Author Tess Gerritsen is back with her latest nail-biting story of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles and detective Jane Rizzoli in this year’s Vanish. Still reeling from the latest revelations about her family in 2004’s Body Double, Maura is given another shock when one of the corpses in her morgue turns out to be very much alive. The presumed-dead woman is quickly rushed to the hospital where doctors work fast to revive her, but tables are turned when the woman ends up taking six people in the hospital hostage, include an about-to-give-birth Jane.

Now it’s up to Jane’s FBI husband, Gabriel Dean, to use all his negotiating and investigative skill to find out why higher-up officials are so interested in the situation while trying to save his wife and child, and what he discovers is a shocking conspiracy that touches the very highest levels of government.

Visit Tess Gerritsen’s Official Website.

[Tess Gerritsen has come under some criticism for expressing disappointment over her latest book's sales number. -Ed]

In the wake of real life natural disasters come author Clive Cussler’s latest NUMA novel, Polar Shift, plays upon another horrifying what if? scenario–this time man-made. A polar shift is a natural phenomena that has occurred many times over Earth’s history. On the minor scale, it can disorient animals and damage electrical equipment, but at its worst, it can cause earthquakes, eruptions, climactic shifts, and the complete obliteration of Earth’s living matter.

Sixty years ago, a Hungarian genius discovered a way to engineer artificial triggers to create polar shifts, but his work was then thought to be lost. However, a charismatic and lethally charming leader of an anti-globalization terrorist group wants to use this weapon to scare industrialized nations for a short time before reverting it, only, what he doesn’t know is that once put into motion, the polar shift cannot be reversed.

Now it’s up to readers’ favorite duo, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala of the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA), to attempt and stop this worldwide distaster before it even starts.

After critically acclaimed hits with Neverwhere, American Gods, and The Sandman series, Neil Gaiman’s latest offering, Anansi Boys, is Gaiman just how you like him: poignant, vivid, witty, and with just the right amount of British eccentricity to keep from falling into melodramatic antics that so often plague the fantasy/supernatural genre. “Fat Charlie” Nancy leads a busy, comfortable life in London at a job he hates and is engaged to a pleasant woman named Rosie, but all of this changes when Charlie’s father dies and Charlie uncovers the strange truth about his heritage: his father was actually the human form of the African trickster god Anansi, and he has a brother named Spider who has inherited some of his father’s magical abilities. Spider, selfish and thoughtless, ends up ruining Charlie’s life, getting him fired from his job, stealing his fiancee, and getting him arrested on embezzlement charges and suspicions of murder. When Charlie finally resorts to magic to get rid of Spider, it opens up a can of worms for everyone, including run-ins with other key figures in folktale and myth, and now all Charlie wants is to return to some sense of normalcy. Gaiman’s expert hand at weaving together his mythical characters (some of whom will be very familiar to Gaiman fans who have read his other works) is showcased to perfection here to create a rich, breathless tapestry with an epic feel.

Visit Neil Gaiman’s Official Website.

Terry McMillan of Waiting to Exhale and A Day Late and a Dollar Short fame, returns with her latest novel, The Interruption of Everything, demonstrating that as the author matures in her writing, so too do her characters gain a sense of wisdom that can only happen with age and experience. Marilyn Grimes is a 40-something-year-old wife and part-time crafts store worker who has had to put the demands of taking care of her family over her own personal goals, hopes and dreams, and now that middle age has come, she finds the cumulative results of her life wanting: her children are grown up, in school, and unappreciative of her, her 25-year marriage is passionless, her mother is becoming senile, her sister is battling drug addiction, and her mother-in-law is demanding.

Marilyn desires to spark a change in her life, daring to consider her own needs for once (such as finishing her graduate degree), just as her family’s various crises are coming to a head. Her husband, Leon, is reconsidering his professional future, marriage, and fashion sense. Her sister, Joy, is struggling towards sobriety. Her mother-in-law, Arthurine, is starting to date again. Her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. To top it all off, Marilyn’s ex-husband reappears and incites rekindled feelings.

McMillan’s thought-provoking, evocative, and deftly written style unfolds this well-crafted tale with humor, sadness, and understanding that will find resonation in many of her readers. McMillan has always given a voice to young African-American women; this time, she weaves a tale that crosses ethnicity and culture, as The Interruption of Everything will find a home in the hearts of many female readers.

Lebanese-American author Anthony Shadid is in a unique position to give an insightful understanding into the Iraqi people: he’s fluent in Arabic and understands Arab culture and customs. In 2004, he won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the lives of ordinary Iraqi people outside the air-conditioned, well-protected Green Zone in Baghdad as they deal with bombed-out buildings, lack of electricity, and violence, and three decades of war. Shadid’s latest book, Night Draws Near : Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War, gives an account of life in Iraq among its common citizens from a variety of stations in life, whether they’re highly educated Baghdad professionals or terrified policemen from the Sunni Triangle. Shadid starts from the days leading up to American Invasion and ends in an epilogue of the January 2005 elections. With clarity and precision, Shadid shares his rare access he had to these strong, resilient people: their fear, their exhaustion, and their frustration for a liberator that has not delivered on its promises.

In 1776, respected historian David McCullough shines more light on the military aspect of the American Revolution and specifically, of course, the events of the year 1776. He describes in graphic detail the hardships endured by American and British troops during the unusually harsh winter of that year, and also the positive effect that the weather had on the American campaign. Additionally, McCullough discusses the importance of morale in the two armies - whereas the ragtag American militia would have been proud to have simply put up a good fight, the British would have been ashamed of anything less than total victory - which of course, they were. The author also sheds light on both George Washington and King George, providing a more in-depth portrait of the latter who’s often seen as a fool. The book is said to be another fine account of American history by the esteemed McCullough.
Published by Simon & Schuster.
Reviews of 1776

Author Sandra Brown takes a departure from her usual romance novels to explore mystery and suspense in Chill Factor. Lilly Martin and Dutch Burton are calling their marriage quits after being unable to survive the death of their three-year-old daughter. As the divorce becomes finalized, the last thing the estranged couple needs to do is close up their summer vacation cabin in North Carolina’s wintry mountains. Dutch is the chief of police in nearby small town Cleary while Lilly works as a magazine editor in Atlanta.

As Lily tries to return to her home after selling Dutch and her’s former cabin, she gets caught up in a blizzard, loses control of her car, and ends up hitting handsome, travel writer Ben Tierney, whom she had met and flirted with last summer on a kayaking trip. With no other choice, she brings the injured Ben back to her cabin in order to wait out the storm and things heat up between them. Meanwhile back in Cleary, Dutch receives a call from the FBI that Ben Tierney might just be the serial killer responsible for the disappearance of five girls in the area over the past two years. Learning that Lilly is snowed in with the man that may possibly be a serial killer, the race is on for Dutch to save his ex-wife (and potentially stop a budding romance between her and Ben) and unravel the mystery surrounding Cleary, N.C. and its seemingly innocent residents who hold deeper, darker secrets.

Read a review of Chill Fact here.

Visit Sandra Brown’s Official Website.

Critically acclaimed writer Bret Easton Ellis is back in form with his latest novel since 1999’s Glamorama, an unwieldy 800-page monster that took a departure from Ellis’ usual writing style. Lunar Park brings Ellis back into his element: blurring the lines between fact and fiction, author and reader, narrator and narrative.

In his latest novel, Ellis inserts himself as a writer with a drugged-out, brilliant but damaged history getting a new lease on life while reconnecting with his wife and son, and settling down in suburbia and sobriety. Naturally, all good things must come to an end when disturbing and supernatural occurences happen that threaten to undermine the comfort and security Ellis has found in himself and his family. Ellis masterfully blends comedy and horror in this twisting, psychological tale about love and loss, fathers and sons, and facing up to one’s personal demons lest they overcome you.

Visit Bret Easton Ellis’s Official Website.

Read a review of Lunar Park: “the best novel I have read all summer…”

Sarad D. Bunting, of Tomato Nation and Television Without Pity fame, offers a less enthusiastic review of Lunar Park.

In Jim Lynch’s mersmerising The Highest Tide, 13-year-old Miles O’Malley, while small for his age, is still a highly intelligent young boy who also happens to be a naturalist and an insomniac living on Puget Sound near Olympia, Washington. One night while he can’t sleep, Miles decides to hop into his kayak and comes face to face with a living Giant Squid, a phenomenon that has never occcured in Puget Sound before. Suddenly, reporters, higher-ups in the science world, and even a cult come down upon him, and Miles unwittingly steps into fame.

And so sets the background for Lynch’s beautiful coming-of-age story, where the pressures of having the world wanting to interview him are the least of Miles’ problems: his parents are on the brink of divorce, his hormally-challenged friend, Phelps, finds his passion for science geeky; his best friend, Florence, an elderly psychic, is dying of a degenerative disease and is predicting an impending record high tide, and, to make matters worse, he has a crush on 18-year-old Angie Stegner, the troubled girl next door.

Lynch infuses his novel with a truly impressive knowledge of marine life, giving his story a rich and multi-layered feel. Miles’ fascination and wonder at the natural world becomes the readers’, as he comes to realize his place in the adult world and in the very fabric of life itself.

Danielle Torres at A Work In Progress has high praise for The Highest Tide: ” I definitely recommend this one!”

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City–A Diary is the story of one woman’s bitter trials in a primarily female-populated Berlin after the second world war during starvation, ruin, and mass rape by the occupying Russian soldiers. The author, a 34-year-old journalist who remained anonymous even until her death in 2001, gives a detailed, clear, and even at times witty account of what life was like for those of East Germany who did not benefit from Western rebuilding and supplies post-war. After having been raped herself, she took it upon herself to survive by making friends with a small group of Russian soldiers, buying herself protection and even food. This anonymous woman writes with breathless and oftentimes grim and horrifying detail of the courage, resourcefulness, and resilience of her fellow Berliners.