THE ICE QUEEN : A NOVEL by Alice Hoffman
“Starred Review. ‘Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes... burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.’ Thus begins Hoffman's (Practical Magic; Here on Earth) stellar 18th novel about healing and transformation. As an eight-year-old, the unnamed narrator makes a terrible wish that comes true; remorseful for the next 30 years, she shuts down emotionally to become a self-proclaimed ice queen. . . Blanketed in prose that has never been dreamier and gloriously vivid imagery, this life-affirming fable is ripe with Hoffman's trademark symbolism and magic, but with a steelier edge: ‘Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.’ Both longtime fans and newcomers will relish it.” – Publisher's Weekly

LIFEGUARD : A NOVEL by James Patterson and Andrew Gross
“*Starred Review* Don't be fooled by the title of Patterson's latest thrilling yarn--the action goes far beyond the beach. . . Packing all the punches readers have come to expect from Patterson's books, this one delivers at every turn.” – Booklist

LOOKING FOR PEYTON PLACE by Barbara Delinsky
“Middle River, New Hampshire, always knew it was the real-life model for literature's most notorious location by virtue of being author Grace Metalious' hometown. Among the residents Grace made famous were Connie Barnes and her daughter, Alyssa, though Connie is long dead and Alyssa has just died--under mysterious circumstances, if you ask her daughter, acclaimed novelist Annie Barnes. When Annie returns to the town she'd forsaken to investigate her mother's death, the townspeople fear she's back to follow in Grace's footsteps by exposing a new generation of dirty little secrets in a tell-all novel--and they'll stop at nothing to see that she never writes a single word. Working from such an intriguing premise, Delinsky is at her best, skillfully weaving elements of a tantalizing mystery and titillating romance in this vibrant page-turner.” – Booklist

THE MERMAID CHAIR by Sue Monk Kidd
“Starred Review. Jessie Sullivan, the protagonist of this rewarding second novel by the author of the bestselling Secret Life of Bees, is awakened by a shrilling phone late one night to horrifying news: her mother, who has never recovered from her husband Joe's death 33 years earlier, has chopped off her own finger with a cleaver. . . Writing from the perspective of conflicted, discontented Jessie, Kidd achieves a bold intensity and complexity that wasn't possible in Secret Life of Bees. . . This emotionally rich novel, full of sultry, magical descriptions of life in the South, is sure to be another hit for Kidd.” – Publisher's Weekly

SATURDAY by Ian McEwan
“In the predawn sky on a Saturday morning, London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne sees a plane with a wing afire streaking toward Heathrow. His first thought is terrorism--especially since this is the day of a public demonstration against the pending Iraq war. Eventually, danger to Perowne and his family will come from another source, but the plane, like the balloon in the first scene of Enduring Love, turns out to be a harbinger of a world forever changed. . . The tension throughout the novel between science (Perowne's surgery) and art (his daughter is a poet; his son a musician) culminates in a synthesis of the two, and a grave, hopeful, meaningful, transcendent ending. If this novel is not as complex a work as McEwan's bestselling Atonement, it is nonetheless a wise and poignant portrait of the way we live now.” – Publisher's Weekly