Hardcover Fiction

by Jan Karon · Viking Press

Wedding bells ring out as Jan Karon takes her fans back in time to a cherished event in Mitford. The Lord's Chapel is the setting for the wedding of Father Tim Kavanagh and Cynthia Coppersmith. Will Father Tim fall apart when he takes his vows? Will Cynthia make it to the church on time? Who'll arrange the flowers and bake the cake? And will Uncle Billy's prayers for a great joke be answered in time for the reception? All the beloved Mitford characters will be there: Dooley Barlow, Miss Sadie and Louella, Emma Newland, the mayor - in short, everybody who's anybody in the little town with the big heart. The perfect book for anyone who believes in laughter, relies on hope and celebrates love.

by Stephen King · Scribner

by Danielle Steel · Delacorte Press

The phone call came on a snowy December afternoon. Kate was certain it was Joe, her soulmate since they'd met thirty-four years before. What she got was the one call she had never wanted, and didn't expect. It took her mind back to the moment when she and Joe first met, when she was just seventeen and he was young, powerful, dazzling and different from any man she'd ever known. It is Christmas, 1940, and Kate is making her debut in New York society. Joe, the brilliant protege of Charles Lindbergh, seems just out of Kate's reach. As the months pass, they meet again, and although Kate goes off to study at Radcliffe and Joe skyrockets to fame in modern aviation, he is always drawn back to her, as a moth to a flame. When the war is over Kate wants a marriage and family - while Joe wants the world. Unwilling to wait any longer, Kate moves on with her life. But when a chance encounter brings them together again, the time has come to make a choice, one that will have profound consequences for the rest of their lives.

by James Patterson · Little, Brown

A sizzling new thriller series by master suspense novelist Patterson features four career women--the Women's Murder Club--who track down a killer who's murdering newlyweds in San Francisco. NBC is scheduled to air a major two-part miniseries based on "1st To Die" during sweeps week in May 2001.

by John Grisham · Doubleday

Racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder are seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy in a 1950s southern cotton-farming community.

by Nora Roberts · Putnam

Set in the lush vineyards of the Napa Valley, "The Villa" is where family and business collide and deadly secrets threaten to destroy a proud heritage and an unexpected love. Tereza, the matriarch of the Giambelli family, has announced a merger with the MacMillan family's winery--a move which throws together Sophia Giambelli with Tyler MacMillan. Sophia is torn between a powerful attraction and a professional rivalry until acts of sabotage threaten both the family business and the family itself.

by P. D. James · Knopf

The setting itself is elemental P. D. James: the bleak coast of East Anglia, where atop a sweep of low cliffs stands the small theological college of St. Anselm’s. On the shore not far away, smothered beneath a fall of sand, lies the body of one of the school’s young ordinands. He is the son of Sir Alred Treves, a hugely successful and flamboyant businessman who is accustomed to getting what he wants—and in this case what he wants is Commander Adam Dalgliesh to investigate his son’s death. Although there seems to be little to investigate, Dalgliesh agrees, largely out of nostal-gia for several happy summers he spent at St. Anselm’s as a boy. No sooner does he arrive, however, than the college is torn apart by a sacrilegious and horrifying murder, and Dalgliesh finds himself ineluctably drawn into the labyrinth of an intricate and violent mystery. Here P. D. James once more demonstrates her unrivalled skill in building a classic detective story into a fully realized novel, gripping as much for its psychological and emotional richness as for the originality and complexity of its plotting—and, of course, for the horror and suspense at its heart. Filled with unforgettable characters, brilliant in its evocation of the East Anglian scene and the religious background against which the action takes place, Death in Holy Orders again offers proof, if proof were needed, that P. D. James is not only the reigning master of the crime novel but also, simply, one of the finest novelists writing today.

by Maeve Binchy · Dutton

by Amy Tan · Putnam

A mother and daughter find what they share in their bones in this compelling novel from the bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Ruth Young and her widowed mother have always had a difficult relationship. But when she discovers writings that vividly describe her mother’s tumultuous life growing up in China, Ruth discovers a side of LuLing that she never knew existed. Transported to a backwoods village known as Immortal Heart, Ruth learns of secrets passed along by a mute nursemaid, Precious Auntie; of a cave where dragon bones are mined; of the crumbling ravine known as the End of the World; and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal. Within the calligraphied pages awaits the truth about a mother's heart, secrets she cannot tell her daughter, yet hopes she will never forget... Conjuring the pain of broken dreams and the power of myths, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit: the past, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes.

by Anne McCaffrey · Del Rey/Ballantine

Once upon a time, a long time ago, even before the classic novel Dragonflight was written, a story was published. It was called Weyr Search and it introduced to the world the incredible Dragonriders of Pern. Now, Anne McCaffrey celebrates a quarter-century of dragons and dragonriders as she returns to the form that started it all: the first-ever Pern short-story collection! Let the queen of dragons herself take you back to the earliest days of Pernese history as she brings to life events that shaped one of the most popular worlds in all of science fiction. Join the original survey team as they explore Pern and decide to recommend it for colonization. Share the terror of the evacuation from the Southern Continent, as a flotilla of ships, aided by intelligent, talking dolphins, braves the dreadful currents of the Pernese ocean. Learn how the famous Ruatha Hold was founded, and thrill with the dragonriders as they expand into a second, then a third Weyr. And discover a secret lost in time: the rescue of some of the original colonists, before the planet was cut off forever! Building a new life on a distant world, braving the dreaded Thread that falls like silver rain from the sky only to destroy every living thing it touches, flying heroically on the wondrous dragons: The Dragonriders of Pern!

by Anita Shreve · Little, Brown

by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman · Wizards of the Coast

In the tradition of "The Wheel of Time, " this lavishly illustrated work is a definitive reference guide to the fantasy worlds of bestselling authors Weis and Hickman. Illustrations, many in full color.

by Diane Mott Davidson · Bantam

Colorado cataerer Goldy Schulz is excited about the chance to cook real Elizabethan food at Hyde Castle. Her first day on the job is ruined by finding a dead body in Cottonwood Creek and having someone shoot at her, twice.

by Robert B. Parker · Putnam

by Amanda Quick · Bantam

Tobias March and Lavinia Lake join forces against a powerful villain who is trying to take over an international criminal organization.