COTTON
by Christopher Wilson

In 1950, a black boy is born in segregated Eureka, Mississippi. Nothing startling there, except that he is born with white skin and blonde hair.

CINNAMON KISS
by Walter Mosley

It's 1966, the emerging counter culture is in full swing as well as the Vietnam War. And Easy Rawlins must raise $35K, anyway that he can, to save the life of his adopted daughter, Feather.

PURSUIT
by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Often called a "master of Cuban noir" writing, Jose Latour writes his darkest novel yet, one which appears on the surface to be a "Cold War" novel of espionage and suspense, though it is written long after the conclusion of the Cold War between the US and the USSR.

WOLVES EAT DOGS
by Martin Cruz Smith

A stylish and atmospheric story set in Russia and the Ukraine featuring the stubborn and sharp detective Arkady Renko.

THE CONJURER'S BIRD
by Martin Davies

Combining natural history, a search for the remains of the Mysterious Bird of Ulieta, several love stories, and a number of exciting mysteries, that keeps the reader on the edge of his/her seat.

THE SEA
by John Banville

Winner of the 2005 Man Booker award, Banville presents a sensitive and remarkably complete character study of Max Morden, an art critic/writer from Ireland whose wife has just died from a lingering illness.

EVE GREEN
by Susan Fletcher

Pregnant with her first child by the man whom she's adored for twenty years, Eve Green recalls her mother's death when she was eight years old and her struggle to make sense of her parents' mysterious romantic past and the years growing up with her grandparents in rural Wales. 2004 Whitbread Frist Novel winner.

LOVE AND OTHER IMPOSSIBLE PURSUITS
by Ayelet Waldman

With wry candor and finely tuned prose, Waldman has crafted a strikingly beautiful novel for our time, tackling the absurdities of modern life and reminding us why we love some people no matter what.

KINSHU: Autumn Brocade
by Teru Miyamoto

Through the personal, confidential, and honest letters exchanged by a young Japanese couple, now divorced for ten years, Teru Miyamoto examines the many roles marriage plays in Japanese culture as he also contemplates the wider relationship between life and death.

CRESCENT
by Diana Abu-Jaber

ICE SOLDIER
by Paul Watkins

One man's quiet life is shattered when he's forced to confront terrifying secrets he'd thought he'd buried high in the Italian Alps. The little-known role of the army's mountaineer corps comes brilliantly to life in this story of men pushed to the limits of endurance and survival, and haunted by the ghosts of war.

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
by Joyce Carol Oates

A solid collection of tales of suspense and violence by this accomplished author.  These nine stories portray women at their most murderous, motivated by passion, desperation, righteousness, or just plain nastiness. 

THE TYRANT'S NOVEL
by Thomas Keneally

Taking place in an unnamed oil-rich country in the Middle East ruled by a tyrant who calls himself Great Uncle, the novel centers on a man calling himself "Alan Sheriff," a short story writer given one month to write an "autobiographical novel" for which Great Uncle will take full credit.

GÖTZ AND MEYER
by David Albahari

The speaker of this long monologue is a teacher of Serbo-Croatian language and literature, a 50-year-old Jewish man who has been trying to fill in the spaces in his family tree after World War II in Yugoslavia.

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
by Jane Smiley

Over an extraordinary twenty-year career, Jane Smiley has written all kinds of novels: mystery, comedy, historical fiction, epic. "Is there anything Jane Smiley cannot do?" raves Time magazine. But in the wake of 9/11, Smiley faltered in her hitherto unflagging impulse to write and decided to approach novels from a different angle: she read one hundred of them.

LOST
by Michael Robotham

Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz of the London Metropolitan Police is a man who lives on the edge and makes his own rules. One night, he is pulled out of the Thames after having been shot in the leg, and nearly bleeds to death. Eight days later, Ruiz emerges from a coma with no memory of the events surrounding the incident.

BAD DEBTS
by Peter Temple

Australian Jack Irish is an ex-lawyer and sometime debt collector, cabinetmaker and barfly. When Jack gets a desperate message from Danny McKillop, whom he defended years before on a hit-and-run charge "at the beginning of the forgotten zone, the year or so I spent drunk," he takes a while to call him back. When he does, Danny, who was fresh out of prison, is dead. Jack's guilt fuels his ensuing search for the truth about Danny's murder.

DEATH DANCE
by Linda Fairstein

Teaming up with longtime friends -- NYPD's Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace -- Assistant DA Alex Cooper investigates the disappearance of world-famous dancer Natalya Galinova, who has suddenly vanished backstage at Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House -- during a performance.

HAPPINESS™
by Will Ferguson

When an enormous self-help manuscript lands on Edwin's desk, it's headed for the trash. Edwin's cynicism of self-help books, coupled with his filthy mood that morning, results in him dismissing Tupak Soiree's What I Learned on the Mountain and using it as a doorstop. However, Tupak's manuscript is unique -- a self-help book that actually works. Before Edwin knows it, a chain of events begins that affects not only his own life but the world at large.

TILT A WHIRL
by Chris Grabenstein

There isn't much fun in the sun when a billionaire real estate tycoon is found murdered on the Tilt-A-Whirl at a seedy seaside amusement park in the otherwise quiet summer tourist town of Sea Haven. John Ceepak, a former MP just back from Iraq, has just joined the Sea Haven police department. The job offer came from an old army buddy who hoped to give Ceepak at least a summer's worth of rest and relaxation to help him forget the horrors of war.

KUSHIELS'S AVATAR
by Jacqueline Carey

The last book in this fantastic romantic adventure is every bit as exciting as the first two books in the trilogy. Read Jana's reviews of each to the three books in the series.

THE GOOD GUYS
by Bill Bonanno & Joe Pistone

In case you don't recognize the Joe Pistone name -- he's Donnie Brasco, the undercover FBI agent the infiltrated the Mafia. Bonanno is a former member of the Boananno crime family. The authors provide an inside look at both a Mafia family and the FBI in this collaborative novel.

SEVEN DEADLY WONDERS
by Matthew Reilly

Teams from various countries are racing against time to find the Golden Capstone that once stood on top of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Alexander the Great broke the Capstone into seven pieces and hid each piece in one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Whoever assembles all seven pieces of the Capstone will gain absolute power for the next thousand years.