Prepub Alert

By Barbara Hoffert -- Library Journal, 09/01/2005

Fiction | Nonfiction

Auster, Paul. The Brooklyn Follies. Holt. Jan. 2006. 320p. ISBN 0-8050-7714-6. $24. The dying Nathan Glass rediscovers a long-lost nephew, whose megawatt boss introduces him to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York."

Barnes, Julian. Arthur & George. Knopf. Jan. 2006. 384p. ISBN 0-307-26310-X. $24.95. George grows up a poor vicar's son and eventually crosses paths with Arthur, who grows up to create Sherlock Holmes. With a 100,000-copy first printing and a ten-city tour.

Brown, Peter C. The Fugitive Wife. Norton. Jan. 2006. 400p. ISBN 0-393-06110-8. $24.95. In 1900, Nome, AK, looks a whole lot better to adventurous Essie than the Midwest—but what if her husband comes after her? A promising debut.

Davenport, Kiana. House of Many Gods. Ballantine. Jan. 2006. 352p. ISBN 0-345-48150-X. $24.95. While bandaging up the injured after a Hawaiian hurricane, physician Ana finds healing of a different sort with Russian documentary filmmaker Niki.

Dean, Louise. Becoming Strangers. Harcourt. Jan. 2006. 320p. ISBN 0-15-101174-5 [ISBN 978-0-15-101174-2]. $23. Everyone learns something when long-married Dorothy and George meet the younger, fracturing couple Jan and Annemieke at a Caribbean resort. A Betty Trask Award winner.

Essex, Karen. Leonardo's Swans. Doubleday. Jan. 2006. 352p. ISBN 0-385-51706-8. $21.95; lrg. prnt. Random. ISBN 0-7393-2578-7. $23.95. CD: Random Audio. Stunning Isabella isn't happy when innocent sister Beatrice marries the future duke of Milan and they end up competing as leading ladies of the realm. The immortal Leonardo captures it all on canvas.

Fairstein, Linda. Death Dance. Scribner. Jan. 2006. 416p. ISBN 0-7432-5489-9. $26. Cassette/CD: S. & S. Audio. A famed ballerina's disappearing act—mid-performance, no less, at the glittering Metropolitan Opera House—puts Fairstein stalwart Alex Cooper on a new case. With a 12-city tour.

Frey, Stephen. The Protégé. Ballantine. Jan. 2006. 320p. ISBN 0-345-48058-9. $24.95. Tough but vulnerable, equity honcho Christian Gillette caves in to an enigmatic government request so that he can secure new information about his father's death. He wasn't expecting an attempt on his own life.

Gibbons, Kaye. The Life All Around Me. Harcourt. Jan. 2006. 224p. ISBN 0-15-101204-0 [ISBN 978-0-15-101204-6]. $23. Brought back from Gibbons's much-celebrated first novel, Ellen Foster has a new home and lots of teenage angst.

Godwin, Gail. Queen of the Underworld. Random. Jan. 2006. 352p. ISBN 0-345-48318-9. $24.95. Ambitious Emma Gant launches her career at the Miami Star just as refugees from Castro's Cuba flood the city. With a six-city tour.

Griffin, W.E.B. The Hostage. Putnam. Jan. 2006. 480p. ISBN 0-399-15314-4. $26.95. Cassette/CD: Penguin Audio. Charley Castillo, the Department of Homeland Security agent who got his start in last year's By Order of the President, must solve the kidnapping of a diplomat's wife.

Horn, Dara. The World To Come. Norton. Jan. 2006. 320p. ISBN 0-393-05107-2. $24.95. Following up her multi-award-winning In the Image, Horn toots a complex story of thirtyish quiz-show writer Benjamin Ziskind's theft of a Chagall painting—and the artist's struggle with issues of truth and representation.

Johansen, Iris. On the Run. Bantam. Jan. 2006. 352p. ISBN 0-553-80343-3. $24.95; lrg. prnt. Random. ISBN 0-7393-2594-9. $28. Cassette/CD: Random Audio. Living on a horse farm with her daughter in idyllic Tallanville, TN, Grace tries to escape her past—but no such luck.

Krentz, Jayne Ann. All Night Long. Putnam. Jan. 2006. 400p. ISBN 0-399-15305-5. $24.95. To help former friend Pamela, Irene has returned to her hometown, where as a teenager she stumbled upon the bodies of her parents—evidently victims of a murder-suicide. Any connection to Pamela's sudden death?

Pérez-Reverte, Arturo. Purity of Blood: Book Two of the Adventures of Captain Alatriste. Putnam. Jan. 2006. 320p. ISBN 0-399-15320-9. $23.95. Cassette/CD: Penguin Audio. After the darkly engaging Captain Alatriste, our eponymous hero returns to rescue a girl from a convent.

Robb, J.D. Memory in Death. Putnam. Jan. 2006. 352p. ISBN 0-399-15328-4. $24.95. Lt. Eve Dallas is back, once more juggling the professional and the personal.

Santos, Marisa de los. Love Walked In. Dutton. Jan. 2006. 320p. ISBN 0-525-94917-8. $23.95. It's just like a movie—a romance starts when gorgeous Martin Grace walks into Cornelia's café. And the real movie will star Sarah Jessica Parker.

Waldman, Ayelet. Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. Doubleday. Jan. 2006. 336p. ISBN 0-385-51530-8. $23.95. CD: Random Audio. High-powered lawyer Emilia can't handle her young stepson—especially when her own infant dies. With a national tour.

Willig, Lauren. The Masque of the Black Tulip. Dutton. Jan. 2006. 384p. ISBN 0-525-94920-8. $24.95. CD: Penguin Audio. The Pink Carnation, the Napoleonic-era English spy featured in Willig's best-selling debut, The Secret of the Pink Car nation, goes up against a deadly French spy—the Black Tulip.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Norton. (Issues of Our Time). Jan. 2006. 256p. ISBN 0-393-06155-8. $24.95. Ghana born, Cambridge educated, and now a philosophy professor at Princeton, Appiah argues that we really need the ancient tradition of cosmopolitanism, which he traces from the fourth-century B.C.E. Cynics through Kant to today. The opener of Norton's new "Issues of Our Time" series.

Atwood, Margaret. The Tent. Nan Talese: Doubleday. Jan. 2006. 176p. ISBN 0-385-51668-1. $18. "Bring Back Mom"; "The Animals Reject Their Names." Just two treats in this fiction/essays combo from the inimitable Atwood.

Bianco, Anthony. The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices Is Hurting America. Currency: Doubleday. Jan. 2006. 304p. ISBN 0-385-51356-9. $24.95. BusinessWeek senior writer Bianco shows how Wal-Mart hurts not just its workers—whose low wages and high turnover are legendary—but American society.

Blaise, Capt. Kate with Dana White. The Heart of a Soldier: A True Story of Love, War, and Sacrifice. Gotham: Penguin Group USA. Jan. 2006. 352p. ISBN 1-59240-177-5. $25. CD: Penguin Audio. Small-town Missourians Mike and Kate fall in love, join the army, and get sent to Iraq, where Mike gets killed. Billed as My Sergei in combat boots, but it seems like more.

Carter, Bill. Desperate Networks. Doubleday. Jan. 2006. 304p. ISBN 0-385-51440-9. $26. Behind the TV scenes with New York Times reporter Carter.

Carwardine, Richard. Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power. Knopf. Jan. 2006. 384p. ISBN 1-4000-4456-1. $27.50. Not the first Lincoln bio, but the first time a British scholar (the Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford) has won the prestigious Lincoln Prize. With a six-city tour.

Fox, Cynthia. Cell of Cells: The Global Race To Capture and Control the Stem Cell. Norton. Jan. 2006. 288p. ISBN 0-393-05877-8. $24.95. That's stem cells, of course; a global view from an award-winning science writer.

Gilbert, Sandra M. Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve—A Cultural Study. Norton. Jan. 2006. 576p. ISBN 0-393-05131-5. $29.95. Do humans die differently now than they did a century ago? And do they die differently in Asia than in Africa or America? Reflections from a celebrated poet/critic.

Godwin, Gail. The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961–1963. Random. Jan. 2006. 336p. ISBN 1-4000-6432-5. $25.95. Godwin pairs her new novel, Queen of the Underworld (see preview, p. 114), with journals showing her early development as a writer.

Lévy, Bernard-Henri. American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville. Random. Jan. 2006. 272p. ISBN 1-4000-6434-1. $24.95. French philosopher/activist Lévy treads where his famed compatriot once trod, gauging the success of America's experiment in democracy.

McWhorter, John. Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America. Gotham: Penguin Group USA. Jan. 2006. 352p. ISBN 1-59240-188-0. $27.50. After Losing the Race, an idea for winning: African Americans must drop alienation as an identity, an attitude that is hurting them more than racism itself. With a national tour.

Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan. Eating, Drinking, Overthinking: The Toxic Triangle of Food, Alcohol, and Depression—and How Women Can Break Free. Putnam. Jan. 2006. 304p. ISBN 0-8050-7710-3. $24. Women suffer from overthinking, argues this Yale psychology professor, dwelling on the problem instead of the solution and then eating and drinking too much in response.

Perle, Liz. Money, a Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash. Holt. Jan. 2006. 288p. ISBN 0-8050-7712-X. $23. One thing women don't think about enough is money—and Perle (When Work Doesn't Work Anymore) draws on personal experience to prove it.

Tannen, Deborah. You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. Random. Jan. 2006. 304p. ISBN 1-4000-6258-6. $25.95. The conversation expert addresses a relationship where the talk can really get tough. With a five-city tour.

Tayman, John. The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai. Lisa Drew Bk: Scribner. Jan. 2006. 432p. ISBN 0-7432-3300-X. $27.50. Founded in 1866 on a rugged Hawaiian island with the steepest cliffs imaginable, the colony of Molokai was America's one and only leper colony. With a four-city tour.

Vollmann, William T. Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Atlas: Norton. (Great Discoveries). Jan. 2006. 240p. ISBN 0-393-05969-3. $22.95. A revolutionary novelist on a revolutionary astronomer.