This dazzling, old-fashioned novel about a poor boy with an extraordinary musical gift is rich in historical detail and brilliant in its timeless portrayal of love, genius and class. (Houghton Mifflin)
For Love
Capricious characters collide in an artful novel of romantic obsessions—and domestic disarray. (HarperCollins)
Loitering with Intent
The actor's intoxicating blend of fury and whimsy has never been better displayed than in this quirky, sly and uproarious portrait of the artist. (Hyperion)
Workers
A photographer's epic examination of the most grueling jobs under the sun inspires both awe at human resilience and anger at waste, danger and exploitation. (Aperture)
President Kennedy
This penetrating history of the brief but consequential years of JFK's Presidency depicts him as a pain-racked but determined politician who enjoyed power and flexed it frequently. (Simon & Schuster)
The Hidden Life of Dogs
Describing the lives of her own animals with exceptional acuity and insight, Thomas reveals the canine's obsession with status and belonging and its capacity for love and even moral outrage. (Houghton Mifflin)
Smilla's Sense of Snow
The year's most offbeat thriller centers on an Inuit woman, uneasily transplanted from Greenland to Denmark, who tracks a child's murder and an eco-conspiracy right into the glacial heart of her homeland. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
A Lesson Before Dying
Set in 1940s Louisiana, this powerful tale of a black teenager wrongly convicted of murder (and the teacher who helps him face death with dignity) resonates with grace and pathos. (Knopf)
The Robber Bride
With painfully precise descriptions, and a slyly distant point of view, Atwood presents her voluptuous antiheroine, Zenia—a temptress who is just as outrageous as the sexual destruction she wreaks. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Lenin's Tomb
This account of the fall of the Soviet empire offers a moving portrait of a society trying to come to terms with its bloody past. (Random House)
FURTHER WORTHIES
Swimming in the Volcano (Scribner's)
A Suitable Boy (HarperCollins)
Exposure (Random House)
The Road to Wellville (Viking)
The Wine-Dark Sea (Norton)
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
