Atonement by Ian McEwan
A young girl unwittingly tells a tale that turns her family upside down. Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class, this novel is at its center a profound--and profoundly moving--exploration of shame and forgiveness, of atonement and the difficulty of absolution.

Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott
When she stumbles upon a small rubber blue shoe and other small items left behind in her deceased father's car, Mattie Ryder, a recently divorced mother of two young children, and her brother struggle to uncover the truth about their dysfunctional upbringing. In the process, she finds a foundation for a new relationship with her mother and the potential for a new life.

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
In this rich and emotionally charged work, a man's obsession with a silent film star sends him on a journey into a shadowy world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love.

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
During her family's annual car trip from Chicago to Mexico City, Lala Reyes listens to stories about her family, including her grandmother, the descendant of a renowned dynasty of shawl makers, whose magnificent striped (or caramelo) shawl has come into Lala's possession, in a multi-generational saga of a Mexican-American family.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
Nineteen-year-old prostitute Sugar yearns for escape from a terrifying brothel. Her ascent through Victorian society offers an intimacy with a host of unforgettable characters as Sugar tries to lift her body and soul out of the gutter.

December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith
Harry Niles, a disreputable American nightclub owner with a mysterious agenda, seeks to abandon his life in Tokyo while desperately trying to flee to the west on the last flight out before the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer
A suspenseful, richly layered novel that asks: How much do people owe the people they love? The Dive from Clausen's Pier will speak to all those who have ever thought about leaving when they knew they should stay or felt trapped, not only by circumstance, but by the strength of their own love.

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
After the death of his father, the accomplished, flamboyant, and controversial Judge Oliver Garland, his son Talcott, a law professor, must unravel the truth about his father's life, a quest that brings him face to face with old scandals, family secrets, and justice gone wrong.

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles
The Colley family are modest farmers in the Missouri Ozarks. The Colleys try to remain neutral, a fact ignored by the Union militia who confiscate their livestock, burn their farm, and arrest their daughter on charges of "enemy collaboration." Yet as this innocent young woman soon discovers, fate can have a double edge. In unsentimental yet elegant prose, Jiles reveals the universal horrors of war and its irreparable damage, and introduces a wonderful new character in a memorable story.

Everything is Iluminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
A writer journeys to the farmlands of eastern Europe to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Passionate and marked by an indelible humanity, Everything Is Illuminated mines the black holes of history and is ultimately a story about searching for people and places that no longer exist.

In Revere, In Those Days by Roland Merullo
Anthony Benedetto, a young boy in a large extended Italian-American family, describes growing up in the working-class community of Revere, Massachusetts, but his idyllic and charmed youth is changed forever by the tragic deaths of his parents, in a coming-of-age story.

The Last Girls by Lee Smith
On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls--classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college--launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez. This time, when they reach New Orleans, they'll give the river the ashes of a fifth rafter--beautiful Margaret ("Baby") Ballou.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive.

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
Growing up in a small Mississippi town in a family haunted by the murder of her brother, Robin, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes lives in a world of her imagination, until, at the age of twelve, she decides to find Robin's murderer and exact her revenge. This is a dark novel of lost childhood, rich in moral paradox.

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
This tale of family, memory, love, and living is told by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and builds out of her family's grief the most hopeful and joyful of stories.

A Simple Habana Melody: From When the World Was Good by Oscar Hijuelos
A haunting story of a Cuban composer whose life is an agonizing mix of joy and sadness, creativity and repression. The story begins in 1947, when the 58-year-old Israel Levis returns to his native Habana after spending most of the 1930s in Paris and then enduring two years in Buchenwald. Hijuelos jumps gracefully between past and present, lingering on Levis' early years in Cuba, when he emerged as a musician and composer, enjoying "small ecstasies of creativity and public acclaim" and reveling in Habana's cafe society. Like the most tender of ballads, this heartbreaking novel laments lost love while it helps us remember how love felt when we were young.

The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel
Langston Braverman abandons her academic career to retreat to her parents' attic, until the murder of her childhood friend Alice and an encounter with Amos Townsend, a local preacher, transforms her life. Told with remarkable wit and sweeping empathy, this novel tells the story of finding ones better self through accepting the shortcomings of others.

Standing in the Rainbow by Flannie Flagg
A heartwarming novel that captures the humorous and complex realities of ordinary people living in Elmwood Springs, Missouri, including Neighbor Dorothy, a radio hostess, her son Bobby, the Oatman Family gospel singers, and hotshot salesman Hamm Sparks.

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland, but the threat of arson leads nine-year-old Lucy's parents to leave Ireland for England. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away. A profound and moving story of love, guilt and forgiveness.

Sunday Jews by Hortense Calisher
A family saga considers the issues of national and religious identity and how they impact one Jewish-American family, from Charles, who hopes to become a Supreme Court Justice, Zipporah-Zoe, who cannot let go of her past, and Bert, who becomes a rabbi despite his ambivalence toward Jewish institutions. In this novel, Calisher explores a family united in blood yet divided by ideas.

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
A story told from five different points of view--a mother receiving the evacuation order, her daughter on the train ride to the camp, the son in the desert internment camp, the family's return home, and the final release of the father after years in captivity--chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

Other Notable Fiction Titles in 2002

Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
Autograph trader Alex-Li Tandem embarks on an odyssey that takes him from London to New York in pursuit of the only autograph that has ever really mattered to him, dealing with mystical lore, con men, interfering rabbis, fellow collectors, and bonsai dealers who would hinder his quest.

Blessings by Anna Quindlen
When a teenage couple abandons their baby at the gate of the estate owned by Lydia Blessing, Skip Cuddy, the estate caretaker, decides to raise the child himself, a decision that has a profound effect on the lives of everyone in the community, in a story of love, secrets, and redemption.

Dirt Music by Tim Winton
Despite her marriage to Jim Buckridge, Georgie Jutland has never really become a part of his inbred fishing community, and her tentative link to conventional life is further jeopardized when she begins a love affair with Luther Fox, the local poacher and outcast.

The Passion of Artemesia by Susan Vreeland
A sweeping novel, set against the backdrops of Renaissance Rome, Florence, and Genoa, vibrantly recreates the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, an influential female artist, whose search for love, forgiveness, and wholeness through her art led to fame as a painter and induction into the prestigious Accademia dell'Arte.

Sea Glass by Anita Shreve
Honora and Sexton Beecher find their lives forever changed when they are rendered virtually penniless by the crash of the stock market, forcing Sexton to work in a nearby mill, a job that is plagued by violence. As they try to reconstruct their marriage and home, they are confronted by passions of every kind.

The Season of Lillian Dawes by Katherine Mosby
Relates the story of two brothers--Gabriel Gibbs and his older brother Spencer--who fall in love with the same woman, the free-spirited, mysterious Lillian Dawes, in Greenwich village in the 1950s.

Seek My Face by John Updike
During an interview with a New York writer, seventy-nine-year-old artist Hope Chafetz describes her eventful life and her integral place in the saga of postwar American art, as the relationship between the interviewer and subject subtly evolves in and out of the roles of mother and daughter, patient and therapist, prey and predator.

Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin
An ordinary man, Murray Tepper--devoted husband, doting grandfather, and partner in a small business--unwittingly turns New York upside down when he engages in the normal activity of reading the newspaper in his car, which always seems to be parked in the same desirable parking spot in Manhattan.

Unless by Carol Shields
Novelist Reta Winter's idyllic life of friends, family, and success is shattered when her beloved eldest daughter abandons her life to sit in a gritty street corner with a sign reading "GOODNESS" around her neck, a situation that prompts Reta to uncover what drove her daughter to her new existence.

Wide Blue Yonder by Jean Thompson
During the summer of 1999, Springfield, Illinois, becomes the center of a climatic, emotional, and metaphysical storm as four unlikely people--Uncle Harvey, his troubled teenage niece Josie, Josie's desperate mother Elaine, and Rolando, a loner fueled by rage--find themselves at the center of the vortex.