ALA 2008 Best Fiction

These are books we have already read or might want to read. Jenny

Fiction

	An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. By Brock Clarke. Algonquin, $23.95 (9781565125513). Released from prison after burning down Emily Dickinson’s house, an accidental arsonist reinvents himself in this incendiary send-up of the state of American letters.
	Away. By Amy Bloom. Random, $23.95 (9781400063567). This beautifully written novel follows Lillian Leyb, a Russian immigrant who embarks on an arduous westward journey across the U.S. in the 1920s in search of her daughter.
	Cheating at Canasta. By William Trevor. Viking, $24.95 (9780670018376). This sublime collection of melancholy short stories exploring relationships between friends, family, and lovers is the work of a master craftsman at the top of his form.
	The Complete Stories. By David Malouf. Pantheon, $27.50 (9780375424977). These intense, powerful stories range from lyrical to violent portrayals of how the Australian landscape changes its inhabitants.
	Finn. By Jon Clinch. Random $23.95 (9781400065912). The dark secrets of Huck Finn’s brutal father, “Pap,” are imagined in this violent tale of life on the Mississippi.
	The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes. By Tess Uriza Holthe. Crown, $23.95 (9780307351852). Linked by an accidental death and by a train route, these 10 stories offer colorful characters and intense dramas entwined into an exemplary novel-in-stories.
	Five Skies. By Ron Carlson. Viking, $23.95 (9780670038503). As three men build a ramp for a daredevil jump across an Idaho gorge, each exposes tender wounds and experiences significant changes.
	The Ministry of Special Cases. By Nathan Englander. Knopf, $25 (9780375404931). By turns humorous and tragic, this sometimes surreal novel examines Jewish culture during Argentina’s “dirty war” and chronicles the disappearance of one family’s son.
	Mister Pip. By Lloyd Jones. Dell, $20 (9780385341066). As her once familiar life crumbles in the face of civil war, a young island girl is transformed by her reading of Great Expectations.
	On Chesil Beach. By Ian McEwan. Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $22 (9780385522404). Miscommunication and apprehension imperil a new marriage in this powerful story of a young couple honeymooning on England’s Chesil Beach in the early 1960s.
	Out Stealing Horses. By Per Petterson. Graywolf, $22 (9781555974701). In this spare and beautiful novel, aging widower Tron Sanders, who lives alone on the Norwegian tundra, contemplates his childhood, which was shaped by World War II, as well as the central tragedy of his youth.
	The Pesthouse. By Jim Crace. Doubleday/Nan A Talese, $24.95 (9780385520751). Pestilence is the backdrop for this surprisingly hopeful tale of Margaret and Franklin, young survivors traveling across postapocalyptic America both to escape and to begin again.
	The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. By Michael Chabon. HarperCollins, $26.95 (9780007149827). What if Israel were relocated to a piece of land leased from Alaska? This genre-blending tour de force explores an outlandish premise with enthusiasm and flair.