Hardcover (cloth) $24.95
Penguin Books     2004

The international literary sensation--a runaway bestseller in Spain--is about a boy's quest through the secrets and shadows of postwar Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget.

Trade Paperback
$14.00
Plume Books     2004

For the first time since his own classic "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations", Al Franken trains his subversive wit directly on the contemporary political scene. Now, the "master of political humor" "(Washington Times) destroys the myth of liberal bias in the media, and exposes how the Right shamelessly tries to deceive the rest of us. Noone is spared as Al uses the Right's own words against them. Not the Bush administration and their rhetorical hypocrisy. Not Arin Coulter and her specious screeds. Not the new generation of talk-radio hosts, and not Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, and the entire Fox network. This is the book Al Franken fans have been waiting for (and his foes have been dreading). Timely, provocative, unfailingly honest, and always funny, "Lies is sure to become the most talked about book of political humor in 2003 and beyond.

Hardcover (cloth)
$10.95
David Fickling Books     2003

Lyra's Oxford is a short story depicting the fate of Lyra Belacqua after her adventures in the His Dark Materials trilogy.

Hardcover (cloth)
$19.95
Little Brown and Company     2003

Invited to live with a Kabul bookseller and his family for several months, an award-winning journalist now gives readers a first-hand look at Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it.

Hardcover (cloth)
$23.00
Alfred A. Knopf     2003 Special Order

From "one of the best writers to have emerged in the 1990s" (Kirkus Reviews), a new novel about the trials and obligations of family and justice. Before the Great War, Byron Aldridge had led a charmed life as heir apparent to a Pennsylvania timber empire, and as guide and idol to his younger brother. But he returned from France a different man, drifting away and finally disappearing altogether, until he is discovered working as a constable in a remote Louisiana sawmill. Here, surrounded by cypress swamps and snakes and alligators, men lead lives of backbreaking toil punctuated only by the brutal entertainments offered by the Sicilians who control the whiskey and card games and girls, and by the rough law meted out by Byron. His brother, assuming charge of the mill, struggles to understand him, even as their wives contend with their own hopes and disappointments, and the future grows fearsome for them all. The Clearing is a story of family, of what sustains people through loss, of esstablishing a community in the deepest wilderness and then defending it. Palpably atmospheric, with a remarkable range of characters and emotions, it displays Tim Gautreaux's masterly understanding of time, place, and human nature.

Hardcover (cloth)
$19.95
Veritcal     2003

What "The Sopranos" does for the American mafia, "Ashes" does for the Japanese yakuza. Tanaka is a gang boss who has fallen out of favor and realizes he must swim against the current to regain his power.