Since we began displaying books from the weekly New York Times Best Sellers lists in November, 2007, we thought you might enjoy looking over their annual list of New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2007. We have included links to our online catalog for these materials in hopes that you will find it convenient to check their availability for check-out at FSPL. (Note: to return to this page from the book's catalog page, please use your browser's Back arrow.) You are welcome to reserve these books (as well as other library materials) by calling or coming by any Fort Smith Public Library neighborhood location.
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Fiction & Poetry
The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta
After Dark by Haruki Murakami; translated by Jay Rubin
The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa; translated by Edith Grossman
Bearing the Body by Ehud Havazelet
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor
The Collected Poems, 1956-1998 by Zbigniew Herbert; translated by Alissa Valles
Dancing to "Almendra" by Mayra Montero; translated by Edith Grossman
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon
A Free Life by Ha Jin
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
House Lights by Leah Hager Cohen
House of Meetings by Martin Amis
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
Knots by Nuruddin Farah
Later, At the Bar: A Novel in Stories by Rebecca Barry
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
Like You’d Understand, Anyway: Stories by Jim Shepard
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander
Mothers and Sons: Stories by Colm Toibin
Next Life by Rae Armantrout
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño; translated by Natasha Wimmer
Selected Poems by Derek Walcott; edited by Edward Baugh
The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine
Sunstroke: And Other Stories by Tessa Hadley
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Throw Like a Girl: Stories by Jean Thompson
Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005 by Robert Hass
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money by Rebecca Curtis
Varieties of Disturbance: Stories by Lydia Davis
The View from Castle Rock: Stories by Alice Munro
What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel by Dave Eggers
Winterton Blue by Trezza Azzopardi
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
Nonfiction
Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre
Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life by Hugh Brogan
Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, From White House Princess to Washington Power Broker by Stacy A. Cordery
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic by Joseph J. Ellis
The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics by Matt Bai
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race by Richard Rhodes
The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
Circling My Mother by Mary Gordon
Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire by Judith Thurman
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944. Volume Two of the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson
The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown
The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the First World War by Graham Robb
Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney
Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans by Jean Pfaelzer
Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism by John Updike
Easter Everywhere: A Memoir by Darcey Steinke
Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam by Tom Bissell
The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl
Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander
Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System by Roberto Saviano; translated by Virginia Jewiss
The House that George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of about Fifty by Wilfrid Sheed
How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now by James L. Kugel
How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard; translated by Jeffrey Mehlman
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS by Helen Epstein
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach
Leonard Woolf: A Biography by Victoria Glendinning
A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 by John Richardson
Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley
Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece by Joan Breton Connelly
Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis
Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter by Phoebe Damrosch
Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point by Elizabeth D. Samet
Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal
The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West by Mark Lilla
Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin
Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton by Sara Wheeler
Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm
The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia by Orlando Figes
The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer
Fiction
In this new novel by the author of "Little Children," a sex-ed teacher faces off against a church bent on ridding her town of "moral decay."
Fiction
A tale of two sisters, one awake all night, one asleep for months.
Fiction
This suspenseful novel transforms "Madame Bovary" into a vibrant exploration of the urban mores of the 1960s, '70s and '80s.
Fiction
In this daring first novel, a man travels to California after his brother is killed in what may have been a drug transaction.
A first novel about an Ethiopian exile in Washington, D.C., evokes loss, hope, memory and the solace of friendship.
Fiction
In his first novel since "Empire Falls," Russo writes of a small town in New York riven by class differences and racial hatred.
Fiction
A nerdy Dominican-American yearns to write and fall in love.
Aciman's novel of love, desire, time and memory describes a passionate affair between two young men in Italy.
Trevor's dark, worldly short stories linger in the mind long after they're finished.
Herbert's poetry echoes the quiet insubordination of his public life.
Spanish Language Fiction
Fact and fiction rub together in this rhythmic story of a reporter on the trail of the Mafia, set mainly in 1950s Cuba.
Fiction
In his latest novel Roth brings back Nathan Zuckerman, a protagonist whom we have known since his potent youth and who now must face his inevitable decline.
Fiction
Through the story of a lawyer and his estranged wife, DeLillo resurrects the world as it was on 9/11, in all its mortal dread, high anxiety and mass confusion.
Fiction
In Mallon's seventh novel, a State Department official navigates the anti-gay purges of the McCarthy era.
The Chinese-born author spins a tale of bravery and nobility in an American system built on risk and mutual exploitation.
Fiction
An Irishwoman searches for clues to what set her brother on the path to suicide.
Fiction,
Juvenile CD 813.54,
Juvenile Fiction,
Juvenile Fiction,
Large Print Fiction,
Young Adult Fiction
Rowling ties up all the loose ends in this conclusion to her grand wizarding saga.
The heroine of Cohen's third novel abandons her tarnished parents for the seductions of her grandmother's life in theater.
Fiction
A Russian World War II veteran posthumously acquaints his stepdaughter with his grim past of rape and violence.
Fiction,
Large Print Fiction
The boy narrator of this novel, set in Libya in 1979, learns about the convoluted roots of betrayal in a totalitarian society.
Fiction
Leavitt explores the intricate relationship between the Cambridge mathematician G. H. Hardy and a poor, self-taught genius from Madras, stranded in England during World War I.
After 20 years, a Somali woman returns home to Mogadishu from Canada, intent on reclaiming a family house from a warlord.
The small-town regulars at Lucy's Tavern carry their loneliness in "rough and beautiful" ways.
Fiction
A young woman searches for the truth about her parentage amid the snow and ice of Lapland in this bleakly comic yet sad tale of a child's futile struggle to be loved.
Shepard's surprising tales feature such diverse characters as a Parisian executioner, a woman in space and two Nazi scientists searching for the yeti.
This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer's life.
Henkin follows a couple from college to their mid-30s, through crises of love and mortality.
Fiction
A married couple find their way back to each other under unusual circumstances.
Fiction
A Jewish family is caught up in Argentina's "Dirty War."
In this collection by the author of "The Master," families are not so much reassuring and warm as they are settings for secrets, suspicion and missed connections.
Poetry that conveys the invention, the wit and the force of mind that contests all assumptions.
Fiction
Consisting largely of a single sex scene played out on a couple's wedding night, this seeming novel of manners is as much a horror story as any McEwan has written.
In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.
Fiction
Hamid's chilling second novel is narrated by a Pakistani who tells his life story to an unnamed American after the attacks of 9/11.
Fiction
In this debut, a Londoner emerges from a coma and seeks to reassure himself of the genuineness of his existence.
A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.
The Nobel Prize winner Walcott, who was born on St. Lucia, is a long-serving poet of exile, caught between two races and two worlds.
Fiction
In this powerful first novel, the father of a prosperous Jewish family in Tehran is arrested shortly after the Iranian revolution.
The Asian-American characters in this meticulously observed comic-book novella explicitly address the way in which they handle being in a minority.
These resonant tales encapsulate moments of hope and humiliation in a kind of shorthand of different lives lived.
Fiction
Layoff notices fly in Ferris's acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.
The women here are smart and strong but drawn to losers.
What Hass, a former poet laureate, has lost in Californian ease he has gained in stern self-restraint.
Fiction
The author of "Jesus' Son" offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.
In this debut collection, a crisp, blunt tone propels stories both surreal and realistic.
Dispensing with straight narrative, Davis microscopically examines language and thought.
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This collection offers unusually explicit reflections of Munro's life.
Fiction
The horrors, injustices and follies in this novel are based on the experiences of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.
An unhappy young woman meets an even unhappier drifter.
Fiction
Cops, thugs, schemers, rabbis, chess fanatics and obsessives of every stripe populate this screwball, hard-boiled murder mystery set in an imagined Jewish settlement in Alaska.
The exploits of Eddie Chapman, a British criminal who became a double agent in World War II.
Brogan's combative biography takes issue with Tocqueville's misgivings about democracy.
A biography of Theodore Roosevelt's shrewd, tart-tongued older daughter.
NonFiction (973.3 ELL)
This history explores an underappreciated point: that this country was constructed to foster arguments, not to settle them.
An exhaustive account of the Democrats' transformative efforts, by a political reporter for The New York Times Magazine.
This artful history focuses on the events leading up to the pivotal 1986 Reykjavik summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev.
The novelist returns to Guatemala, a major inspiration for his fiction, to try to solve the real-life killing of a Roman Catholic bishop.
Danticat's cleareyed prose and unflinching adherence to the facts conceal an undercurrent of melancholy in this memoir of her Haitian family.
Gordon's deeply personal memoir focuses on the engaged and lively Catholicism of her mother, a glamorous career woman who was also an alcoholic with a body afflicted by polio.
These surgically analytic essays of cultural criticism showcase themes of loss, hunger and motherhood.
NonFiction (909.0982 JAM)
Essays on 20th-century luminaries by one of Britain's leading public intellectuals.
NonFiction (940.542 ATK)
A celebration of the American experience in these campaigns.
Biography (92 DIANA)
The former New Yorker editor details the sordid domestic drama that pitted the Princess of Wales against Britain's royal family.
Robb presents France as a group of diverse regions, each with its own long history, intricate belief systems and singular customs.
Mahoney juxtaposes her solo rowing journey with encounters with the Egyptians she met.
How the Chinese were brutalized and demonized in the 19th-century American West - and how they fought back.
Updike's first nonfiction collection in eight years displays breathtaking scope as well as the author's seeming inability to write badly.
A minister's daughter confronts her own spiritual rootlessness.
This meticulous biography shows Wharton's significance as a designer, decorator, gardener and traveler, as well as a writer.
Bissell mixes rigorous narrative accounts of the war and emotionally powerful scenes of the distress it brought his own family.
In her fifth and most powerful memoir, Hampl looks hard at her relationship to her Midwestern roots as her mother lies dying in the hospital.
With scathing humor and bitter irony, Auslander wrestles with his Jewish Orthodox roots.
This powerful work of reportage started a national conversation in Italy when it was published there last year.
A rich homage to Gershwin, Berlin and other masters of the swinging jazz song.
NonFiction (610.695 GRO)
Groopman takes a tough-minded look at the ways in which doctors and patients interact, and at the profound problems facing modern medicine.
In this tour through the Jewish scriptures (i.e., the Old Testament, more or less), a former professor of Hebrew seeks to reclaim the Bible from the literalists and the skeptics.
A French literature professor wants to assuage our guilt over the ways we actually read and discuss books.
NonFiction 956.7044 CHA
The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America's governance of Iraq.
Rigorous reporting unearths new findings among the old issues.
NonFiction (327.1273 WEI)
A comprehensive chronicle of the American intelligence agency, from the days of the Iron Curtain to Iraq, by a reporter for The New York Times.
How Hitler's favorite director made "Triumph of the Will" and convinced posterity that she didn't know what the Nazis were up to.
Glendinning shows Virginia Woolf's accomplished husband as passionate, reserved and, above all, stoical.
The third, penultimate installment in Richardson's biography spans a dauntingly complicated time in Picasso's life and in European history.
NonFiction (977.761 KAL)
Kalish's soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.
NonFiction (966.404 BEA)
A former child warrior gives literary voice to the violence and killings he both witnessed and perpetrated during the Sierra Leone civil war.
NonFiction (347.7326 TOO)
An erudite outsider's account of the cloistered court's inner workings.
Colley tracks the "compulsively itinerant" Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.
A scholar finds that religion meant power for Greek women.
Biography (92 ELLISON)
Ellison was seemingly cursed by his failure to follow up "Invisible Man."
In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker's music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.
Biography (92 SCHULZ)
Actual "Peanuts" cartoons movingly illustrate this portrait of the strip's creator, presented here as a profoundly lonely and unhappy man.
A memoir about waiting tables at the acclaimed Manhattan restaurant Per Se.
A civilian teacher at the Military Academy offers a significant perspective on a crucial social and political force: honor.
Of the many biographies of Henry Morton Stanley, Jeal's, which profits from his access to an immense new trove of material, is the most complete and readable.
With nuance and complexity, Lilla examines how we managed to separate, in a fashion, church and state.
Biography (92 HARDY)
Tomalin presents Hardy as a fascinating case study in mid-Victorian literary sociology.
The story of the man immortalized in "Out of Africa."
Sharp criticism meets playful, absorbing biography in this study of Stein and Toklas.
An extraordinary look at the gulag's impact on desperate individuals and families struggling to survive.
Individual testimony and broader events are skillfully interwoven.
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