A Seasonal Wave Of Titles -- Notable Books From Spring's Flood Of Writers Who Smile, Beguile, Enthrall And Tell All

THIS SPRING SEES the release of substantial new books by literary masters who have been in for the long haul, as well as first-time memoirists offering the freshest revelations from the latest headlines.

Work from the heavy hitters of fiction includes new books by John le Carre (author of "The Tailor of Panama," "A Perfect Spy" and "Smiley's People" among others), Annie Proulx (who won every possible award for "The Shipping News"), Salman Rushdie and Martin Cruz Smith ("Gorky Park"), who has resurrected his existential hero, Arkady Renko, the Moscow homicide detective in a new book, "Havana Bay." Local hero David Guterson, who enjoyed monstrous success with "Snow Falling on Cedars," comes out with a new book, "East of the Mountains."

In the nonfiction world, George Stephanopoulos finally offers his memoirs of life with the Clintons. George Mitchell, the former senator from Maine who negotiated the Irish peace accord, offers an inside look at the peace talks. And Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, explains world economic forces and their collision with ethnic and traditional cultures.

In a lighter (or, come to think of it, darker) vein, popular fiction megastars Patricia Cornwell, Mary Higgins Clark and Anne Rice show up with new books.

Some of these books are available now; the rest will rear their heads throughout the spring and summer.

Literary Fiction

"East of the Mountains" by David Guterson (Harcourt Brace). The Bainbridge Island author returns, following the success of his hugely popular "Snow Falling on Cedars," with a meditative novel on love, death and work. Heart surgeon Ben Givens, a Western Washington doctor who has terminal cancer, returns to his childhood haunts (east of the mountains), intending to revisit his past and commit suicide on one last hunting trip.

"Single & Single" by John le Carre (Scribner). The master spy-storyteller tells the story of Oliver Single, the young scion of a London merchant banker, who learns that his father is crooked, betrays him to the government and then attempts to rescue him from the retribution of the father's former business partners in the Russian mob.

"Close Range" by Annie Proulx (Scribner). The author of "The Shipping News" offers a collection of short stories about loneliness, quick violence and the wrong kinds of love, with rodeo riders, cowboys and ranchers as central characters.

"The Ground Beneath Her Feet" by Salman Rushdie (Henry Holt). This is Rushdie's take on the myth of Orpheus - a famous singer who disappears after an earthquake and the lover who searches for her. "A tale of love, death and rock 'n' roll," says the publisher.

"A Dangerous Friend" by Ward Just (Houghton Mifflin). The author of "Echo House" and "Jack Gance" and a reporter during the Vietnam War constructs a story of Saigon in 1965, as its French, Vietnamese and American characters struggle with the conflict that is on its way to tearing the country apart.

"Havana Bay" by Martin Cruz Smith (Random House). Arkady Renko, the indefatigable detective from Smith's "Gorky Park," returns to investigate the death of a Russian embassy official whose body is found floating in, where else, Havana Bay.

"Broke Heart Blues" by Joyce Carol Oates (Dutton). A 16-year-old heartthrob rises to celebrity after a man is murdered in his mother's house. Was he protecting her from rape, covering up her crime, or is he actually innocent?

"An Equal Music" by Vikram Seth (Broadway Books). Passion is rekindled when a married pianist and a violinist reunite. By the author of "A Suitable Boy."

"Another World" by Pat Barker (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Three generations in a British family discover the power of memory and the ways in which the violent past returns to haunt the present. By the author of "Regeneration."

"The Sopranos" by Alan Warner (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). A raucous novel about a Catholic schoolgirl's choir that sets out to lose in the British national singing finals - a novel, the publisher says, of adolescent debauchery, sex, drugs and quaint chorales, "in all its gore and glory."

"Mountain Time" by Ivan Doig (Scribner). The Seattle author of "This House of Sky" and "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" sets his latest book in Seattle, Montana and Alaska and tells a story about intense relationships within and across generations.

"Sharmila's Book" by Bharti Kirchner (Dutton). An American woman of Indian heritage decides to enter into an arranged marriage to a New Delhi businessman, moves to India and must sort out the consequences of her act. By the Seattle-based author of "Shiva Dancing."

"A Long Way from Home" by Connie Briscoe (HarperCollins). The story of Civil War Virginia through the points of view of three generations of house slaves. By the author of "Sisters & Lovers" and "Big Girls Don't Cry."

"My Russian" by Deirdre McNamer (Houghton Mifflin). The author of "Rima in the Weeds" tells the story of a woman searching for her moorings who takes as her lover her Russian gardener, an exile from Chernobyl.

"I Left My Back Door Open" by April Sinclair (Hyperion). The author of "Coffee Will Make You Black" offers up Daphne Dupree, a black radio DJ who searches for love and thinks she meets it in the person of Skylar, a handsome mediator brought in by the radio station to resolve a sexual-harassment dispute.

"Italian Fever" (Knopf) by Valerie Martin. A 30-something New Yorker finds herself in Italy and in the cross-currents of various mysteries. By the author of "Mary Reilly."

"Gardens in the Dunes" by Leslie Marmon Silko (Simon & Schuster). A Native American girl is orphaned when soldiers raid and destroy her town and is adopted by a proper Victorian family, but cannot forget the past.

"Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown). A new collection of stories by the author of "Infinite Jest."

"Juneteenth" by Ralph Ellison (Random House). A posthumously published novel by the author of "Invisible Man" about a race-baiting senator who is shot on the Senate floor, then calls for an elderly black Baptist minister to share the secrets of their collective past.

"Elementals: Fire and Ice" by A.S. Byatt (Random House). A new collection of stories by the author of "Possession."

"Little Green Men" by Christopher Buckley (Random House). The author of "Thank You for Smoking" tells this tale of a stuffy TV pundit who is abducted by aliens while golfing, becomes a believer and must decide whether to crusade on behalf of credulous UFO believers everywhere. Like the X-Files, nothing is as it seems, and is sure to be funny.

"Cruddy" by Linda Barry (Simon & Schuster). The cartoonist and former Seattle resident tells the story of a young girl's harrowing eighth-grade year.

"The Strangeness of Beauty" by Linda Minatoya (Simon & Schuster). The Seattle author of the memoir "Talking to High Monks in the Snow" writes her first novel about a Japanese immigrant in Seattle who returns to Japan for family reasons and is swept up in the run-up to World War II.

"Windward Heights" by Maryse Conde (Soho Press). A retelling of the "Wuthering Heights" story set on the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Guadaloupe, a tale of obsessive love between a wronged man and the daughter (named Cathy) of the man who maltreated him.

"The Best American Short Stories of the Century" selected by John Updike with Katrina Kenison (Houghton Mifflin). Fifty-five stories from Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty and others.

Peoples' Lives

"All Too Human: A Political Education" by George Stephanopoulos (Little, Brown). Clinton's former counselor tells his story and what he observed in the White House during his tenure there, including portraits of the Clintons, Al Gore, Dick Morris, Colin Powell and others.

"Making Peace" by George Mitchell (Knopf). Mitchell's version of his long, arduous and ultimately successful quest for a negotiated agreement in the Irish peace accords.

"The Iraq Solution" by William "Scott" Ritter (Simon & Schuster). The world's most famous weapons inspector offers a look at Sadam Hussein's weapons program, the way he dispatches his enemies and the prospects for the Iraqi dictator's use of weapons of mass destruction.

"A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century" by Witold Rybczynski (Scribner). A biography of Olmsted, America's best-known park designer (whose firm designed Seattle's early park and greenbelt system). Olmsted was also a major cultural figure of the period who lobbied almost single-handedly to make Yosemite a national park, created the first planned suburban community in America and ran the United Stations Sanitation Commission, the precursor to the Red Cross. By the author of "Waiting for the Weekend" and "City Life."

"Dark Wind: A Survivor's Tale of Love and Loss" by Gordon Chaplin (Atlantic Monthly Press). A harrowing story of two lovers in midlife who decide to sail across the Pacific and ride out a typhoon on their sailboat, with disastrous results.

"Vera: The Story of a Marriage" by Stacy Schiff (Random House). The biography of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, a woman who was essential to the life of the writer she married.

"Another Life" by Michael Korda (Random House). The editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster tells the stories of the rich, famous and talented he's encountered in his career in the publishing industry.

"High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places" by David Breashears (Simon & Schuster). The autobiography of the filmmaker whose team hauled an IMAX camera to the summit of Mount Everest and ended up assisting the survivors of the 1996 storm that killed nine people, the events chronicled in Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air."

"Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving Everest" by Lene Gammelgaard (Seal Press). Gammelgaard, the first Scandinavian woman to summit Everest, describes her version of the climb recounted in "Into Thin Air."

"I'm a Stranger Here Myself" by Bill Bryson (Broadway Books). The author of "A Walk in the Woods" returns with the story of his return, after living abroad for two decades, to a new-and-improved (or maybe not) America.

"Deadlines and Datelines" by Dan Rather (Morrow). The veteran journalist and CBS news anchor looks at his life in the news in a collection of essays examining how figures such as Madeleine Albright, Bill Gates and Fidel Castro have shaped our culture.

"Honor in the House: Speaker Tom Foley" by Thomas S. Foley and Jeffrey Biggs (Washington State University Press). The former Speaker of the House and longtime Washington state representative reflects on a life in local and national politics that spanned three decades. Biggs is Foley's former press secretary.

"Madeleine Albright: The Making of an American Woman" by Michael Dobbs (Henry Holt). The former Washington Post Moscow bureau chief looks at the life of Albright, from her escape from Nazis in Czechoslovakia as a child to U.S. Secretary of State.

"Robert Frost: A Life" by Jay Parini (Henry Holt). The life and work of one of America's most beloved poets.

"The Great Unknowing: Last Poems" by Denise Levertov (New Directions). Forty final poems from the English-born poet who spent her last years in Seattle.

Popular Fiction, Mysteries and Science Fiction

"The Right Hand of Evil" by John Saul (Ballantine). Seattle's horrormeister turns out this tale of the troubled marriage of Ted and Janet Conway, who try to make a new start by moving with their three children into a long-abandoned Victorian house in a small Louisiana town. The situation deteriorates.

"Black Notice" by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam). Cornwell returns to the world of medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, who goes to Paris to investigate the death of a stowaway whose remains arrive in Richmond in a locked, sealed container on a cargo ship.

"Vittorio the Vampire" by Anne Rice (Knopf). The vampire impresario tells a new story about a vampire in the Italian Renaissance.

"We'll Meet Again" by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster). A woman is convicted of a murder that her best friend may have committed and, after having served her time, sets out to even the score.

"Tara Road" by Maeve Binchy (Delacorte). Two women - one Irish, one American - exchange houses for a summer, learn that the other has a secret and ultimately become good friends.

"A Sight for Sore Eyes" by Ruth Rendell (Crown). The lives of a child who sees her mother's murderer, a lonely older woman and a sociopathic young man all converge, with harrowing results.

"Terminal Event" by James Thayer (Simon & Schuster). A National Transportation Safety Board inspector investigates an air crash in which his wife died pursuing a bomber who threatens to bring down another plane. Thayer is a Seattle resident.

"The First Victim" by Ridley Pearson (Hyperion). Seattle policeman Lou Boldt gets at cross-purposes with a couple of journalists as they investigate a scam involving illegal aliens.

"I Thee Wed" by Amanda Quick (Bantam). Quick, local bestselling romance author Jayne Anne Krentz's alter ego, writes a historical romance in which a woman meets a man (both hiding inside a wardrobe); the two unite and, among other things, solve a mystery.

"On Mystic Lake" by Kristin Hannah (Crown). Hannah, a Bainbridge Island author, crosses over from the paperback romance world, writing her first hardback novel about an abandoned wife who finds love with an old friend and his emotionally scarred child.

General Nonfiction

"The Lexus and the Olive Tree" by Thomas Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The foreign-affairs columnist for the New York Times looks at worldwide market forces driving today's economy and how they converge or conflict with local forces of religion, race, ethnicity and cultural identity.

"The Earth Shall Weep" by James Wilson (Atlantic Monthly Press). A new history of Native America. The author, a British writer and journalist, uses traditional historical sources, plus ethnography, archaeology, Indian oral tradition and his own research into Native American communities to tell the story of the collision of Native American and European cultures, extending the story to the evolution of Native American culture into the present day. A British reviewer called it "a wonderfully sympathetic introduction to native predicaments from the first encounters to the casinos."

"Home Town" by Tracey Kidder (Random House). The author of "The Soul of a New Machine," "House" and "Among Schoolchildren" explores Northampton, Mass., in hopes of finding what it takes to make a small modern city a success story.

"The Old Neighborhood: What We've Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-99" by Ray Suarez (Free Press). The National Public Radio host looks at how the face of the nation has changed with the move of millions from the cities of their birth to the suburbs, and the effect on people who have lost their relationship to a place and to each other.

"On the American Presidency" by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster). Woodward examines the legacy of Watergate and how it altered American politics, culture and the presidency.

"Sunrise to Paradise: The Story of Mount Rainier National Park" by Ruth Kirk (University of Washington Press). The author of "Snow" tells the story of Mount Rainier National Park, which celebrates its centennial this year.

"Chasing Monarchs: A Migration with Butterflies" by Robert Michael Pyle (Houghton Mifflin). Pyle, author of "Wintergreen" and a Washington state resident, follows the trail of monarch butterflies from British Columbia to Mexico.

"For the Time Being" by Annie Dillard (Knopf). The author of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" and "The Living" writes on the natural history of sand, a catalog of clouds, the existence of God and other matters.

"Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems and Poems" by Mary Oliver (Houghton Mifflin). The National-Book-Award and Pulitzer-Prize winner offers up nine essays, accompanied by a brief selection of new prose poems and poems.

"How the Web Was Won: Inside Microsoft's Battle for Internet Supremacy" by Paul Andrews (Broadway Books). A look by Andrews, a Seattle Times reporter who wrote a best-selling biography of Bill Gates, at how Microsoft became the dominant force in the Internet software market.

"The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who Are Making Virtual Reality a Reality" by Fred Moody (Times Business Books). Local author Moody tells the story of the difficulties of bringing virtual-reality technology out of the lab and into our homes, focusing on a Seattle laboratory.

"God's Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization" by A.N. Wilson (Norton). The London critic, biographer and novelist, author of "Jesus" and "Paul: The Mind of the Apostle," tells the story of how the belief in God began to unravel in the 19th century, leaving a sense of loss that echoes into our own time.

"Letter to a Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care?" by Reynolds Price (Scribner). The author of "A Whole New Life" looks at one of the Big Questions and how it has been answered through religion, music, art and literature.

"Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life" by Stephen Jay Gould (Ballantine/Library of Contemporary Thought). The eminent zoologist advances the thesis that the clash between science and religion is a false one, and advances the premise that they should "coexist peacefully."

"Some Horses" by Thomas McGuane (Lyons Press). A collection of essays by the author of "The Sporting Club" and "Nothing But Blue Skies" about remarkable horses and horsemen he has known.

"River Damned, River Redeemed: Dam Removal in the Pacific Northwest" by Yale Lewis (Mountaineers Books). This book considers the ecological benefits of removing dams on the Snake River.

"Another Country: The Emotional Terrain of Our Elders" by Mary Pipher (Riverhead). The author of "Reviving Ophelia" presents a sort of "field guide to the lives of older people" and explores such questions as how baby-boomers can communicate better with their aging mothers and fathers.

"Woman: An Intimate Geography" by Natalie Angier (Houghton Mifflin). The Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times writer looks at the female body - "its anatomy, its chemistry, its evolution and its laughter," says the publisher.

"Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior" by Jonathan Weiner (Knopf). The Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of "The Beak of the Finch" tells the story of a biologist's search for the foundations of behavior.

Mary Ann Gwinn is book editor of The Seattle Times. Paul Schmid is Pacific Northwest magazine's art director.