THE AIR WE BREATHE
by Andrea Barrett
Publisher: W.W. Norton (October 2007)
Reviewer: Poornima Apte

Amazon readers rating: from 2 reviews

In the fall of 1916, Americans debate whether or not to enter the European War. In an isolated community in the Adirondacks, the danger is barely felt. At Tamarack Lake the focus is on the sick-- wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly European immigrants, fill the large public sanitorium. An enterprising patient initiates a weekly discussion group. When his well-meaning efforts lead instead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice and vigilante sentiment. (read review)

THE BAD GIRL
by Mario Vargas Llosa
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giraux (October 2007)
Reviewer: Mary Whipple

Amazon readers rating: from 3 reviews

Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as “Lily” in Lima in 1950, when she arrives one summer out of the blue, claiming to be from Chile but vanishing the moment her claim is exposed. He loves her next in Paris, where she appears as the enchanting “Comrade Arlette,” an activist en route to Cuba, and becomes his lover, albeit an icy, remote one who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by. Whomever the bad girl turns up as—whether it’s Madame Robert Arnoux, the wife of a high-ranking UNESCO official, or Kuriko, the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman—and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. (read review)

ZEROVILLE
by Steve Erickson
Publisher: Europa Editions (November 2007)
Reviewer: Guy Savage

Amazon readers rating: from 1 reviews

A film-obsessed ex-seminarian with images of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift tattooed on his head arrives on Hollywood Boulevard in 1969. Vikar Jerome enters the vortex of a cultural transformation: rock and roll, sex, drugs, and-most important to him-the decline of the movie studios and the rise of independent directors. Set primarily in Los Angeles from the late 1960s through 1980s, this darkly funny and wise novel focuses on our collective fascination with movies. (read review and INTERVIEW)

BLONDE FAITH
by Walter Mosley
Publisher: Little Brown & Co (October 2007)
Reviewer: Hagen Baye

Amazon readers rating: from 10 reviews

Easy Rawlins comes home one day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend Chrismas Black, left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that the ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon. Easter's appearance is only the beginning, as Easy is immersed in a sea of problems. The love of his life is marrying another man and his friend Mouse is wanted for the murder of a father of 12. Easy's investigation brings him to Faith Laneer, a blonde woman with a dark past. (read review and excerpt)

ZUGZWANG
by Ronan Bennett
Publisher: Bloomsbury (October 30, 2007)
Reviewer: Sudheer Apte

The breakout book from a celebrated literary writer: a thriller set in St. Petersburg in 1914 amid an international chess tournament and a series of mysterious murders. (read review)

A FREE LIFE
by Ha Jin
Publisher: Pantheon Books (October 30, 2007)
Reviewer: Poornima Apte

1990s America. We follow the Wu family--father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao--as they fully sever their ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and begin a new, free life in the United States. (read review)

THE QUEEN OF THE TAMBOURINE
by Jane Gardam
Publisher: Europa Editions (September 2007)
Reviewer: Mary Whipple

Amazon readers rating:from 8 reviews

This quirky epistolary novel is told from the point of view of Eliza Peabody, a middle-aged woman living in present-day South London. Eliza begins a fervid letter-writing campaign to her neighbor, Joan, whom she hardly knows, after Joan abandons her husband and children to go see the world. Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year. (read review)

VIVALDI'S VIRGINS
by Barbara Quick
Publisher: HarperCollins (July 2007)
Reviewer: Terez Rose

Amazon readers rating:from 15 reviews

Eighteenth-century Venice is recreated at the height of its splendor and decadence. A story of longing and intrigue, half-told truths and toxic lies, Vivaldi's Virgins unfolds through the eyes of Anna Maria dal Violin, one of the elite musicians cloistered in the foundling home where Antonio Vivaldi—known as the Red Priest of Venice—is maestro and composer. (read review)

DIE WITH ME
by Elena Forbes
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing (October 22, 2007)
Reviewer: Eleanor Bukowsky

Amazon readers rating:from 1 reviews

Somewhere in London, a lonely young woman is reaching out to the wrong man. It’s up to Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia and the rest of the Murder Squad to find her before a killer does. It’s Tartaglia’s first time in charge, and he walks right into a political minefield as the investigation turns up three more suspicious deaths—all involving vulnerable young women falling to their deaths, all initially ruled suicides. (read review)

THE FUGITIVE
by Massimo Carlotto
Publisher: Europa Editions (April 2007)
Reviewer: Guy Savage

Amazon readers rating:from 1 reviews

After serving years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, Massimo Carlotto received a presidential pardon in 1993. This is the first book he wrote as a free man, telling of his years on the run from a politically motivated murder charge. This gritty tale takes readers from the French underworld to a Mexico besieged by guerrilla warfare. (read review)

GRUB
by Elise Blackwell
Publisher: Toby Press (September 2007)
Reviewer: Mary Whipple

Amazon readers rating:from 4 reviews

"Casting a satiric eye on the publishing business, author Elise Blackwell shows the agonies and excitements of several young authors as each tries to find the magic formula for getting a book published, publicized, and sold to the public." (read review)

THE FIRST WAVE
by James R. Benn
Publisher: Soho Press (September 2007)
Reviewer: Tony Ross

Amazon readers rating:from 3 reviews

Lieutenant Billy Boyle reluctantly accompanies Major Samuel Harding, his boss, in the first boat to land on the shores of Algeria during the Allied invasion. Their task is to arrange the surrender of the Vichy French forces. But there is dissension between the regular army, the local militia, and De Gaulle's Free French. American black marketeers in league with the enemy divert medical supplies to the Casbah, leading to multiple murders that Billy must solve while trying to rescue the girl he loves, a captured British spy. (read review)

A KILLER'S KISS
by William Lashner
Publisher: William Morrow (August 2007)
Reviewer: Chuck Barksdale

Amazon readers rating:from 10 reviews

There's nothing easier than falling in love with an old girlfriend. That's what Philly lawyer Victor Carl finds out when he hooks up again with a femme fatale who's definitely bad for his health.

A knock on Victor's door in the middle of the night. Two cops invite themselves in, asking where Victor has been. They also ask him about a doctor named Wren Davis. Victor sends them packing. As soon as they leave, a beautiful woman steps out of Victor's bedroom, a towel around her naked body. "Who was that?" she asks. "The cops," says Victor. "What did they want?" she asks. "To tell me that your husband is dead." (read review)

THE ALMOST MOON
by Alice Sebold
Publisher: Little, Brown, Co (October 16, 2007)
Reviewer: Eleanor Bukowsky

Amazon readers rating:from 16 reviews

Forty-nine year old Helen Knightly is severely depressed, but she is not fully aware of how low she has sunk until one day, in a fit of despair, she smothers her demented eighty-eight year old mother. Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, the meaning of devotion, and the line between love and hate. (read review and excerpt)