Fiction

The second installment in Aidan's Fitzwilliam Darcy trilogy has the Pride and Prejudice hero wrestling with his infatuation with Elizabeth Bennet. While Aidan's Darcy exhibits the class snobbery and noblesse oblige readers expect of him, he also has a purpose: Darcy decides he must find another woman "of his own station as beautiful and blessed with wit as Elizabeth Bennet, whose charms would banish her from his mind and displace her in his heart." While searching for this woman, Darcy looks after his sister, Georgiana, who is emerging from a long depression. Aidan is comfortable with the overwrought Regency prose and tropes ("The horses, atremble with desire for home, broke into a canter from which no one in the coach wished to dissuade them") and, instead of imitating Austen, convincingly makes Darcy's story her own. Darcy and his loyal valet, Fletcher, travel to Norwycke Castle for a house party where murky inheritances, debt, husband-hunting aristocrats, the supernatural and dead ancestors commingle, resulting in a good time for fans of the series and those enamored of Austen. (Oct.)

Sammar, a young Sudanese widow, is working as a translator in a Scottish university when love blossoms between herself and her Scottish supervisor, Rae Isles, a scholar of the Middle East and of Third World politics. A religious Muslim who covers her hair, Sammar has left her young son in Khartoum to be raised by her aunt and quells her loneliness by throwing herself into her job translating terrorist documents for kindly divorcé Rae. The two signal their growing love for one another with sympathy (and chastity). On the eve of her trip to Khartoum to see her son and bring him back with her, she confronts Rae, desperate to know if he will accept Islam—since a relationship to her is impossible without marriage, and that marriage is impossible without his conversion. His hesitation reveals the cultural gulf between them, and Sammar is pierced to the quick. Though The Translator is Aboulela's second novel to be released in the U.S., it is the Sudanese-British author's first, published in the U.K. in 1999. (Her third, Minaret, appeared here last year.) With authentic detail and insight into both cultures, Aboulela painstakingly constructs a truly transformative denouement. (Oct.)

This lurid urban soap opera—which sold 65,000 copies when originally self-published by the author, a Bronx fire inspector—follows Silver Jones as she flees Harlem, with its loose women of the night and seductive, heroin-shooting men, for Spelman College, where she dreams of becoming a doctor. Blue's wide cast is often villainous, paper thin and brimming with crack-smokers and sex-peddlers: there's Silver's confidant, Auntie Birdie, a "nearly 7 foot when he wears his stilettos" transvestite hooker who falls for men with roving eyes; Jesse, Silver's "junkie whore" of a mother whose inspirational aphorisms shape Silver's life; Chance, Silver's longtime, drug-dealing love who doesn't know how to dance; and a serial killer who drains his prostitute victims' blood and dresses each in a wedding gown before having sex with their bodies. The episodic story line, which has echoes of another successful lost-girl saga, White Oleander, moves briskly and assuredly between clichés. Suspense isn't one of the author's strong points, but it's heartening that even in Blue's world of double-crossing, misogyny, drugs and brutality, an against-all-odds fairy tale can come true. (Oct.)

Tracy Farber, a 33-year-old not-yet-tenured English professor at an unnamed New York City university, works to subvert Tolstoy's famous statement that "happy families are all alike" by investigating whether American fiction can "have an ending that's both honest and happy." Satisfied with her independence and her challenging academic career, Tracy's only worries are her girlfriends' romantic problems and bitter colleague Joanne, who is on a professional witch-hunt over grade inflation. Until she starts dating earnest education policy consultant George; the two have a two-month whirlwind romance before getting engaged, but when they hit a rough patch, Tracy finds real happiness isn't necessarily the stuff of her academic research. Her romantic difficulties (and joys) share near equal time with Tracy's academic pursuits and university politics: Tracy's best friend considers resigning to be with his lover; a visiting Oxford professor shakes up the department; a high-strung graduate student melts down; and Joanne's increasing rancor puts Tracy's tenure at risk. Kadish (From a Sealed Room) writes about relationships with as much passion as she does literary theory, and her intelligent narrator—intensely aware of romantic clichés—gives this novel insightful traction that 21st-century feminists will appreciate. (Sept. 1)

Wagamese (Keeper N' Me) threads Native Canadian lore and spirituality into his generous and sentimental Western. Rodeo bull rider Joe Willie Wolfchild, eight seconds away from becoming the #1 ranked "All-Round Cowboy," suffers a career-ending accident that leads him to retreat to the family ranch, where his parents, grandparents and physiotherapist try to coax him back onto his feet. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Aiden Hartley, a disaffected city kid jailed for his role in a botched armed robbery, and his abused mother, Claire, are shepherded by a sympathetic cop (who happens to be a friend of the Wolfchilds) to the Wolfchild ranch, where they can mend their fractured relationship and get Aiden on a better track. Claire takes to the country life and to the Wolfchilds, who represent the stability she's always wanted. Aiden, not one for the "yippee cay-yay" stuff, locks horns with Joe Willie until the similarities in their warrior spirits bring them together. Aiden helps Joe Willie restore a '34 Ford pickup, and Joe Willie teaches Aiden to ride bulls. From there, the narrative grows predictably uplifting, and Wagamese's tendency to carry on (and on) about the romance of cowboy life wears thin. But the novel remains a worthy testament to the healing power of family and tradition. (Sept.)

Boudinot proves himself a twisted, formidable storyteller in his dark and surefooted debut. In the title story, fourth-grader Davy, with his father's assistance, dresses up as Hitler for Halloween ("I had gotten the idea after watching World War II week on PBS"), but realizes his terrible judgment after an encounter with a classmate dressed as Anne Frank. "On Sex and Relationships" brims with irony as two yuppie couples get together for dinner; the evening is banal enough—board games, nostalgic chitchat—but festering rivalries, buried secrets and bitterness color the evening and threaten to sink the narrator's relationship with his girlfriend. In "Civilization," teens of the future receive "duty papers" when it's time to kill their parents, so as to be accepted into college. Despite his parents' encouragement to kill them ("Don't let your nerves get to you!" reads a Post-it his father sticks to the refrigerator), narrator Craig has his reservations. Reminiscent of early Rick Moody or the short stories of Daniel Handler, each of Boudinot's 13 stories is a microcosm of weirdness imbued with imagination and maniacal wit. (Sept.)

Snelling (Saturday Morning; The Healing Quilt), known for her inspirational romance novels, sets this story largely in North Dakota. Ragni, a single woman who is struggling with her job and her father's Alzheimer's disease, agrees against her will to fix up her great-grandmother's cabin. She's accompanied by her teenage niece, Erika, who has taken to wearing all black and rarely talks to Ragni anymore. Snelling takes this opportunity to weave together Ragni's story with the story of Nilda, her great-grandmother, who traveled out by train in the early 1900s to be a frontier housekeeper. Both women encounter hardships—like the plague of grasshoppers that strips the crops in Nilda's time or Ragni's more humorous attempts to get Erika to adjust to life without modern conveniences. Both of them paint; when Ragni and Erika discover some of Nilda's paintings, they begin to feel close to her and are inspired to continue their own artistic pursuits. And both Ragni and Nilda enjoy romance with interesting men. The story has its sweet moments, but is largely tedious: the dialogue plods, the characters have little emotional depth, the historical details are sparse and the conclusions are not believable. And while the main character is a modern-day 30-something, the book is written in a style that will appeal most to older readers. (Sept. 19)

Kumar (You Are, Therefore I Am) neatly reworks an ancient allegory of Buddha's conversion of a bloodthirsty killer. In the northern Indian city of Savatthi, a renegade Untouchable called Angulimala murders people indiscriminately and cuts off their fingers (his name means "Wearer of a Finger Necklace"). Apprised of the danger, Buddha insists that he must also console "those who are possessed with anger and ignorance" and seeks him out. With Buddha's gentle instruction in the forest, Angulimala recognizes the futility of violence in dealing with his profound sense of abandonment and separation from loved ones. He takes the name Ahimsaka ("Nonviolent One"), becomes a monk and lives by the Four Noble Truths. The king and relatives of Angulimala's victims nevertheless cry out for vengeance. Skillfully, Kumar demonstrates the transformation necessary in the consciousness of a society bent on punishment rather than persuasion, or as the king says: "What one person, the Buddha, has achieved, my entire army could not." In a foreword, Thomas Moore draws parallels between this parable and the Gospels, the Tao De Ching and the Sufi "way of love." More a pamphlet than a novella, this short piece hits its mark with studied grace. (Sept. 1)

Toby Jenkins, now 72, has been living all her life in the same ornate Sears, Roebuck farmhouse in the Nebraska Sandhills her father bought for her mother back in 1920. For now, Toby aims to stay there with her cranky self-righteous sister, Gertie, despite the local weasel banker's pressure to sell. Toby is widowed, resolute and land-scarred; a string of family deaths, tragedies and abandonments have left Toby and Gertie with no one to pass the place on to. Then Toby's 16-year-old pregnant granddaughter, Lila, arrives from Minneapolis. At first the unloved, metal-studded Lila, the child of Toby's adoptive daughter, a bitter airline stewardess, is surly and ungrateful, but eventually her curiosity about country rituals and her grandmother's life leads her to the family cemetery and to archives harboring long-buried family secrets. Playwright Joern's characters are as stern as the land, and the world of her debut novel is sturdy and memorable. (Sept.)

Grim, joyless and mostly friendless, Edmund Naughton is a white divorcé who buries himself in his work as a computer programmer and lives a solitary life on New York's Upper West Side. He impulsively offers shelter to Careese, a recovering black alcoholic, who is homeless, has little education and is shakily attempting to stand on her own. It's an edgy arrangement: Careese has a relationship with the building's super and can't keep her pusher brother Camron from hanging out in the apartment; Edmund, with the pretext of rendering Careese productive in the workplace, buys her sensible clothes and grooms her for a secretarial job, but is already growing emotionally attached. Despite a surface aversion to each other, they share a bond as wounded parents: Careese's 10-year-old daughter has been taken away from her because of a careless, drunken burning incident; Edmund 's college-age daughter hates him for failing to save her from her abusive stepfather. Laser (Old Friend Old Pal) overplays their nagging black-white assumptions about each other (and about secondary characters like Careese's ex-DeVaughn). Though moments in their relationship ring true, the whole has a schematic feel. (Sept.)

Day (Crazy Love) follows the tribulations of four stressed-out female friends from Atlanta who take a two-week Caribbean cruise and, to complement the sweet seaboard life (and keep their minds off their problems back ashore), compete to see who can have the most sex (a "dick hunt," they call it). Madison DuPree, the wildest of the quartet, copes with the recent bombshell that Lucius, her freeloading and untrustworthy father, is not really her father. Blair Ricci, mother of three, discovers her husband has been cheating on her with a young waitress. Lauren Hobson, the vice president of a Fortune 500 public relations firm, has trouble keeping up with her job, her busy husband and her 12-year-old twins. Born-again virgin LaShawn Greene, never without a Bible, questions her celibacy after discovering her fiancé, Calvin, knocking bondage boots with neighbor Rita. Day has trouble maintaining her varied cast, and Lauren and Blair are half-sketched compared to LaShawn and Madison. And though the prose is swift, it has its saccharine moments. African-American women's fiction with a light touch, Day's novel will jerk tears from the right reader. (Sept.)

Abulhawa's first novel is an earnest but heavy-handed depiction of the 20th century through Palestinian eyes. The book opens in the Arab village of Ein Hod, outside Jerusalem, as a farmer named Yehya witnesses the destruction of his home in the war following Israel's founding in 1948. The book then follows Yehya's granddaughter, Amal, from her youth in a refugee camp to America (strange but full of opportunity), then her reunion with her family in Lebanon. There she falls in love with a doctor named Majid and becomes pregnant, but returns to America as many of her loved ones become enmeshed in the brutal Lebanese civil war of the 1980s and the Israeli occupation. With the Oslo peace accords, Amal finally returns to the country of her birth, but finds that the situation there remains tense and violent. While Amal's story is undeniably tragic, Abulhawa surrounds her with paper-thin characters, Arab and Jewish alike. The Palestinians want "only to live on their land as they always had," while the Israelis are murderers and baby-snatchers who use the Holocaust to justify their actions. Equal parts clumsy history lesson and melodrama, this book does little to shed light on one of the world's most complex conflicts. (Sept.)

In the shadow of her famous sibling, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, older sister Nannerl was perhaps no less talented but devoid of the opportunities of the time because of her sex and a controlling parent. At least this is the argument presented in this historical novel by Moser, author of numerous inspirational novels, including the Sister Circle series. As told by Nannerl in the first person, a demanding father channels his love and energies into his young son. Although Nannerl performs, her father denies her a chance at fame—and perhaps more important, the lion's share of his attention and love. He relentlessly tours Europe with his children, lying about their ages to make them seem like younger prodigies and exploiting them for large sums of money. Nannerl adores her father, but as she ages from a young adolescent into a woman, she seems numbingly resigned to a life of disappointment and frustration. As she moves into adulthood, more unhappy events occur, which are not quite satisfactorily developed in the novel's latter half. Moser's writing is smooth, and there are some fascinating historical details, but the story loses steam toward the end. That Nannerl's sad life is portrayed as the will of God will be difficult for many readers to accept. (Sept.)

George (Mary, Called Magdalene) depicts with bravado, grace and eloquence the grand spectacle surrounding Helen of Troy. The author's research into Mycenaean culture, coupled with Trojan War mythology's larger-than-life heroes, enliven a bold story pulsing with romance and sacrifice, omens and battles. Helen's noble Spartan parents try to defy the fates when a seer foretells the tragedy Helen and her legendary beauty will cause, but, as the myth of Helen demonstrates, destiny cannot be altered. Helen's years of seclusion in Sparta lead to a frigid marriage to Menelaus before she connects with Paris, the Trojan prince with whom she forges an inextricable bond. Barely into her 20s, Helen escapes with Paris to Troy, but finds the Trojan royals welcome her with less than open arms. The mythic war, which, in less capable hands, might be over-romanticized, is portrayed with an enthusiasm that rings true to the period without verging on stagy—no small feat when dealing with such a sweeping conflict. George's extraordinary storytelling abilities shine in her portrayal of Helen as both a conflicted woman who abandoned her homeland and child for true love, and as a legendary figure whose beauty and personal choices had epic consequences. (On sale Aug. 7)

Hard-boiled crime fans will enjoy the latest entry in Vachss's long-running Burke series (Down Here, etc.). The renegade New York City PI, who operates by an idiosyncratic private moral code, has been lying low since being shot in the face. But a longtime fixer, Charlie, soon sees past Burke's attempt to pose as his own brother and arranges a meeting with a prospective client, who wants to find a missing woman. What should have been a routine setup turns deadly when professional hit men gun down the client as he's attempting to retrieve Burke's retainer from his car. Burke, afraid that the gunmen may come after him and the data-filled CD the dead man gave him, uses his own network of allies and contacts to learn more about the missing woman, Beryl Preston, whom he happens to have saved from a pimp 20 years earlier. Despite a familiar plot, the sharp-edged prose and cutting insights into New York's underbelly elevate this above many similar crime novels. (Aug.)

Powers (Declare) delivers another top-notch supernatural spy thriller. When Frank Marrity's grandmother dies unexpectedly during 1987's New Age Harmonic Convergence, his 12-year-old daughter, Daphne, steals a videotape from the old woman's Pasadena house that turns out to be a Chaplin film long believed lost. Before Daphne can finish watching the film, its powerful symbolism awakens a latent pyrokinetic ability in her that burns the tape. Frank later discovers letters that prove his grandmother was Albert Einstein's illegitimate daughter. This comes to the attention of a special branch of the Mossad specializing in the Kabbalah as well as a shadowy Gnostic sect interested in a potential weapon discovered by Einstein that he didn't offer to FDR during WWII—a weapon more terrible in its way than the atomic bomb. In typical Powers fashion, his characters' spiritual need to undo past sins or mistakes propels the ingenious plot, which manages to be intricate without becoming convoluted, to its highly satisfying conclusion. (Aug.)

A feisty young Latina, Jasmine Reyes, abandoned by her drug-addled parents as a teen, is mourning the prison suicide of her gifted twin, Jason. She runs her struggling bail bond business (funded with money saved from working as a hooker) like a social worker, attempting to salvage lives before they're lost to a cycle of hardened criminality. She thus gambles on posting bail for Malcolm "Macho" Booker, a talented graffiti artist whose sweet nature reminds her of Jason. Macho's failure to appear for a date in court plunges Jasmine into a gritty urban underground. Artemis packs the book with entertaining if one-dimensional street lit clichés and characters (a gruff cop who becomes Jasmine's lover; an HIV positive pre-op trannie), as Jasmine confronts a shady gang of graffiti artists and the sleazy founder of a too-good-to-be-true community health clinic. Artemis's previous offerings include Explicit Content and Picture Me Rollin' (as well as the chick lit novel Divas Don't Yield, written under her own name, Sofia Quintero). This busy, formulaic tale, with its hyperbolic and hyperactive twists and turns, is done with sensitivity and has genuine noir appeal. (Aug.)

E.O. Smonk is an ugly, unwashed, murdering rapist who has terrorized the small town of Old Texas, Ala., for years. In 1911, the town summons Smonk to stand trial, and a nonstop blood-orgy of brutality and destruction is the result in Franklin's gloriously debauched second novel (following Hell at the Breech). After Smonk's goons assault the Old Texas courthouse and kill the town's menfolk, reformed former Smonk associate turned lawman Will McKissick pursues Smonk. Meanwhile, a posse of Christian deputies chase teenage whore Evavangeline through the Gulf Coast, but the girl is a skilled killer, too, and the trail of her victims spans the region. McKissick follows Smonk's trail out of and back into Old Texas, while Evavangeline drifts into the town, where all the children are dead except McKissick's 12-year-old son and the widows lay out their dead husbands on their dining tables. The town's sordid past, about to be exposed, involves a rabies-ravaged one-armed preacher, a rabid dog named Lazarus the Redeemer, incest and a church full of dead boys dressed in Sunday best. Fast-paced and unrelentingly violent, Franklin's western isn't for everyone, but readers looking for a strange and savage tale can't go wrong. (On sale Aug. 22)

At the start of this strong thriller from bestseller Mills (Fade), career criminal Brandon Vale is in prison for a failed diamond theft when Richard Scanlon, an ex-FBI agent and security consultant, gets him released and offers him a job. The Ukrainian mob claims it has 12 nuclear warheads for sale, and Scanlon decides he'll save them from becoming ammunition in a terrorist plot by, with Brandon's help, coming up with the $200 million asking price by robbing a Vegas casino. With the aid of one of Scanlon's employees, Catherine Juarez, Brandon executes a brilliant plan, but finds himself mired in the terrorist plot. The likable Brandon wants nothing more than to be allowed to continue his life of cons and crime without the distractions of morality and patriotism, but this is not to be ("It was hard to believe that the planet's future—or lack thereof—was going to rest on the narrow shoulders of a thirty-three-year-old thief"). Fortunately for readers and the world, Brandon proves to be interesting, intelligent and more than equal to the task. (Aug.)

Turf wars among Washington's multitudinous spy agencies are nothing new, as shown by Koontz's debut, a gripping 1950s Cold War thriller featuring ex-FBI agent John Apparite (aka Superagent E). After being recruited by an ultrasecret organization whose existence is known only to elite D.C. brass and whose religion "is to kill or be killed," Apparite undergoes weeks of rigorous training that includes a practice brawl with barroom toughs and a butcher shop massacre of Mafiosi selling scandalous photos of his hero, J. Edgar Hoover. Apparite's new boss, the inscrutable, superpatriotic "Director," orders him to liquidate Robert Kramer, an atomic scientist living in London who possesses the secrets of rocket-firing submarines, before Kramer defects to the Soviets. Apparite soon finds himself caught up in a violent world that contrasts with the novel's many nostalgic touches of life in the Eisenhower era. This fine start bodes well for future entries in the series. (Aug.)

The Zarr sisters are having a rough go of it: the oldest, Estelle, wants to make it as a movie director and to find a good man, but success eludes her on both fronts. Jessie, meanwhile, worries herself to the edge of mental illness as she juggles a staid marriage with "diet guru" Allan, two inquisitive children and her booming organizing and decorating business. Youngest sister Erica, living in New York, longs to become a writer. Even the girls' parents, Lilly and former songwriter Milton, are having trouble navigating the late-life doldrums ("He's retired, his voice isn't what it used to be, he's a grandfather... what's left?"). When Gladys, Milton's former business and stage partner, dies, the family reunites in Toronto and, between meltdowns and shivah sessions, help one another get sorted out. Estelle realizes she may be better off without a husband when her career takes off. Jessie's extramarital fling portends a breakdown and a pleasantly broken home. And Erica and her narcissist novelist boyfriend forge a complicated breakup. Goodman's second (after Belle of the Bayou) offers a generously imagined panorama of life crises. (Aug. 1)

Fact into fiction? In bestseller Strieber's engrossing SF thriller, which draws heavily from Communion (1987), the author's controversial account of his personal contact with aliens, Danny and Katelyn Callaghan are a happily married couple oblivious that both took a saucer ride as kids—until a UFO sighting in their Indiana town awakens subliminal memories and excites their genius teenage son, Conner. Meanwhile, in a secret facility in Colorado, Air Force Lt. Lauren Glass learns that the Roswell incident really happened, and that for decades the surviving ETs have been sharing their advanced science with us. In exchange, these "Grays" have sought to rejuvenate their dying species by genetically manipulating human receptacles for their DNA. But some military hard-liners see this as a betrayal of humanity, and they launch a manhunt that brings them to Indiana and the Callaghans' doorstep. Though Strieber's human characters are sometimes as stiff and unbelievable as his Grays, his depiction of black ops intrigue and military espionage is a first-rate exercise in literary paranoia. It goes without saying that his abduction scenarios have a disturbing authenticity that even skeptical readers will find provocative. (Aug.)

Set in the very near future, veteran Forsyth's latest isn't quite up to the level of The Day of the Jackal or his more recent Fist of God, but it's a cut above most other post-9/11 spy thrillers. The threat of a catastrophic assault on the West, discovered on a senior al-Qaeda member's computer, compels the leaders of the U.S. and the U.K. to attempt a desperate gambit—to substitute a seasoned British operative, Col. Mike Martin, for an Afghan Taliban commander being held prisoner at Guantánamo Bay and then arrange Martin's release into Afghan custody. Martin must maintain his cover under the closest scrutiny, even as the details of the planned outrage are kept beyond his reach. Despite the choice to have Porter Goss as CIA director at the end of 2006 and some nick-of-time Hollywood heroics, Forsyth convincingly conjures up the world of counterterrorism and offers an all-too plausible terrorist plot. 250,000 printing. (Aug.)

At the start of this unoriginal but undeniably creepy horror chiller from bestseller Saul (Perfect Nightmare), Eric Brewster and two high school pals, Kent Newell and Tad Sparks, are looking forward to a summer vacation with their families in picturesque Phantom Lake, Wis. The Brewsters have rented Pinecrest, an age-blackened old house once the home of Dr. Hector Darby, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances seven years before. Eric's mother, Merrill, has a bad feeling about the house, as well she should, but the rest of the family is insistent, so she goes along with the plan. Once at Pinecrest, Eric and friends discover a secret room in the carriage house, a room filled with deadly surgical instruments, medical files, books and artifacts relating to Dr. Darby's research into the minds of serial killers. The boys begin to hear strange voices and experience terrifying dreams. Or are the dreams real? It's more YA novel than adult, but Saul has been in the business long enough to know how to send shivers up the spines of readers of any age. (Aug.)

A temperate entry in the rapidly overheating Da Vinci Code sweepstakes, Malarkey's second novel (following An Obvious Enchantment) illuminates the spiritual yearnings underlying and bolstering that boffo megaseller's more sensationalistic elements. Set in Egypt just after WWII, the novel fictionalizes the discovery of the Gnostic gospels, early Christian writings whose explosive intimations—that a growing nonauthoritarian sect was suppressed as Christianity was incorporated into the Roman empire—have been expertly explored by the great scholar Elaine Pagels. Malarkey, a founding editor of Tin House, is clearly enamored of these writings, but she makes a hash of the intrigue around their discovery. A faulty sense of period (a character at one point anachronistically calls for "security") and characters and situations straight from romance fiction ("This is the most beautiful part of the horse, and, I think, some women") mix uneasily with fairly sophisticated Bible readings, as young Brit Gemma Bastian follows her archeologist father to Cairo and gets mixed up with the household of his friend David Lazar—and David's sons. Such criticisms would be quibbles if Resurrection possessed the pulpy energy of Da Vinci, but it doesn't. Budding Gnostics and Essenes would be better off going straight to Pagels. (Aug.)

In this third novel in Monroe's bestselling God Don't series, Annette Goode finally has it all: a sexy husband who adores her, a beautiful young daughter, a comfy house, a good job and a perfect best friend. But why is someone suddenly sending her anonymous hate mail? As the poison pen letters and threatening phone calls become more ugly and violent, Annette takes her friend Rhoda's advice and sets out to discover and expose the culprit. Along the way, she is forced to dust off some of the skeletons in her closet—including childhood poverty and sexual abuse, a brief stint turning tricks as a teenager, and being an accessory to murder. Annette also confronts gnawing insecurity: obese and unfashionable, she wonders how long she can hang onto a husband who, according to gossip from the local beauty parlor, still has his name tattooed on the buttocks of Annette's prime suspect, the town femme fatale. Monroe squeezes everything she can from this novel's melodramatic plot, but it never feels as ominous as it should, nor does the tidiness of the conclusion enhance the book's already-faint sense of verisimilitude. What was interesting about Annette is covered in the earlier books. (Aug. 29)

Bergren's experience as a Christian historical fiction author (God Gave Us You) serves her well in this religious thriller, the first of a trilogy set in 14th-century Italy. Fragments of a mysterious long-lost letter written by Saint Paul are surfacing that speak of a group known as the Gifted, who will gather to fight the powers of encroaching darkness. With the Inquisition in full swing, Satan has sent his minion, the Sorcerer, to take over the world. Father Piero, a Dominican priest, has found the first of the Gifted, Lady Daria D'Angelo, who can bring the dead back to life. Daria uses her gift on the dying knight Gianni de Capezzana, who swears fealty to Daria and joins her in Siena, where the group gains strength and numbers. Soon, the Gifted and the forces of the underworld are locked in mortal combat. CBA readers will find much to cheer, but others will also enjoy this classic battle between good and evil. Disregard Da Vinci Code comparisons and think Lord of the Rings, but without Hobbits and the allegorical trappings. (Aug.)

Sacramento journalist and lapsed Catholic, Martin Martinez has seen his once fulfilling life flame out: his son has died of AIDS, his marriage is over, his daughter hates him and his siblings wrote him off after he let their mother die alone. Not to mention, he's diagnosed with prostate cancer shortly after coming a matchstick's distance to self-immolation in his backyard. As urologists and oncologists prod Marty's tender parts and offer conflicting information about treatment, he marries the eminently patient and understanding cancer-survivor physician, Miranda. With her help, Marty accepts that cancer isn't a punishment from God but just a bunch of cells gone wild. He also reconciles with his family, looks again to the church for support and learns the difference between a "grace period" and a cure. Haslam's (Straight White Male) portrait of the community Marty grew up in rings true, but his didactic prose makes this read like a primer on prostate cancer and a thin treatise on problems facing the Catholic Church, though some will find Marty's story—and his uneasy redemption—inspirational. (Aug.)

Lilly Dumont, a presumed-dead heiress, has been living as successful New York working girl Lacey Kinkaid, but she must confront her smalltown past in this formulaic entry from Phillips (The Bachelor), more romance than chick lit. At 17, Lilly's friends Tyler Benson and Daniel Hunter ("Hunter"), her childhood companions at the foster home Ty's mother ran—and where Lily was dumped by evil uncle Marc Dumont—helped her run her uncle's car off a cliff, faking her death so that she could escape his abuses. Years later, her uncle, who tried to get at her trust fund and plotted the trio's ruin, renews his attempts to get at her money. Hunter, now a lawyer in the upstate New York town, gets wind of Marc's legal maneuvers; he tips off Ty (now a town PI), and they find Lilly, who returns (leaving behind Alex Duncan, the investment banker whose proposal she can't seem to accept). Complicating Lacey/Lilly's identity issues are her feelings for Ty (explored physically in a chapters-long encounter), and the fact that her now fully AA'ed uncle Marc is engaged to be married to the gold-digging mother of Molly Gifford, the attorney that Hunter has had a crush on since law school. The plot falters, but the proceedings have enough emotional crispness to engage. (Aug.)

Parr (A Place Called Trinity) leaves both St. Martin's and historical fiction with this novel, a mostly successful foray into contemporary inspirational fiction. The heartwarming story stars three middle-aged sisters dealing with the ordinary ins and outs of life. The eldest is Andrea, a widowed real estate agent battling cancer. Next in line is Madge, the well-heeled wife of a businessman, who thrives on taking care of everyone around her. The 42-year-old baby of the family is Jenny, a mother of two who works as a nurse so her husband can stay at home with the kids and try to write a novel. The three sisters rely not only on each other, but also on their solid Christian faith, as they cope with family crises, professional contretemps and even—in Andrea's case—50-something dating. Parr is to be commended for her character development; each sister is well differentiated. The novel is also tightly plotted. Each sister faces a trial, and each trial is resolved (perhaps too tidily). That the book ends with a confirmation of traditional gender roles is predictable, but still disappointing. But all in all, this represents another strong offering from Steeple Hill. (Aug. 29)

Harrowing health problems and a dramatic murder trial collide in this convoluted novel that idealizes pregnancy and romantic love in equal measure. Caroline, forced to grow up too quickly and mother her younger sister after their alcoholic parents' divorce, has difficulty conceiving a child of her own now that she's in her 30s. When her last-ditch in-vitro fertilization attempt finally appears to succeed, Caroline chronicles her pregnancy in letters to her unborn daughter. In the meantime, Caroline's husband, Jeffrey, a Seattle area prosecutor, has his own preoccupation as he attempts to convict a famous ex-football player for the murder of his fiancée and their unborn son (the parallels to the Laci Peterson case are made explicit). Desperate to give her husband a child, Caroline puts her own life on the line when preeclampsia threatens both her and her unborn child. Blow-by-blows of Jeffrey's legal doings threaten to derail the plot, as do Caroline's treacly journal entries (on the blastula: "Each cell accepted its destiny, and went about its task. Joyfully). Haul out the tissues for this genuine tearjerker, which makes up in sentimentality what it lacks in drama. (Aug.)

Charming, melancholy, hip and at times hopeful, the 21 poems of Zapruder's second collection take on personal subjects and meditate on life in cities and towns, friendship, love and the nature of poetry itself. In surprising, often lengthy narratives, Zapruder (founding editor of Verse Press, now Wave Books, and author of American Linden, 2002) makes huge associative jumps, interjects playful imagery ("I love / baseball, it makes me angry / and hopeful for justice") and offers unlikely characterizations of places and ideas: "Go, Jerry, soon you will be / in Canada where / Neil Young was born." "There Is a Light" pays tribute to the venerable institution of the New York City bodega ("in silence you have been here / forever since 1993"), and the sequence "Twenty Poems for Noelle" attempts to console a grieving friend. The title poem, a several-page piece in prose, outlines an imaginary novel about a pajama-wearing man who takes other people's suffering on in their stead. "Water Street" recounts the experience of being the poet-in-residence at the home of the late Ouija board–wielding poet James Merrill. Most moving is a longish poem that portrays Zapruder's hometown of Brooklyn, with its "row of dented Sundays." (Sept.)

A kind of poet's journal or miscellany, mixing verse with prose, considered ideas with spontaneous exclamations, notes to friends and even e-mails, Hahn's seventh book adapts the traditional Japanese prose poetry genre zuihitsu to modern American aims. The notebook form allows room for scenes in Brooklyn and on Cape Cod; the poet's feelings about her preteen daughter and her former husband; her thoughts on academia and on Asian-Americanness; her experience of her own body, in youth, in sex and in middle age; and her reactions to 9/11. Honesty has long stood among Hahn's strengths: "I want hands on my face the way no husband or woman has ever held me." Childhood recollections are also movingly evoked: "I need not write about those snow forts where I lay on my back looking up at the ceiling turning into twilight, my mother calling from the trite threshold." Hahn's self-consciousness about this cross-cultural form—a recurring theme—can become self-indulgent, and the development comes not from a change in Hahn, but from the terrorist attack on her city. No revelation emerges at notebook's end. And yet her individual musings retain their force, even in a form Hahn (The Artist's Daughter, 2004) calls "a kind of fragmented anything." (July)

Cairns's warm, calm, personal tones win him respect in many quarters, but his core audience comes from his subject matter: the mysteries, consolations and consequences of Christian belief. Questions about how to live as a Christian, how to understand such theological concepts as eros and agape, as sacrifice and resurrection, give depth and seriousness to his verse. Familiarity not only with New Testament texts but with the Church Fathers, their methods of exegesis and sometimes parallel questions from Jewish learning give Cairns a range of allusion and launching pads for his poems, as in the winning series "Adventures in New Testament Greek." A poem from his first collection, The Theology of Doubt (1985), explores "the sober forms / of worship, the forms love takes// when the mind is rested"; "Late Apocalypse," one of the 27 new poems, begins, "Blessed is anyone who reads much of anything, blessed / and most unusual." That poem, among his best, rises into a serious condemnation of our consumer-driven world. More often Cairns seeks compassionate ways to apply the lessons of theologians or of Christ to his own life; one does not need to be Christian, or even religious, to profit from what he finds. (Sept.)

In this accessible yet sinuous third collection, New York City's landscape becomes a subtle metaphor for a complex inner life in which hope makes room for despair and joyful recklessness attempts to coexist with sober wisdom. Using a variety of forms—from sonnets, haikus and ghazals to extended free verse and prose poems—Wetzsteon probes disturbing contradictions: "the heart's response is a matter of / degree, not kind—whether the ax is lifted / in ardor or in fury, the frozen sea still melts." She revels in melancholy, imploring, "[t]ake me back / to where thunder claps in minds and skies / and hearts are glad to be unhappy," and admits that there is safety in identifying with one's own pain: "I'm lost without my precious wounds; scrape the welts away and there's no one left to be kind to." Finally, in the title poem, set in a park near the poet's New York home, where "petals lift and scatter / like versions of myself I was on the verge / of becoming," Wetzsteon (Home and Away, 1998) acknowledges the futility, and also the necessity, of her struggle: while awaiting "sweet reprieve /... / meanwhile's far from nothing:/ the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees." These poems are deep and artfully crafted. (July 7)

Escape—from unhappy love relationships, bad situations and the claustrophobia of one's own identity—is the central theme of this darkly humorous second book by a young British poet. In most of these 38 poems, whimsical, fantastic and at times adorable metaphors establish a wide field of vision: "I dreamed of a far blue-green planet, / like earth, round which I drifted // softly on a weightless rope. / I made the planet smaller and more silent / by dreaming the rope longer." Fans of the American poet Matthea Harvey may find a related spirit in operation here. Levity in these poems only pretends to distract the reader and the speaker from a deeper self-loathing: "my own giant muteness, piled and blind, / unlovely and stubborn as cement." Clark (Kiss, 2000) also has a knack for poems about animals, including stingrays (who fill "all the ocean with trembling politeness"), a swan ("a pure white question / with its underwater dream in tow") and a hedgehog ("a living flinch"). Closing the volume is a several-page translation from the Chinese, which is stylistically compelling though a bit out of place. (July 17)

Edgy, and inventive, PW reviews editor Scharf's poetry has been gaining attention in avant-garde circles for almost a decade, even though this is his first full-length book (Vérité, a collection of more recent poems, was published online by Ubu.com). The sequences in the first half enmesh what could sound like personal revelations (even an "intense love promise") in a webwork of cultural quotations, literary history and free-floating postmodern headlines. "I was slightly excited / under the domination and guidance of a milk-/ white star," Scharf explains; elsewhere "disbelief about scatology / turns to eschatology, ontology." The sequence "Nine Sonnets for Late Nineties Literary Culture" performs a half-appreciative exorcism on the social contexts for poetry now, in poems with titles like "Recent Grad: Poem for the New Yorker," much in the tradition of Jack Spicer. Some of the volume's peaks arrive near the end, where chants, self-deconstructing sentences, celebrations of friends and investigations of social subtexts suggest the ambitious critique of work, time and meaning associated with England's Cambridge School. In this challenging and versatile debut, Scharf hits cultural bedrock. (July)

In careful rhythms, the 21 poems of this British poet's fourth collection describe the "collision" of opposites that Londoners and other city dwellers live with daily: e.g., the city's smell of "Peking duck and piss." Repo-men and aging chess players, pigeons and Chinese supermarkets, sidewalk preachers and railway station bars all populate these neat stanzas. While echoing Larkin in his desire to look unflinchingly, Hill is ultimately more optimistic about the human condition. Many poems insist on some kind of sweetness, even a lost one, as in the penultimate section of "A Year in London," a poem with a section for each month; after suggesting bombs falling, the poem ends with fireworks: "[a]nd all that brilliance was ours / in our dreams that night." Hill also sounds at times like Frost, another polestar for plainspoken poets: describing a young couple fixing up an abandoned house, he writes, "[a]ll this was years ago. And now you're here, / the two of you scything the bittersweet." Occasionally, what Hill (Zoo, 1998) encounters in the contemporary world is so awful that only silence or disbelief are appropriate: "[t]he death toll mounts every morning. / It grows unspeakable." (July 15)

Vaulting whimsy ornaments a fundamentally earnest storytelling sensibility in Kimbrell's delightful sophomore collection. Multipage poems with swiftly moving anecdotes open the volume on a strong note: Kimbrell (The Gatehouse Heaven, 1998) explains why "the desire to walk over the dunes beyond the sea oats /... / is a desire for Ferris wheels," or lauds the slogan "NO SHERIFF GREATER THAN LOVE" in a poem called "Sometimes a Cloud Looks Like a Getaway Car Again." At the volume's close, tongue-in-cheek odes and quasiconfessional poems present similar strengths, praising Whitman ("kosmic bamboozler"), and recalling how "the yellow school bus rubbed its wheel against the curb / as if to say, Jimbo, you a fox!" The second of the volume's three parts strikes a more somber tone, commemorating the poet's mother in 15 untitled free verse elegies, which conclude, "the shape of love... is larger than the shape // of loss." Moving and honest in their accumulation of incidents, the elegies employ little of the verbal invention for which Kimbrell's other work can stand out. (July)

If a football team composed of players from the Popul Vuh and The Tibetan Book of the Dead were forced into citizenship rites that involved playing school football at "Twisted or Deception High," the results would be something like the latest, beautiful, uncategorizable work from Doris. Published nearly simultaneously with the very different but similarly daring Knot (University of Georgia), Cheerleader's Guide tracks society's bases in timeless, evil small-group dynamics through an ingenious formal gambit. Using a withering faux-naïve diction ("victory / takes brains but not for thinking"), Doris imbues characters like "N0t Righ+ N0w," "Laugh1ng M1rrors Puk1ng" and "Dry-Me Out" with a violence and scale that feels at once queasily of-the-political-minute and gorgeously timeless. Each page contains a few short stanzas at the top, and, at bottom, a football diagram with x's, o's and lines showing where the characters move in relation to one another. Each reads like a sudden-death play at fourth down, where "what's human is formations / and drills" and "The Team's ball is just / an ovoid knife"; the whole resembles an ironic instruction manual for joining a society stuck in a very sick game. (July)

Sad, silly and fantastical: in her first poetry collection translated into English (after three previous collections, plus a novel, in her native Macedonian) Dimkovska pins readers to the wall with rapid-fire linguistic energy and the propulsion of her chosen form, the jagged, long-lined column. In this forceful translation, Dimkovska takes on love (there is a cryptic "A." who is often addressed), marriage, fertility, beauty ("[he] refreshes himself with L'Oreal / (because he's worth it) to exhaustion"), religion ("God is a polyglot. God nibbles at himself thus penetrating into / the word God"), Aristotle and, of course, poetry itself. The political realities of being a contemporary woman in Eastern Europe haunt the whole collection, as in "Decent Girl": "I'll wear embroidered blouses from the Ethnographic Museum / of Macedonia, and someone will have to pay for them." Although Dimkovska's distinctive zip does, at times, get lost in the prose-like quality of some of her lines, this collection is mostly exhilarating. "I will confess," Dimkovska writes, "that art is not—but should be— / a delight." As deep and complex as they are hilarious, these poems are powerfully delightful. (June)

This disarmingly intimate account—rendered in fragmentary poetic sequences, neat couplets and prose blocks—of Bumstead's travels in northern Guatemala, El Salvador, Chiapas and the Ivory Coast is an expansive and surprising experimental debut, in terms of its far-ranging geography as well as its stylistic diversity. Travelogues, letters ("This morning I ate an entire cantaloupe. Granted, it was a small cantaloupe") and, most strikingly, spare and cryptic lyrics display technical dexterity and a finely tuned ear: "gritty chitty / chitty bang bang in American /movies we want /war, silliness / & war." Writing as an outsider, mother and lover in places where most are afraid to go, Bumstead attests that, "stories /can't be possessed by anyone, not / really." Throughout, the political and personal overlap, each clarifying and obscuring the other: "Governments spinning on a pin. Whole criminal enterprises running countries. History is such a long book.... I am long too like a story about a musical note. When I remember things I plead with them not to forget me." (June)

Watson's fiery third effort offers a rare combination: the propulsive rawness of performance poetry and the pathos of impending middle age. These insistent, not-quite-narrative poems describe the daughter she loves, the husband she leaves and the dangerous world through which she moves, where "a child needing new lungs / waits for another child to die." Individual lines can sound direct—"Newly in my body, blind to the lie at the core / I toy with forbidden self"—when the poems that contain them remain evasive and hard to pin down. Poems about motherhood, and divorce, paint a picture of a world both fragile and precariously coherent: to her ex, Watson (Ladder Music, 2001) writes, "I'm ashamed / we failed at forever"; about a newborn, she says, "Today is the first day everything about her / is my job." The political poems dominating the volume's close perhaps take on predictable targets ("The President // who doesn't know how to be sorry") though they do so with ferocity and confidence in the belief that the personal has always been political. The effective rapidity of these lines does deprive some poems of depth. On the whole, though, Watson's accessible subjects and clear phrasing should draw readers to her work. (June)

Retired professor David Mapstone once again brings a historian's touch to his job as Phoenix deputy sheriff in Talton's smartly plotted fourth adventure (after 2004's Dry Heat). Nothing appears to link the ice-pick murder of lawyer Alan Cordesman in David's neighborhood with a body in the desert that turns out to be that of landowner Harry Bell. Months later, David starts connecting the dots when Harry's brother, Louis, also turns up with an ice pick through his skull, and David's supposed former student, who originally directed him to the location of the body in the desert, proves to be Dana Earley, wife of Tom Earley, Maricopa county supervisor and chief critic of the sheriff's department, run by David's prickly boss, Mike Peralta. David also links the Earleys to Arizona Dreams, a massive new development with one major problem: it has no water supply, a requisite in Arizona. But the Bell land does. While much of this is familiar territory, Talton crisply evokes Phoenix's New West ambience and keeps readers guessing with unexpected plot twists. (Sept.)

In Bruen's superb new pulp-inspired novel featuring Inspector Brant (after 2005's Vixen), the Southeast London Police Squad is plagued by a serial murderer who's determined to give his victims a lesson in manners. Taking a cue from Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, the "Manners Killer" believes that anyone who behaves rudely in public (e.g., verbally abuses a store clerk, slaps a child) is fair game. He soon finds that he's no match for Brant, Bruen's amoral, sociopathic brute of a detective ("He was heavily built with a black Irish face that wasn't so much lived in as squatted upon"). While his methods may be questionable, Brant gets results, and we find ourselves secretly cheering him on. Meanwhile, Brant is writing his first crime novel, Calibre, and aspires to become the English Joseph Wambaugh. Of course, he doesn't let the fact that he can't write deter him; Brant just nicks the stories from his cop buddy Porter Nash. Bruen's furious hard-boiled prose, chopped down to its trademark essence, never fails to astonish. (Aug.)

The latest anthology from the Mystery Writers of America offers a high quality assortment of stories propelled by human passions behind crimes both hot- and cold-blooded. Despite the participation of such noted authors as Coben, Charles Todd, Laura Lippman and R.L. Stine, the gems come from lesser knowns. The standout is Charles Ardai's "The Home Front," a noir tale that Cornell Woolrich fans will relish, recounting the travails of a WWII-era federal agent whose role in the accidental death of a black marketer haunts him and leads to further disaster. Brendon DuBois's "The Last Flight," a taut tale of revenge, and Lee Child's "Safe Enough," about a dark secret uniting an upscale woman and her electrician, will also linger for many readers. Cozy and fair-play fans won't find much specifically aimed at them, but fans of quality short fiction should be satisfied. (Aug.)

This auspicious first in a new mystery series from Raichev, a Bulgarian long resident in London, introduces a sympathetic sleuth, Antonia Darcy, an assistant librarian at London's Military and Naval Club, a divorced grandmother and aspiring writer. Twenty years after the Royal Wedding, Antonia sadly remembers the little girl of the novel's title, who disappeared the same day Charles and Diana were married in July 1981. Along with Sonya's parents, Antonia was on holiday at a country house on the Thames at the time the young girl went missing and was presumed drowned, her body never recovered. When Antonia discovers a detailed account of Sonya's disappearance that she wrote shortly after the tragedy, Antonia has a strong sense that something isn't right with her story and sets out to satisfy her nagging doubts—with the help of her admirer and willing assistant, widower Maj. Hugh Payne. Agatha Christie fans will find much to like in this traditional whodunit. (Aug.)

In this savage, darkly comic second American outing for the newest member of the "Scottish noir" school, the action begins with a particularly gruesome crime: a madman has sealed up a squatter's apartment and set it—and the six people partying inside—afire. That same evening, a prostitute is found beaten to death, and Det. Sgt. Logan MacRae, the ambitious star of Cold Granite (2005), is on the case. But his star has fallen; after a botched raid, MacRae has been demoted to the "Screw-Up Squad," led with a droll lack of enthusiasm by one Inspector Steel. Several characters from Cold Granite reappear, but newcomers won't have any trouble parsing this thriller, though some may be unsettled by the jarring but witty contrast between MacBride's wry tone and the story's brutal violence. The city of Aberdeen figures as one of this well-written novel's main characters, a portrait that will warn readers away from its mean streets. (Aug.)

Camilleri's gripping seventh Inspector Montalbano mystery (after 2005's The Smell of the Night) successfully integrates serious political themes with a hero reminiscent of Colin Dexter's beloved Inspector Morse. Frustrated by his department's repressive handling of security for the G8 summit in Genoa, Montalbano seriously considers resigning. His attempt to unwind with a casual swim along the Sicilian seashore fails when he discovers a corpse in the water. The inspector's pursuit of the cause of death intersects with another mystery—the inquiry into a hit-and-run that claimed the life of a young boy who may have been victimized by human traffickers. When Montalbano realizes that he may have inadvertently aided the boy's victimizers, his internal turmoil intensifies. Despite Camilleri's hard look at modern-day slavery and child abuse, he maintains Montalbano's gallows humor, making this far from a run-of-the-mill police procedural. (Aug.)

In Anderson's third mystery (after 2005's Killer Cocktail) to feature Molly Forrester, advice columnist for Zeitgeist magazine, the fashionable New York City journalist still yearns to be an investigative crime reporter. She gets her chance when her editor asks her to interview Gwen Lincoln, the wealthy ex-wife of "advertising rock star" Garth Henderson and the prime suspect in Henderson's high-profile murder, which the police think may be connected to the victim's agency's recent merger with a rival firm. Molly's two best friends—attorney Cassady Lynch and events planner Tricia Vincent—hope to see Molly's byline in the New York Times, but Molly's sexy homicide detective boyfriend, Kyle Edwards, wants her to keep out of danger and off his turf. As Molly investigates the many possible suspects, she jeopardizes her romance, her friends' safety and her own life. But this "Sleuth in the City" stays on her toes as Anderson keeps the story lighthearted and fast-paced. (July 28)

The second Detective Inspector Chen novel (after 2005's Snake Agent) traverses a wildly imaginative landscape based on Chinese mythology, with humans mingling with demons, Celestials and the deceased. When rich girl Deveth Sardai turns up dead, the case goes to demon Zhu Irzh, recently of Hell but posted to Earth to assist the police department of the city of Singapore Three. Meanwhile, Deveth's girlfriend, Robin Yuan, frees Mhara, a demon Robin's research company has been experimenting on for defense reasons. Robin and Zhu Irzh's paths cross as they follow the trail of the killer, leading them to uncover a larger plot involving a goddess in Heaven's bid for power. As the end of the world beckons, Mhara, who is far more than he seems, offers his help, but Heaven, Hell, Earth and everything in between falls into chaos. Williams weaves a rich, complicated tapestry that merges life with afterlife, otherworldly with worldly and human with inhuman. (Aug.)

Set in contemporary Moscow, Lukyanenko's fantastic American debut—the first in a series about an epic struggle between good and evil—charts the adventures of a race of supernaturally gifted Others, who serve either the Light or Dark Side. The Others slip in and out of an eerie parallel world where they coexist in an uneasy peace that a terrible revolution may soon disrupt. Philosophical Anton Gorodetsky, an earnest Night Watch agent, falls in love with 24-year-old Svetlana Nazarova, a troubled young doctor under a Dark Magician's curse. While Anton endeavors to undo the curse, he discovers Egor, a gifted boy unwilling to choose between his Light or Dark abilities. As humankind's fate hangs in the balance, Anton is forced to re-examine his allegiance, and Svetlana is drawn deeper into the exotic, vivid universe of dueling magicians, shape-shifters, witches and vampires. Potent as a shot of vodka, this compelling urban fantasy was adapted to a Russian blockbuster movie in 2004. (July)

At the start of the third book in Keyes's Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series (The Briar King, etc.), princess Anne Dare's father, the king of Crotheny, is dead and her mother, Muriele, is the prisoner of her mad uncle, Robert Dare, who now rules the kingdom. Anne does her best to elude her uncle's clutches as she flees across a well-developed landscape reminiscent of Renaissance northern Italy (rugged terrain and priests who belong to an established church) and medieval Germany (thick forests and ogres). The scenes and viewpoints shift often enough to be somewhat confusing, but the occasional well-handled erotic episode or magic duel can startle with its originality. This volume closes with a climactic grand battle in which Anne's cohorts appear to be victorious. Readers curious about the fate of Robert Dare, who has vanished, must await the fourth and final volume in this sophisticated and intelligent high fantasy epic. (July)

This excellent, scholarly edition provides the first English translation of an obscure, early Balzac work (1822). A mix of gothic elements, romance and SF, this disjointed novel is a mishmash of stories set in different time frames, loosely linked by the two characters of the title—the Centenarian father and his illegitimate son Tullius, or General Beringheld. The monstrous, immortal father—who sustains his powers by extracting the life-essence from young people—is the novel's central figure, but Tullius's diaries form the main story. Born centuries after his father was born, Tullius, who later grows up to become a much-decorated general in Napoleon's army, searches for the Centenarian, a quest punctuated with love stories, including that of Tullius and the innocent Marianine. This improbable tale reveals a writer seeking a voice and will appeal to scholarly readers interested in the early history of science fiction and its origins in 19th-century French popular literature. (July)

The McCaffreys' second fire-breathing collaboration (after 2003's Dragon's Kin) again proves why these fabled dragons still cast a spell. Pellar, a mute Apprentice Harper; Halla, a homeless girl; and Cristov, a miner's son, learn invaluable life lessons as the planet Pern prepares for the return of the deadly Red Star and its annihilating "Thread," which can only be destroyed by firestone-fueled dragonfire. But mining firestone is dangerous work, often carried out by children of disenfranchised criminals called the Shunned. Accompanied by his new fire-lizard Chitter, Pellar joins Masterharper Zist in a search for Moran, a missing Journeyman Harper who's involved with the Shunned. Pellar finds his fate intertwined with Halla, but his tangle with Tenim, a ruthless thief, almost keeps them apart. Their friend Cristov learns about the Shunned firsthand after a terrible mine explosion. Fortunately, events lead to dragon-riding wish fulfillment and a remarkable discovery. While it allegorizes the risks of mining fossil fuels and the horrors of slave labor, this coming-of-age fantasy offers suitable dragon play for all ages. (July)

This primarily reprint anthology attempts to define "Slipstream" as the "literature of cognitive dissonance and of strangeness triumphant," with examples showcasing the work of various mainstream and genre writers. Highlights include Bruce Sterling's "The Little Magic Shop," an allegorical fantasy story; Jonathan Lethem's "Light and the Sufferer," which uses the SF trope of superior aliens to comment on a story of character; Ted Chiang's "Hell Is the Absence of God," which presents a believably horrific picture of God's lack of compassion; Kelly Link's "The Specialist's Hat," which plays with the ghost story form; and Michael Chabon's "The God of Dark Laughter," a reinvention of Lovecraftian horror. Original to this volume is M. Rickert's "You Have Never Been Here Before," which the editors believe is an example of what slipstream does best by being "hauntingly familiar and very, very strange." While these intriguing stories (and accompanying essays) may not be enough to define the canon of a new subgenre, they provide plenty of good reading. (July)

D'Alessandro's latest historical romance (after Not Quite a Gentleman) features an engaging murder mystery and a heroine refreshingly free of title and rank. While attending Lord Malloran's soiree, London fortune teller Madame Alexandra Larchmont fears that Viscount Sutton, Colin Oliver, may recognize her as the woman who picked his pocket four years earlier. Hiding in a study, Alex overhears partygoers detailing a murder plot. She flees the party by leaping from a second-floor window, only to come face to face with Colin, who hasn't forgotten the beautiful pickpocket. When, just hours later, two men turn up dead in the room from which Colin saw Alex leap, he becomes intent on and tracking her down. After Colin finds and confronts Alex, he reluctantly decides to believe her story of the overheard murder plot, and the two get to work installing her at Lord Wexhall's, where the murders are meant to take place. The romance between Alex and Colin scintillates, and the whodunit murder mystery makes good use of a beguiling cast of characters, as each come under the scrutiny of the sexy sleuths. (Aug.)

Fans of Collins (Road to Perdition) will be delighted to find him resurrecting Quarry, the ruthless hit-man he put to rest years ago, after six Quarry novels and a small handful of short stories. Now living and relaxing in the Minnesota woods, Quarry is lured out of retirement by a Chicago media magnate who wants a seemingly harmless young librarian dead. But when he winds up falling for his target, one Janet Wright, Quarry begins second-guessing his assignment and experiences an uncharacteristic change of heart that almost gets him killed. Stemming from Collins's screenplay for the award-winning short film A Matter of Principal, this novel covers a lot of ground in a small space—a credit to the distinct, wry voice Collins has given Quarry, who doesn't waste anything, least of all words: "Louis cracked open the door and peered out and said, 'What is it?' and I shot him in the eye." Compact enough to be read in a couple of sittings but bristling with suspense and sexuality, this book is a welcome addition to the Hard Crime Case library and, if there's any justice, will spark sales of Collins's back-catalogue titles. (Aug.)

Former DEA agent Max Roper finds love again in this well-balanced romantic suspense novel, the second installment of St. Claire's Bullet Catcher series. Max is a member of the Bullet Catchers, an elite team of bodyguards made up of former government agents. His latest assignment is to protect Cori Peyton, widow of recently murdered billionaire William Peyton. Five years ago, Max and Cori were a couple on the verge of engagement; when Cori's father, Max's old partner at the DEA, died in a drug bust gone bad, Cori blamed Max, and ended their affair. Dogged by both the rekindling passion between them and suspicions about the secretive Cori's motives—did she kill her husband?—the stoic bodyguard delves into Cori and William's life by whatever means necessary: "[H]e knew a million ways to get information. With Cori, a million and one." As Max and Cori discover that she's a target for the mystery killers, the two uncover an intricate web of greed and deceit that traces back to Peyton Enterprises. St. Claire's ability to evenly match sultry romance with enticing suspense make this novel a superior entry into the romantic suspense game. (Aug.)

In the new book by Bram Stoker Award–winner Little (Dispatch), strangers across the U.S. are each pursued by different supernatural forces as they fall into the path of a ghost train rumbling into the present day from a dark chapter in American history. Switching among characters—college freshman Angela Ramos in Flagstaff, Ariz.; divorced park ranger Henry Cote in Canyonlands National Park, Utah; Jolene, fleeing her husband to Bear Flats, Calif., with eight-year-old Skyler in tow; and Dennis Chen, on his first cross-country road trip—Little turns the screws bit by bit, bringing his unfortunate charges face to face with multiple terrors, including haunted houses, mummified zombies, a pair of succubi and a room full of jarred human body parts. The novel draws from historical record and modern-day hot-button topics, bringing to bear immigration issues from the time of the Transcontinental Railroad to the present. Readers might tire of the revolving door structure—characters switch off on a per-chapter basis—before the stories converge in northern Utah, and might find the multiple strands a bit overstuffed and under-scary; still, this novel offers Steven King–size epic horror for those with the patience for it. (Aug.)

There are lots of anthologies of the work of the past century's famous cartoonists, but Nadel has done a real service in putting together this collection of 29 marvelous nearly unknown comic strip and comic book artists. Many are reprinted from yellowing newsprint—in a few cases, like Walter Quermann's late-'30s newspaper strip Hickory Hollow Folks, from the only copies of their work still extant. Only a few, like Ogden Whitney's poker-faced '60s comic book Herbie, have ever been reprinted before. Nadel's five categories, "Exercises in Exploration," "Slapstick," "Acts of Drawing," "Words in Pictures" and "Form and Style," sometimes seem arbitrary; the biographical notes at the back are informative but all too brief. Still, it's hard to argue with the comics themselves. Charles Forbell's 1913 newspaper strip Naughty Pete looks like it had a huge influence on Chris Ware; Gustave Verbeek's bonkers formal experiment The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo, from 1904, is still hilarious and sui generis; Rory Hayes's crude but meticulous horror stories from 1969's Bogeyman Comics, the most recent pieces here, were decades ahead of their time. Contemporary cartoonists—and their fans—have a lot to learn from the freewheeling, witty, try-anything-twice artistic attitude of the pieces Nadel's assembled. (June)

This American manga series is built upon manga fandom, as well as other elements of Japanese culture that outsiders love, like gaming and anime. Gallagher has many different plot lines going through the book, all built around or inspired by these subjects. Some feature anime voice actresses, others gamers from America who have moved to Japan. One large story line is the Beatlemania-like reception an out-of-work anime voice actress gets. The book is about fandom and, indeed, often feels like an overexcited Internet message board. Gallagher's penciled artwork is very attractive—he doesn't just rip off what Japanese cartoonists have been doing but creates a more stylized look for all the characters, one that's somewhere in-between anime cartoons and video game sprites. Unlike most manga from Japan, Megatokyo is a very dense read with panels tightly packed in and word balloons taking up a lot of room. Those whose appreciation of the Otaku lifestyle already puts them in the mood for this hyperactive storytelling will enjoy it. Those not as familiar with the world of manga and anime and trying this book for the first time, perhaps based on its move from Dark Horse to CMX, might find it more of a challenge. (June)

Who knew there was a comic book based on Our Gang (aka The Little Rascals), the long-running series of short films featuring those lovable urban scamps, Mickey, Buckwheat and Spanky? And by Kelly, the man responsible for Pogo, no less. This is a sweet, idiosyncratic collection of comics dating from 1942–1943. Kelly, then a young animator and fledgling comic book artist, was given the job of bringing these icons to life on the comic book page; while it took him a few issues to find his groove, he eventually rendered the gang in his own eloquent visual style. As in all of his work, Kelly's characters are gently nuanced, his lively brush strokes giving them an unvarnished realism that jibes perfectly with their cartoonish surroundings. Kelly makes the characters his own—these comics never feel like adaptations. In these issues, the gang embark on their usual adventures, including making a circus, foiling a crime caper or two and even visiting a movie set. These comics are suitable for nostalgic adults and adventurous kids alike, though Buckwheat's unfortunate but contemporary racist rendering might require some explanation. But all in all, it's an exuberant and transportive collection. (June)

The latest installment in the long running Gundam saga begins after the war between Earth and the Plant has been halted by a cease fire. The war was fought with space battleships and Gundams—enormous mechanized exoskeletons that can double as single-person massively-armed spaceships. The result hasn't been real peace, though. There's too much tempting, deadly technology available, so eager military research and development people start building more and more advanced Gundams, while fanatics plot to reignite the war. Series creator Tomino has been spinning increasingly elaborate plot webs since 1979, which shows how fascinating the basic concept has proved, but it also means that a new reader picking up a book like this is apt to feel a bit like a new viewer trying to appreciate the intricacies of a well-established soap opera. What may hold newbies' attention, though, is the continuing attraction of the Gundams themselves, all captured by the intricate art: it would be wonderful to shrug off the frustrating complications of our daily lives, climb inside a fantastically powerful machine and go out to fight for peace. (June)

Tracing the factual origins of a legend that has undergone hundreds of permutations over the years, McCulloch and Hendrix blend a fictional narrative with a detailed look at the documented information and myths of Lee Shelton, or "Stagger Lee." Best known to today's audiences thanks to Lloyd Price's 1959 #1 hit recording, the tale is a prototype for the "gangsta" image in black American song-story, an archetype even presented as a Caucasian character when the story headed west in the late 19th century. The basic account revolves around a fatal dice game in which Lee shot and killed one Billy Lyons. McCulloch's script interweaves the recorded facts of the incident with close scrutiny of many of the song's versions and its changing significance as American society progressed, bolstering the cultural archeology with a fictional account of the political upheaval caused by the murderer's trial. McCulloch covers much territory, and sometimes loses its thread, but sharp dialogue and characterizations maintain interest. Hendrix's solid art captures the story with a documentary precision, making this worth a look for those with an interest in America's musical history. (May)