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Dodd, Susan. The Silent Woman. Nov. 2001. 336p. Morrow, $25 (0-688-17000-5). The early career of Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka provides the material for Dodd's latest novel, which follows The Mourner's [...]

Koeppen, Wolfgang. The Hothouse. Tr. by Michael Hofmann. June 2001. 224p. Norton, $23.95 (0-393-04902-7). Koeppen was an influential post-World War II German writer, although he came of age before the [...]

Yoshimura, Akira. One Man's Justice. Tr. by Mark Ealey. Aug. 2001. 288p. Harcourt, $23 (0-15-100639-3). Yoshimura, author of the previous novels On Parole (1999) and Shipwrecks (2000), here takes such [...]

Yarbrough, Steve. Visible Spirits. May 2001. 288p. Knopf, $23 (0-375-41159-3). A family's complex relations and dark history are the central forces binding together plot and theme in this latest novel [...]

Merridale, Catherine. Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia. Apr. 2001. 372p. Viking, $29.95 (0-670-89474-5). 393. Combining personal interviews and archival research, Merridale has written a gut-wrenching, at [...]

* Banville, John. Eclipse. Feb. 2001. 224p. Knopf, $23 (0-375-41129-1). Banville's twelfth novel (his previous one was The Untouchable [1997]) is really an elegiac prose poem that takes what is [...]

* Ulitskaya, Ludmila. The Funeral Party. Tr. by Cathy Porter. Jan. 2001. 160p. Pantheon/Schocken, $18.95 (0-8052-4185-X). Ulitskaya is considered by many to be the best contemporary Russian novelist, and it's [...]

Hynes, James. The Lecturer's Tale. Jan. 2001. 400p. St. Martin's/Picador, $25 (0-312-20332-2). This macabre, sort of magic realist satire takes dead aim at some of the pretensions of the academic [...]

* Stapinski, Helene. Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History. Mar. 2001. 288p. Random, $23.95 (0-679-46306-2). 364.1. This is certainly not the run-of-the-mill memoir that's being cranked out these days, and [...]

Pesmen, Dale. Russia and Soul: An Exploration. Dec. 2000. 352p. index. Cornell, $45 (0-8014-3739-3); paper, $19.95 (0-8014-8709-9). 947. As the author herself notes, the idea of the Russian soul (dusha) [...]

* Lardner, Ring. I'd Hate Myself in the Morning. Jan. 2001. 208p. illus. Thunder's Mouth/Nation, $22.95 (1-56025-296-0). 813. The only thing wrong with this book is that it's a memoir [...]

Wall, Jack. Prime Leaf: A Novel of the Kentucky Tobacco Wars. Dec. 2000. 308p. Hill Street, 191 E. Broad St., Ste. 209, Athens, GA 30601-2848, $24.95 (1-892514-82-6). This posthumous first [...]

Benioff, David. The 25th Hour. Jan. 2001. 192p. Carroll & Graf, $24 (0-7867-0772-0). This absorbing debut novel follows the final day of freedom for Montgomery 'Monty' Brogan, a convicted heroin [...]

Lyons, Arthur. Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir. Nov. 2000. 256p. illus. Da Capo, $17.50 (0-306-80996-6). 791.43. Lyons has written a nice little study of [...]

Medvedev, Roy. Post-Soviet Russia: A Journey through the Yeltsin Era. Tr. by George Shriver. Nov. 2000. 360p. index. Columbia Univ., $37.50 (0-231-10606-8). 338.947. Russia's best-known contemporary historian comes to grips [...]

Piglia, Ricardo. The Absent City . Tr. by Sergio Gabriel. Nov. 2000. 147p. Duke, $45.95 (0-8223-2557-8); paper, $15.95 (0-8223-2586-1). This mysterious, Calvino-like tale by the author of Artificial Respiration (1994) [...]

* Prieto, Jose Manuel. Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire. Tr. by Thomas and Carol Christensen. Nov. 2000. 288p. Grove; dist. by Publishers Group West, $24 (0-8021-1665-5). Cuban-born Prieto, who [...]

Handke, Peter. On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House. Nov. 2000. 160p. Farrar, $23 (0-374-17547-0). A small-town pharmacist with a penchant for wild mushrooms--some hallucinatory, some not--embarks on [...]

Ultan, Lloyd and Unger, Barbara. Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictoral History of the Borough. Nov. 2000. 288p. illus, index. Rutgers, $32 (0-8135-2863-1). 810.8. Ultan and Unger chronicle the rise, [...]

* Duiker, William J. Ho Chi Minh. Sept. 2000. 720p. index, illus. Hyperion; dist. by Little, Brown, $35 (0-7868-6387-0). DDC: 959.704. He Who Enlightens. That's the translation of Ho Chi [...]

* Kopperud, Gunnar. The Time of Light. Tr. by Tiina Nunnally. July 2000. 256p. Bloomsbury; dist. by St. Martin's, $23.95 (1-58234-088-9). A journalist by trade, Kopperud's remarkable first novel tells [...]

* Harrison, Jim. The Beast God Forgot to Invent. Oct. 2000. 240p. Atlantic Monthly; dist. by Publishers Group West, $24 (0-87113-821-2). Like his other fiction, Harrison's fourth volume of novellas [...]

Isegawa, Moses. Abyssinian Chronicles. June 2000. 416p. Knopf, $26 (0-375-40613-1). This autobiographical first novel by a Ugandan expatriate living in Holland captures perfectly the sociological and political upheavals that country [...]

Zucker, Benjamin. Blue. June 2000. 224p. illus. Overlook; dist. by Viking, $40 (1-58567-000-6). The blue of the title refers to the color of a sapphire, or to the irresistible blue [...]

Hazuka, Tom. In the City of the Disappeared. June 2000. 288p. Bridge Works, $22.95 (1-882593-31-6). Santiago, Chile, is the eponymous city of the disappeared, and the time is the late [...]

Kadare, Ismail. Elegy for Kosovo. Tr. by Peter Constantine. May 2000. 128p. Arcade; dist. by Little, Brown, $17.95 (1-55970-528-0). DDC: 891. This is a retelling of the legendary battle in [...]

Rosen, Jeffrey. The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. June 2000. 288p. index. Random, $24.95 (0-679-44546-3). DDC: 342.7. Using John Stuart Mill as his model, Rosen mounts a [...]

Pelevin, Victor. Buddha's Little Finger. Tr. by Andrew Bromfield. May 2000. 352p. Viking, $24.95 (0-670-89168-1). Pelevin, author of The Life of Insects (1998) and one of Russia's foremost contemporary authors, [...]

* Crace, Jim. Being Dead. Apr. 2000. 193p. Farrar, $23 (0-374-11013-1). In his latest novel, Crace (author of Quarantine, 1998) archly explores life and death and the effect of chance [...]

Drury, Tom. Hunts in Dreams. May 2000. 208p. Houghton, $22 (0-395-94113-X). This highly entertaining tale of American working-class existentialism takes place over the course of a long weekend, during which [...]

* Mango, Andrew. Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Apr. 2000. 666p. index. illus. Overlook; dist. by Viking, $40 (1-58567-011-1). DDC: 956.1024092. Perhaps more than anyone in [...]

Freeman, Joshua B. Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II. May 2000. 432p. index. illus. New Press, $35 (1-56584-575-7). DDC: 305.5. Overlooked in the generalizations about the [...]

* Wright, Lawrence. God's Favorite. Mar. 2000. 352p. Simon & Schuster, $24 (0-684-86810-5). Wright's timely first novel is a historical fiction recalling the events, beginning with the murder of opposition [...]

Aron, Leon. Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life. Mar. 2000. 896p. index. illus. St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, $35 (0-312-25185-8). DDC: 947.085 Aron's exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, political biography of Russia's first post-Communist president [...]

Standiford, Les. Black Mountain. Feb. 2000. 336p. Putnam, $23.95 (0-399-14584-2). This latest page-turner by Standiford, author of Spill (1991) and the five Deal novels, is a crime thriller with political [...]

Hawkes, G. W. Gambler's Rose. Mar. 2000. 262p. MacMurray & Beck, $26.95 (1-878448-96-X). If there's one thing Music Halloran and his two sons, Reggie and Charlie, know how to do, [...]

Thomson, Rupert. The Book of Revelation. Feb. 2000. 272p. Knopf, $23 (0-37540927-0). Thomson (author of Soft!, 1998) once again probes the psychological depths of his protagonist in this tale of [...]

* Thubron, Colin. In Siberia. Jan. 2000. 288p. index. HarperCollins, $26 (0-06-019543-6). DDC: 957. No single book can capture the enormity or the 'otherness' of Siberia, but this one comes [...]

* Gorbachev, Mikhall. Gorbachev: On My Country and the World. Tr. by George Shriver. Nov. 1999. 274p. index. Columbia, $29.95 (0-231-11514-8). DDC: 947.08501. Gorbachev's authorship alone makes this book an [...]

Grass, Gunter. My Century. Tr. by Michael Henry Heim. Dec. 1999. 288p. Harcourt, $25 (0-15-100496-X). Grass, newly crowned with the Nobel Prize in literature, has decided to close out the [...]

* Stern, Lesley. The Smoking Book. Dec. 1999. 235p. Univ. of Chicago, $22 (0-226-77330-2). DDC: 823. After death and taxes now comes a third certainty: that this book will be [...]

Barthelme, Frederick and Barthelme, Steven. Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss. Nov. 1999. 208p. Houghton, $24 (0-395-95429-0). DDC: 616.85. An old story with a new twist: What began as [...]

Dezhnev, Nikolai. In Concert Performance. Tr. by Mary Ann Szporluk. Oct. 1999. 304p. Doubleday, $23.95 (0385-49326-6). There's a touch of Wim Wenders and a great deal of Mikhail Bulgakov in [...]

Mitgang, Herbert. Once upon a Time in New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age. Jan. 2000.272p. index. Free Press, $25 (0-684-85579-8). DDC: [...]

Galvin, James. Fencing the Sky. Oct. 1999. 258p. Holt/John Macrae, $23 (0-8050-6220-3). Once you get past this novel's stereotypes and its morality of 'thou shalt get away with murder if [...]

Makine, Andrei. The Crime of Olga Arbyeline. Sept. 1999. 256p. Arcade; dist. by Little, Brown, $24.95 (1-55970-494-2). The third novel by the author of Dreams of My Russian Summers (1997), [...]

* O'Hagan, Andrew. Our Fathers. Oct. 1999. 304p. Harcourt, $23 General Fiction (0-15-100494-3). O'Hagan's first novel is a generational story that argues for the idealism of progress while simultaneously acknowledging [...]

* Logue, Antonia. Shadow-Box. Aug. 1999. 336p. Grove; dist. by Publishers Group West, $24 (0-8021-1647-7). It is 1946, and a man and a woman renew their acquaintance through letters, each [...]

* Lethem, Jonathan. Motherless Brooklyn. Sept. 1999. 320p. Doubleday, $23.95 (0-385-49183-2). Here's a detective story with a unique twist: the narrator-protagonist, Lionel Essrog, out to solve the murder of his [...]

Walter, Richard. Escape from Film School. July 1999. 256p. St. Martin's/ Thomas Dunne, $22.95 (0-312-20537-6). It is 1966 and Stuart Thomas, the protagonist in this first-person roman clef, has two [...]