Nicholas Evans's best-selling Horse Whisperer is a story of tragedy, soul-searching and unabashed romance. When the Graves family--13-year-old daughter Grace, high-powered, highly charged Annie, and her lawyer husband Robert--is struck by tragedy, each searches for their own way to come to terms with it. Annie thinks if she can fix Grace's physically and spiritually battered horse, she'll mend her daughter's maimed soul in the process. And so the search for the mythical horse whisperer begins. He appears in the form of Tom Booker--a handsome, rugged, sensitive Montana cowboy. The story travels from Upstate New York to Manhattan, then makes an eventful detour through the glorious foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

It has been said often enough that baby boomers are a television generation, but High Fidelity reminds that in a way they are the record-album generation as well. This hilarious novel is obsessed with music; Hornby's narrator is an early thirtysomething bloke who runs a London record store. He sells albums recorded the old-fashioned way--on vinyl--and is having a tough time making other transitions as well, specifically to adulthood. The book is in one sense a love story, both sweet and interesting; most entertaining, though, are the hilarious arguments over arcane matters of pop music.