What novels are about these days

I have a certain fascination with plot summaries and what they show about the presumed subjects that people want to read about -- presumed by publishers, that is. Here is a list of plot summaries from the New York Times bestseller list, with titles, authors and publishers removed.

A Colombian poet's love for a woman is tested.

A young man -- and an elephant -- save a Depression-era circus.

An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to learn how a childhood friend has fared under the Taliban.

An epic story about three generations of Greek-Americans, told by a hermaphrodite.

A doctor's decision to secretly send his newborn daughter, who has Down syndrome, to an institution haunts everyone involved.

Privileged 30-somethings try to make their way in literary New York just before 9/11.

A rift in an Amish community threatens to keep a courting couple apart.

A Spanish shepherd boy travels to Egypt in search of treasure.

A father and son travel in post-apocalypse America.

Politics and treachery in the court of Henry VIII.

The lives of two women in 19th-century China.

An unlikely romance between a soldier and an idealistic young woman is tested in the aftermath of 9/11.

A girl sues her parents after learning they want her to donate a kidney to her sibling.

An Amish teenager goes on trial, accused of having a baby, then smothering it to death.

A team is dispatched to investigate the wreckage of a Soviet bomber that crashed 50 years ago, loaded with weaponized anthrax.

Romance blooms between a widower and a woman who's been teaching his brother, who has Down syndrome, to live independently.

The story, set mainly in northern India, of characters united by the legacy of colonialism.

A cafe manager falls for a Cary Grant-like charmer, then learns he has an 11-year-old daughter.

An American third-string quarterback joins the Italian National Football League's Parma Panthers.

How the choices made by a North Carolina man and the neighbor with whom he falls in love play out in their lives

Virgil Flowers investigates three murders in a small Minnesota town.

A friendship between two women in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of war.

An aspiring photographer working as a nanny has terrible visions.

The entangled lives of an upstate New York couple and their best friend.

Two young black men, adopted in childhood by the former mayor of Boston, encounter their birth mother and sister

Stone Barrington, the New York cop turned lawyer, tracks a rogue C.I.A. agent on a Caribbean island.

The dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden seeks vengeance against the orcs.

Someone is out to destroy a young chef's New market restaurant, poisoning food and setting off a bomb.

A woman finds a skull in her garden, while in the 1830s, a medical student tracks a killer.

Nathan Zuckerman grapples with aging and desire.

In Lake Wobegon, a daughter learns about her mother's secret life.

Two sisters overcome their differences and claim their heritage when one returns to their North Carolina home.

Another Christmas story featuring the angels Shirley, Goodness and Mercy.

Note several themes:

• A large dose of wonderfulness, some of it seen in magical realism, some of it in mere exoticism.
• A fascination with Asia.
• Two different stories about Amish characters; I can tell you they're by different authors.
• Several stories emphasizing the vulnerability of babies.

technorati: books, novels, plots