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 ...
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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 ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
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 ...
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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 ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
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 ...
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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,...
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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...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Literary Fiction
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 ...
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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...
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Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
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 ...
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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 ...
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Literary Fiction
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 ...
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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 ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Little House in the Big Woods: Full Color Edition (Little House, 1)
by
Laura Ingalls Wilder
HarperCollins Publishers, 05/11/2004
Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in the
Little House series, takes place in 1871 and introduces us to four-year-old Laura, who lives in a...
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Literary 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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
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 ...
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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 ...
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Biography/Memoir
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 ...
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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 ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Biography/Memoir
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,...
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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-...
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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...
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Literary Fiction
