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|  | Duluth by Edgar Box
Gore Vidal's DULUTH, which has become a cult favorite since its 1983 publication, is satire of American life in the city of Duluth, which is not necessarily Duluth, Minnesota. In this rather plotless comic satire, Gore's fictional Duluth is also a TV show with a cast comprised of Duluth citizens who have died. AUTHOR: Edgar Box
PUBLISHER: Viking Penguin
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction 
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 | A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, Jay Long
A story of injustice and redemption set in rural Louisiana during the late 1940s. Grant Wiggins, a backwoods schoolmaster, is asked visit a young black prisoner on death row. Jefferson, the prisoner, was falsely accused and convicted of murder and is sentenced to hang, and Wiggins' job, once he realizes the impossibility of overturning the verdict, is to prepare the boy for death. Although, as a nonbeliever, Wiggins at first finds himself in competition with the minister for the boy's attention, he eventually comes to see that the cultivation of any instinct of love--human or religious--is the essence of salvation, both for Jefferson and himself. AUTHOR: Ernest J. Gaines, Jay Long
PUBLISHER: Random House, Incorporated
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
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 | Big & Noisy Simon by Joseph Wallace, Kevin O'Malley
While on a trip to Africa with his photographer parents, a boy named Simon tries to keep himself quiet--especially when they're photographing animals. Unfortunately, Simon is always big and noisy--he just can't be silent. Then one night Simon witnesses some elephants, who are usually big and noisy, walking quietly through the jungle. Now Simon has an inspiration to help him keep quiet--when necessary. Color illustrations accompany the text. AUTHOR: Joseph Wallace, Kevin O'Malley
PUBLISHER: Hyperion Books for Children
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
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 | Middlemarch by A. S. Byatt, Bert G. Hornback, David Carroll, E. S. Shaffer, Felicia Bonaparte
George Eliot's masterpiece, portraying every level of society in a provincial English town, tells the story of the romantic idealist Dorothea Brooke, her misguided marriage, and the love affair that ultimately brings meaning to her life. A parallel plot involves the plight of Lydgate, the equally idealistic doctor who arrives in Middlemarch hoping to bring advanced medical techniques to the village poor but becomes infatuated with a spoiled and materialistic young woman. The novel explores the idea that the search for one's true function in life may be warped or frustrated by one's environment--and also how those obstacles may ultimately be overcome or transcended. It is celebrated for its solid Victorian virtues of realism and moral fervor; it is also a grand panorama of personality types, a fascinating and detailed look at English life in 1832, and an intensely readable and gripping story. AUTHOR: A. S. Byatt, Bert G. Hornback, David Carroll, E. S. Shaffer, Felicia Bonaparte
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
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 | Hollywood by Edgar Box, Grover Gardner
Caroline Sanford, half-sister of the newspaper tycoon Blaise Sanford from WASHINGTON, D. C., and a newspaper publisher herself, becomes actress Emma Traxler in a fledgling motion picture industry. Vidal chronicles the rise of Hollywood and the rest of the country's conflicted feelings about it, peopling his story with characters like Hearst, Douglas Fairbanks, Woodrow Wilson, Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his own grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma. AUTHOR: Edgar Box, Grover Gardner
PUBLISHER: Knopf Publishing Group
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction
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 | Pushcart Prize 2000 by Bill Henderson
The annual collection of stories, poems, and essays from independent journals and presses features essays by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elizabeth Sifton, Alexander Theroux, and Amitav Ghosh. AUTHOR: Bill Henderson
PUBLISHER: Pushcart Press, The
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction
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