New York, NY: Scribner (1998)

In this hypnotically beautiful debut novel, Mark, a young war photographer, returns to New York after being slightly injured in a Third World brushfire war. He had spent a few frightening days in the recovery ward of a dilapidated, overcrowded hospital, but can this explain his sleeplessness, distraction, his wounds' inability to heal? Elena, Mark's Spanish girlfriend, grows more and more alarmed by his strange behavior, while she also tries to calm her pregnant friend Diane, whose photographer husband has gone missing in the same war zone. As Mark continues to deteriorate, Elena's grandfather sweeps onto the scene. Joaquin is the last person from whom Elena wants to accept help; once very close to him, she ended all contact after learning of his role in "purifying" conscience-stricken officers after the Spanish Civil War. In treating Mark, Joaquin sees a way back into his granddaughter's life, and, despite Elena's disapproval, the two men begin to forge an extraordinary relationship. Eventually, all three travel to Joaquin's manor home in southern Spain so that Mark can find a safe haven in which to heal. It is in this romantic and haunted Spanish valley where both men's secrets surface with life-altering force and where Mark and Elena attempt to know and love each other again. Reminiscent of the work of Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo, this stunning novel is informed by Scott Anderson's experiences reporting on combat around the globe. A literary page-turner about the aftermath of war in the lives of survivors and their loved ones, "Triage" introduces a major new voice in American fiction.

New York, NY: Broadway Books (1998)

A combination of Ichabod Crane and Abe Lincoln, Thomas Chippering is living the real American love story. His ex-wife, the faithless Lorna Sue, left him for a suntanned tycoon in Tampa. Chippering's new prospect, Mrs. Robert Kooshof, is attractive, demanding, and of course already married. And the miniskirted young ladies at the Minnesota college where Chippering teaches? Moody, untrustworthy. But nubile... Through this hilarious, brilliantly inventive swath of characters and locales, Tomcat in Love introduces a completely fresh perspective on the chaotic, self-delusional atmosphere of romance in our time. As Chippering reaches the breaking point and goes for all out, red-blooded revenge, Tim O'Brien tells his most daring, and his most human, tale to date.

New York: Atlantic Monthly Press (1998)

Fine in dust jacket.

The sequel to Harrison's bestselling "Dalva", written ten years ago, and a magnificent story of the American West, "The Road Home" tells the story of a family drenched in suffering and joy, imbued with fierce independence and love, rooted in the Nebraska soil and intertwined with the destiny of whites and Native Americans.

Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin (1998)

Now that she has outlived those who might have objected to her telling four family secrets, Ellen Douglas does just that. A novelist revered for her storytelling, here she crosses over into the mirror world of historical fact to tell four stories in which she seeks the truth -- about herself, about her white Mississippi forebears, about their relationships to black Mississippians, and ultimately, about their guilt as murderers of helpless slaves.

New York, NY: Simon and Schuster (1998)

One of the literary geniuses of his generation, James Dickey produced his art and lived his life with a ferocious passion. He was a heavy drinker, a destructive husband and father, a poet of grace and sensitivity, and -- with the publication of his first novel, Deliverance -- a popular literary star. Now Christopher Dickey re-creates his father's world of Southern intellectuals and backwoods rednecks, his brief, heady celebrity, his quick and second marriage, and his reckless decline into alcoholism. From descriptions of Christopher's unconventional childhood, to moving memories of the crisis that reunited father and son, Dickey reveals the corrosive effects of fame and the redemptive power of love.

New York, NY: Penguin Putnam (1998)

In the year 1900--on the afternoon she suspects might be the last in her long, eventful life--Emma Garnet Tate Lowell sets down on paper what came before, determined to make an honest account of it. She recalls her life on the plantation, her marriage to a Boston surgeon, her survival of the Civil War, and the terrible secret which shaped her father's life.

New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin (1998)

The first full-length novel by one of our finest fiction writers, Where the Sea Used to Be tells the story of a struggle between a father and his daughter for the souls of two men - his proteges, her lovers. Old Dudley is a Texan whose religion is oil, and in his fifty years of searching for it he has destroyed a dozen good geologists, "crushing them to dust by manipulating their own desires against them." His most recent victim is Matthew, his daughter Mel's sometime lover. Matthew grew up in Swan Valley in Montana, where Mel has been living and studying wolves for twenty years. The valley is Old Dudley's albatross. He and Matthew have drilled nineteen dry holes there, and sensing that Matthew is burning out, Dudley sends in Wallis, a new geologist. Seduced by the valley and by Mel, Wallis discovers the dark mystery of Dudley's life, yet he cannot escape the old man's grip.

New York, NY: Ecco Press (1998)

A disabled trucker builds his dream house from Lincoln Logs. A woman returns from having a mastectomy to find the flea-market trader she loves imprisoned for selling stolen goods. A recent divorcee fantasizes about time travel as she lies in a tanning booth and wishes for a future "unbounded by time and space or custody arrangements." These are some of the people who inhabit the world of Midnight Magic, a collection of the best short stories by Bobbie Ann Mason. Mason moves quietly through the lives of her Kentucky people, capturing their tangled aspirations and buried disappointments. Men and women struggle with the ironies of modern life in a traditional rural society, trying to cope with fractured families, television evangelism, women's lib, and MTV.

New York, NY: Penguin Putnam (1998)

Hanson, the Vietnam-vet hero of "Sympathy for the Devil", is now a Portland, Oregon, cop assigned to the inner city, where, in the summer of 1975, the easy availability of drugs and guns is turning the neighborhood into a war zone. Skilled at dealing with violence, Hanson is also dangerously drawn to it. Assigned to a run of controversial cases, Hanson feels his world spinning out of control as he becomes the target of a deranged killer.

New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin (1998)

Jerusalem: where earth meets heaven, home to seekers and heretics, hustlers and madmen, dreamers and the faithful of every persuasion. In this holiest and most fractious city, where religion and politics are inextricably bound, a plot unfolds to bomb the sacred Temple Mount. Christopher Lucas, an expatriate American journalist, skeptical and searching, stumbles upon the Temple Mount plot while on assignment to investigate religious fanatics. Unwittingly entangled in the bombing plan is another American, Sonia Barnes, a Sufi convert and nightclub singer, who is drawn with Lucas into the dangerous intrigues surrounding the Old City. They encounter Adam De Kuff, an unstable Jewish guru; Raziel Melker, a strung-out Kabbalist who foists De Kuff into the role of messiah; and Jan Zimmer, a soldier of fortune routinely at the center of the world's flashpoints.

New York, NY: Henry Holt (1997)

In "The Deep Green Sea," Robert Olen Butler has created a memorable and incandescent love story between a contemporary Vietnamese woman orphaned in 1975, when Saigon finally fell to the Communists, and a Vietnam veteran who returns from America to a once war-torn land, seeking closure and a measure of peace. Bit by bit they learn more of each other's pasts. Secrets are revealed: Ben's love affair with a Vietnamese prostitute in 1966; Tien's mixed racial heritage and her abandonment by her bar-girl mother, who feared retribution from the North Vietnamese for having given birth to one of the hated "children of dust." In Butler's hands, what follows conjures the stuff of classical tragedy and also achieves a classic reconciliation of once-warring cultures.

New York, NY: Doubleday (1998)

Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone: A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm’s plush offices. When it’s all over, the man’s blood is splattered on Michael’s face—and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable. Rediscovering a conscience he lost long ago, Michael is leaving the big time for the streets where his attacker once lived—and where society’s powerless need an advocate for justice.

But there’s one break Michael can’t make—from a secret that has floated up from the depths of Drake & Sweeney, from a confidential file that is now in Michael’s hands, and from a conspiracy that has already taken lives. Now Michael’s former partners are about to become his bitter enemies. Because to them, Michael Brock is the most dangerous man on the streets.

New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (1997)

Using the oral-biography style that made his "Edie" (with Jean Stein) a bestseller, George Plimpton has blended the voices of Capote's lovers, detractors, acquaintances, and colleagues into a captivating and highly readable narrative. All his famous friends are here, including Katherine Graham, Lauren Bacall, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Lee Radziwill, William F. Buckley, Jr., and dozens of others. 60 photos.