"Everything She Thought She Wanted" by Elizabeth Buchan (Viking). The popular British writer ("Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman") contrasts the domestic lives and opportunities of two women, one living in 1959 and the other 40 years later.

"Babylon Sisters" by Pearl Cleage (One World/Ballantine). New novel by the author of "Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do," about a mother who, as close as she is to her daughter, won't reveal to her who her father was.

"The Scourge of God" by William Dietrich (HarperCollins). The Seattle Times writer's latest novel is set in a fifth-century Roman Empire under attack by Attila the Hun.

"The Sign of the Book" by John Dunning (Scribner). The new Cliff Janeway mystery finds the bibliophile-sleuth doing a friend a favor by investigating a puzzling murder.

"With No One as Witness" by Elizabeth George (HarperCollins). A new Lynley-Havers mystery, as the posh aristocrat and the blue-collar policeman investigate a string of twisted killings.

"Market Forces" by Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey). A new novel by the author of "Altered Carbon," about a commodities trader who makes his dough by investing in "small wars."

"Saving Cascadia" by John Nance (Simon & Schuster). Nance, a local aviation expert, pens a tale of a wealthy real-estate developer who builds a casino, hotel and convention center on an island off the coast of Washington, despite predictions that centuries of tectonic strain are about to shake things up. Earthquakes, tsunamis and air rescues, all wrapped up in a local package.

"Cold Service" by Robert B. Parker (Putnam). Parker's new Spenser novel finds the investigator tending his injured friend, Hawk, and tracking down the Ukrainian mobsters who hurt him.

APRIL

"Where There's a Will" by Aaron Elkins (Berkley). The Sequim author's latest Gideon Oliver mystery finds the professor of forensics uncovering "a deadly family plot of greed and murder" in Hawaii.

"In the Company of Cheerful Ladies" by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon). A new No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novel, in which proprietress Mma Ramotswe finds herself dealing with an intruder in her house and "a mysterious pumpkin" in her yard.

"Lost in the Forest" by Sue Miller (Knopf). A novel set in California vineyard country about a divorced, remarried mother of three whose second husband is killed in a car crash. By the author of "The Good Mother" and "Inventing the Abbotts."

"The Breakdown Lane" by Jacquelyn Mitchard (HarperCollins). A novel by the author of "The Deep End of the Ocean," about a Wisconsin newspaper advice columnist who's a little bit clueless about her own life.

"True Believer" by Nicholas Sparks (Warner). Another "unforgettable love story" from the author of "Message in a Bottle," this one about a science journalist investigating ghostly doings in small-town North Carolina.

"Ya-Yas in Bloom" by Rebecca Wells (HarperCollins). The local author writes a sequel to her best selling "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," about the lifelong friendship of a circle of Louisiana gals.

MAY

"Bangkok Tattoo" by John Burdett (Knopf). Burdett's creation, Royal Thai Police detective and practicing Buddhist Sonchai Jitpleecheep ("Bangkok 8") returns to investigate the death of a CIA agent in Bangkok's down-and-dirty district.

"The Closers" by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown). One of the best American thriller writers working today brings his detective creation, Harry Bosch, back to the LAPD to a job closing unsolved cases, specifically an apparent 1988 suicide by a 16-year-old girl that implicates a white supremacist with close ties to the department.

"The Right Madness" by James Crumley (Viking). A new thriller by a "raw, subversive" writer, featuring Army-officer-turned-Montana-private-eye C.W. Sughrue in a tale about some stolen psychoanalysis files.

"The Smoke Room" by Earl Emerson (Ballantine). The North Bend firefighter-suspense writer delivers a new thriller about a goof-off firehouse rookie who gets blackmailed into covering up his colleagues' "ever-escalating spiral of crime."

"The Franklin Affair" by Jim Lehrer (Random House). PBS' "Jim Lehrer News Hour" host pens a tale about a historian whose mentor bequeaths him a sensational secret about Benjamin Franklin.

"Blood from a Stone" by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly Press). Another installment in Leon's atmospheric Commissario Guido Brunetti series — the Venetian policeman investigates the death of an illegal African immigrant. As usual, readers learn as much about Venice and its people as they do about murder.

"The Hot Kid" by Elmore Leonard (Morrow). A thriller set in 1930s Oklahoma and rife with "hot cars, gun molls, speakeasies, bank robbers and murder."

JUNE

"The Wonder Spot" by Melissa Bank (Viking). The much-awaited follow-up to Bank's "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" focuses on a heroine who's Jewish but not religious, a book-lover but a mediocre student, and impetuous in love but reluctant to marry.

"Eleven on Top" by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin's Press). Bounty hunter and Jersey Girl Stephanie Plum is back in series installment No. 11, trying to quit her job in a quest for normalcy. Complications ensue.

"Locked Rooms: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes" by Laurie R. King (Bantam). A new installment in the adventures of Holmes and his young, bright and independent wife, as they encounter a mysterious stranger in San Francisco who may hold the key to Mary's troubled dreams.

"Captain Alatriste" by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Putnam). The author of "The Fencing Master" and other intellectual thrillers begins a series of historical novels featuring a 17th-century Spanish soldier who lives as a swordsman-for-hire in Madrid and becomes entangled in a plot with links to the Spanish Inquisition.

"Fire Sale" by Sara Paretsky (Putnam). V.I. Warshawski, Chicago's hard-boiled female private eye, begins coaching a girls' basketball team at her former high school and is drawn into an investigation of a giant Chicago-area discount-store retailer.

"Lie By Moonlight" by Amanda Quick (Putnam). A London teacher looks to a gentleman to protect her pupils from a sinister London figure.

"High Plains Tango" by Robert James Waller (Shaye Areheart Books). The author of "The Bridges of Madison County" pens a tale about a solitary carpenter newly settled in South Dakota who gets caught up in the corruption surrounding the construction of a highway that will cut through his property. There's an "enigmatic" woman in the picture, too.

JULY

"No Man's Land" by G.M. Ford (Morrow). The Seattle thriller writer's latest novel concerns "a desperate hostage situation" that "sets off a chain of heart-stopping events."

"To the Power of Three" by Laura Lippman (Morrow). Three girls' friendship-gone-wrong results in murder at a suburban Baltimore high school.

"72 Hour Hold" by Bebe Moore Campbell (Knopf). A mother, desperate over how to handle her violent, bipolar daughter, turns to an anti-psychiatric organization that models itself on the Underground Railroad of the pre-Civil War era. By the author of "Brothers and Sisters."

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic). The book much of America, old and young, awaits — the sixth installment of the further adventures of Harry, English wizard and budding adolescent.

"The Lynne Truss Treasury" by Lynne Truss (Gotham). Three comic novels and a collection of newspaper columns by the British author who made a huge splash last year with her book on punctuation, "Eats, Shoots and Leaves."

AUGUST

"Long Time Gone" by J.A. Jance (Morrow). An aging nun suddenly recalls a gruesome murder she witnessed as a girl in the latest J.P. Beaumont detective novel by the Seattle writer.

"Starwater Strains" by Gene Wolfe (Tor). A new collection of 25 science-fiction and fantasy stories by the popular writer.

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