Hardcover Fiction

by Robert Jordan · Tor/Doherty

by Anne Rice · Knopf

Armand, the nubile Venetian, the living, breathing remnant of the high Renaissance, narrates his own story here, and his world-weary perspective is a subdued contrast to the bombast of Rice's usual hero, the egomaniacal rock star/French fop Lestat. A complicated, sexually ambiguous pretty boy with an evolving but perpetually twisted relationship to Christianity, Armand at times comes across as endearingly muddled as any modern teen. Unfortunately, he can also be just as irritating. He may be 500 years old, but Armand apparently still has neither the depth to passionately probe his religious mysteries with convincing fervor nor the sense of humor to see the ridiculousness of his quests.

by Stephen King · Scribner

by Mary Higgins Clark · Simon & Schuster

Retired cleaning lady Alvirah Meehan sets out to reunite a mother with a daughter who was stolen as a baby eight years earlier. The mother left her pram outside a church and the pram was taken by a church thief to hide his loot.

by Barbara Kingsolver · Harper Flamingo

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the self-centered, teenaged Rachel; shrewd adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility. Dancing between the dark comedy of human failings and the breathtaking possibilities of human hope, The Poisonwood Bible possesses all that has distinguished Barbara Kingsolver's previous work, and extends this beloved writer's vision to an entirely new level. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel establishes Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.

by James Patterson · Little, Brown

by Ken Follett · Crown

by Tom Clancy · Putnam

by Fannie Flagg · Random House

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is the funny, serious, and compelling new novel by Fannie Flagg, author of the beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (and prize-winning co-writer of the classic movie). Once again, Flagg's humor and respect and affection for her characters shine forth. Many inhabit small-town or suburban America. But this time, her heroine is urban: a brainy, beautiful, and ambitious rising star of 1970s television. Dena Nordstrom, pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise, her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery.

by Arthur Golden · Knopf

by Patrick O'Brian · Norton

"One of the best novelists since Jane Austen…The Hundred Days may be the best installment yet." —Philadelphia Inquirer Napoleon, escaped from Elba, pursues his enemies across Europe like a vengeful phoenix. If he can corner the British and Prussians before their Russian and Austrian allies arrive, his genius will lead the French armies to triumph at Waterloo. In the Balkans, preparing a thrust northwards into Central Europe to block the Russians and Austrians, a horde of Muslim mercenaries is gathering. They are inclined toward Napoleon because of his conversion to Islam during the Egyptian campaign, but they will not move without a shipment of gold ingots from Sheik Ibn Hazm which, according to British intelligence, is on its way via camel caravan to the coast of North Africa. It is this gold that Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin must at all costs intercept. The fate of Europe hinges on their desperate mission.

by Nicholas Evans · Delacorte Press

by Johanna Lindsey · Avon

In 1882, New York socialite Sharisse Hammond meekly accepts her father's order to marry Joel Parrington ... until she discovers that Joel and her younger sister are deeply in love. The only way for Sharisse to avoid a disastrous marriage, and her father's wrath, is to leave town for a while, posing as a mail-order bride, keeping her identity a secret. Of course, she has no intention of marrying roughbred Arizona rancher Lucas Holt, and she's certain he could never want a pampered society woman. Sharisse feels lucky that Lucas is willing to delay the marriage, but she isn't prepared for the way his kisses send her blood racing. Luke is charming and gentle most times, but frightening, cold, even cruel sometimes ... like his twin brother, Slade, who has more than once almost had his way with her. How can her body betray her so easily? How can it delight in such two very different men. Sharisse is terrified that Luke will discover who she really is, and that she's using him to bide time. She has yet to learn that Luke has his own dark secrets to hide, has no intention of ever marrying her.. and has been watching her every move with Slade.

by Richard Paul Evans · Simon & Schuster

The love story of David and MaryAnne Parkin and the storms that their relationship must face when the blissful state of romance vanishes into real-life challenges and difficulties.

by Jamie Lee Curtis. Illustrated by Laura Cornell · Cotler/HarperCollins