The Best New Books Publishing in 2003

2003

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We currently have previews of 46 2003 books.
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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
I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark
by Brian Hall
Viking, 01/13/2003
 
Brian Hall's compulsively readable novel vividly re-creates Lewis and Clark's extraordinary journey into the unknown western frontier. Focusing on the...more
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
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
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
Critics' Consensus:

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
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
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
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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
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
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
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
Out of the Silent Planet (1) (The Space Trilogy)
by C.S. Lewis
Scribner, 03/11/2003
 
Written during the dark hours immediately before and during World War II, C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which Out of the Silent Planet is the first ...more
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
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
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
Critics' Consensus:

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
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
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
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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
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
Critics' Consensus:

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
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
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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
Things that Fall from the Sky
by Kevin Brockmeier
Vintage, 07/08/2003
 
Weaving together loss and anxiety with fantastic elements and literary sleight-of-hand, Kevin Brockmeier’s richly imagined Things That Fall from ...more
Critics' Consensus:

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
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
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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
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
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
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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
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
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
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