Come Closer: A Novel
by
Sara Gran
Soho Press, 01/01/2003
She Will Never Be Lonely Again ... Amanda is happily married to Ed, works as an architect, and likes her life. But disturbances begin to upset her. ...
more
Thrillers
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Of Mice and Men
by
John Steinbeck
Pearson Schools, 01/01/2003
"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place ...With us it ain't like that...
more
Historical Fiction
Oryx and Crake
by
Margaret Atwood
Vintage, 01/01/2003
Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The House Above the Trees
by
Ethel Cook Eliot
Raven Rocks Press, 01/01/2003
A wonderful fantasy written by Ethel Cook Eliot, first published in 1921.
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Palestine
by
Joe Sacco
Jonathan Cape, 01/02/2003
Upon returning to the United States he started writing and drawing
Palestine, which combines the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Kindred
by
Octavia E. Butler
Beacon Press, 01/03/2003
"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."
Dana's torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Historical Fiction
Country of Cold: Stories of Sex and Death
by
Kevin Patterson
Nan A. Talese, 01/23/2003
Graduating from high school in a small Canadian town, you are immediately faced with two stark choices: leave or stay.
Country of Cold follows the ...
more
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar
by
Robert Alexander
Viking, 01/27/2003
Now an ancient Russian immigrant, Leonka claims to be the last living witness to the Romanovs' brutal murders and sets down the dark secrets of his ...
more
Historical Fiction
Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
by
Robert Kagan
Knopf, 01/28/2003
From a leading scholar of our country's foreign policy, the brilliant essay about America and the world that has caused a storm in international ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
by
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Scribner, 01/28/2003
With an immediacy made possible only after ten years of reporting, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses the reader in the mind-boggling intricacies of the ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Mrs. Kimble: A Novel
by
Jennifer Haigh
William Morrow, 02/01/2003
A chameleon, an enigma, all things to all women -- a lifeline to which powerful needs and nameless longings may be attached -- Ken Kimble is revealed ...
more
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by
Oscar Wilde
Penguin Classics, 02/04/2003
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the ...
more
Literary Fiction
Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
by
Carlos Eire
Free Press, 02/05/2003
Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos's youth -- with its lizards and turquoise seas ...
more
Clara: A Novel
by
Janice Galloway
Simon & Schuster, 02/11/2003
In her lifetime, Clara was a celebrated concert pianist and composer, editor and teacher, friend of Brahms — as well as mother of the eight ...
more
Historical Fiction
Property: A Novel
by
Valerie Martin
Nan A. Talese, 02/18/2003
Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion,
Property takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a ...
more
Dream of the Blue Room: A Novel
by
Michelle Richmond
Bantam Books, 02/19/2003
Jenny and Amanda Ruth were best friends in a small Alabama town until eighteen-years-old Amanda Ruth was murdered. Now, fourteen years later, Jenny ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
by
Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
Penguin Books, 02/25/2003
Don Quixote has become so entranced reading tales of chivalry that he decides to turn knight errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, ...
more
Literary Fiction
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
by
William Taubman
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/01/2003
The definitive biography of the mercurial Soviet leader who succeeded and denounced Stalin. Nikita Khrushchev was one of the most complex and ...
more
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons
by
Lorna Landvik
Ballantine Books, 03/04/2003
Now she returns to her beloved, eccentric stomping ground of small-town Minnesota where the most eclectic, and engaging group of women you'll ever ...
more
Literary Fiction
At Swim, Two Boys: A Novel (Award-Winning Fiction)
by
Jamie O'Neill
Scribner, 03/04/2003
Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and ...
more
Literary Fiction
All Over Creation
by
Ruth Ozeki
Viking, 03/10/2003
Yumi Fuller hasn't set foot in her hometown of Liberty Falls, Idaho—heart of the potato-farming industry—since she ran away at age fifteen...
more
Literary Fiction
Caramelo (Today Show Book Club #9)
by
Sandra Cisneros
Knopf, 03/10/2003
Lala Reyes' grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl, makers. The striped caramelo rebozo is the most beautiful of all, and...
more
Literary Fiction
Literary Fiction
Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy
by
Paul Hendrickson
Knopf, 03/18/2003
"Sons of Mississippi recounts the story of seven white Mississippi lawmen depicted in a horrifically telling 1962 Life magazine photograph - and of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Ballad of Sir Dinadan: The Squire's Tales #5
by
Gerald Morris
Houghton Mifflin Books For Children, 03/24/2003
Young Dinadan has no wish to joust or quest or save damsels in distress or do any of the knightly things expected of him. He"d rather be a minstrel, ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry
by
Billy Collins (editor)
Random House, 03/25/2003
A dazzling new anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced
by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.
Inspired by Billy ...
more
Short Stories
A Fountain Filled with Blood: A Mystery
by
Julia Spencer-Fleming
Minotaur Books, 04/01/2003
But the Episcopal priest and former Army Air Force chopper pilot proved to her flock and to police chief Russ Van Alstyne that she could cope with the...
more
Mysteries
The Dogs of Riga
by
Henning Mankell
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 04/01/2003
On the Swedish coastline, two bodies, victims of grisly torture and cold execution, are discovered in a life raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and ...
more
Thrillers
I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story
by
Glen Duncan
Grove Press, 04/02/2003
It's the ultimate case of trying without buying and, despite the limitations of the human body in question (previous owner one suicidally unsuccessful...
more
Literary Fiction
Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife
by
Peggy Vincent
Scribner, 04/15/2003
Each time she knelt to "catch" another wriggling baby—nearly three thousand times during her remarkable career—California midwife Peggy ...
more
Biography/Memoir
Between Sisters
by
Kristin Hannah
Ballantine Books, 04/15/2003
Now, Meghann is a hotshot divorce attorney who doesn't believe in intimacy–until she meets the one man who can change her mind.
Claire ...
more
Literary Fiction
Second Helpings: A Jessica Darling novel
by
Megan McCafferty
Three Rivers, 04/22/2003
Paperback Original.
"Knowing that I've just done something that will take decades off my parents' lives with worry, you'll excuse me for not ...
more
Dissolution
by
C. J. Sansom
Viking, 04/28/2003
The year is 1537, and the country is divided between those faithful to the Catholic Church and those loyal to the king and the newly established ...
more
Historical Fiction
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Literary Fiction
Gulag: A History
by
Anne Applebaum
Doubleday, 04/29/2003
The Gulag--a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners--was a system of repression and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Haunted Ground: A Novel
by
Erin Hart
Scribner, 04/29/2003
When farmers cutting turf in an Irish peat bog make a grisly discovery—the perfectly preserved head of a young woman with long red hair—...
more
Thrillers
Debut Author
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
by
Chris Ware
Pantheon Books, 04/29/2003
An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands ...
more
Graphic Novels
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
by
Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon Books, 04/29/2003
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
Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)
by
Jane Austen
Penguin Books, 04/29/2003
Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister ...
more
Literary Fiction
Meditations
by
Marcus Aurelius
Modern Library, 05/06/2003
Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It's all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature,...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
by
Jennet Conant
Simon & Schuster, 05/06/2003
Legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the twentieth century -- ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Canning Season
by
Polly Horvath
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/07/2003
One night out of the blue, Ratchet Clark’s ill-natured mother tells her that Ratchet will be leaving their Pensacola apartment momentarily to ...
more
Storied City: A Children's Book Walking-Tour Guide to New York City
by
Leonard M. Marcus
Dutton Juvenile, 05/12/2003
In this handy-size book, renowned critic and historian (and New Yorker) Leonard S. Marcus has created and narrated twenty walking tours of New York ...
more
Literary Fiction
Cranford
by
Elizabeth Gaskell
Dover Publications, 05/15/2003
Author Elizabeth Gaskell situated her stories in a hamlet very like the one in which she grew up, and her affectionate but unsentimental portraits of ...
more
Historical Fiction
Dragon Bones: A Novel
by
Lisa See
Random House, 05/20/2003
As Hulan scrutinizes this death—or is it a murder?—David, on behalf of the National Relics Bureau, tries to discover who has stolen from ...
more
Mysteries
My Lover's Lover
by
Maggie O'Farrell
Viking, 05/22/2003
When Lily slips on the sidewalk outside a London gallery and literally falls at the feet of a stranger, Marcus, the attraction is instant and electric...
more
Literary Fiction
Summer People: A Novel
by
Elin Hilderbrand
St. Martin's Press, 05/30/2003
When Arch Newton, a prominent New York attorney, dies in a plane crash on his way home from a business trip, his beautiful widow, Beth, can barely ...
more
Romance
East of Eden (Oprah's Book Club)
by
John Steinbeck
Viking, 06/01/2003
In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called
East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth....
more
Literary Fiction
First Degree
by
David Rosenfelt
Mysterious Press, 06/01/2003
When a cop's body is found burned and decapitated, the last thing Andy expects is for a stranger to waltz into his office and admit to the crime. For ...
more
Mysteries
The First Part Last
by
Angela Johnson
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 06/01/2003
Bobby is your classic urban teenaged boy -- impulsive, eager, restless. On his sixteenth birthday he gets some news from his girlfriend, Nia, that ...
more
Dry: A Memoir
by
Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Press, 06/02/2003
"I was addicted to "Bewitched" as a kid. I worshipped Darren Stevens the First. When he'd come home from work and Samantha would say, 'Darren, would ...
more
Biography/Memoir
The Other Boleyn Girl
by
Philippa Gregory
Scribner, 06/04/2003
When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of the handsome and charming Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, ...
more
Historical Fiction
Evidence of Things Unseen: A Novel
by
Marianne Wiggins
Simon & Schuster, 06/11/2003
Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Virgin Blue: A Novel
by
Tracy Chevalier
Penguin Books, 06/24/2003
When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family ...
more
Historical Fiction
Charleston
by
John Jakes
Dutton, 07/01/2003
Written in three parts, Charleston follows the lives, loves, and shifting fortunes of the Bells, saints and evildoers mingled together in one ...
more
Historical Fiction
Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)
by
William Shakespeare
Simon & Schuster, 07/01/2003
In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne, becoming James I of England. London was alive with an interest in all things Scottish, and ...
more
Literary Fiction
Short Stories
Kartography
by
Kamila Shamsie
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 08/01/2003
Crib mates, raised together from birth, narrator Raheen and her best friend Karim dream each other's dreams, finish each other's sentences, speak in a...
more
Literary Fiction
Death Masks (Dresden Files)
by
Jim Butcher
Ace Books, 08/05/2003
Harry Dresden, Chicago's only practicing professional wizard, should be happy that business is pretty good for a change. But he also knows that ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Practical Magic: 25th Anniversary Edition (The Practical Magic Series)
by
Alice Hoffman
Berkley Books, 08/05/2003
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Amber Room
by
Steve Berry
Ballantine Books, 08/26/2003
Life is good for Atlanta judge Rachel Cutler. She loves her job, loves her kids, and remains civil to her ex-husband, Paul. But everything changes ...
more
Thrillers
Debut Author
Vernon God Little
by
D.B.C. Pierre
Canongate Books, 09/01/2003
When sixteen kids are shot on high school grounds, everyone looks for someone to blame. Meet Vernon Little, under arrest at the sheriff's office, a ...
more
The Furies
by
Fernanda Eberstadt
Knopf, 09/09/2003
Fernanda Eberstadt brings all her gifts of insight, feeling, and storytelling to bear on passion and the balance of power in marriage. She tells the ...
more
Catalyst
by
Laurie Halse Anderson
Puffin, 09/15/2003
Meet Kate Malone -- straight-A science and math geek, minister's daughter, ace long-distance runner, new girlfriend (to Mitchell "Early Decision ...
more
Our Town: A Play in Three Acts
by
Thornton Wilder
Harper, 09/23/2003
Our Town explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, ...
more
Literary Fiction
Paladin of Souls: A Novel
by
Lois McMaster Bujold
Harper Voyager, 09/23/2003
Three years have passed since the widowed Dowager Royina Ista found release from the curse of madness that kept her imprisoned in her family's castle ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
by
Laurence Gonzales
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/01/2003
Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better-equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. ...
more
Science, Health and the Environment
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship
by
Jon Meacham
Random House, 10/14/2003
The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history’s towering leaders
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
As Cool As I Am
by
Pete Fromm
Picador, 10/17/2003
As she races at breakneck pace toward womanhood, everything is at stake for her, producing an urgency and dread that she holds at bay with humor and ...
more
Literary Fiction
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three
by
Mara Leveritt
Atria Books, 10/21/2003
In 2011, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American legal history was set right when Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley ...
more
True Crime
Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab, The Body Farm, Where the Dead Do Tell Tales
by
Bill Bass, Jon Jefferson
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/27/2003
At the "Body Farm," nature takes its course, with corpses buried in shallow graves, submerged in water, concealed beneath slabs of concrete, locked in...
more
True Crime
A Christmas Story: The Book That Inspired the Hilarious Classic Film
by
Jean Shepherd
Crown, 10/28/2003
The holiday film
A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each ...
more
Short Stories
Purple Hibiscus
by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Algonquin Books, 10/30/2003
Fifteen-year-old Kambili's world is circumscribed by the high walls and frangipani trees of her family compound. Her wealthy Catholic father, under ...
more
Mr. Timothy
by
Louis Bayard
HarperCollins Publishers, 11/01/2003
Tiny Tim is back! No, not the squeaky-voiced troubadour who tip-toed through tulips in the 1960s, but the original--Timothy Cratchit, the crutch-...
more
A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
by
Steven Hahn
Belknap Press, 11/10/2003
This is the epic story of how African-Americans, in the six decades following slavery, transformed themselves into a political people-an embryonic ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Keepers of the House: Pulitzer Prize Winner
by
Shirley Ann Grau
Vintage, 11/11/2003
Entrenched on the same land since the early 1800s, the Howlands have, for seven generations, been pillars of their Southern community. Extraordinary ...
more
Historical Fiction
Responsibility and Judgment
by
Hannah Arendt
Schocken Books, 11/18/2003
This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase "the banality of ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Away Goes Sally
by
Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth
?Ignatius Press, 12/01/2003
In late eighteenth-century Massachusetts, Sally, an orphan living on a farm with her three aunts and two uncles, is excited when, after deciding to ...
more
Literary Fiction
Lord of the Flies
by
William Golding
Penguin Books, 12/16/2003
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their...
more
Literary Fiction
In the Miso Soup
by
Ryu Murakami
Kodansha USA, 12/18/2003
It's just before New Year, and Frank, an American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's nightlife. But, Frank's behaviour ...
more
Thrillers
Washington's Crossing: Pivotal Moments in American History
by
David Hackett Fischer
Oxford University Press, 12/23/2003
Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
