It's November 1991. Nirvana's in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer. Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it's guilt and grief over the shocking...

"Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven't spoken to one another in over four decades. As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deep-rooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing...

"This dark, propulsive novel, the crowning masterwork by the 92-year-old Caldwell, takes place during 1992, when AIDS was still an incurable scourge and death casualties were every day events. One cold winter night, when the artist, Dempsey Coates, is on the way home to her loft, she encounters a several alarm blaze, water jetting every which way from hydrants, and ends up offering several fireman a place to get warm. One of them is Johnny Donegan,...

"Johanna Morrigan (aka Dolly Wilde) has it all: she is nineteen, lives in her own flat in London, and writes for the coolest music magazine in Britain. Her star is rising, just not quickly enough for her liking. Then John Kite, Johanna's unrequited love, has an album go to number one. Suddenly John exists on another plane of reality: that of the Famouses, a world of rabid fans and VIP access. Johanna lacks the traditional trappings of fame (famous...

"Guy Novel marries a thriller to a shameless love story and fun ride, what Graham Greene might have called "an entertainment." It takes place over one month in 1996, from early August to early September, as the Taliban were about to take over Afghanistan, Bill Clinton was running for reelection, most people still used answering machines, and HoTMaiL became the latest new thing. The story is told retrospectively but vividly by Robert Wilder, a less-than-successful...