My Top Fiction Reads of 2003
Discover the best fiction books of 2003 with my top reads list! Explore captivating novels, must-read titles, and literary gems from a standout year in fiction.
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The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.
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Red Water
by Judith Freeman
In 1857, at a place called Mountain Meadows in southern Utah, a band of Mormons and Indians massacred 120 emigrants. Twenty years later, the slaughter was blamed on one man named John D. Lee, previously a member of Brigham Young’s inner circle. Red Water imagines Lee’s extraordinary frontier life through the eyes of three of his nineteen wives. Emma is a vigorous and capable Englishwoman who loves her husband unconditionally. Ann, a bride at thirteen years old, is an independent adventurer. Rachel is exceedingly devout and married Lee to be with her sister, his first wife. These spirited women describe their struggle to survive Utah’s punishing landscape and the poisonous rivalries within their polygamous family, led by a magnetic, industrious, and considerate husband, who was also unafraid of using his faith to justify desire and ambition.
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Blacklist
by Sara Paretsky
Investigating the death of a man found in an empty estate building for a long-time client starts V.I. on the trail of four generations of deadly secrets.
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The Samurai's Daughter
by Sujata Massey
Antiques dealer Rei Shimura is in San Francisco visiting her parents and researching a personal project to trace the story of 100 years of Japanese decorative arts through her own family's history. But Rei's work is interrupted by the arrival of her long-distance boyfriend, lawyer Hugh Glendinning, who is involved in a class action lawsuit on behalf of people forced to engage in slave labor for Japanese companies during World War II. Suddenly, when one of Hugh's clients is murdered, their two projects intertwine. Before long, Rei uncovers troubling facts about her own family's actions during the war. As she starts to unravel the truth and search for a killer, the notions of family ties and loyalty take on an entirely new meaning. Sujata Massey, whom critics consistently praise for her ability to balance murder and mystery with captivating cultural lore, is back with another gripping and provocative tale sure to keep readers charmed from start to finish.
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Darjeeling
by Bharti Kirchner
Set in the mountainous tea plantations of Darjeeling, India, and Manhattan, this is the story of a family torn apart when two sisters fall in love with the same man.
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Compromising Positions
by Susan Isaacs
Long Island housewife Judith Singer is incredibly bored. So when a local dentist is found murdered and the police suspect her neighbor, that's all the excuse Judith needs to jump in and begin her own investigation. In between school runs and making dinner, she is drawn deeper into the case-and closer to the police detective in charge.
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Beach Music
by Pat Conroy
An American living in Rome with his daughter after his wife's suicide tracks a classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester and never resurfaced.
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Agnes Browne (The Mammy Tie-in)
by Brendan O'Carroll
Now a major motion picture starring Anjelica Huston "Mammy" is what Irish children call their mothers and The Mammy is Agnes Browne—a widow struggling to raise seven children in a North Dublin neighborhood in the 1960s. Popular Irish comedian Brendan O'Carroll chronicles the comic misadventures of this large and lively family with raw humor and great affection. Forced to be mother, father, and referee to her battling clan, the ever-resourceful Agnes Browne occasionally finds a spare moment to trade gossip and quips with her best pal Marion Monks (alias "The Kaiser") and even finds herself pursued by the amorous Frenchman who runs the local pizza parlor. Like the novels of Roddy Doyle, The Mammy features pitch-perfect dialogue, lightning wit, and a host of colorful characters. Earthy and exuberant, the novel brilliantly captures the brash energy and cheerful irreverence of working-class Irish life.
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Someone Like You
by Cathy Kelly
Cathy Kelly has enjoyed unprecedented success in the UK and her native Ireland. Building on the popularity of her "Dear Cathy" advice column, Kelly brings to her fiction a warmth and humor that speaks to women everywhere. Hannah, Emma, and Leonie, three women at critical turning points in their lives, meet on holiday and find themselves changing in unexpected ways. Hannah, young, beautiful and reeling from the betrayal of a lover, decides to throw herself into her career and embrace the single life. Emma, married for two years and hoping to start a family, constantly questions her ability to be a parent, while still allowing her own parents to interfere in her life. Leonie, generously proportioned and equally big-hearted, wonders if she'll ever find love with three teenage children in tow. Someone Like You is a celebration of life and friendship, firmly establishing Cathy Kelly as a captivating new voice in contemporary women's fiction.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
by J. K. Rowling
Collects the complete series that relates the adventures of young Harry Potter, who attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he and others of his kind learn their craft.
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Brick Lane
by Monica Ali
“A book you won’t be able to put down. A Bangladeshi immigrant in London is torn between the kind, tedious older husband with whom she has an arranged marriage (and children) and the fiery political activist she lusts after. A novel that’s multi-continental, richly detailed and elegantly crafted.” —Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Sisterland After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. How can she cross the road without being hit by a car (an operation akin to dodging raindrops in the monsoon)? What is the secret of her bullying neighbor Mrs. Islam? What is a Hell's Angel? And how must she comfort the naïve and disillusioned Chanu? As a good Muslim girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos. Monica Ali’s splendid novel is about journeys both external and internal, where the marvelous and the terrifying spiral together.
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I Don't Know How She Does It
by Allison Pearson
Delightfully smart and heartbreakingly poignant, Allison Pearson’s smash debut novel has exploded onto bestseller lists as “The national anthem for working mothers.” Hedge-fund manager, wife, and mother of two, Kate Reddy manages to juggle nine currencies in five time zones and keep in step with the Teletubbies. But when she finds herself awake at 1:37 a.m. in a panic over the need to produce a homemade pie for her daughter’s school, she has to admit her life has become unrecognizable. With panache, wisdom, and uproarious wit, I Don’t Know How She Does It brilliantly dramatizes the dilemma of every working mom.
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Dating Big Bird
by Laura Zigman
Thirty-five-year-old careerwoman Ellen Green wants a child, but her boyfriend Malcolm doesn't, so she is forced to consider the option of single motherhood, in a new novel by the best-selling author of Animal Husbandry. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.
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A Married Man
by Catherine Alliott
Widowed four years ago, London antiques dealer Lucy Fellowes was plunged into single motherhood with two growing boys. Since then, she’s had little time—or inclination—to think straight, much less fall in love again. Now, she’s been offered an incredible dream house in the country. Of course, accepting means having to cope with her domineering mother-in-law, her husband’s wacky family, and all their assorted scandals. But suddenly, none of it matters. Because she’s met HIM. His name is Charles; he’s a famous television writer, gorgeous, witty, charming, and very, very attracted to her. And, he’s married. Well, a woman can’t have everything. Or can she? In this delightfully sexy, amusing romp through mishap and desire, Catherine Alliott hits the shores of America with a romantic comedy of manners and unexpected passion—in which her plucky heroine discovers that despite her best intentions, love has a plan all its own!
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White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time—set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence. Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own. At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. “[White Teeth] is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones, and textures…with a raucous energy and confidence.” —The New York Times Book Review
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Range of Motion
by Elizabeth Berg
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Story of Arthur Trulov and Night of Miracles comes "the love story of the year"*--an inspiring story of a woman at the limits of her faith and hope. When a freak accident leaves her husband comatose, Lainey Bergman dutifully waits for him to awake, desperate not to lose hope. Through the invisible wall that separates them, she seeks to connect with him through kind whispers, messages of love, and reminders of their beautiful life together: their lovely children; the smell of home cooking; the feeling of his clothes. But as she remains by his side, two incredible women remain by hers, sustaining her and giving her the courage and strength to carry on. From uncertainty to despair, Lainey and her friends navigate the most turbulent waters, affirming the unbreakable and essential nature of friendship, even in the face of some of life's hardest moments. *Detroit Free Press
