New Fiction

Take a look at some of the latest additions to our New and Featured Fiction collections! We check in new books nearly every day -- check out the First Floor's LibraryThing account where we log all of our newest arrivals!

New Fiction - Week of September 1, 2008

	Brownrigg, Sylvia Morality Tale
"The narrator of Morality Tale, Sylvia Brownrigg's comic new novel, has been finding domestic life something of a strain. She's tired of her husband's ongoing negotiations with his angry ex-wife and fretful over her two stepsons, tossed around on the rough waters of their parents' divorce. When our heroine meets Richard, an amiable envelope salesman, she finds the man's warmth and his nice lines of Zen philosophy a little too hard to resist. So begins an adventure of the heart and the home that will eventually take her across the San Francisco Bay and into the shadows of Mount Tamalpais - where ghosts of her past betrayals still wander, and important revelations await."--BOOK JACKET.
	Goodman, Carol The Night Villa
"The eruption of Italy's Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 buried a city and its people, their treasures and secrets. Centuries later, echoes of this disaster resonate with profound consequences in the life of classics professor Sophie Chase. In the aftermath of a tragic shooting on the University of Texas campus, Sophie seeks sanctuary on the isle of Capri, immersing herself in her latest scholarly project alongside her colleagues, her star pupil, and their benefactor, the compelling yet enigmatic business mogul John Lyros. Beneath layers of volcanic ash lies the Villa della Notte - the Night Villa - home to first-century nobles, as well as to the captivating slave girl at the heart of an ancient controversy. And secreted in a subterranean labyrinth rests a cache of antique documents believed lost to the ages: a prize too tantalizing for Sophie to resist. But suspicion, fear, and danger roam the long-untrodden tunnels and chambers beneath the once sumptuous estate - especially after Sophie sees the face of her former lover in the darkness, leaving her to wonder if she is chasing shadows or succumbing to the siren song of the Night Villa. Whatever shocking events transpired in the face of Vesuvius's fury have led to deeper, darker machinations that inexorably draw Sophie into their vortex, rich in stunning revelations and laden with unseen menace."--BOOK JACKET.
	Kalla, Daniel Cold Plague
"Pristine water - hidden for millions of years, untouched by pollution, and possessing natural healing powers - is found miles under the Antarctic ice. The scientists who make this astonishing discovery stand to win worldwide acclaim and earn billions. While people around the world line up for a taste of the therapeutic water, a cluster of new cases of mad cow disease explodes in a rural French province. Dr. Noah Haldane and his World Health Organization team are urgently summoned. Fresh from a brush with a pandemic flu, Noah recognizes the deadliness of a prion - the enigmatic microscopic protein responsible for mad cow disease - that kills with the speed and ferocity of a virus. Despite intense international pressure to declare the outbreak a random occurrence, Noah suspects that factors other than nature have ignited the prion's spread among animals and people in France. Facing a spate of disappearances and unexplained deaths, Noah uncovers a conspiracy that stretches from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Beverly Hills, and from the North to the South Pole. He soon realizes that the scientific find of the century - a lake the size of Lake Superior buried three miles under Antarctica - might hold the key to a microscopic Jurassic Park. With a billion dollar industry hanging on his silence, Noah has to stay alive long enough to sound the alarm."--BOOK JACKET.

New Science Fiction and Fantasy - Week of September 1, 2008

	Ahlgren, Paco Discipline
Building on the vision of Kurt Vonnegut, the suspense of Michael Crichton, the rich characters of Stephen King, and the passion of George Orwell, Paco Ahlgren's first novel Discipline paints a chilling picture of a world that defies human perception. Douglas Cole is being hunted--and protected--but he doesn't know it. His life has been shattered by inexplicable tragedy, his waking hours haunted by ominous visions, but the more he pursues the questions plaguing him, the more elusive the answers become. Pushed to the brink of insanity, Douglas begins a desperate psychological battle with an enemy he cannot see, the outcome of which will determine the past, present, and future of human existence. Fusing blunt, gritty realism and philosophical passion with electrifying suspense, Discipline dissects our assumptions about reality.
	Hill, Laurel Anne Heroes Arise
Heroes Arise is a modern parable about timeless ideals: The pursuit of honor and justice, and the right to love and family. In an era when definitions of terrorism and heroism can seem fickle and where honor may be capricious, Laurel Anne Hill gives readers a story of great insight and inspiration.

New Mysteries - Week of September 1, 2008

Kagen, Lesley Land of a Hundred Wonders

"The cicadas are humming, and it's so warm even the frogs are sweating the summer Gibby McGraw catches her big break. Lord knows she's due. Brain damaged after a tragic car accident that took both her parents Gibby is now NQR (Not Quite Right), a real challenge for a fledgling newspaper reporter - especially when she stumbles upon the dead body of the next governor of Kentucky, Buster Malloy. Armed with her trusty blue spiral notebook, Gibby figures that solving the murder might be her best chance to prove to everyone - most of all dearly departed Mama and overprotective Grampa - that she can become Quite Right again. But she gets more than she bargained for when she uncovers a world of corruption, racism, and family secrets in small-town Cray Ridge. Lucky for her, she's also about to discover that some things are far more important than all the brains in the world ... and that miracles occur in the most unexpected moments."--BOOK JACKET.

New Horror - Week of September 1, 2008

Carey, Mike Vicious Circle

"Felix Castor has reluctantly returned to exorcism after a successful case convinces him that he really can do some good with his abilities - 'good,' of course, being a relative term when dealing with the undead. But his friend Rafi is still possessed, the succubus Ajulutsikael (Juliet to her friends) still technically has a contract on him, and he's still dirt poor. Doing some consulting for the local cops helps pay the bills, but Castor needs a big private job to really fill the hole in his bank account. That's what he needs. What he gets is a seemingly insignificant 'missing ghost' case that inexorably drags him and his loved ones into the middle of a horrific plot to raise one of hell's fiercest demons. When satanists, stolen spirits, sacrifice farms, and haunted churches all appear on the same police report, the name Felix Castor can't be too far behind."--BOOK JACKET.

New World Fiction - Week of September 1, 2008

	Guo, Xiaolu Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
"From the author of the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize finalist A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers comes a wholly original novel that follows a bright, impassioned young woman as she rushes headlong into the maelstrom of a rapidly changing Beijing to chase her dreams. Twenty-one-year-old Fenfang Wang has traveled one thousand eight hundred miles to seek her fortune in contemporary urban Beijing, and has no desire to return to the drudgery of the sweet potato fields back home. However, Fenfang is ill-prepared for what greets her: a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a city undergoing rampant destruction and slapdash development, and a sexist attitude seemingly more in keeping with her peasant upbringing than the country's progressive capital. Yet Fenfang is determined to live a modern life. With courage and purpose, she forges ahead and soon lands a job as a film extra. While playing roles like woman-walking-over-the-bridge and waitress-wiping-a-table helps her eke out a meager living, Fenfang comes under the spell of two unsuitable young men, keeps her cupboard stocked with UFO noodles, and, after mastering the fever and tumult of the city, ultimately finds her true independence in the one place she never expected."--BOOK JACKET.
	Taher, Bahaae Love in Exile
"In Love in Exile, Bahaa Taher presents multilayered variations on the themes of exile, disillusionment, failed dreams, and the redemptive power of love. Unwilling to recant his Nasserist beliefs, the unnamed narrator is an Egyptian journalist in a self-imposed exile in Europe after conflict with the management of his newspaper and a divorce from his wife. Absorbed in introspection over his impotent position at the paper and in ill health, he suddenly finds himself faced with two issues he cannot ignore: the escalating tensions in Israeli-occupied Lebanon and, more personally, an unexpected love affair with a much younger Austrian woman, Brigitte. Brigitte, also an exile of sorts, encourages him to turn his back on the problems and pressures of the everyday world and cocoon himself in the warmth of their love. However, the horror of events surrounding the occupation of Lebanon in 1982 soon shocks them out of their contentment and safety."--BOOK JACKET.

New GLBT Fiction - Week of September 1, 2008

No new GLBT Fiction, please check back.

New African-American Fiction - Week of September 1, 2008

	D. Cake
"It's less than six months after the events of Got and our nameless narrator has vanished off the Brooklyn grid only to end up in Atlanta, where he now lives with his ambitious but somewhat dim-witted cousin Durante. Flush with cash from the unfortunate events that forced him out of Brooklyn, he has enrolled in an Atlanta college, transferred his credits, and is doing his best to live a normal life. But when our hero meets Jennifer, a dark-skinned beauty putting herself through school via small-time dealing, he inadvertently sets off a series of events that once again sandwich him between the worlds of light and dark. He can't get away completely clean, because this time he'll have to choose between being the man he wants to be and the one who can keep him alive. It's another seven days in the life of a guy who just can't seem to get a break."--BOOK JACKET.
	Clarke, Breena Stand the Storm
"Even after Sewing Annie Coats and her son, Gabriel, have managed to buy their freedom, their days are marked by struggle and sacrifice - to the extent that Annie sometimes secretly recalls with a perverse nostalgia times spent back on the plantation. Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, where the Coatses are seeking to build their new lives - with Gabriel, a tailor, producing uniforms for soldiers and fine suits for pompous politicians, and Annie, a seamstress and laundress, catering to the nearby brothels and stately homes - is understood to be a safe haven, a 'promised land' for former slaves, but is effectively a frontier town, gritty and dangerous, with no laws protecting black people. Through fortitude, luck, and abundant hard work, the Coats family grows and prospers, only to find its status compromised anew when the District of Columbia's emancipation efforts put Gabriel's three young daughters (each of them born free of free parents) at risk of becoming the property of the Coatses' former master. The remarkable emotional energy with which the Coatses surmount the obstacles they face - as they negotiate with their former owner, as they assist other former slaves en route to freedom, as they prepare for the encroaching war, and as they struggle to love one another enough - is what fuels this novel and makes its startling denouement so powerfully affecting."--BOOK JACKET.

New Historical Fiction - Week of September 1, 2008

No new Historical Fiction, please check back.

New Short Stories - Week of September 1, 2008

	Crouse, David The Man Back There and Other Stories
"In this deceptively quiet collection, the truth is something that simmers up through what is not said. A hero is a man who saves himself from himself, who placates his temper with self-awareness and, most importantly, self-forgiveness. The Man Back There is a feat of empathy and razor-sharp vision."--BOOK JACKET.
	Keegan, Claire Walk the Blue Fields
"Claire Keegan's brilliant debut collection, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Now she has delivered her next, much-anticipated book, Walk the Blue Fields, an unforgettable array of stories about despair and desire in the timeless world of modern-day Ireland. A masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past, Walk the Blue Fields is a breathtaking collection from one of Ireland's greatest talents, and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart." --BOOK JACKET.
	Kelly, James P. The Wreck of the Godspeed
"This collection of James P. Kelly's recent work provides the reader with new insights into the human psyche, as well as some of the best speculative fiction available."--BOOK JACKET.