Aloft by Chang-rae Lee
Lee burst on the scene with Native Speaker, which won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award. Now, with Aloft, Lee has expanded his range and proves himself a master storyteller, able to observe his characters' flaws and weaknesses and, at the same time, celebrate their humanity.

Bandbox by Thomas Mallon
From the author of Henry and Clara comes a dazzling, hilarious novel that captures the heart and soul of New York in the Jazz Age. Mallon pens a madcap and poignant book that brilliantly portrays the gaudiest American decade of them all.

Banishing Verona by Margot Livesey
Follows the brief love affair of unworldly London carpenter Zeke and pregnant radio show host Verona, whose relationship is cut short in the face of Zeke's father's failing health, his mother's infidelity, and Verona's brother's shady financial dealings.

Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos
Funny, heartbreaking and alive with a potpourri of eccentric and irresistible characters, this fresh and compulsively readable debut novel is about two women in self-imposed exile whose lives intersect, transforming both their worlds.

Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy
A biographical, structurally innovative novel in the grand European literary tradition that spans multiple generations and three centuries of tumultuous Central European history.

The Circus in Winter by Cathy Day
From 1884 to 1939, the Great Porter Circus made the unlikely choice to winter in an Indiana town called Lima. Day follows a colorful cast of circus people into their everyday lives and brings the greatest show on earth to the page.

Coal Run by Tawni O'Dell
Coal mining community deputy Ivan Zoschenko remembers the injury that ended his football career, prepares for a former teammate's release from prison, and confronts a secret that has troubled his conscience.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which people live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.

The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
In this profoundly compelling adventure, Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in the late 1600s on the high seas. It is a time of breathtaking genius and discovery for men and women whose exploits define an age known as Baroque.

Crossing California by Adam Langer
Three families living in Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood find their lives impacted by world events from 1979 to 1981, including the Iran hostage crisis, Reagan's election, and the deaths of famous musicians.

The Darling by Russell Banks
Raising serious philosophical questions about terrorism, political violence, and the clash of races and cultures, this political/historical thriller is Russell Banks at his best.

Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
From the acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory comes a powerful story of a man known as a "dew breaker," a Haitian torturer, whose past crimes lie beneath his new American reality.

The Epicure's Lament by Kate Christensen
From the author of In the Drink, a compelling novel about a man smoking himself to death. A literary tour de force of bitter humor and gorgeously articulated misanthropy to rival the works of Martin Amis and John Lanchester.

An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray
Vastly entertaining and outright hilarious, Paul Murray's debut heralds the arrival of a major new Irish talent. His protagonist is endearing and wildly witty. With its rollicking plot and colorful characters, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is a delightful and erudite comedy of epic proportions.

Eventide by Kent Haruf
Returing to the high plains region around Holt, Colorado, an evocative, profoundly moving novel of small-town life follows the challenges, emotional upheaval, tragedies, struggles, and intertwined destinies of the local inhabitants as they cope with the changes they encounter.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets.

Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick
Ozick pays homage to the most beloved writers of the 19th century--Charles Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot--in a story set on the outskirts of the Bronx in the 1930s.

Human Capital by Stephen Amidon
Drew Hagel's financial decline is halted by his relationship with hedge fund manager Quint Manning, but the relationship between Drew's and Quint's teenage children bears the most fruit when an accident involving the two promises a big payoff.

The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle
Fresh on the heels of his bestselling Drop City, Boyle's tenth novel features fabulous characters, a rollicking plot, and more sex than pioneering researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey ever dreamed of documenting . . . or almost.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that it leaves readers longing for more.

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
An extraordinary story exquisitely told, Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn weaves history and fiction into a beautiful, timeless, and intriguing literary tapestry that rivals in grace and grandeur the masterpiece that inspired it.

Magic Seeds by V.S. Naipaul
In his early forties, Willie Chandran joins an underground movement in India, but seven years of revolutionary campaigns--and several years in jail--convince him to return to England.

The Master by Colm Toibin
Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity, his decision not to marry, and his difficulties with emotional intimacy.

Outside Valentine by Liza Ward
Haunted by the serial murders committed by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate years earlier, Manhattan collector of antiquities Lowell finds the case further complicated by a self-appointed teen detective, while Caril Ann remembers the killing spree and her feelings of being out of control.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
In this alternate history, Pulitzer Prize-winner Roth considers what it would be like for his Newark family--and for a million such families all over the country--during the menacing years of a Charles Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews would have every reason to expect the worst.

The Red Queen: A Transcultural Tragicomedy by Margaret Drabble
Receiving the two-hundred-year-old memoir of a Korean crown princess from an anonymous sender, Oxford student Barbara Halliwell reads about the princess's life and finds profound changes occurring within her present-day London home.

Runaway: Stories by Alice Munro
A collection of short stories about people, often women living in rural Ontrario, whose vivid, unremarkable lives are rendered with almost Tolstoyan resonance.

Sweet Land Stories by E.L. Doctorow
A compelling assortment of short fiction by the award-winning author of Ragtime ranges across America, from Alaska to the District of Columbia, as its explores the complexities of modern life.

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
An unemployed actress, Olivia Hunt is forced to leave Hollywood to return home at the request of her younger sister, Madeleine, and finds herself struggling to help her sister, keep her parents under control, and reconnect with an old boyfriend, all the while attempting to balance her newly energized film career with her family needs.

An Unfinished Season by Ward Just
The distinguished chronicler of American social history and political culture hauntingly captures the 1950s, a time when even the small-town family could not escape the nationwide suspicion and dread of "the enemy within."

War Trash by Ha Jin
Captured by enemy forces, Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer serving in Korea in 1951, takes on the role of interpreter thanks to his proficiency in English, a role that places him in the middle of the conflict between his fellow prisoners and their captors and between rival groups of prisoners.

Waterborne by Bruce Murkoff
A panorama of human desire and enterprise, this debut novel is exceptional for its ambition, generosity, characters and grasp of history.

Other Notable Fiction Titles of 2004

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres
In a small town in Anatolia in the finals days of the Ottoman Empire, the lives of its inhabitants--Armenians, Christians, and Muslims--peacefully intertwine, until Mustafa Kemal, a powerful military leader, conscripts the young men of the village to battle the invading Western European forces during the Great War, and religious fanaticism and nationalism destroy the peace.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
During World War II, Louis Belk, a young American bomb disposal sergeant, is sent on a mission to Anchorage, Alaska, to find and disarm the balloon bombs launched by the Japanese against North America, a search that leads him to encounters with a variety of haunting individuals and sends him on a lifelong quest to understand the meaning of faith, friendship, trust, and love.

Lemon Table by Julian Barnes
A collection of tales featuring aging characters facing the ends of their lives.

Old School by Tobias Wolff
During his senior year at an elite New England prep school, a young man who had struggled to fit in with his contemporaries finds his life unraveling due to the school's obsession with literary figures and their work.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
The forces of secular and Islamic Turkey collide in this prescient, complexly orchestrated novel, begun before 9/11 and completed shortly thereafter.

Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra
Their lives as a diplomat and lawyer frozen by the ascendancy of the Taliban, Moshen and Zunaira find their situation becoming a nightmare when Zunaira is arrested and condemned to death.