Body Artist by Don DeLillo
Artist Lauren Hartke, living in a rented coastal house, meets a strange, ageless man with an uncanny knowledge of her life.

Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
When Ruth Young comes across a stack of letters in Chinese calligraphy written by her ailing mother, she discovers the truth about her mother's life as the daughter of the famous bonesetter in the village of Xian Xin, China.

Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Enid Lambert begins to worry about her husband when he begins to withdraw and lose himself in negativity and depression as he faces Parkinson's disease. In this comic, tragic masterpiece of an American family breaking down in an age of easy fixes, where an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty into collides wildly with the era of home surveillance and New Economy speculation.

Crooked River Burning by Mark Winegardner
Set in Cleveland, this sweeping tale of romance and social turmoil follows two ill-fated lovers on a twenty-year odyssey that begins in the turbulence of the 1950s and 1960s.

Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Milo Roby tries to hold his family together while working at the Empire Grill in the once-successful logging town of Empire Falls, Maine, with his partner, Mrs. Whiting, who is the heir to a faded logging and textile legacy.

Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
Returning to her native Domincan Republic, forty-nine-year-old Urania Cabral, discovers that Rafael Trujillo, the depraved dictator called the Goat by the Domincans, still reigns over his inner circle, which includes Urania's father, with brutality and blackmail, but soon an uprising against him will result in a revolution that will have profound consequences.

Gabriel's Story by David Anthony Durham
Gabriel Lynch, a fifteen-year-old African American boy, reluctantly moves with his mother and younger brother from the urban East to join his stepfather, a Kansas homesteader. Gabriel hates their primitive, harsh new life and runs away to seek adventure as a cowboy, in a coming-of-age story of a young black man in the American West of the 1870s.

The Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil
Confronted by both professional and personal crises, reference librarian Alexander Short gains a new lease on life when he meets Henry James Jesson III, a collector who shares a number of Alexander's uncoventional interests and who hires him for some after-hours research into an enigmatic eighteenth-century inventor.

Half a Life by V. S. Naipaul
The son of a man who, inspired by Gandhi, married below his caste, travels to New York where he struggles to find his identity and forge a career as a writer.

Heart of Stone by Renate Dorrestein
A Dutch girl living in suburban Amsterdam, Ellen Van Bemmel begins to delve into her own past when a traumatic event shakes her idyllic famly life.

How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
Katie, a liberal, urban mother and doctor from North London, finds her life turned upside down when her husband, David, undergoes an outrageous spiritual transformation, in a hilarious novel about marriage, parenthood, religion, and morality.

In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden by Kathleen Cambor
A love story set in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, before and after the 1889 dam disaster that took more than two thousand lives, chronicles the greed and abuse of power in post-Civil War America.

Juno and Juliet by Julian Gough
Two beautiful sisters, Juno and Juliet Taylor, experience the challenges, triumphs, and tragedies of university life in Galway, Ireland, and the extraordinary wonder of new love.

Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
As a priest nears the end of his life, he is asked to prove or disprove the sainthood of a woman he knows well and struggles to guard his own secret identity in the process.

Niagara Falls All Over Again by Elizabeth McCracken
During thirty years together as a famous comedy team, conniving comedian Rocky Carter and his straight man, Mose Sharp, a small-town boy from Iowa, have enjoyed a warm relationship and encountered a host of colorful characters on their road to fame and fortune, but when Rocky commits a desperate act of betrayal, their friendship is endangered.

Paradise Park by Allegra Goodman
After being abandoned by her boyfriend in Honolulu, Sharon Spiegelman embarks on a spiritual quest in search of enlightenment, a journey that takes her from the Greater Love Salvation Church and the Consciousness Meditation Center back to Judaism and to true love.

The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
A love affair between a wealthy South African woman and an Arab illegal alien challenges both of their notions of race, class, and citizenship.

A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay
In a story set against the backdrop of Dust Bowl Canada of the 1930s, the two Hardy sisters--Lucinda and Norma-Joyce--fall for the same man, Maurice Dove, a visitor to the Saskatchewan farm of their widower father, igniting an emotional storm that has a profound impact on their lives.

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Ned Kelly, the son of Irish immigrants, outlaw, and legendary nineteenth-century Australian folk-hero, describes in his own words how he, his brother, and two friends led authorities on a twenty-month manhunt, marked by widespread populist support, before his capture and execution.

Other Notable Fiction Titles in 2001

Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
Beck Davitch looks back on her thirty-year marriage to Joe and her role as a mother and manager of the Open Arms, wondering if she is living the life she was meant to live and reconsidering her dedication to the family business.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai
At the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, two young boys are sent to the country for "reeducation" at a remote mountain village, where their lives take an unexpected turn when they meet the beautiful daughter of a local tailor and stumble upon a forbidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translations.

Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman
The revelation of a dark secret about Ethan Ford's true identity and his past threatens to turn a small Massachusetts town upside down as the truth shatters Monroe's small-town peace and tests the bonds between family and friends.

Carry Me Across the Water by Ethan Canin
Follows the life and fortunes of August Kleinman, a man who shapes his destiny in the fires of World War II and its aftermath.

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
In 1920, Charles Carter, known as Carter the Great, who became a master illustionist out of loneliness and desperation, creates the most outrageous stunt of all, involving President Harding--one that could cause his downfall.

Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri
In a stirring novel that incorporates elements of Hindu mythology, an apartment building becomes a metaphor for the divisions and cultural clashes of modern India.

Eva Moves the Furniture by Margot Livesey
Raised by her aunt and her grieving father, motherless Eva McEwen grows up accompanied by two otherworldly companions--a woman and a girl--whom only she can see. She finds herself torn between real life, including her career as a nurse and her love for a young plastic surgeon, and the meddling of her enigmatic companions.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
In a novel of manners and social divisions set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century England, two girls from different classes become friends, and their families' lives become intertwined in the process.

The Fourth Hand by John Irving
When a New York journalist suffers a horrible accident--his left hand eaten by a lion while reporting on a story from India--witnessed by millions on television, viewers rally to help him, in this satiric farce that looks at the power of second chances and the will to change.

Greetings from the Golden State by Leslie Brenner
Chronicles three decades in the life of an extremely troubled California family.

John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
An assignment for a travel Web site takes J. Sutter, a young black journalist, to West Virginia for the first annual "John Henry Days" festival, where history and popular culture are juxtaposed as the real story of John Henry unfolds.

The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve
Meeting Thomas Janes for the third time, widowed Linda Fallon remembers their two previous encounters, the second of which involved an affair with him that shattered her life.

My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faolain
Kathleen de Burca, an Irish travel writer based in London, faces the realities of a milestone birthday and sets out for Ireland to discover the truth about a scandalous love affair that took place between the wife of an English landlord and an Irish servant during the potato famine. She uncovers not only the complex mysteries of love but confronts a fateful decision that could change her own life forever.

The Right Hand of Sleep by John Wray
A teenage deserter from the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, Oskar Voxlauer returns to his home after nearly twenty years of exile in Communist Ukraine, only to find himself caught up once more in the growing political tensions and rising fascism in the area.

Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
Born to poverty in eighteenth-century London, Mary Saunders's love of fine clothes and a dream of a better life take her from the world of prostitution to life as a household seamstress in Monmouth to a search for true freedom.

Winter Journey by Isabel Colegate
An aging brother and sister--celebrated photographer Alfred Ashby and his headstrong older sister, Edith--struggle to repair their broken relationship.

The World Below by Sue Miller
After being diagnosed at nineteen with tuberculosis in 1919, a young woman is sent to a sanitarium, where she rediscovers the pleasures of unfettered youth and falls in love with a doomed man.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Young Anna Frith, a vicar's maid, is faced with the loss of her family, the disintegration of her local community, and a passionate, illicit love as she and her village confront the horrors of th the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England.