages; $24.95): In his book, Rodriguez ("Hunger of Memory") meditates on how the great influxes of immigrants, especially those from Latin America, and the melding of the races in the United States will confuse our expectations of what is American and how certain groups should present themselves. "Brown" is an eloquent, nuanced plea for the individual as the primary force in U.S. life,

but it is more intriguing for its honesty about the author's desires and frustrations.

BY THE LAKE by John McGahern (Knopf; 336 pages; $24): McGahern's fiction has been mostly concerned with country matters: the life of farms and small- town footballers, of men and women moving to the city (sometimes London, oftentimes Dublin) and then coming back to the small, insular towns of their births. In "By the Lake," the raw, often obliquely expressed emotion of the early novels and stories appears to have been plowed under the soil as McGahern tells the story of the daily and seasonal habits of a rural lakeside community and how pain and loss are endured and happiness achieved.

CAN LOVE LAST? The Fate of Romance Over Time by Stephen A. Mitchell (Norton;

223 pages; $24.95): A practicing psychoanalyst until his death in 2000, a noted writer in his field and the editor of the influential journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Mitchell draws upon his clinical experience with patients, his knowledge of psychoanalytical theory and his readings in the realms of literature, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and history to examine the question posed in his title. Quite apart from helping us understand the degree to which we can control our romantic destiny, "Can Love Last?" is a thought-provoking book about all sorts of things: free will, aggression and human nature.

CARAMELO by Sandra Cisneros (Knopf; 441 pages; $24): Her first novel since "The House on Mango Street" in 1984, Cisnero's story shuttles among Chicago, Mexico City and San Antonio as it tells the multigenerational story of the Reyeses, a Mexican American family. The memories that Cisneros offers in this book sometimes wrinkle the nose and scorch the palate, and the author proves superb at assembling these components of memories and at evoking the sensations of the past in their full complexity.

THE CAVE by Jose Saramago (Harcourt Brace; 307 pages; $25): Saramago, the Portugese author awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998, tells the tale of a family from a small village -- an elderly potter, his daughter and son-in-law -- and their struggles with an enormous Orwellian entertainment- shopping-apartment complex called the Center. As the story unfolds, "The Cave" eventually becomes a lament against globalization and consumerism, the erasure of individuality and the surrender to mass tastes and pleasures.

THE CHELSEA WHISTLE by Michelle Tea (Seal; 331 pages; $14.95 paperback): Tea, the author of "Valencia," writes about her '80s-era childhood and adolescence in roughneck Chelsea, Mass., effectively depicting in all its shadings an atmosphere of everyday dysfunction. A veteran spoken-word performer, she keeps her prose loose and conversational, keying it toward punch lines that hit with comic sadness, pointing out how, subtly, people can be warped in ways too ineffable to even measure.

THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN PIER by Ann Packer (Knopf; 370 pages; $24): In her first novel, Packer, who lives in San Ramon, examines the moral quandary of a young woman who is emotionally drifting away from her fiance when an accident leaves him a quadriplegic. This is an intricately detailed, deeply felt, compelling and ultimately surprising portrait of a young woman facing an unbearable loss.

THE DOCTOR'S HOUSE by Ann Beattie (Scribner; 288 pages; $24): This bleak, piercing study of a brother and sister is told in three parts, with Nina, Andrew and their mother each getting their say. Skillfully skipping from the present to the past and back again, Beattie gradually reveals the facts of Andrew and Nina's childhood, giving each of the three characters an opportunity to rebut and embellish one another's points of view. "The Doctor's House" is a dark ride, but Beattie's skill is such that you can't turn away.

THE DOUBLE BOND: Primo Levi: A Biography by Carole Angier (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 898 pages; $40): Were the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded posthumously, Primo Levi (1919-1987) would surely have won it by now. If Levi's writings alone did not make the case, Angier's overpowering biography would. Levi presents tremendous obstacles to any biographer, not only because of his intelligence and compulsive reserve but also by being a paragon of moral seriousness. Angier's life study succeeds because, beyond its diligence and probity, it is an exhaustive exercise of moral imagination.

THE DREAM OF SCIPIO by Iain Pears (Riverhead; 416 pages; $27.95): Pears ("An Instance of the Fingerpost") has chosen Provence as the stage for a historical novel spanning 1,500 years and focusing on three periods. From late Roman times, when the region is under threat from Goth and Visigoth, the novel leaps to medieval Europe during Rome's decay, the threat of the Black Death and Avignon's rise to glory, to occupied France during World War II, when darkness once more looms over European civilization. Pears could not have chosen a setting richer in beauty or in historical resonance, as he tells the story of three people, one from each period, with fateful political choices to make at times when no one's hands can remain entirely clean.

THE EAGLE'S SHADOW: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World by Mark Hertsgaard (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 236 pages; $23): Long before Sept. 11, 2001, San Francisco journalist Hertsgaard had already embarked on round-the- world travels to research a book on how the United States is perceived outside its borders, interviewing people from all walks of life. The result is a report of that research and the author's reactions and recommendations for improving the many problems he perceives -- problems that are not as simple as we might wish to believe.

EMBATTLED DREAMS: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950 by Kevin Starr (Oxford; 368 pages; $35): State librarian and popular historian Starr covers just 10 years of California history in his new book, but a more momentous California decade than the '40s can scarcely be imagined. Starr parcels "Embattled Dreams" into 11 chapters, one for each year from 1940 to 1950, using individual years as limited but useful pretexts, springboards from which to dive into the bottomless backyard pool of California history -- a subject he may well understand as well as anyone alive.

EMPORIUM by Adam Johnson (Viking; 256 pages; $23.95): Johnson's masterful story collection depicts a discomfortingly recognizable alternative reality with violence as its organizing force. The San Francisco native often blends the past, present and future to create a searing juxtaposition between scientific progress and its futility in the face of mortality. With pulsating energy and seemingly endless imagination, this collection pushes to its exciting limits the irony -- observed by Johnson -- that "there's a freedom that comes with doom."

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED by Jonathan Safran Foer (Houghton Mifflin; 276 pages; $24): In his first novel, Foer interweaves separate narratives by two young men. One, Alex, is a Ukrainian student pressed into service as a translator for the second narrator, Foer himself, who is trying to find the shtetl from which his grandfather, Safran, escaped in the early years of World War II and to locate a woman named Augustine who may have helped him. "Everything Is Illuminated" is often brilliant, occasionally a bit arty for its own good and sometimes a challenge. But there are extraordinary, shattering payoffs at the end of the book that make it all more than worthwhile.

FAMILY MATTERS by Rohinton Mistry (Knopf; 439 pages; $26): Mistry's prize- winning novel focuses with Dickensian detail on a small but troubled clan of Parsis in Bombay, whose aging patriarch, Nariman Vakeel, is suffering from Parkinson's disease and laboring under the weight of lost loves. As Vakeel's illness progresses, the squabbles and scheming of his children come into the foreground along with a wonderful group of eccentrics. How the family comes nearly undone before it reknits itself makes for a wonderfully wise and moving story, something like a soap opera, to be sure, but after this story you feel washed clean.

FEMALE TROUBLE by Antonya Nelson (Scribner; 256 pages; $24): Any lover of realistic narrative fiction will be greatly rewarded by Nelson's work. She pulls no punches and airbrushes nothing, and her moral compass functions in all settings and climates. In her new collection of stories, her honesty is perfect, her prose is frequently beautiful without being afraid to be coarse, and her strong, confused, wild and funny women are unforgettable and, while indeed troubled, are steel-willed and ready for anything.

FROM THE LAND OF GREEN GHOSTS: A Burmese Odyssey by Pascal Khoo Thwe (HarperCollins; 320 pages; $24.95): Khoo Thwe's prize-winning memoir charts the author's spellbinding journey from a tribal village in the remote mountains of Burma to the medieval halls of Caius College at Cambridge University in England. It is wonderfully evocative of life in Burma -- both the culturally sublime aspects and the politically horrific. Told with a perceptive eye for detail, Khoo Thwe's book makes exceptionally haunting reading.

GOD'S FOOL by Mark Slouka (Knopf; 272 pages; $24): Set in the years leading up to the Civil War and narrated by half of history's most famous pair of Siamese twins, Slouka's first novel amounts to a melancholy catalog of personal humiliations, exploitation and old-fashioned bad luck. But through it all, Slouka gracefully bestows upon Chang -- of Chang and Eng -- the individuality that his public life denied him. Few books in recent memory have offered as much in terms of fully formed characters, and fewer authors share Slouka's gift of rendering the extraordinary in ordinary terms without sacrificing its potency.

THE GOLEMS OF GOTHAM by Thane Rosenbaum (HarperCollins; 367 pages; $25.95): As both fiction writer and essayist, Rosenbaum has brought formidable intelligence and fierceness of vision to exploring the lives of children of Holocaust survivors. In this novel, he mixes elements of fable and traditional social novel in his tale of famous writers of the Holocaust (Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Jerzy Kosinski) who are brought back from the dead to help a successful author struggling with writer's block but wind up wreaking havoc through Manhattan.

GREAT DREAM OF HEAVEN: Stories by Sam Shepard (Knopf; 160 pages; $20): Fear coils beneath the stories in this collection, surfacing in the scared eyes of a teenager or the terrified imaginings of a lonely gas station clerk. The more complex characters are frightened of failure, loss or loneliness. Of course, the writing reveals the other strong emotions that make a Shepard story as familiar as an old leather saddle: sexual desire, antagonism, jealousy and regret.

HEART OF A SOLDIER by James B. Stewart (Simon & Schuster; 307 pages; $24): Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley's vice president for security, actually sang to keep people calm as he herded them out of the World Trade Center -- a detail that might seem unbelievable if a writer of Stewart's ("Blood Sport") caliber had not chosen to tell us Rescorla's life story. Rescorla fought in Vietnam, even though he was a British citizen at the time, and proved himself then as a true hero and a remarkable man, long before he went back for one last sweep on Sept. 11, 2001, after all his company's employees were cleared out, sacrificing his own life.

THE HIGH SIERRA OF CALIFORNIA by Gary Snyder (poems and journals) and Tom Killion (woodcuts and essays), with excerpts from the writings of John Muir (Heyday; 128 pages; $50): Adapted and expanded from Killion's original hand- pulled edition of 129 copies, this book juxtaposes excerpts from four decades of Snyder's backpacking journals alongside the artist's striking color and monochrome woodcuts. Snatches of naturalist John Muir's journals come in for the same treatment. These verbal and visual elements work together to produce in the reader a light-headedness rarely encountered at sea level.

IGNORANCE by Milan Kundera (HarperCollins; 208 pages; $23.95): In his new novel, Kundera, the 73-year-old Czech native and resident of France, casts a black light on the insidious pull of nostalgia. Like "Cinema Paradiso" gone wrong, Kundera's unrelenting work focuses on what, over time and distance, is irrevocably lost as he tells the story of two Czech emigres who return to their homeland after the collapse of the Soviet empire.

THE IMMORTAL DINNER: A Famous Evening of Genius and Laughter in Literary London, 1817 by Penelope Hughes-Hallett (Ivan R. Dee; 336 pages; $27.50): Scholar Hughes-Hallett enters the realm of the profound in her book. In skillfully detailing a gathering hosted by now-forgotten English painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, whose guests included Keats, Wordsworth, essayist Charles Lamb and aspiring explorer John Ritchie, she brings alive the excitement and innocence of that time.

IN THE FOREST by Edna O'Brien (Houghton Mifflin; 272 pages; $24): Based on a triple murder in western Ireland in 1994, O'Brien's novel concerns the violent, troubled life of a murderer as well as the circumstances of his three victims: a single mother, her small son and a priest. O'Brien is evenhanded in her compassion for the murderer and the victims, and with her cutting prose and deft sympathy, she shows us the frailty and darkness of people and disturbs us by offering no easy resolution.

IN THE HAND OF DANTE by Nick Tosches (Little, Brown; 376 pages; $24.95): Tosches' third novel features a character named Nick Tosches who has written books with the same titles as those written by the author of "In the Hand of Dante," but he's also killed a few people and robbed a lot more and gets involved in a plot to steal a manuscript purported to be an original of Dante's masterpiece, "The Divine Comedy." Alternating with first-person chapters about the caper is the story of Dante himself, struggling with his faith and determined to create a single work of art that reflects not only his own truths but God's as well.

IN THE IMAGE by Dara Horn (Norton; 278 pages; $24.95): Horn, a 24-year-old doctoral candidate at Harvard, mesmerizingly blends religious and family history with a coming-of-age story in her first novel. Leora, a quirky loner whose best (and only) friend dies in high school, develops an interest in Jewish history and philosophy, a tenuous friendship with her dead friend's grandfather and, eventually, a writing career and a solitary life in New York. The novel almost begs to be read twice.

INSECT DREAMS: The Half-life of Gregor Samsa by Marc Estrin (Blue Hen/Putnam; 480 pages; $26.95): This ambitious and arresting first novel resurrects Kafka's Gregor to cry out against the evils of the Nazis and the atomic bomb, in a thoroughly engaging tragicomic romp across cultural milestones of the 20th century West. But if this book bears a sobering message,

it is also adroitly playful about the incongruities of life as an insect- human whose trials and sorrows truly seem like our own.

JIHAD: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid (Yale University; 281 pages; $24): Millions of words have been written about Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001, but the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakstan and Turkmenistan are also important battlegrounds in the global war on terror. Rashid's book offers a penetrating tour of a region that has always retained interest for explorers and exploiters and serves as a warning for everyone with a foot in Central Asia, including Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

THE KINDNESS OF SISTERS: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons by David Crane (Knopf; 290 pages; $26.95): Few stories can compete with the scandalous separation of the English Romantic poet Lord Byron from his wife, Annabella, in 1816. The incestuous relationship between Byron and his older half-sister, Augusta Leigh, was soon an all-but-open secret. Crane's gripping account of the exceedingly strange relationship that bound Lady Byron to her sister-in-law focuses on their two vastly different characters and evokes the huge effect Byron had on those involved with him and on society at large.

KOBA THE DREAD: Laughter and the Twenty Million by Martin Amis (Miramax; 306 pages; $24.95): Amis ("Experience") focuses on Stalin's reign over the Soviet Union -- probably the most murderous in history -- and its Bolshevik prelude. Amis' devastating, heart-felt survey gives credence to the thought that today's potentates might willingly, even proudly, incinerate the planet to fulfill their delusional visions.

THE LAST AMERICAN MAN by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking; 271 pages; $24.95): Gilbert makes good on her title's implicit promise: to place her subject -- hunter, horseman, carpenter, ecologist and athlete Eustace Conway -- in a tradition. She pursues the comparisons that Conway's life invites and makes sound but surprising observations about his real and fictional frontiersmen predecessors, creating a vivid, nuanced portrait of an endlessly complicated man.

LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel (Harcourt Brace; 319 pages; $25): Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel is the son of a zookeeper who, while on an ocean trip with his family and their animals, winds up stranded in a lifeboat with a seasick orangutan, a wounded zebra, a frenetic hyena and an eerily placid Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. In his Booker Prize-winning novel, Martel nimbly navigates through an examination of natural and religious order, of the comforts of containment and the chilling prospects of freedom.

THE LITTLE FRIEND by Donna Tartt (Knopf; 556 pages; $26): In her first novel in the 10 years since "The Secret History" was published, Tartt offers this story of 12-year-old Harriet, who makes up her mind to solve the murder of her beloved brother a decade before. Funny, empathic, a demon plotter with a crack-shot sense of time and place, Tartt conjures up a jerkwater town in 1970s Mississippi with an unholy vividness and tension.

THE LIVES OF THE MUSES: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired by Francine Prose (HarperCollins; 403 pages; $24.95): Prose seriously examines the seemingly old-fashioned idea of the female muse and male artist relationship, while thoughtfully considering why the phenomenon makes us uncomfortable. Her chief accomplishments are her methodical examination of the subject in all of its variety and her choice of examples, which reflect the passions and prejudices of their respective ages.

LONESOME RANGERS: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures by John Leonard (New Press; 318 pages; $27.95): In this latest collection of "intellectual journalism," the prolific Leonard, former editor of the New York Times Book Review and literary co-editor of the Nation, looks back over his long career, wondering, was it worth it? What was the point? And, most important, did he do any good? The most interesting moments in the essays are when Leonard talks about himself, particularly his vivid snapshots of traveling around the world, discussing literature.

THE LOVELY BONES by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown; 328 pages; $21.95): In Sebold's memorable first novel, 14-year-old narrator Susie Salmon speaks from heaven to tell the tale of her rape and murder. Not only can Susie watch the unfolding devastation wreaked upon her beloved family, but she can also roam their thoughts and the depraved thoughts of her on-the-loose killer. "The Lovely Bones" is so palpable and multifaceted that the real world seems like a crude interruption whenever the book must be put down.

MAN WALKS INTO A ROOM by Nicole Krauss (Doubleday; 248 pages; $23.95): Krauss' story of a filthy vagrant found wandering in the desert near Las Vegas,

who turns out to be a Columbia professor missing for eight days after a tumor short-circuits his memory, celebrates the anything-but-simple art of human connection. Also, it's a reminder of how precious, and how necessary, memory must be for us all -- but only when we work at it, when we think hard and carefully about what we cherish and why.

MARRIED TO THE ICEPICK KILLER: A Poet in Hollywood by Carol Muske-Dukes (Random House; 205 pages; $23.95): A wry, witty look at Hollywood and acting in general, filled with apt, telling anecdotes and intelligent analysis, Muske- Dukes' book is at the same time a clear-eyed, penetrating look at the world of poetry: from the classroom to the billboard, from West Point to the Clinton White House. And running through the book is a deeply felt tribute to the author's husband, David Dukes, whose death at age 55 two years ago ended an impressive stage and screen career.

MASTER OF THE SENATE: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 by Robert Caro (Alfred A. Knopf; 1,167 pages; $35): Every one of Caro's books has been a study in a particular kind of power. In this National Book Award-winning volume of his biography of LBJ, which is as much a chronicle of the Senate as it is of Johnson's years there, Caro shows us more of his subject's ruthlessness in his public and private lives and how that ruthlessness led to positive public policy, especially in changes in civil rights for minority populations.

MEDIA UNLIMITED: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives by Todd Gitlin (Metropolitan; 260 pages; $25): The prolific New York University professor examines the impact on society of the ever-increasing rush of media. Gitlin's balanced yet biting critique proves him to be a valuable semiotic crusader and savvy guide to our increasingly kinetic times, part of the torrent that's worth listening to.

MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 529 pages; $27): Eugenides' novel streaks from post-World War I Greece to 20th century Detroit (with occasional zigzags to present-day Berlin). Told by a 41-year-old hermaphrodite named "Cal" Stephanides, "Middlesex" is the history of a Greek American family and that most reliable of American stories: a son of immigrants who finally finds love after growing up feeling like a freak.

MORAL HAZARD by Kate Jennings (Fourth Estate; 175 pages; $21.95): Australian novelist Jennings' second book is a taut, harrowing, often sardonic novel about working for a Wall Street firm in the early 1990s. Telling the story of a woman who works at an investment bank writing speeches for its executives, Jennings details the deterioration of the woman's husband from Alzheimer's as his wife's firm gradually collapses.

A MORAL RECKONING: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (Knopf; 344 pages; $25): Goldhagen's devastating, thorough book is the logical continuation of his earlier "Hitler's Willing Executioners," and makes the case that the Roman Catholic Church played an active role in centuries of anti-Semitism and knew from the start that the Jews were being persecuted and then exterminated. If anything, according to Goldhagen, the church, under the leadership of Pope Pius XII, encouraged participation in the Holocaust.

THE MULBERRY EMPIRE by Philip Hensher (Knopf; 476 pages; $26): When a 19th century traveler named Alexander Burnes returned to London from Afghanistan, his book about it became all the rage. And Burnes became an unwitting pawn in the early phase of the intrigue and maneuvering among the great powers for control of the region that became known as the Great Game and led to a disastrous British military expedition. Out of this fertile historical material, London novelist and critic Hensher has made his splendid, idiosyncratic epic.

MY SKY BLUE TRADES: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time by Sven Birkerts (Viking; 277 pages; $24.95): Birkerts, now one of our best literary critics, recaptures the times of his youth (the memoir ends in 1978 when he is 27), including a year of drug experimentation that culminated in academic disgrace and deep depression. The historical irony is that, coming of age when he did, this son of Latvian immigrants found that the way to complete assimilation into U.S. culture was complete rejection of it. He arrived just in time to drop out.

NATASHA'S DANCE: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes (Metropolitan; 544 pages; $35): Seventy-four years of Soviet rule and a decade of economic chaos have caused many Americans to mistrust Russia and deprecate things Russian. Yet, as Figes demonstrates in his scintillating history of its artistic culture, Russia has graced the planet with one of the world's most vibrant civilizations. Figes shows how over the past two centuries Russia's artists created "a national community of values and ideas through literature and art," despite the prospect of banishment, imprisonment or execution for one's artistic integrity.

NIGGER: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy (Pantheon; 224 pages; $22): By the end of Kennedy's book, it feels as if the title word has been tattooed all over one's body. The complexities of its meanings, its usage and its impact on U.S. culture over the past four centuries are the soul of Kennedy's book. The author delivers what his subtitle promises: a detailed, well-researched book on a word's troublesome career, using the word over and over again, yet not gratuitously.

NOBODY'S PERFECT: Writings From the New Yorker by Anthony Lane (Knopf; 722 pages; $35): This large and savory collection of Lane's New Yorker movie reviews, essays and profiles makes it clear that he is the best and most entertaining film critic at work today. He understands that gorgeous, expressive language isn't necessarily murky or difficult to read. And he deputizes his reader in a generous conspiracy, based on shared enthusiasm, presumed erudition and a healthy suspicion of bunk and bluster.

NOTHING REMAINS THE SAME: Rereading and Remembering by Wendy Lesser (Houghton Mifflin; 234 pages; $24): Books don't change, but people do, and the same book can have a profoundly different effect depending on when we read it. This is the idea that propels Lesser's book, and it's a potent one. Going through an eclectic bunch of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, her observations back up her assertion that rereading -- in which our former selves, our present selves and a book interact -- is an even more personal act than reading.

NOWHERE MAN by Aleksandar Hemon (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday; 256 pages; $23. 95): Hemon delivers a searing and mordantly funny novel about the dislocation of his protagonist, Jozef Pronek, born in 1967 Sarajevo, who finds himself stuck in Chicago 25 years later when war breaks out in Bosnia, preventing his return home. He sees the horrific events unfold on the front pages of newspapers and in firsthand accounts in a friend's letters. This angst-ridden, lusting Balkan is deeply human, totally irresistible and often hilarious and by turns culturally specific and universal.

NUMBER9DREAM by David Mitchell (Random House; 400 pages; $24.95): Twenty- year-old Eiji arrives in Tokyo after growing up on a rural Japanese island, having been abandoned with a twin sister by his unstable mother, who became pregnant while having an affair with a married man. Immediately he seeks to unravel the mystery of his parentage, and immediately the reader gets thrust into what seems like a William Gibson cyber-thriller with a dash of Gabriel Garcia Marquez magic realism and video game chaos.

OUR POSTHUMAN FUTURE: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution by Francis Fukuyama (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 256 pages; $25): Fukuyama has taken a stunning step forward with this exploration not only of the ins and outs of a designer-baby future but also of the politics and the political philosophy of a world in which advances in biotechnology fundamentally shape who we are as human beings. The genius of "Our Posthuman Future" is that it makes clear how important these issues soon will be for ordinary people.

THE PIANO TUNER by Daniel Mason (Knopf; 320 pages; $24): Bay Area author Mason's first novel -- the story of a 19th century English piano tuner who finds himself in Burma, mesmerized by his surroundings and the persona of the British surgeon-major whose piano he's been sent to repair -- is so cinematic, you can almost hear the popcorn crunching and the soundtrack swelling. It is a passionate story of empire and individualism that couldn't be more timely.

THE POWER OF BABEL: A Natural History of Language by John H. McWhorter (Times/Henry Holt; 327 pages; $26): University of California at Berkeley linguist McWhorter's master metaphor for explaining how language changes is evolution. Like any good scientist, he doesn't make value judgments about the results of evolution, although he can't help feeling bad about the accelerating rate of language extinction in the modern world, and he betrays a relish for the baroque complications and furbelows that evolution has bestowed on just about every language.

PRAGUE by Arthur Phillips (Random House; 448 pages; $24.95): More than a decade after the great rush of young Americans fleeing to live in Eastern Europe comes Phillips' first novel. Actually set in Budapest in 1990, the book centers on a group of expatriates whose lives are examined with satiric and ironic distance, yet treated with a genuine exuberance for youth's strange, beautiful bloom.

A PROBLEM FROM HELL: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power (Basic Books; 590 pages; $30): Power, a former reporter and now executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, meticulously studied the U.S. and international responses to what she saw as the most egregious genocides of the past century. Her main conclusion is deceptively simple, but no less important for that: U.S.

leaders have consistently avoided taking action to prevent genocide because inaction was dictated by rational political calculus.

RAPTURE by Susan Minot (Knopf; 114 pages; $18): Minot's novel concerns a single moment -- two former lovers back in bed together -- and pulls back from there to reveal the circumstances of their first meeting and how at this literal and symbolic climax they're both ashamed about who they've become. At a wiry 114 pages, Minot delivers more emotional finality and impact than many writers do while stretching themselves over their own queen- and king-size tales.

ROSCOE by William Kennedy (Viking; 291 pages; $24.95): This novel by Pulitzer-winning Kennedy is the story of the beefy Roscoe Conway Esq., a virtuoso hack of the state Democratic machine circa 1945, who finds himself pulled back into politics, and aiding the woman he pines for, just as he wants out. "Roscoe" reads like a book by a man who's digested and loved all the techniques that modern fiction affords, but who's put them in service of one of the oldest stories around: the requital of long-cherished love.

ROSALIND FRANKLIN: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox (HarperCollins; 400 pages; $29.95): Franklin's story -- as the uncredited discoverer of the structure of DNA -- has helped turn her into a symbol of the feminist struggle.

In her new book on the brilliant British scientist, Maddox has done a great service to science and history by giving this story a serious journalistic treatment. In the process, she's created what will surely become known as the definitive Franklin biography.

SAVAGE REPRISALS: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks by Peter Gay (Norton; 192 pages; $24.95): Gay, the social and intellectual historian probably best known for his work on Freud, turns his nuanced analytical mind onto the subject of realism in fiction -- and its promise to show society and the people within it as they really are. Written in elegant prose, and wearing its extensive scholarship lightly so it appeals to the general reader, "Savage Reprisals" is continually stimulating.

SECRETS: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg (Viking; 480 pages; $29.95): Ellsberg reveals his personal evolution from a former Marine and loyal State Department employee to someone arrested on charges of espionage, theft and conspiracy for leaking the Pentagon Papers, which told the secret history of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times in June 1971. "Secrets" is more than an absorbing memoir; it offers new insights into the high crimes that taught Americans to distrust their government.

SERVANTS OF THE MAP: Stories by Andrea Barrett (Norton; 258 pages; $24.95): The author of the National Book Award-winning story collection "Ship Fever" and the highly regarded novel "The Voyage of the Narwhal" offers this beautifully stylized collection of stories and novellas. The stories, ranging from a British cartographical expedition to the Himalayas, to immigrant siblings separated for decades, are a testament to the diverse and growing repertoire of an important U.S. writer.

SHAMROCK TEA by Ciaran Carson (Granta Books; 308 pages; $19.95): As priests hatch a plan to heal Northern Ireland's religious divisions by spiking Belfast's water supply with Shamrock Tea, a mythic hallucinogen, Carson's novel becomes a magic carpet embroidered with stories within stories, connecting everything from the paintings of Van Eyck to wormholes.

THE SHAPE OF A POCKET by John Berger (Pantheon; 264 pages; $24): For almost 50 years, Berger has sustained his protest against the dehumanization of society by the overt and the silent violence of business as usual, and continues to do so in this collection of essays, which ranges in topic from Hieronymus Bosch to Subcomandante Marcos.

THE SILENCE OF THE RAIN by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (Henry Holt; 272 pages; $24): Brazilian author Garcia-Roza's engrossing and captivating novel introduces U.S. readers to Inspector Espinosa of the First Precinct in Rio de Janeiro. This bookish and lonely detective, with his existential sensibility, his exotic beat and his literary merit, seems poised to join the ranks of the great modern international fictional cops.

A SIMPLE HABANA MELODY (From When the World Was Good) by Oscar Hijuelos (HarperCollins; 342 pages; $24.95): For his sixth novel, Hijuelos tells the story of fictional Cuban songwriter Israel Levis, who after World War II leaves Europe to return to Cuba, where he lives out his days haunted by his unrequited love for a beautiful singer and by the horrors of Buchenwald (where he was imprisoned, mistaken for a Jew). This book is not a story so much as a study in character development. As such, it's a small masterpiece.

SINCLAIR LEWIS: Rebel From Main Street by Richard Lingeman (Random House; 638 pages; $35): Lingeman attempts to restore Sinclair Lewis, the first U.S. writer to be honored with the Nobel Prize in literature, to his rightful place in the canon. Lingeman is a competent analyst of Lewis' novels and is sensitive to the demons and pressures that tormented the author, making him far more sympathetic to Lewis than past biographers have been.

THE SISTERS: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell (Norton; 384 pages; $27.95): Britain's Mitford family -- Lord and Lady Redesdale and their seven daughters -- comprised a dazzling cast of characters, including Jessica Mitford, who lived in Oakland for years and wrote the expose "The American Way of Death." Drawing on legions of witnesses, layering the memories of those alive and those now dead, Lovell evokes a fascinating swirl of hunting parties,

inherited castles, plane crashes, love affairs, suicide attempts and two world wars.

SMALL WONDER: Essays by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins; 288 pages; $23. 95): In her first book of nonfiction since 1995, Kingsolver ("The Poisonwood Bible") takes on the global gluttons, with their newfound patriotic justification for environmental and social irresponsibility, in a collection of 22 essays about nature, war, sustainability and the elusive idea of home.

SOMETHING TO DECLARE: Essays on France by Julian Barnes (Knopf; 295 pages; $25): Barnes does for France what he did for England with "Letters From London": He offers insight into the political, literary and sporting culture of a nation, with brilliant and engaging results. From musings on the work and life of Flaubert to pieces on the 2000 Tour de France, Barnes shows his nose for the extraordinary detail and the comic.

THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY by Stephen Jay Gould (Belknap/Harvard; 1,433 pages; $39.95): It took the late Harvard paleontologist 20 years to boldly redefine Darwin in light of what the world has learned from more than 150 years of progress in genetics, molecular biology and the fossil record. This magnum opus is fascinating, discursive, dogmatic and intensely personal and was clearly intended to be both a tribute to Darwin and a definitive (for now, at least) declaration of a new and more complex version of how species have emerged again and again since life began on Earth.

SUMMERLAND by Michael Chabon (Hyperion/Miramax; 492 pages; $22.95): This baseball-infused adventure for all ages from Pulitzer Prize-winner Chabon has the body of a grown-up novel and the head of a prodigiously gifted children's book. Three friends and their motley pickup squad barnstorm across a parallel universe on a rescue mission. Even for nonbaseball fans, the power of Chabon's verbal and storytelling power delivers in the clutch.

THE SWEETEST DREAM by Doris Lessing (HarperCollins; 479 pages; $26.95): This stirring novel impressively synthesizes many of Lessing's lifetime preoccupations, including the devastating impact of World War I and II, the failed ideologies and idealism of the '50s and '60s and her beloved, ever- suffering Zimbabwe. In her ninth decade, Lessing is a true pro, writing at the top of her powers, realistically, passionately and accessibly.

TESTS OF TIME: Essays by William H. Gass (Knopf; 319 pages; $25): Ever since his first novel, "Omensetter's Luck," Gass has been a distinctive if hard-to-characterize figure on the U.S. literary scene. This originality carries through the 14 essays in this collection, which range from a provocative discussion of the difference between a "story" and a "fiction" to forceful diatribes against political correctness on the left and the reign of the marketplace on the right.

THINK OF ENGLAND by Alice Elliott Dark (Simon & Schuster; 272 pages; $24): Elliott Dark has such a reputation as a master storyteller, it comes as something of a surprise to realize that this is her first novel. Set in London and the United States, and jumping from 1964 to 1979 and 2000, her novel follows the lives of the MacLeods, weaving as it does so the themes of death, guilt and the individuality that somehow binds family members together while simultaneously pulling them apart.

THE VARIETIES OF ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE by Robert Cohen (Scribner; 217 pages; $23): Cohen's funny new story collection ostensibly deals with sex, but mostly concerns itself with the nature of adulthood, its compromises and its consolations. Cohen, who divides his time between Berkeley and Vermont, has a sure command of comic tone that suits his attentiveness to life's false springs and Indian summers.

THE VINE OF DESIRE by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Doubleday; 320 pages; $23. 95): Divakaruni takes up where she left off in her acclaimed novel "Sister of My Heart," with the two girls, Anju and Sudha -- now women -- living in the United States. Divakaruni has always written well about the immigrant experience, but here she draws a compelling contrast between the selflessness required of women in India and the sometimes bewildering freedoms offered in their adopted land.

WAITING PERIOD by Hubert Selby Jr. (Marion Boyars; 198 pages; $22.95): Brooklyn-born, 73-year-old Selby builds on his dark vision of the country first revealed in his 1964 masterpiece, "Last Exit to Brooklyn," with this novel of an unnamed, unnerved narrator who desperately wants to shoot himself - - only to make a sudden about-face when he finally gets his hands on a gun.

WALK THROUGH DARKNESS by David Anthony Durham (Doubleday; 246 pages; $23. 95): Durham's evocative and finely wrought second novel follows a runaway mulatto slave and the white tracker on his trail. While the author's primary focus is slavery, he devotes much of his story to its personal effects. And though the plot has all the makings of a Western showdown, its climax and resolution, despite the inevitable violence that is part of nearly all racial confrontations in the novel, is anything but.

WALKING THROUGH FIRE by Nawal El Saadawi (Zed Books; 251 pages; $19.95 paperback): Known as a daring, intrepid advocate for women's rights, El Saadawi has exercised much influence in the Arab world. This frank memoir includes remembrances of El Saadawi's youth in Egypt, but her formative years in medicine and her long-running battles with hypocritical government officials anchor much of this emotionally draining work.

WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips (Doubleday; 472 pages; $29.95): Placing himself deep in progressive- populist territory, Phillips ("The Politics of Rich and Poor") compares the United States today with the Gilded Age of the robber barons and the Harding- to-Hoover Roaring '20s. This is an indictment of the runaway "financialization" of U.S. business, meaning the sleazy manipulation that turned the dot-com boom into a bust and the sort of unfettered self-interest that ultimately makes a mockery of markets.

WHEN THE ELEPHANTS DANCE by Tess Uriza Holthe (Crown; 372 pages; $24.95): This first novel by Marin writer Uriza Holthe is set during World War II amid the final turbulent week that Japan occupied the Philippines. Loosely based on the childhood experiences of Holthe's father and inspired by the Filipino myths and legends she heard growing up, the book is a powerful tale of the resilience and courage of the Filipino people.

WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE by Julie Otsuka (Knopf; 144 pages; $18): This accomplished novel of a Berkeley family's evacuation and internment during World War II, and their difficult return home, is told through Otsuka's absorbing and tight writing. Her spare prose is complemented by precise details, vivid characterization and a refusal to either flinch at or sentimentalize a part of the Japanese American experience.

WHY I AM A CATHOLIC by Gary Wills (Houghton Mifflin; 367 pages; $26): Pulitzer Prize-winning Wills has written an "unintended sequel" to his best- selling, controversial "Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit." A devout Catholic who recites the rosary daily, Wills answers questions raised by that book -- among them, "How does one remain a Catholic while criticizing some of the church's authority figures?" -- and does so in a sophisticated and crystalline way.

A WOUNDED THING MUST HIDE: In Search of Libbie Custer by Jeremy Poolman (Bloomsbury; 306 pages; $24.95): Poolman's first nonfiction book is a beguiling blend of historical fiction that re-creates scenes of Gen. George and Libbie Custer's lives with the author's memoir of dealing with the loss of his wife. The overall effect is something of a subconscious fugue state. And though the mix is illogical and daring in the most precipitous way, like many unlikely creations, it works.

WRITING LOS ANGELES: A Literary Anthology edited by David L. Ulin (Library of America; 873 pages; $40): Ulin's chronological compendium of writing about Los Angeles draws from just about every medium imaginable: thoughtful history from Carey McWilliams and Mike Davis; childhood memoirs from Charles Willeford and the incomparable M.F.K. Fisher; reportage from James Ellroy; fiction from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler and William Faulkner; plus priceless contemporary stuff from Walter Mosley and Mona Simpson. It's a measure of Ulin's achievement that one still wishes for more.

YOU ARE NOT A STRANGER HERE by Adam Haslett (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday; 209 pages; $21.95): Like Russell Banks or Amy Bloom, Haslett writes stories in which nobody has a monopoly on wisdom. In his first story collection, he explores such dark themes as a mother's bereavement, homosexual panic, suicidal melancholy and sibling guilt, but his almost democratic empathy for his characters gives life to his graceful, witty, mature stories.

YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY by Dave Eggers (McSweeney's; 371 pages; $22): In this novel, the author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" has crafted an entertaining and profoundly original tale about two young men -- one rich, one not -- who travel the globe in a week while giving away $32,000. Eggers makes a strong argument for the arbitrary quality of wealth and how difficult it is to redistribute it in a way that is not equally arbitrary. And though he coats this meditation on generosity in his helium-inflected humor, there is a reflexive sadness here, too.

Publisher: Online Originals

Format: Electronic

ISBN: 1-84045-055-X

Rating: * * * * * stars

It is 1979 and Paul Harkin, a näive Peace Corps volunteer is assigned to the Modka Health Center in Modka, South Korea. Modka sits on the coast south of Seoul, and is one of the poorer, forgotten sections of Korea. Paul hopes to experience the excitement of living deep within a foreign culture.

One of his duties at the tuberculosis unit is to go out in the field and find the patients who have missed their monthly trip to the clinic for medicine, and to take spectrum samples from likely suspects. Although conditions in the poorer sections of Modka are squalid, Paul finds the Korean natives full of traditions.

He has difficulty speaking in Korean. Mi Jin, a third grade English schoolteacher, comes to his rescue at a local tabang (tearoom). She offers to teach Paul the finer points of the Korean language in exchange for her chance to converse in English. They meet in local tabangs to hold their lessons.

Rule number one in the Peace Corps is to not to become personally involved with local citizens. Paul keeps this rule in mind and conducts himself accordingly. He absorbs a lot of the Korean culture but finds himself drawn to Mi Jin. Although she does not volunteer her position on the country's political situation, she does exhibit some sympathy towards former classmates still in college.

Mi Jin tours the countryside with Paul and while in Seoul they witness students demonstrating against the government. They are in the thick of things when the president is assassinated, an insurrection takes place

and martial law is enforced. Massive student protests gain momentum despite their losses. When the citizens of Modka join the students against the military, Paul no longer stays neutral. He is in trouble with the Peace Corp anyway and refuses to leave Korea when the Americans are evacuated.

Trouble is the seed of joy. This ancient proverb explains the essence of a Korean's life. "They can be busy as can be, but when something like falling snow happens, they stop and become poets."

William Amos brings to light the political and cultural conditions in South Korea during one of their most dangerous times. He weaves a searing tale of love, death and hope in modern Korea. I remember the news of the riots, but Amos puts the reader right in the middle of the fighting. This is an excellent book for the historical insight into the Korean culture and the tender love story where traditions clash against the human spirit.

Reviewed by Pamela White

Publisher: Broadway Books

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 0767905938

Rating: * * * * * stars

"A Year by the Sea" is the fairy tale that the Brothers Grimm never saw coming. Enchanting and magical, this is the nonfiction tale of a 50-year old woman who takes a literal men-o-pause, a pause from her man as she nears the change of life. Joan Anderson shares her inner travels, as well as her physical retreat from a stagnating marriage and a dissatisfied husband.

Anderson's husband announces he has taken a job and they will be moving. In the aftershock of that announcement, she realizes this is an opportunity for her to break away from where and who she is. As her husband prepares to move on to his new position, she prepares to move back to their summer cottage on Cape Cod.

With a gentle singsong voice, Anderson recounts the marital separation and her journey to the sea, which in turn becomes a journey to herself. Her personal growth receives a jump-start with her introduction to a colony of seals, who join her for a frolic in the surf. A job in a fish market, holiday reunions and life as a hard working clammer all bring her deeper in tune with what she seeks, yet her self-discovery leads her to the refreshing conclusion that she is an unfinished woman and wishes to remain that way.

Anderson writes these essays of her year walking the dunes, raking clams and filleting swordfish with the peace of where she is now. We see her questions as she grows but do not see any bitterness or rancor. Anderson is no victim trying to win us to her side. Rather she is a work in progress who has lost that deep connection with herself. She is ready and amply able to do the inner, and outer, work for the reconnection she craves.

In this beautiful, flowing collection of personal essays, we are not only given insight into Anderson's personal journey of self-appreciation and understanding, but we are handed a mirror in which to see our own life struggles to become finished people. Shall we strive for better paying jobs and worldly success? Shall we, as Anderson's dear friend and mentor Joan Erikson proclaims we must, find enjoyment in our work as we seek our own life adventures?

As a woman who has had her share of struggles and reflective solitude, I wish to share this book with all those who have not yet felt comfortable in their own bodies, who have not yet made peace with their own spirits. From the graceful language and winning descriptions of nature in all seasons to the lovely, uplifting conclusion, "A Year by the Sea" is a delight.

Reviewed by Michelle Angelini

Publisher: MountainView Publishing

Format: Electronic

ISBN: 1928602533

Rating: * * * * * stars

Escaping from an abusive relationship with Roy Jacobs, a pregnant Sandy Matthews disappears from her college campus. Many years pass but Sandy is as fearful of her ex-boyfriend threats as she was the first time he angrily shouted them at her.

The young mother trusts few people, especially men. When she learns of a new family building a house on the hill above Blackberry Hollow, Sandy is terrified for her children. She instantly distrusts her new neighbors, especially Mark Fischer, the construction manager, whose company is building the new house for him and his parents.

Both Mark and Sandy have been badly hurt by past experiences, so the chill between them strains the new neighbor relationship. Yet, where adults don't always succeed, children sometimes bridge the gap.

Sandy's eight-year-old son, Tim forms a friendship with "Mr. Fischerman," as he calls him, and Tina, his twin follows. The relationship becomes essential to the value of the increasingly suspenseful events in the story.

While the plot is basic, Lauralee Bliss presents the story from a Christian perspective. God, prayer and faith are integral parts of each event, whether it is the initial sparks flying between Sandy and Mark or the danger from Roy's pursuit of Sandy.

Characters, such as Roy's wife Hilary, are seen initially as allying with the enemy, but innate goodness is revealed during a series of frightening events. Bliss's characters do not hide in corners. All are well-developed, and their personalities fit like puzzle pieces to make the story more interesting. They have flaws, however Bliss balances the bad with good.

Roy's character is easy to hate, as his evil is deep-routed. Stopping at nothing to get what he wants, Roy rationalizes his decisions, so that he is never wrong. He might even be pitied for his selfishness, since he is incapable of loving almost no one, save Hillary.

"Blackberry Hollow" hooked me from the first sentence and kept me reading with its easy style. I enjoy Christian fiction and this story weaves a rich tapestry of character, plot, faith, good, evil, endurance, growth and the importance of family and faith-based support.

The detailed descriptions allowed me to be "in" the scenes. In addition, the element of faith under stress adds reality to the characters, as they are have moments of doubt, just as we all do. Anyone, who enjoys suspenseful, romantic stories without the distractions that so often masquerade as entertainment, will enjoy "Blackberry Hollow."

Reviewed by Audrey Snowden

Publisher: Alexandria Digital Literature

Format: Electronic

Rating: * * * * stars

The alarms went off. People herded themselves obediently into the nearest underground shelters. Just another day on Terra. But once in that shelter, everyone but Bradford Donovan lost consciousness. And when he went aboveground to find out what was happening, he saw alien troops parachuting down from the sky.

Donovan finds allies, and the aliens, Llralans -- commonly known as Larrys -- advance with plans to take over the human-occupied planets in the galaxy (of which there are three).

Here you have the bare bones of a rip-roaring adventure story: a handful of Terrans against a fleet of aliens, fighting for the freedom of three worlds.

Additionally, you have hunters! Guns! Territorial squabbles! Us versus them! Aliens! Robots! Military parlance! More guns! Different kinds of guns! Nary a line spoken by a female, not anywhere!

And despite that last part, I loved the whole thing.

"Sleeping Planet" is definitely a genre book -- very boy-oriented science fiction -- but it's well written and highly entertaining.

Major players here are Donovan, an embittered one-time adventurer; James Rierson, a lawyer and game hunter; Sjilla, a Llralan officer and spy surgically altered to pass as a human and Sarno, the Llralan officer in charge of this invasion. William R. Burkett, Jr. sketches these characters in rough, broad strokes at first (particularly the Terrans), but that works. This is a broad-sketch sort of book.

That's not to say Burkett leaves loose ends or neglects detail. He's plotted this tale well, and it moves along swiftly. He provides smooth transitions from one character to the next and from one locale to the next. And he efficiently sketches in background detail, in one instance comparing 25th-century London to 20th-century New York: "big, uncouth and brawling." One of my favorite lines occurs near the beginning of the book, when Donovan, who uses mechanical legs (having lost his in an accident), is shot by a newly-arrived Larry. The legs stop working and Donovan topples. "Down he went, like a timbered sequoia."

As "Sleeping Planet" progresses, Burkett widens his scope to give access to the key Llralans and their points of view. A little bit of cultural knowledge goes a long way, and Burkett's story widens and unfolds like a flower coming into bloom. This tale of the Federation versus the Empire, written before those terms evoked thoughts of "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," will stay with you long after those once-bright entities have been franchised into extinction.

"Sleeping Planet" is a fabulous, high-quality example of old-school science fiction. Although it was copyrighted in the 1960s, its been rereleased in a new electronic format. If you enjoy classic science fiction of the sort that some might term "boy books," I suggest you purchase "Sleeping Planet" for your personal library. It's a classic just waiting to be discovered and savored.

Reviewed by Michelle Angelini

Publisher: Uglytown Productions

Format: Paperback

ISDN: 0-9663473-2-3

Rating: * * * * stars

Mystery, written by authors living in Los Angeles, takes on a new perspective in "A Deadly Dozen." Each author in this short story collection is knowledgeable about the field of crime, because of some aspect of their life's work, in addition to being members of the Los Angeles Chapter of Sisters in Crime (SinC/L.A.).

"A Deadly Dozen" is a collection of murder mysteries, and every story contains all the elements of a crime: a dead body or bodies, a motive, a list of suspects and a unique plot. The endings, arriving through twists and turns, surprise the reader. Remarkably, the villains aren't totally evil monsters without consciences, but ordinary people with hidden agendas.

It would be difficult for me to say which story in this book is my favorite, since all were enjoyable. Instead, I will summarize two of them.

"Wifely Duties" by Cory Newman tells of a wife's plot to kill her husband of 37 years. Lucy Hummelthorpe prepares a feast for her husband, Walter, with an additional secret ingredient. She sets the mood for his entrance after work, wearing a special dress and later, playing a tape of her favorite artist, Julio Iglesias. As Lucy expects, Walter is in his own world. He talks about work and notices little else, until the end of meal, when the next part of Lucy's plan begins.

Gayle McGary's "The Cats and Jammer" is a story of a young mystery writer with an overactive imagination and curiosity about the inner workings of a criminal investigation. When Jammer begins a new story, he uses the people in the cottage complex he owns as his characters, not realizing a crime had actually been committed. Jammer imagines numerous scenarios. When the police arrive, Jammer does his best to get involved in the investigation, since he is sure his intuitive knowledge will help the police solve the crime. Nevertheless, the police are less than enthusiastic about his help.

All the stories reveal the dark, deadly world of crime and murder, however they are light, enjoyable reading. Every plot is well developed, as are the characters and the situations. The descriptions are especially vivid. Once I began reading, "A Deadly Dozen" became a welcome break from life, and I kept reading because of each author's style.

Reviewed by Liz Burton

Publisher: First Publish

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 1929925387

Rating: * * * * stars

Jake is a man who doesn't exist.

Once, he was an FBI agent, an expert in computers who discovered a complex international plot to trade drugs for weapons. He left the Bureau -- and his own existence -- when nothing was done to arrest the culprits. Instead, he used his skills to destroy the organization, then erased all trace of himself from the world's databanks. He becomes The Heretic.

Since then, he has lived alone on an isolated ranch in Montana, his identity a carefully concocted fiction. He maintains contact with the outside through virtual reality and a computer persona named Galileo. Galileo is a member of the powerful Guild, an organization of computer experts established to prevent misuse of the powers of technology.

But someone has found him, and suddenly people who know him start dying. He doesn't know why or who, but he must learn the identity of his mysterious cyberstalkers before his entire life is demolished -- literally and virtually.

Jake the Heretic is a hero in the classic mode, dragged from safety and comfort into a world he wanted only to abandon yet accepting the responsibility without hesitation. FBI Agent Dorrie Itake, his eventual partner, is equally compelling, tough and feminine and flexible enough to adapt to events that turn around her entire existence.

"The Heretic" is a stunningly creative cyberthriller that takes the reader by the throat and refuses to let go until the last high-adrenaline page is finished. Jason K. Chapman has written a book that recalls the very best of Tom Clancy and Neal Stephenson without losing the author's own taut style and distinctive voice. The great mysteries of technology are ever-present and yet never confuse -- Chapman shares Stephenson's enviable ability to make the complex easy to understand even by the technologically challenged.

This is a book that will enthrall both genders, written by a master craftsman who not only knows his genre and his subject matter but manipulates both with consummate skill. It is one you will want to read more than once, just for the sheer pleasure it provides.

Reviewed by Jan Kozlowski

Published by Treble Heart Books

Format: Electronic

ISBN: 1-894606-02-7

Rating: * * * * stars

Kaye Berreano has a lot on her plate. She is the night shift counselor at a battered women's shelter, she's in the middle of a messy divorce and she's trying to raise a teenage son and daughter with little help and much hindrance from her soon-to-be-ex.

Then things get worse. A suspicious fire, preceded by a threatening phone call, starts at the shelter during her shift and while she bravely struggles to get everyone out, one of the residents, a new arrival, who no one was overly fond of, is killed.

Suddenly Kaye's life goes from being merely complicated to spiraling nearly out of control. Farrell, the police arson investigator suspects that Kaye knows more than she's telling and may indeed be covering for the arsonist. The threatening phone calls continue, but the police down play their importance.

Kaye's hours are cut due to the shelter's relocation and the paycheck that she is owed has somehow been hung up in administrative red tape. Her ex-husband decides that he wants custody of the kids and her pregnant niece mysteriously goes incommunicado.

Instead of crumbling under the massive internal and external pressures, Kaye decides that her best option is to take matters into her own hands and solve the crime herself. As she investigates though, the number of suspects mount and the facts become even muddier than she could have imagined. Could one of the women have killed a fellow resident? Was it a misguided suicide attempt? Was Kaye's own husband involved?

Christine Duncan's debut mystery novel, the first in a projected series, is a fast paced, well-plotted and highly suspenseful read. The strength of the story is in the astoundingly real personality and voice of the main character. Kaye is, unlike some other fictional female sleuths, a woman we all are intimately familiar with. She isn't a brilliant, hard-edged attorney, a gourmet forensics expert or a karate kicking private investigator. Kaye is an ordinary woman, trying her best to multi-task her way through the day, who is suddenly thrown into an extraordinary situation where she proves that she can not only keep her head on straight, but successfully use it to solve the crime and reclaim her life.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Safe Beginnings." Mysteries can be notoriously difficult to write well, but Duncan has done an excellent job of balancing the plot, giving us enough story lines and characters to make it interesting, but keeping it from being convoluted or frustrating. Her characters were well drawn and soundly three-dimensional and her use of the battered women's shelter as a background gives the reader the opportunity to see inside a world that too few of us truly understand.

Reviewed by Tina L. Miller

Publisher: Jacobyte Books

Format: Electronic

ISBN: 1-74053-021-7

Rating: * * * * stars

The prologue to "Celestial Crossroads" is enough to hold the reader entranced and transfixed. Yet, it is just the teaser -- the beginning of a tale that unfolds as Marianne Masters begins to build a new life for herself after a messy romantic breakup.

When she moves to a historical cottage in the English countryside, Marianne is determined to make a new start. However, she is totally unprepared for the experiences she will encounter when she takes a wrong turn one day and stumbles upon a small antique shop. There Marianne literally meets the man of her dreams.

Dominic is the spitting image of the man she encountered in one of her dreams. When Marianne discovers an old printer's composing stick with an intriguing verse hidden in her cottage, she and Dominic embark on a journey to discover its mysteries. Along the way, Dominic also helps Marianne discover much about herself.

"Celestial Crossroads" is interwoven with many references to King Arthur and his beloved Guinevere, the knights of the Round Table, Camelot and even the life of Jesus Christ. While the story is somewhat of a historical and fictional romance, it is also much more -- an inspirational volume from which many, many words of wisdom can be culled from the pages.

This story can best be described as, "fact and fiction" rolled into one, and history "merged in with the legends." The references to reincarnation, multiple lives and multiple periods in history may differ with an individual reader's personal beliefs and understanding of English history, but the spiritual truths outlined in this story appear universal. There is no doubt that every reader will come away a little wiser and more enlightened from having read this book.

Paula Hartwood weaves a fascinating, sometimes romantic and always inspirational tale with profound mastery. Whether the historical references are completely accurate or largely fictional, this book is unique and exceptionally well written. From the first page to the last, it is captivating and enthralling. For anyone with the slightest interest in spiritual matters, "Celestial Crossroads" is a must-read.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino

Publisher: Milligan Books

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 1881524744

Rating: * * * * * stars

Family secrets haunt Anna Rose Harris, a bright, sensitive, black 14-year-old girl. She is forced to leave her small town in Mississippi in 1987 to live with a mother she barely knows in the inner city of Cleveland, Ohio.

Feeling like an unattached flower floating away from her world, she finds herself confused, scared and angry, unable to call Joyce, "Mom," despite her mother's pet name of "Rosie" for Anna. Feeling isolated, she holds on for all she's worth to try to get through it.

School adds to her terror as the huge numbers of students, who seem so distant and uncaring, overwhelm her. Joyce keeps promising to talk with her about her father, of whom she knows nothing, but circumstances seem

to always get in the way of the discussion to clear up the past. Anna's one glimmer of support is her newfound friendship with Margaret, who she affectionately calls Mo, a caring young white girl with a severely clubbed foot, who is there for her new friend.

What sustains Anna during this difficult transition is her personal faith in God. For one so young, she is able to go to a loving God and speak to Him when her inner turmoil prevents her from finding her way by herself.

We find that things are not always as they appear according to this young girl's initial judgments. As we journey with Anna for a year to her 15th birthday, we share her fear, anger and triumphs when the truth is finally revealed.

Annetta P. Lee wrote a powerful story that reaches not just young readers, but has a message to adults, too. She was able to bring me into Anna's heart, seeing things as she did and then discovering what she discovered. I found myself angry with her, afraid with her and able to cry with her as she searched for love and acceptance in her quest to know who she was.

Lee, an author who can elicit such empathy in the reader, bridging over age, race and religion, has done a tremendous job "A Bitter Rose."

Reviewed by Pamela White

Publisher: Vintage Books

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 0375724842

Rating: * * * * * stars

Inspector Wexford steps in when a intellectually challenged teenage girl does not return home. All fears for her safety dissipate when she shows up on her mum's doorstep and won't say where she's been. Consensus is that she merely stayed with a boyfriend. That is until another report is made on a teenager who doesn't make it home after a night out with friends.

Take the mysterious kidnapping and random return of young women and mix in the release from prison of a child molester, the abduction of a toddler, a shelter for abused women, Wexford's own daughter, poverty, infidelity and finally a murder. Voila! You have the intricate plotting and subplotting that make "Harm Done" an intense and rewarding read.

The village of Kingsmarkham, the setting for Ruth Rendell's novel, is held together by threads of hate, revenge, violence and fear, surfacing quickly as hysteria takes over the town. For amid the missing persons and distastefully written news accounts of local events runs outrage against the child molester, now an old man, who has served his time in prison and is returning to the community.

Rendell's storybuilding and characterizations makes the underlying disturbance and disease of the people familiar to the reader. Does the cool smile of the man next door belie his cruel treatment of his wife? Can a peaceful person be pushed to violence through the chanting encouragement of a mob? Who can know what wrongdoings are buried in our own hearts?

If you are a resident of Kingsmarkham, you can bet Wexford will puzzle it out. Wexford is an authority figure we can lean on. He is calm, rational, supported by family and compassionate. Where are his flaws? Shouldn't every hero have a weakness, a quirk, a gimmick? Since 1964, this award-winning author has determined no. Rendell wisely leaves the often fatal flaws to the rest of Wexford's world and gives us a stalwart man to catch the evil-doers.

Rendell's skill at weaving a literary tapestry shines in the breathtaking, and often heartbreaking, "Harm Done." Her writing is formal, her storytelling delicious and sinister. Her plot will knock you off your feet more than once, as you try to keep up with the motives, not to mention the actual number of crimes and who committed which one. Rendell's novels are to be treasured no less than those by other British murder mystery divas, including Agatha Christie and P.D. James. Long live this queen of mystery.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino

Publisher: Wordbeams

Format: Electronic

ISBN: 1-58785-016-8

Rating: * * * * stars

Which is more devastating in life -- being lonely or taking a chance? Taking a chance always involves risk. Sometimes the risks involved can be so scary that the familiar sense of loneliness becomes the more comfortable alternative.

A chance to explore London, the city of her dreams, has Caterina Garcia leaving Dallas, ready for adventure. Beautiful, loving, innocent Caterina wants to experience the pubs and night life in London, having never done so at home.

Her friends Marilyn and David are happy to see her traveling, but are worried about her at the same time. So David calls his friend Jax in London, asking him to show her around and keep Caterina safe.

Jax personifies the typical tall, dark and handsome type, with a reputation as a lady-killer to boot. Yet his respect for David and Marilyn has him promising he can be trusted to take her out and show her the city's wild side. Besides, he didn't make it a habit to mess with innocent women. Past experience had taught him that they always seek a relationship, which is the one thing he neither desires nor has the time for.

After Caterina and Jax see London together, they get caught up in a relationship that mystifies them both and eventually draws in Caterina's friend, Mark. The reader is taken back and forth across the Atlantic and is additionally drawn into the situation as intensely as the characters. Whether in England, Texas or Maine, these people are constantly faced with choices, most of which require taking a chance no one seems ready or able to take.

Kimberly Roberts tells a compelling story. She allows the reader not only to meet the characters, but also to understand and feel with them. I found myself caught up in the story as if it were circumstances my own friends were sharing. When an author can involve a reader like that, the book has succeeded. "A Chance Worth Taking" is definitely worth reading.

Reviewed by Audrey Snowden

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press

Format: Hardcover

ISDN: 0312261764

Rating: * * * * * stars

The book's secret is out just from the title: it's not the history of copyright, it's the illustrated story. Edward Samuels has taken a subject in which we, as writers, should all be well versed, and he's presented it in an accessible, lively format. This book is downright fun.

While it's not meant to provide answers to nitpicky copyright questions, "The Illustrated Story of Copyright" does contain a huge amount of information and background on copyright. Perhaps more importantly, Samuels does a thorough job of putting his information in context; instead of dry facts, he sketches his subject matter in a framework of societal development and political climate.

The book is separated into two sections. Section one is copyright technology. Section two is copyright basics. Samuels emphasizes that the reader can start with section two if said reader wishes to do so, or the reader can even follow Samuels's frequent cross-references and have a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" experience. He's not being cavalier. The book is simply well designed. It's laid out like a textbook, but don't picture organic chemistry, picture Psychology 101 on caffeine.

This is a survey course masquerading as leisure reading. Decent-sized print and lots of side-bars grace the text, and you'll pick up all kinds of excellent extra knowledge along the way. Know how a microprocessor works? How a player piano works? No? Not only will you learn these things, you'll learn how these processes are relevant to the story of copyright.

Samuels's writing is highly readable, and his use of side-bars is fabulous. He includes sections of relevant legal rulings, which are useful, but he also uses the side-bars to riff on real-life examples that illustrate his accompanying text. Flipping through, you'll see lots of pictures (nice!), but will you expect to see Denis Leary, the Sesame Street Muppets, or Groucho Marx?

The factor that magnifies the quality and value of this book is Samuels himself. He's clearly passionate about and dedicated to his work, and he hasn't kept his personality or his sense of humor out of the text.

The book's tone is conversational, and while Samuels has lots of knowledge to impart, he doesn't lecture. Reading this book is deceptively fun. Samuels has succeeded wildly. He's crafted a comprehensive book on a substantial topic, and he's made the topic both accessible and enjoyable.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino

Publisher: London Circle Publishing

Format: Electronic

ISBN: 1930677146

Rating: * * * * * stars

The year is 2008. A suitcase nuclear device has toppled the Eiffel Tower, leaving 50,000 people dead. An Internet message claims that the terrorist group known as URI is responsible for the destruction. In response, the president of the United States has declared war on terrorism.

In Florida, a television station struggling to survive poor ratings is the first to broadcast a tape of an African-American woman murdered by two policemen. The broadcast is followed by a series of race riots that inflames the U.S. while it battles international terrorism.

A Miami journalist, Zackery Stearn, uncovers a terrorist plot and struggles to protect himself and the country. The story line brings us along with the journalist in varied risky situations confronting many dangerous people.

Stearn is the 52-year-old owner, editor and general manager of "The Boca," a twice-weekly newspaper in Miami with a circulation of 50,000 that promotes idealism in a cynical world.

In contrast, a discussion of the Elite Inner Circle (EIC) members points to reality as perception. People, in their view, no longer know reality, seeking their information through reading, seeing it on television or scanning the Internet. Reality is seen as virtual.

Leo Novak, General William "Mac" MacCallister and Dr. Barbara Lande, the members of the EIC formed by the president, discuss the president's mission, in his words to "kick some ass." The goal is to make the streets of America safe again, tackle global terrorism at its roots and forge a world peace under American protections and freedoms.

President Benjamin P. Armstrong, the only son of a media mogul who owns 210 radio and TV properties in the southeast, is a former ABC sitcom star converted to TV evangelist. Stating that he is God's servant on earth, he begins each speech pausing for a moment of silent prayer before addressing the public.

With many eerie similarities to the terrorism situation the U.S. is now facing, reviewing this book after Sept. 11 was definitely a challenge. To do a fair review, I found I had to rely on my own training as a journalist to remove myself from the emotions I experienced in the reading to an objective narration of the story.

"The Journalist" is a captivating book that had me reading quickly to follow the developments as they occurred. The story progresses well with extremely believable characters. Reading a fictional accounting of a war on terrorism by a president with an agenda was both upsetting and thought provoking for me, but I must conclude the writing is very well executed to stir up so much in the reading.

Reviewed by Michelle Angelini

Publisher: Barclay Books

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 1931402248

Rating: * * * * * stars

A legendary monster, caught between life and death, returns from a sleepy Pennsylvania town's ancient burial ground to seek new victims on which to unleash his fury and demonic power.

After the death of a prominent physician, the monster, Dust, returns to the unsuspecting town of McKeesport. Yet, Dust's power is useless unless finding a viable human vehicle. Dust's method of entering the human host is through horrifying dreams. The monster chooses victims carefully, and tolerates no mistakes from his minions, destroying them with utter brutality for any sign of weakness or failure to follow its orders exactly.

Insanity rules the town, which becomes the scene of numerous suicides, property crimes and murders. Law enforcement, headed by Detective Steve Wyckoff, is baffled, since McKeesport normally has an imperceptible crime rate. The horror starts off one Saturday, escalating to the point where no one person, place or thing in the town is unaffected.

Wyckoff and Harris Smith, the deceased doctor's son, battle to resolve the mystery of the town's horrible events. A connection between Dr. Smith's clinic and Dust only deepens the dilemma, since both realize the force they battle is non-human.

Drew William's writing style, while easy to read, is also vividly graphic without being extremely gory. He paints a picture of what's happening so that a scene becomes alive in the reader's mind. His writing incorporates the five senses. One can smell the stench of death and hear the victim's terrified screams that are not described but sensed. Additionally, visualization of the grotesquely mutilated bodies accompanies the hair-rising feeling on the back of the neck, as the victims understand Dust is about to destroy them. Evil's near-victory against good creates a bitter taste in the mouth, as the horror of the situation becomes more real.

"Night Terrors" offered continuous action that held my attention and interest, so I was reluctant to discontinue reading it for any reason. Make plenty of time to read this book and keep the light on.

Reviewed by Lynne Remick

Publisher: Street Saint Publications

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 1931090149

Rating: * * * * stars

Even though I admittedly did not know what "Piedmont Stubble" refers to, and had to look it up [according to Webster -- the short stumps of corn, grain, etc., collectively left after harvesting], the impact of this collection of rural thoughts and experiences was not lost on me.

In "Piedmont Stubble," poet Neca Stoller reveals herself and shares essential shards of her life via chapters entitled "Flowers in a Glass Jar," "Beachcoming," "Loosening Up" and "Measuring and Marking." Captivating words and well-strung phrases call up long-ago times and faraway places, as in "The Last May Pole":

That last May Day something broke

with a slight, definite sound

like ice settling under hot sugared tea

I was in the seventh grade

neither skinny nor fat

but self-conscious with my new breasts.

and in "Turtle Point":

At Turtle Point, children, pelicans

and seagulls are always leaving

yet always there. The sandbar spreads

like a drunk giant who wakes from a trance

to find the land deported to the airless sea.

Stoller comes from a different time and place, and yet I embraced her poems as if they were my own words and moments. Stoller has a way of inviting you in, offering you a seat and fixing up a nice pot of hot tea to sip while she tells her stories. Through them, you understand what it is like to live in the country down south, what it is like to be Stoller, and, what is like to feel human.

Reviewed by Audrey Snowden

Publisher: Three Owls Press

Format: Electronic

Rating: * * * * stars

John Toliver devoted his life to studying and preserving nature. With his cabin in the woods, his solid, dependable research team and a cadre of like-minded friends, he found contentment -- except when his work took him outside the redwood forest and into the public eye.

When Reynolds Lumber threatened a particularly important piece of land, John feared he'd be pressed into service as a spokesperson. He knew the American Wilderness Foundation would help by sending a representative to check out the jeopardized spot, but he didn't know that the representative would be the daughter of the president of the United States.

Dr. Rose Brennan is brilliant, beautiful and charming. And she is being stalked.

Margaret Vance uses an initially familiar plot of "man, embittered by the loss of his lover, meets talented younger woman." Additionally and simultaneously, though, man, friends and woman fight big business to prevent environmental destruction. And that stalker's not just twiddling his thumbs. Nothing's overly complex here, but nothing feels forced.

Vance covers lots of ground without muddling her narrative or distorting its pace. Her story unfolds naturally and the physical presentation of her tale is lovely, with photographs at the beginning of each chapter to enhance the text's impact.

Part of the story's success is due to Vance's characters. She uses just enough detail to bring her characters to life and give them weight. Skinny graduate student Ethan can't enter a room without looking for food. Hot-tempered Isabelle serves as the team's smart aleck, warden and mother. Vance deftly establishes John's individualism and love of solitude. And Rose, who in the wrong hands could have been a caricature, is shown as intriguing and complex.

Rose's relationship with Secret Service agent Daniel Carter parallels John's familial ties with his colleagues. Vance successfully mixes the two camps and develops a romance that fits naturally into the plot without overpowering the book's other plotlines. Aside from the John/Rose romance, this mixture creates an unexpected partnership between John and Daniel -- not necessarily what Rose had in mind. Then again, she hadn't expected to be fascinated by anything on this job except by the redwoods.

Vance gracefully communicates her own passion for nature, and she does this without preachiness. In fact, "Toliver's Forest" succeeds in inspiring environmental awareness, and environmental appreciation. Her afterword speaks of a desire to do something lasting for her world and to inspire in others the exact feelings she evokes.

Vance's prose does hit a grammatical hitch now and then, however, her gift for dialogue make the novel much more than just a call to action. With its camaraderie, well-drawn settings, humor, romance and great characters, "Toliver's Forest" is simply an excellent read.

Reviewed by Lisa Landis

Publisher: Domhan Books

Format: Hardcover, Paperback and Electronic

ISBN: 1583454683

Rating: * * * * * stars

Through sheer willpower and ruthlessness, Sean MacDonagh has built a successful business for himself in New York City, a world away from his cold and emotionally-distant father who lives in Belfast, Ireland.

When Sean receives an invitation to a party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his grandparents' marriage, he is tempted not to go, just to avoid his father's disapproving gaze. Plus, lately, his dreams have been filled with visions of a mystical woman who wants more than he is able to give.

Treyanna, Faerie princess and daughter of King Gael-bhan, has always dreamed of falling in love and finding happiness. One man haunts her dreams, but she doesn't know why. She discovers that her father has arranged for her to marry a man -- a human she has never met. To escape from this forced marriage, she runs away and is transported to the place where the man in her dreams resides.

Karen Williams weaves a compelling plot that spans the centuries and carries the reader into a mystical world where man's greatest enemy is himself. As the story flies from the world of the fairies to the lush landscape of Northern Ireland, Sean and Treyanna learn more about one another and their ultimate destiny.

Sean harbors deep resentment against his uncaring father, who spent every waking hour building his business, neglecting his young son and driving away his beautiful wife. As the book progresses, Sean learns more about himself and discovers that things aren't always as they appear. Treyanna has the daunting task of prying open Sean's steel-plated heart. If she doesn't, she will be doomed to a lifetime of unhappiness.

"The Wings of Love" is a sweet, can't-put-it-down fairy tale that reaches the heart of every relationship. It's all about trust, and Williams weaves this wonderful story in less than 200 pages. A great book to curl up with!

Reviewed by Warren Richardson

Publisher: Atlantic Bridge Publishing

Format: Electronic

ISBN: 0970691300

Rating: * * * * * stars

The story of romance evolving during the course of a murder investigation is as old as the hills. What gives the plot device the freshness that keeps it popular, and readers reading the books, are the characters inhabiting the particular fictitious world.

Sheriff Bill Ashton and Air Force Captain Arden Jones are two such characters, and you'll be doing yourself no favor if you miss their appearance in "The Summerland" by T.L. Schaefer.

Ashton and Jones are brought together when her stolen Miata is discovered, abandoned, along a rural road in Mariposa County. The thief: her none-too-close sister, Samantha, who has disappeared leaving behind a briefcase full of money. If that isn't enough for Ashton, his department is investigating a serial killer who leaves his victims in a ceremonial position, suggesting a connection with the Wiccan religion. Convinced that Samantha has been abducted by the serial killer, Ashton conducts a by-the-book investigation, following a nonexistent trail.

Both Ashton and Jones sense the electricity between them the moment they meet, but then circumstances interfere with their romance. Strong-willed, stubborn and tenacious, the personalities of Ashton and Jones will permit neither to take the first step to close the breach that forms as the time of Samantha's projected death is revealed.

Schaefer manages both plots expertly, building them to the unexpected revelation of the killer. Schaefer has such a firm grasp over her characters, the narrative flow and the dialogue that it's hard to believe this is a first novel. Interweaving the murder mystery with Wicca is a masterstroke on Schafer's part, making "The Summerland" a sure hit.

Reviewed by Jade Walker

Publisher: Doubleday

Format: Hardcover

ISBN: 0385505833

Rating: * * * * * stars

Luther and Nora Krank are at a turning point. They've just shipped their only daughter off on a Peace Corps mission in Peru and grimly face the prospect of a holiday season in their now-empty house.

Nora's reaction to her daughter's departure is to constantly cry and worry after her safety. Luther heads down to his basement for some quiet reading time and cognac.

An accountant by nature and profession, Luther soon realizes just how much money could be saved by skipping Christmas entirely. Without his daughter at home, he sees no point to overdose on the holiday -- the tree, the presents, the parties, and the traffic, shopping and crowds.

With thoughts of freedom dancing in his head, Luther concocts a plan. Instead of wasting thousands of dollars on Yuletide cheer, he and Nora will treat themselves to a luxurious cruise through the Caribbean. Luther expects everyone to be envious of his plans; instead the Kranks are met with disbelief, disdain and mockery.

Neither Luther or Nora are very appealing as human beings. They're fairly mediocre people who spend a great deal of their lives complaining over the most mundane things. But once their friends and neighbors turn to Gestapo tactics to force the Kranks into celebrating the holiday, they soon become characters a reader can sympathize with, even root for.

John Grisham's mastery of the fast-paced plot shines, and I dare any reader to try and put this book down. A modern mixture of "It's a Wonderful Life" meets "The Ref," "Skipping Christmas" is both endearing and hilarious. Even the most Scrooge-like folks will be unable to find fault in this charming story. Save yourself a few calories this year, and gobble up "Skipping Christmas."

*Click on book titles for reviews and purchasing information from Amazon.com.

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