Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund
A fictional tale of the life of Marie Antoinette presents the story of a teenage empress's daughter who is forced to leave her family home to marry the future king of France and who rebels against the formality and rigid protocol of court life.

The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright
Born in 1844 in upstate New York as the child of ardent abolitionists, Liberty Fish finds his life forever influenced not only by his parents but by his grandparents, Carolina slaveholders dedicated to preserving the institution of slavery, a conflict that he struggles to resolve by enlisting during the Civil War.

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes
Chronicles the lives of two boys--one who is forgotten by history, and one who becomes the creator of the world's most famous detective--as they pursue their separate destinies until they meet in a remarkable alliance.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
A meditative novel of a young boy on the cusp of adulthood follows a single year in the life of thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor as he grows up in what is for him the sleepiest village in Worcestershire, England, in 1982.

Brookland by Emily Barton
Prudence Winship, the owner of a successful gin distillery in eighteenth-century Brooklyn, becomes obsessed with a plan to build a bridge across the East River to Manhattan, enlisting the help of a loyal surveyor and her two sisters.

The Eagle's Throne by Carlos Fuentes
In a near future Mexico, a country teetering on the edge of chaos and anarchy in which all communications with the outside world have been cut off, an ambitious president, his scheming cabinet secretary, and an unscrupulous sexual diva all compete for power.

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
Twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter, suffering from a rare brain disorder that causes him to believe his sister to be an impostor, endeavors to discover the cause of the motor vehicle accident that resulted in his head injury.

Eifelheim (SF) by Michael Flynn
Tom, a modern-day historian, and his girlfriend Sharon, a theoretical physicist, search for the truth about the 1349 disappearance of the small German town of Eifelheim as the Black Death strengthens its grip on medieval Europe, unaware that Father Deitrich, the village priest in 1348, became the first contact between humankind and a mysterious alien race.

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
Follows three friends - and their overlapping social and family circles - through their day-to-day lives, their perceived struggles and successes and their search for meaning. This work also presents a portrait of a particular place at a particular moment, and an illustration of how the events of a single day can change everything for ever.

Everyman by Philip Roth
A successful commercial artist with three very different ex-wives, a daughter who adores him, and two sons who despise him, the protagonist finds his confidence, sense of independence, and well-being undermined by an attack of illness in middle age.

Grief by Andrew Holleran
Grieving over the death of his mother, a jaded professor heads for the nation's capital to recuperate and finds in his lonely landlord and the journals of Mary Todd Lincoln insights into the feelings of loneliness, yearning, and mourning.

In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant
In 1527, when the city of Rome is sacked and burned by an invading army, the famed courtesan Fiammetta Bianchini and her dwarf companion, Bucino Teodoldi, escape to the wealthy and powerful city of Venice in order to rebuild their business, but they soon discover unexpected temptations and challenges that will have profound repercussions for them all.

Intuition by Allegra Goodman
A trio of researchers--a publicity-seeking oncologist, an exacting scientist driven by a love of research, and an ambitious young lab technician--becomes caught up in the desperate quest for a financial grant from the Philpott, a prestigious research laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a campaign that has a profound impact on all their lives.

Last Seen Leaving by Kelly Braffet
When Miranda, a young drifter, vanishes after being picked up by a passing stranger following a car accident, no one realizes that she is missing for two months or that her highway rescuer could be tied to rumors of a serial killer stalking young women.

Magic Time by Doug Marlette
Following an emotional breakdown, New York City newspaper columnist Carter Ransom returns home to Mississippi to confront his formidable father and a traumatic past marked by a twenty-five-year-old unsolved civil rights murder case that shattered his family.

The Meaning of Night: A Confession by Michael Cox
Convinced that he is destined for great wealth, power, and influence, Edward Glyver--booklover, scholar, and murderer--will to anything to reclaim a prize that is rightfully his, following a trail from the underworld depths of Victorian London, to the posh estate of Evenwood and all-consuming love for the enigmatic Emily Carteret, to an ultimate showdown with his rival, poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt.

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood
A collection of short fiction presents eleven stories that capture important moments in the course of a life and in the lives intertwined with it, in a volume that ranges from the 1930s to the 1980s.

The People's Act of Love by James Meek
In a remote Siberian town torn apart by civil war and inhabited by a small Christian sect, Anna Petrovna, a beautiful photographer, becomes involved in the fate of Samarin, an escapee from Russia's northernmost prison camp.

Prospero's Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez
Exiled from England for performing dangerous experiments on his patients, Peter Gardner flees to the Caribbean with his daughter, Virginia, raising her in isolation except for a few natives, including Carlos, a young boy of mixed race with whom Virginia develops a forbidden friendship that blooms into love.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.

Skinner's Drift by Lisa Fugard
Returning to her South African home to attend the death of her violent father, Eva van Rensburg is forced to confront a terrible childhood secret, in a tale set against a backdrop of the region's troubled history.

Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky
A remarkable story of life under the Nazi occupation includes two parts--"A Storm in June," set amid the chaotic 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, and "Dolce," set in a German-occupied provincial village rife with jealousy, resentment, resistance, and collaboration.

Terrorist by John Updike
Eighteen-year-old Ahmad, the son of an Irish-American mother and long-gone Egyptian father, is contemptuous of the self-indulgent society surrounding him in suburban New Prospect, New Jersey, and devoted to the teachings of Islam, becomes drawn into an insidious terrorist plot.

Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
Reduced to living in the remote country house of his largest collector and serving as caretaker for his volatile and childlike brother Hugh, Michael "Butcher" Boone, a once famous painter, finds his delicately balanced world undermined by the arrival of an enigmatic young woman named Marlene who sets in motion a series of events that will forever alter all of their lives.

The Thin Place by Kathyrn Davis
Discovering a dead body at a lake near the Canadian border, twelve-year-old Mees Kipp inexplicably brings the man back to life and realizes that she possesses an extraordinary gift that irrevocably shapes the lives of Mees, her two friends, and their community.

Timothy, or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Timothy, a tortoise who lived in the garden of eighteenth-century curate Gilbert White, speaks out on his life in the garden, his nine-day adventure outside the gate, his observations of the curious habits and habitations of humans, and the natural world around him.

The Whole World Over by Julia Glass
Hired as the personal chef to the governor of New Mexico, headstrong Greenie Duquette leaves behind her Greenwich Village pastry business and her psychotherapist husband Alan to head west with her four-year-old son, prompting a period of adventure, upheaval, and reflection for herself and all those drawn into her orbit.

More Notable Fiction Titles of 2006

The Accidental by Ali Smith
Talking her way into the Norfolk cottage that the Smart family is renting for the summer, Amber, an enigmatic, lying con artist insinuates herself into the lives of Eve, her husband Michael, and their children, forcing them to reexamine the events of their lives through her perceptions and forever altering the world around them.

After This by Alice McDermott
A vivid portrait of an American family during the middle decades of the twentieth century evokes the social, spiritual, and political turmoil of the era as seen through the experiences of a middle-class couple and their children, as they cope with the changing world around them.

All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones
A collection of fourteen short stories is set in Washington, D.C., and follows morally complex characters caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations of modern city life.

Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson
Unduly familiar with choosing between sides throughout her lifetime, Nonny Frett finds herself once again caught in the middle between an escalating family feud that began before her birth and the realization of her own dreams.

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, retired life insurance salesman Nathan Glass moves to Brooklyn to find anonymity and solitude through his declining years, but a chance meeting with Tom Wood, his long-lost nephew, who works in a local bookstore owned by the charismatic Harry Brightman, transforms his life and forces him to come to terms with his past.

Digging to America by Anne Tyler
A chance encounter between two families--the Donaldsons, and the Iranian-born Yasdans--at the Baltimore airport, as both couples await the arrival of an adopted daughter from Korea, prompts an examination about what it means to be an American while the lives of the two families intertwine over the years.

A Family Daughter by Maile Meloy
A young woman from the Santerre clan accompanies her family to Argentina, where their lives become entwined with an uninhibited rich girl, an aging French playboy, a young Eastern European prostitute, and an orphaned child.

Forgetfulness by Ward S. Just
A former spy for the CIA now living as a respected painter in the south of France, Thomas Railles finds his life turned upside down when his wife Florette is murdered, until he discovers that four Moroccan terrorists have been charged with the crime.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
A collection of more than twenty-five short fictional works includes a novella featuring the hero from his best-selling American Gods, in a volume that follows a theme of the intersections between life and death, perception and reality, and darkness and light.

Golden Country by Jennifer Gilmore
Traces the lives of three Jewish-American families throughout four decades in the twentieth century, in a tale told through the experiences of such characters as gangster-turned-Broadway producer Seymour, salesman and innovator Joseph, and actor Frances Gold.

Helen of Troy by Margaret George
Married at a tender age to the Spartan king Menelaus, the beautiful Helen bears him a daughter and anticipates a passionless marriage before falling in love with the Trojan prince Paris, with whom she flees to Troy with devastating consequences.

High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
A seminal anthology of outstanding short fiction, selected by the author herself, features selections from such collections as The Wheel of Love, Marriages and Infidelities, and Heat, as well as nine previously unpublished works.

Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende
A work of historical fiction chronicles the brave deeds and passionate loves of a spirited woman who journeyed to the New World and helped found a nation.

The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
A sequel to Ellen Foster finds fifteen-year-old Ellen settling into a permanent home with a new mother, where she manages conflicted feelings through her ritual visits to the county fair, her poetry, and her growing relationship with marriage-oriented Stuart.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King
Two years after losing her husband of twenty-five years, Lisey looks back at the sometimes frightening intimacy that marked their marriage, her husband's successes as a novelist, and his secretive nature that established Lisey's supernatural belief systems.

The Lives of Rocks by Rick Bass
A compilation of short fiction includes the title story about a woman's recovery from cancer, as well as "Pagans," a retrospective about the dangerous games played by a girl and two boys in their youth, and "Her First Elk," in which a woman recalls her first elk hunt.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
A tale set in World War II London finds a rescue worker struggling for composure after a bombing, a young woman longing for her soldier lover, and a convict who watches a battle through the bars of his window.

Paint It Black by Janet Fitch
Following the suicide of her lover, art student Michael Faraday, Josie Tyrell, an art model and teenage runaway, struggles to come to terms with his death and to deal with his mother, Meredith, who holds her responsible for the tragedy.

Philosophy Made Simple by Robert Hellenga
Widower Rudy Harrington, a father of three grown daughters, leaves his Chicago home for a new life at an avocado grove in Texas, where he takes up philosophy, presides over his daughter's Hindu wedding, and falls for his son-in-law's mother.

Strivers Row by Kevin Baker
Rev. Jonah Dove returns home to World War II-era Harlem, troubled by his history of passing as a white man in college, and finds his life colliding with that of Malcolm Little, a teenage hustler from Michigan who is destined to rename himself Malcolm X.

Strivers Row by Kevin Baker
Rev. Jonah Dove returns home to World War II-era Harlem, troubled by his history of passing as a white man in college, and finds his life colliding with that of Malcolm Little, a teenage hustler from Michigan who is destined to rename himself Malcolm X.

Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle
Having fallen completely in love with hearing-impaired Dana, Bridger is unable to believe her guilty of charges ranging from assault to auto theft and discovers that a man named William "Peck" Wilson has been living a life of criminal excess at Dana's expense.

The World to Come by Dara Horn
Having stolen a million-dollar Marc Chagall masterpiece, thirty-year-old quiz-show writer Benjamin Ziskind and his twin sister work to evade the police and evaluate the eighty-year-old link between their family and the famous painting.