Best fiction 2005
THE HA-HA, by Dave King (Little, Brown, $23.95)
With this story of a mute Vietnam vet suddenly asked to care for a 9-year-old boy, King creates a strangely lovable hero. (1/4/05)
MY JIM, by Nancy Rawles (Crown, $19.95)
Nancy Rawles takes the brief mention of the wife of Jim, the runaway slave in "Huck Finn" and from that richly invents the life and love of a remarkable woman. (1/18/05)
PEARL, by Mary Gordon (Pantheon, $24.95)
In this provocative novel, political extremism becomes a stark reality to a mother when her daughter - who has been studying in Ireland - begins a hunger strike. (1/25/05)
A LONG LONG WAY, by Sebastian Barry (Viking, $24.95)
This Booker prize nominee employs beautiful language to tell the horrifying tale of life in the trenches of World War I. (2/1/05)
TILTING AT WINDMILLS, by Julian Branston (Shaye Areheart Books, $23)
A witty, modern novel created as a companion to Cervantes's grand classic "Don Quixote." (2/22/05)
MARCH, by Geraldine Brooks (Viking, $24.95)
The father from Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" comes to life in this story of a man struggling to reconcile his principles with the demands of everyday life. (3/1/05)
IRELAND, by Frank Delaney (HarperCollins, $26.95)
Delaney, a former BBC reporter, packs as many folk tales as possible into this story of an Irish teen in search of a storyteller he encountered as a child. (3/15/05)
SATURDAY, by Ian McEwan (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, $26)
Britain's award-winning novelist Ian McEwan offers us one long Saturday in the life of Henry Perowne, a prosperous middle-aged London surgeon who encounters a street tough who rocks his well-ordered world. (3/22/05)
THE HISTORY OF LOVE, by Nicole Krauss (W.W. Norton, $23.95)
A Holocaust survivor who has never gotten over his first love and a young girl who was named for a character in a book he wrote are brought together in this unusual but graceful tale. (6/21/05)
OH PURE AND RADIANT HEART, by Lydia Millet (Soft Skull Press, $25)
In this humorous but compassionate satire, a Santa Fe librarian, in 2003 - thanks to a neat trick of time travel - meets the three physicists responsible for the creation of the atom bomb. (7/26/05)
SHALIMAR THE CLOWN, by Salman Rushdie (Random House, $25.95)
Doomed love, a doomed region, and terrorism all collide in Salman Rushdie's tale of a Muslim extremist from Kashmir who assassinates an ambassador to avenge a lost love. (9/6/05)
THE PAINTED DRUM, by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins, $25.95)
Longtime fans of Louise Erdrich and first-time readers alike will find much to enjoy in this story of a traditional native American drum and the lives it affects. (9/6/05)
THE KING OF KINGS COUNTY, by Whitney Terrell (Viking, $24.95)
In this rueful but loving coming-of-age tale set in Kansas farm country in the 1950s, a boy wrestles with his feelings about his dad, a real estate con man. (9/9/05)
ON BEAUTY, by Zadie Smith (Penguin, $25.95)
This Booker prize nominee is Zadie Smith's love letter to E.M. Forster. In this modern take on "Howard's End," a British academic and his African-American wife grapple with questions of race, nationality, and marital expectations. (9/13/05)
