onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Northern_Clemency');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/1400044480'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">The Northern Clemency

by Philip Hensher

Amazon says:
In 1974, the Sellers are transplanted from London to Sheffield in northern England. On the day they move in, the Glover household across the street is in upheaval: convinced that his wife is having an affair, Malcolm Glover has suddenly disappeared. The reverberations of this rupture will be felt for years as the connection between the families deepens. But it will be the particular crises of ten-year-old Tim Glover -- set off by two seemingly inconsequential but ultimately indelible acts of cruelty -- that will erupt, full-blown, decades later.

These lives unfold against a brilliantly rendered backdrop of twentieth-century English history at the dawn of the Thatcher era: prosperity for some and disenfranchisement for others, which will have a drastic impact on both families.

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Northern_Clemency');" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Northern_Clemency');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/1400044480'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> 512 page hardcover |$16.17

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/Hurry_Down_Sunshine');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/1590511913'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">Hurry Down Sunshine

by Michael Greenberg

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onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/Nixonland_The_Rise_of_a_President_and_the_Fracturing_of_America');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0743243021'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

by Rick Perlstein

Amazon says:
How did we go from Lyndon Johnson's landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon's equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a "Silent Majority" that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended them in disgrace.

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/Nixonland_The_Rise_of_a_President_and_the_Fracturing_of_America');" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/Nixonland_The_Rise_of_a_President_and_the_Fracturing_of_America');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0743243021'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> 896 page hardcover |$24.75 |44 reviews

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Forever_War');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0307266397'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">The Forever War

by Dexter Filkins

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onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Story_of_Edgar_Sawtelle');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0061768065'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

Amazon says:
It's gutsy for a debut novelist to offer a modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin -- particularly one in which the young hero, born mute, communicates with people, dogs, and the occasional ghost through his own mix of sign and body language. But David Wroblewski's extraordinary way with language in "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" immerses readers in a living, breathing world that is both fantastic and utterly believable.

Edgar's tale takes you to the extremes of what humans must endure, and when you're finally released, you will come back to yourself feeling wiser, and flush with gratitude. And you will have remembered what magnificent alchemy a finely wrought novel can work.

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Story_of_Edgar_Sawtelle');" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Story_of_Edgar_Sawtelle');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0061768065'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> 576 page hardcover |$14.27 |619 reviews

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Likeness');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0670018864'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">The Likeness

by Tana French

Amazon says:
Six months after the events of "In the Woods," Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to recover. She's transferred out of the murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam O'Neill, but she's too badly shaken to make a commitment to him or to her career. Then Sam calls her to the scene of his new case: a young woman found stabbed to death in a small town outside Dublin.

The dead girl's ID says her name is Lexie Madison -- the identity Cassie used years ago as an undercover detective -- and she looks exactly like Cassie.

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Likeness');" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Likeness');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0670018864'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> 480 page hardcover |$16.35 |37 reviews

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/Serena');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0061470856'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">Serena

by Ron Rash

Amazon says:
The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains -- but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness. Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor.

Rash's masterful balance of violence and beauty yields a riveting novel that, at its core, tells of love both honored and betrayed.

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/Serena');" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/Serena');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0061470856'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> 384 page hardcover |$14.99 |32 reviews

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/So_Brave_Young_and_Handsome');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0871139855'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">So Brave, Young and Handsome

by Leif Enger

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onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Lazarus_Project');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/1594489882'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

Amazon says:
On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, a recent Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe to Chicago, knocked on the front door of the house of George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police. When Shippy came to the door, Averbuch offered him what he said was an important letter. Instead of taking the letter, Shippy shot Averbuch twice, killing him. When Shippy released a statement casting Averbuch as a would-be anarchist assassin and agent of foreign political operatives, he all but set off a city and a country already simmering with ethnic and political tensions.

Now, in the twenty-first century, a young writer in Chicago, Brik, also from Eastern Europe, becomes obsessed with Lazarus's story -- what really happened, and why? In order to understand Averbuch, Brik and his friend Rora who overflows with stories of his life as a Sarajevo war.

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Lazarus_Project');" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_Lazarus_Project');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/1594489882'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> 304 page hardcover |$15.67 |10 reviews

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_TenCent_Plague_The_Great_ComicBook_Scare_and_How_It_Changed_America');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0374187673'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;">The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

by David Hajdu

Amazon says:
In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress -- only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in Mad magazine.

The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has never been fully told until now. Hajdu's remarkable new book vividly opens up the lost world of comic books, its creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority.

onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_TenCent_Plague_The_Great_ComicBook_Scare_and_How_It_Changed_America');" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/to_amazon/Amazons_Best_of_2008_Best_Overall_Books/The_TenCent_Plague_The_Great_ComicBook_Scare_and_How_It_Changed_America');" onMouseOver="window.status='http://amazon.com/dp/0374187673'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;"> 448 page hardcover |$17.16 |28 reviews