Jonathan Raban's caustic novel takes place in post-Y2K Seattle, where Tom Janeway is caught in the trajectory of current events (WTO riots, Al Qaeda fears) and his own deteriorating life, which includes the departure of his wife and not one but two brushes with the law. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.

Sometime in the 1820s, two men become friends--a man who cooks for a party of trappers and the fugitive he finds hiding out in the camp. The two band together to make money selling beaver musk to the Chinese, but their scheme goes bad and they perish in a deadly bog. A hundred and fifty years later, a pair of alienated teenage girls in a commune find the skeletons of the men and become embroiled in a dispute with local Native Americans. The two narratives, separated by time, have subtle similarities in what they have to say about friendship, hardship, and the landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan tracks down a vicious serial killer in Montreal.

Nathan Zuckerman, now in his early 60s, agrees to write a tribute to the dead father of an old friend and, in researching the man's life, becomes intrigued with the mystery of why someone who seemed to have been blessed in every way--with a happy marriage, successful business, good health--turned into such an intensely bitter and unhappy man during the 1960s. The novel serves as Roth's assessment of the domestic casualties of the Vietnam War.

This novel spins back and forth through time, telling the tale of a peaceful planet devastated by tragedy when a predatory new race evolves into being. Winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award and the 1997 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel.

In the small, economically gutted town of Thomaston, N.Y., three friends and lovers, Lou C. Lynch (nicknamed "Lucy"), Bobby Marconi, and Sarah Berg, struggle with the emotional desolation of their lives, loves, and families. Richard Russo is a master at showing how minor crimes and misunderstanding--a fight, a one-night-stand, a marriage to the wrong man--snowball into bitter tragedies.