Small Island, by Andrea Levy (Picador, April). Brits and Jamaicans interact in an England still recovering from World War II.
Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham (FSG, June). Walt Whitman is at the center of this three-part novel that combines ghost story, noir thriller and science fiction.
To the Power of Three, by Laura Lippman (Morrow, July). Three high school girls are found locked in a restroom: the first is wounded, the second is dead, and the third is lying.
The Untelling, by Tayari Jones (Warner, April). Fifteen years after surviving an auto accident, a young Atlanta woman remains haunted by memories of the crash.
Until I Find You, by John Irving (Random House, July). A boy and his tattoo-artist, bohemian mother travel Canada and New England in search of his missing father, a church organist.
Velocity, by Dean Koontz (Bantam, May). A hard-working, ordinary guy begins to receive threatening notes from a killer -- when he ignores them, the innocent die.
The Washingtonienne, by Jessica Cutler (Hyperion, June). Based on Cutler's Capitol Hill weblog, a novel about a young staffer and her sexual escapades with the powerful.
What Casanova Told Me, by Susan Swan (Knopf, June). Casanova has been the focus of a number of novels recently, and so he is in this -- a story that features John Adams.
The Wild Girl, by Jim Fergus (Hyperion, May). A man undertakes a mission to rescue a boy abducted by Apaches, but finds instead a young Apache girl, orphaned in a massacre.
The Wonder Spot, by Melissa Bank (Viking, June). Sophie Applebaum, a wry young woman from Surrey, Pa., muses over two decades of family misadventure.
Zorro, by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins, May). The legendary Diego de la Vega, son of an aristocratic Spaniard and a Shoshone squaw, joins a secret movement pledged to avenge the powerless.
NONFICTION
Memoirs
Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression, by Brooke Shields (Hyperion, May). A celebrity's bout with a syndrome that affects millions.
Embroideries, by Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon, April). From the author of the comic-strip memoir Persepolis, a foray into the private lives of Iranian women.
A Lotus Grows in the Mud, by Goldie Hawn (Putnam, May). An ugly duckling grows up to become America's darling.
No Mountain High Enough : Raising Lance, Raising Me, by Linda Armstrong Kelly (Broadway, April). A pregnant teenager, banished from home, becomes the mother of the indefatigable Lance Armstrong.
Oh the Glory of It All, by Sean Wilsey (Penguin, May). The founding editor of McSweeney's tells of his zany childhood among the rich and famous.
One Soldier's Story, by Bob Dole (HarperCollins, April). A former senator and candidate for the American presidency gives his very personal account of World War II.
Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, by Michael Chorost (Houghton, June). A deaf man gets a cochlear implant, then proceeds to become truly wired.
A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey, by Quang X. Pham (Ballantine, April). The father was a South Vietnamese pilot, but the son becomes a pilot for the U.S. Marines.
Them: A Memoir of My Parents, by Francine du Plessix Gray (Penguin, May). Two talented Russian émigrés escape wartime Paris and join New York's high society.
