Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
by
William Shakespeare
Simon & Schuster, 01/01/2004
In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers' final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play ...
more
Romance
Those Who Save Us
by
Jenna Blum
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 01/01/2004
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her ...
more
Historical Fiction
Dark Matter: Reading the Bones
by
Sheree R. Thomas
Aspect, 01/02/2004
A second diverse anthology of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction by an array of African-American authors includes both original works ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Literary Fiction
Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer
by
Lynne Cox
Knopf, 01/13/2004
In this extraordinary book, the world’s most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and about the ...
more
Blood Hollow (Cork O'connor)
by
William Kent Krueger
Atria Books, 02/03/2004
When the body of a beautiful high school student is discovered on a hillside four months after her disappearance on New Year's Eve, all evidence ...
more
Mysteries
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
by
ZZ Packer
Riverhead Books, 02/03/2004
Published simultaneously in hardcover & paperback. A remarkable debut short-story collection by a fresh and captivating new voice in American ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
The Queen's Fool
by
Philippa Gregory
Atria Books, 02/04/2004
Winter, 1553. Pursued by the Inquisition, Hannah Green, a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl, is forced to flee with her father from their home in Spain. ...
more
Historical Fiction
The Coming of the Third Reich
by
Richard J. Evans
Penguin Press, 02/09/2004
There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand than Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book)
by
Robert Hough
Grove Press, 02/19/2004
In the 1910s and '20s, during the golden age of the big top, Mabel Stark was the superstar of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, and one ...
more
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
by
Steve Coll
Penguin, 02/23/2004
To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Against Nature (A Rebours) (Penguin Classics)
by
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Penguin Books, 02/24/2004
A wildly original fin-de-siècle novel,
Against Nature contains only one character. Des Esseintes is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to...
more
Literary Fiction
Al Capone Does My Shirts
by
Gennifer Choldenko
Penguin Young Readers Group, 03/01/2004
Moose Flannagan moves with his family to Alcatraz so his dad can work as a prison guard and his sister, Natalie, can attend a special school. But ...
more
What I Loved: A Novel
by
Siri Hustvedt
Picador, 03/01/2004
He buys the work; tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler; and the two men embark on a life-long friendship. Leo's story, which spans twenty-five years,...
more
Literary Fiction
American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans
by
Eve LaPlante
HarperOne, 03/02/2004
In a time when women could not vote, hold public office, or teach outside the home, the charismatic Hutchinson wielded remarkable political power. Her...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Doctored Evidence: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries, 13)
by
Donna Leon
Atlantic Monthly Press, 03/03/2004
But when it becomes clear the maid could not have had time to kill the old woman before catching her train, Guido Brunetti decides—unofficially&...
more
Mysteries
Aloft
by
Chang-rae Lee
Riverhead Books, 03/08/2004
Battle's favorite diversion is to fly his small plane solo; slipping away for quick flights over the Island or to the coastal towns of New England, ...
more
Literary Fiction
Codex
by
Lev Grossman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 03/08/2004
About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hot-shot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Season for the Dead
by
David Hewson
Delacorte Press, 03/30/2004
In a hushed Vatican reading room, the scene was shocking: a crazed professor shot dead after brandishing evidence of a grisly crime. Moments later, ...
more
Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America (Nation of Nations, 25)
by
Ji-Yeon Yuh
New York University Press, 04/01/2004
Since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, nearly 100,000 Korean women have immigrated to the United States as the wives of American soldiers. ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton
by
Patricia O'Brien
Touchstone, 04/01/2004
From childhood, Susan Gray and her cousin Louisa May Alcott have shared a safe, insular world of outdoor adventures and grand amateur theater -- a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Literary Fiction
The Devil's Highway: A True Story
by
Luis Alberto Urrea
Little Brown & Company, 04/02/2004
In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Westing Game (Puffin Modern Classics)
by
Ellen Raskin
Penguin Books, 04/12/2004
A highly inventive mystery begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of the very strange will of the very rich Samuel W. Westing. ...
more
Mysteries
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation
by
Cokie Roberts
Harper, 04/13/2004
Her second bestseller,
From This Day Forward, written with her husband, Steve Roberts, described American marriages throughout history, including the ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
by
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Knopf, 04/13/2004
Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes - as many as 20 ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel
by
Gayle Brandeis
Harper Perennial, 04/22/2004
Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now in her twenties, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Alexander Hamilton
by
Ron Chernow
Penguin Press, 04/26/2004
Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow's biography gives Hamilton...
more
Biography/Memoir
An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain
by
Diane Ackerman
Scribner, 05/01/2004
Does the mind reflect or dictate what the body sees and feels? What is the language of emotion? Is memory a function of our imaginations? Are we all ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Anna Karenina
by
Leo Tolstoy
Penguin Classics, 05/01/2004
Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly ...
more
Literary Fiction
Can You Keep a Secret?
by
Sophie Kinsella
The Dial Press, 05/01/2004
Secrets from her mother:
I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur. Sammy the...
more
Romance
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Atrocity Archives
by
Charles Stross
Golden Gryphon Press, 05/01/2004
Charles Stross takes a departure from his epic science fiction to craft this cross between Len Deighton—style espionage and H.P. Lovecraftian ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Reformation: A History
by
Diarmaid MacCulloch
Viking, 05/03/2004
The Reformation and Counter-Reformation represented the greatest upheaval in Western society since the collapse of the Roman Empire a millennium ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Sarah: A Novel (The Canaan Trilogy, Book 1)
by
Marek Halter
Crown, 05/04/2004
The story of Sarah--and of history itself--begins in the cradle of civilization: the Sumerian city-state of Ur, a land of desert heat, towering ...
more
Historical Fiction
The Master
by
Colm Toibin
Scribner, 05/25/2004
Like Michael Cunningham in
The Hours, Colm Tóibín captures the extraordinary mind and heart of a great writer. Brilliant and profoundly ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Photograph
by
Penelope Lively
Penguin Books, 05/25/2004
Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, many years ...
more
Literary Fiction
Madame
by
Antoni Libera
Canongate Books, 05/26/2004
Madame tells the story of a charmingly self-absorbed teenager as he pursues sexual and intellectual maturity—and the woman of his dreams—in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath
by
Jeanine Cummins
Berkley Books, 06/01/2004
A Rip in Heaven is Jeanine Cummins' story of a night in April, 1991, when her two cousins Julie and Robin Kerry, and her brother, Tom, were assaulted ...
more
True Crime
Gardens Of The Moon
by
Steven Erikson
Tor Books, 06/01/2004
The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Godless
by
Pete Hautman
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 06/01/2004
Fed up with his parents' boring old religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god — the town's water tower. He recruits an ...
more
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
by
Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon Books, 06/01/2004
In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the coming-of-age story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Three Wishes
by
Liane Moriarty
Harper, 06/01/2004
Lyn, Cat, and Gemma Kettle, beautiful thirty-three-year-old triplets, seem to attract attention everywhere they go. Together, laughter, drama, and ...
more
Romance
How to Be Lovely
by
Melissa Hellstern
Dutton, 06/03/2004
On many occasions, Audrey Hepburn was approached to pen her autobiography, the definitive book of Audrey, yet she never agreed. A beloved icon who ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Sula
by
Toni Morrison
Vintage, 06/08/2004
Masterful, richly textured, bittersweet, and vital,
Sula is a modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from ...
more
Literary Fiction
Natasha: And Other Stories
by
David Bezmozgis
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/09/2004
Few readers had heard of David Bezmozgis before last May, when
Harper's, Zoetrope, and
The New Yorker all printed stories from his forthcoming ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings (Today Show Book Club #25)
by
Christopher Moore
HarperCollins Publishers, 06/15/2004
And Nate's spent most of his adult life working to solve it. You see, although everybody (well, almost everybody) knows that humpback whales sing (...
more
Literary Fiction
The Doctor's Wife
by
Elizabeth Brundage
Viking, 06/17/2004
"
The memory starts here, in my apron pocket, with the gun."
Lydia Haas is devoted to Jesus, her church, and her husband. Only recently, after it's ...
more
Thrillers
A Stir of Echoes
by
Richard Matheson
Tor Books, 07/01/2004
Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now he's hearing the private thoughts ...
more
Thrillers
Shoot the Moon
by
Billie Letts
Warner Books Inc., 07/01/2004
In 1972, windswept DeClare, Oklahoma, was consumed by the murder of a young mother, Gaylene Harjo, and the disappearance of her baby, Nicky Jack. When...
more
Mysteries
Maisie Dobbs
by
Jacqueline Winspear
Penguin Books, 07/05/2004
Young, feisty Maisie Dobbs has recently set herself up as a private detective. Such a move may not seem especially startling. But this is 1929, and ...
more
Skinny Dip
by
Carl Hiaasen
Knopf, 07/13/2004
Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went ...
more
Thrillers
The Truth About Celia
by
Kevin Brockmeier
Vintage, 07/13/2004
While playing alone in her backyard one afternoon, seven-year-old Celia suddenly disappears while her father Christopher is inside giving a tour of ...
more
March Violets
by
Philip Kerr
Penguin Books, 07/27/2004
Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer," Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries that are ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
The Aleph and Other Stories
by
Jorge Luis Borges
Penguin Classics, 07/27/2004
With uncanny insight, Jorge Luis Borges takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians,...
more
Short Stories
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by
Barack Obama
Crown, 08/10/2004
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
by
Kevin Boyle
Henry Holt and Company, 08/12/2004
In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cloud Atlas: A Novel
by
David Mitchell
Random House, 08/17/2004
A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye ...
more
The Romanov Prophecy
by
Steve Berry
Ballantine Books, 08/31/2004
Ekaterinburg, Russia: July 16, 1918. Ten months have passed since Nicholas II's reign was cut short by revolutionaries. Tonight, the White Army ...
more
Thrillers
Where I Was From: A Memoir
by
Joan Didion
Knopf, 09/14/2004
Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to California's ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic's often tenuous ...
more
Biography/Memoir
About Grace: A Novel
by
Anthony Doerr
Scribner, 09/21/2004
David Winkler begins life in Anchorage, Alaska, a quiet boy drawn to the volatility of weather and obsessed with snow. Sometimes he sees things before...
more
Literary Fiction
Shopaholic & Sister (Shopaholic Series, 4)
by
Sophie Kinsella
The Dial Press, 09/28/2004
Now Becky's back in a hilarious, heartwarming tale of married life, best friends, and long-lost sisters (and the perils of simply having to own an ...
more
Romance
Any Place I Hang My Hat
by
Susan Isaacs
Scribner, 10/05/2004
Her mother abandoned her when she was ten months old (just a couple of months after Amy's father went off to serve his first prison term), leaving her...
more
Romance
Shantaram: A Novel
by
Gregory David Roberts
St. Martin's Press, 10/13/2004
An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. ...
more
Historical Fiction
Case Histories: A Novel (Jackson Brodie, 1)
by
Kate Atkinson
Back Bay Books, 11/09/2004
Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night.
Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.
...
more
Literary Fiction
De Kooning: An American Master
by
Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan
Knopf, 11/09/2004
The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making,...
more
The Final Solution: A Story of Detection
by
Michael Chabon
Harper, 11/09/2004
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year old man, vaguely recollected by the locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned ...
more
Literary Fiction
A Tale Of Love And Darkness
by
Amos Oz
Mariner Books, 11/15/2004
A family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. A Tale of Love and ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Historical Fiction
The Coroner's Lunch
by
Colin Cotterill
Soho Press, 12/01/2004
Laos, 1972. The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over this former French colony. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr. Siri Paiboun, a Paris-...
more
David Copperfield (Penguin Classics)
by
Charles Dickens
Penguin Classics, 12/28/2004
Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his brilliant, but ultimately unworthy school...
more
Literary Fiction
