Hardcover Fiction

by Stephen King · Scribner

by Nicholas Evans · Delacorte Press

by Tom Clancy · Putnam

by Wally Lamb · Regan Books/HarperCollins

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

by Sidney Sheldon · Morrow

Sidney Sheldon returns with a tale of two equally determined people headed on a collision course. One the governor of a small southern state, Oliver Russell is a man with a strategy to win the White House. The other is the beautiful and ambitious Leslie Stewart, a woman intent on seeing him lose everything. Soon they will both discover that even the best laid plans can go dangerously astray--with deadly consequences. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

by Arthur Golden · Knopf

by Dick Francis · Putnam

by Judy Blume · Delacorte Press

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • “Summer Sisters is a book to return to again and again.”—Colleen Hoover “As warm as a summer breeze blowing through your hair, as nostalgic as James Taylor singing ‘How Sweet It Is.’ You remember. So does Judy Blume. How sweet it was.”—Chicago Tribune In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard’s world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, an enchanting place where the two friends become “summer sisters.” Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin begs Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go—because she wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend—her summer sister—still has the power to break her heart.

by Nicholas Sparks · Warner

In a moment of desolation on a windswept beach, Garrett bottles his words of undying love for a lost woman, and throws them to the sea. My dearest Catherine, I miss you my darling, as I always do, but today is particularly hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together . . . But the bottle is picked up by Theresa, a mother with a shattered past, who feels unaccountably drawn to this lonely man. Who are this couple? What is their story? Beginning a search that will take her to a sunlit coastal town and an unexpected confrontation, it is a tale that resonates with everlasting love and the enduring promise of redemption.

by Richard North Patterson · Knopf

by Tony Hillerman · HarperCollins

by Allan Folsom · Little, Brown

After the phenomenal success of THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, Allan Folsom has created another dazzling thriller of heart-stopping action involving a chillingly credible int'l conspiracy. The Addison brothers, Harry & Danny, have been estranged for many years, but when Danny calls from Rome pleading for Harry to get in touch, his brother doesn't ignore him. Except it seems he is too late, as Danny was on board a tourist bus which was blown apart by a bomb. But when Harry arrives in Italy he is plunged into a Kafka-esque nightmare, discovering that his brother is accused of assassinating the Cardinal Vicar of Rome and when he dares to suggest that Danny is still alive he finds that someone is willing to frame him for murder before he can start to clear Danny's name. Alone and vulnerable in a foreign country, Harry is sucked into the maelstrom of a conspiracy in the heart of the Vatican, where men of God are using the devil's hand to further the influence of the Catholic Church. A tense and absorbing thriller.

by Helen Fielding · Viking Press

by Lorrie Moore · Knopf

A "New York Times" Book of the Year A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Winner of the "Salon "Book Award A "Village Voice "Book of the Year Birds of America""is the celebrated collection of twelve stories from Lorrie Moore, one of the finest authors at work today. " " "Fluid, cracked, mordant, colloquial.... Stand s] by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability." --"The New York Times Book Review " "A marvelous collection.... Her stories are tough, lean, funny, and metaphysical.... Birds of America has about it a wild beauty that simply makes one feel more connected to life." --"The Boston Globe" " " "At once sad, funny, lyrical and prickly, Birds of America attests to the deepening emotional chiaroscuro of her wise and beguiling work." --"The New York Times" "Stunning.... There's really no one like Moore; in a perfect marriage of art form and mind, she has made the short story her own." --"Milwaukee Journal Sentinel " " " "Birds of America stands as a major work of American short fiction.... Absolutely mastered." --"Elle " " " "Wonderful.... These stories impart such terrifying truths." --"Philadelphia Inquirer " " " "Lorrie Moore soars with Birds of America.... A marvelous, fiercely funny book." --"Newsweek" " " "Fifty years from now, it may well turn out that the work of very few American writers has as much to say about what it means to be alive in our time as that of Lorrie Moore." --"Harper's Magazine"