May 7, 2004

Raffaella Barker. Hens Dancing

Young divorce and single mother of three Venetia Summers finds herself marooned in the English countryside, surrounded by clutter, children, and hens. This charming, wickedly funny novel marks the author's U.S. debut.

April 23, 2004

C.J. Box. Open Season

The debut of a writer hailed by Tony Hillerman as "a great storyteller"-the first book in an engaging and gritty mystery series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

April 9, 2004

Samrat Upadhyay. The Guru of Love

Upadhyay's first novel showcases his finest writing and his signature themes. "The Guru of Love" is a moving and important story--important for what it illuminates about the human need to love as well as lust, and for the light it shines on the political situation in Nepal and elsewhere.

March 19, 2004

Diana Abu-Jabar. Crescent

Praised by critics for her first novel, "Arabian Jazz, " Diana Abu-Jaber now weaves with spellbinding magic a multidimensional love story set in the Arab-American community of Los Angeles.

March 5, 2004

Elizabeth Berg. Say When

How difficult is it to live in truth when you live with another? When is a relationship worth saving, and when is it better to let it go? In Say When, Berg negotiates perfectly the fine balance between humor and poignancy as she charts the days and nights of a family whose normalcy has been shattered.

February 20, 2004

Laura Wolf. Diary of a Mad Mom-to-Be

Amy, the quirky heroine of Diary of a Mad Bride, has survived her wedding with aplomb, only to find herself yearning for the patter of little feet. Next stop: parenthood!

February 5, 2004

Russell Banks. The Sweet Hereafter

A brilliant and powerful novel from the critically acclaimed author of Continental Drift that explores a small town's response to the inexplicable loss of its children in a school bus accident.

January 23, 2004

Wallace Stegner. Angle of Repose

Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. Through the prism of one family, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel illuminates the American present against the fascinating background of its past.

January 9, 2004

Ann Patchett. Bel Canto

A novel that is as lyrical and profound as it is unforgettable, "Bel Canto" engenders in the reader the very passion for art and the language of music that its characters discover. A virtuoso performance by an important writer.

December 19, 2003
Tracy Chevalier. Girl with a Pearl Earring

With the precision and focus of an Old Master's painting, "Girl with a Pearl Earring" paints a vivid portrait of colorful 17th-century Delft, as well as the hauntingly poignant story of one young girl's rite of passage.

December 5, 2003

Louis Zamperini with David Rensin. Devil at My Heels

A juvenile delinquent, a world-class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a World War II bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a life fuller than most when it changed in an instant. On May 27, 1943, his B-24 crashed in the Pacific. Drifting for 47 days, he and his companions survived on rainwater and scarce food.  They spotted land and were captured by the Japanese, beginning two years of torture.  Freedom brought short lived celebration as Zamperini couldn't get his torturers out of his head.  Only the love of his wife, faith, and time brought an end to his nightmares and drinking.

November 21, 2003

Philip Gulley. Home to Harmony

In the fictional small town of Harmony, Indiana, Sam Gardner becomes the pastor of his hometown church, Harmony Friends Meeting. In this delightful, first-person book, Sam describes in a warm, down-home style the moving and humorous adventures he encounters his first year home to Harmony.

November 7, 2003

Karen Hesse. Out of the Dust

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

October 24, 2003

Sue Monk Kidd. The Secret Life of Bees

During the summer of 1964 in rural South Carolina, a young girl is given a home by three black, beekeeping sisters. As she enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, she discovers a place where she can find the single thing her heart longs for most.

October 10, 2003

Oswald Wynd. The Ginger Tree

This bittersweet story of love and betrayal set in the Far East will be a Masterpiece Theatre miniseries airing in October. In 1903 a 20-year-old Scots girl sails to China to marry a British attache, but soon horrifies the British community by having an affair with a young Japanese count.

September 26, 2003
Amy Tan. The Bonesetter's Daughter

This is the story of LuLing Young, who searches for the name of her mother, the daughter of the famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain. The story conjures the pain of broken dreams, the power of myths, and the strength of love that enables us to recover in memory what we have lost in grief.

September 12, 2003
Thaddeus Carhart. The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier

This intimate and idiosyncratic history of the piano and a view into the secret heart of Paris life is written by an American expatriate, who details his attempts to gain entry into a piano shop where locals gathered to discuss music, love, and life.

August 29, 2003
Jonathan Harr. A Civil Action

When a young lawyer named Jan Schlichtmann initiates a civil suit against two of the nation's largest corporations who stand accused of the deaths of children in a Massachusetts suburb, he finds himself locked in an epic struggle that costs him his home, his reputation, and very nearly his sanity

August 15, 2003
Kent Haruf. Plainsong

In an eastern Colorado town, a teacher gets several damaged families to interact and care for one another.

August 01, 2003

Ann Patchett. The Patron Saint of Liars

Sadness, passion, faith, and laughter fill a home for unwed mothers. Set at St. Elizabeth's in Habit, Kentucky, this is the story of Rose, an obstinate, complex young woman fleeing her first marriage who seeks temporary sanctuary but instead finds a permanent place among the nuns when she decides to keep her child and marry the groundskeeper.

July 18, 2003

Mary Doria Russell. The Sparrow

Father Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit linguist whose messianic virtues hide his occasional doubt about his calling. The mystery is the climactic turn of events that has left him the sole survivor of a secret Jesuit expedition to the planet Rakhat and, upon his return, made him a disgrace to his faith.

July 3, 2003

Ian McEwan. Atonement

In this rich novel by the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel "Amsterdam, " a young girl unwittingly tells a tale that turns her family upside down. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, "Atonement" is at its center a profound--and profoundly moving--exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.

June 20, 2003

Zadie Smith. White Teeth

A spectacular, riotously entertaining epic set in post-World War II London, "White Teeth" tells the story of two families, whose hilarious and tortured lives capture all the optimism and absurdity of the past half-century.

June 6, 2003

Sena Jeter Naslund. Ahab's Wife: or, the Star-Gazer

Inspired by a brief passage in Moby-Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created an entirely new universe--a vast, enthralling, and compellingly readable saga, spanning a full, rich, eventful, and dramatic life.