Fiction Reviews: Week of 8/21/2006

By Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 8/21/2006

Fiction

Only months after the inauguration of Chile's first female president, Allende recounts in her usual sweeping style the grand tale of Doña Inés Suárez (1507– 1580), arguably the country's founding mother. Writing in the year of her death, Inés tells of her modest girlhood in Spain and traveling to the New World as a young wife to find her missing husband, Juan. Upon learning of Juan's humiliating death in battle, Inés determines to stay in the fledgling colony of Peru, where she falls fervently in love with Don Pedro de Valdivia, loyal field marshal of Francisco Pizarro. The two lovers aim to found a new society based on Christian and egalitarian principles that Valdivia later finds hard to reconcile with his personal desire for glory. Inés proves herself not only a capable helpmate and a worthy cofounder of a nation, but also a ferocious fighter who both captivates and frightens her fellow settlers. Inés narrates with a clear eye and a sensitivity to native peoples that rarely lapses into anachronistic political correctness. Basing the tale on documented events of her heroine's life, Allende crafts a swift, thrilling epic, packed with fierce battles and passionate romance. (Nov.)

This stylishly funny follow-up to Cooking with Fernet-Branca continues the story of Gerald Samper, the English ghostwriter of exuberant sports and media autobiographies. It's a couple of years later, and Samper, still at his Tuscan retreat, is bereft of the hard-won intimacy of his Voynovian neighbor Marta, who has mysteriously disappeared. He consoles himself with penile enhancers and with such dishes as vindaloo blancmange ("an intriguing marriage of the incandescent and the gelid"). Meanwhile, celebrated one-armed yachtswoman Millie Cleat beckons; she wants Samper's help in rendering her more spiritual side in print. And Samper's chain-smoking agent back in London, Frankie, wouldn't mind a subject with more clout—perhaps the great orchestra conductor Max Christ? Shuttling from Tuscany to London and back again, dining with the likes of Cooking's Nanty (the leader of a superfabulous newly New Age boy band), Samper (as he calls himself) must also deal with a tremendous problem related to those penile enhancers—one even more outsized than Millie Cleat's ego. Recipes for badger and "Death Roe" are sprinkled throughout this charming comedy, sophisticated in the manner of a Peter Sellers romp, with a little Mel Brooks for good measure. (Nov.)

Rosenbaum's debut sets The Lovely Bones to strains of Fiddler on the Roof. In rural Zokof, Poland, in 1906, young Itzik Leiber protects three small Jewish boys from a beating, resulting in the accidental death of a menacing Polish peasant. Itzik hides in a Jewish cemetery where he unknowingly draws the soul of Friedl Alterman—who died the previous year at 83. Friedl, childless in life, protects Itzik as he flees Zokof for Warsaw, then America. Fast forward 86 years as Itzik's son, Nathan Linden (name change), a scholar of international law, is a guest of the Polish government. He is drawn to his father's hometown (via a still-protective Friedl), and there he comes upon Rafael Bergson, "the last Jew in Zokof," who forces Nathan to confront his ambiguous feelings about religion and begs him to help restore Friedl's spirit through prayer and ritual. But it may be up to Ellen, Nathan's free-spirited choreographer daughter, to come to Poland to liberate Friedl's soul. Friedl's voice retreats after the early chapters, and Rosenbaum handles the shifts in voice, time and place smoothly. She packs a lot of Jewish history, recent and otherwise, into this luminous tale, as well as joy in the arts and in prayer. (Nov.)

Harvard Ph.D. candidate Eloise Kelly continues her research of early 19th-century spies in the smart third book of the Pink Carnation series, following the well-received The Secret History of the Pink Carnation and The Masque of the Black Tulip. This installment focuses on 19-year-old Letty Alsworthy, who, after a comedy of errors, quickly weds Lord Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe, her older sister's intended. Geoffrey, an officer in the League of the Purple Gentian, flees to Ireland the night of his elopement. Unbeknownst to Letty, his plan isn't to abandon her; it's to quash the impending Irish Rebellion. When Letty tracks down her prodigal husband in Dublin, not only does she learn of his secret life as a spy, she's sucked into it with hilarious results. Willig—like Eloise, a Ph.D. candidate in history—draws on her knowledge of the period, filling the fast-paced narrative with mistaken identities, double agents and high stakes espionage. Every few chapters, the reader is brought back to contemporary London, where Eloise gets out of the archives long enough to nurse her continuing crush on Colin Selwick. The Eloise and Colin plot distracts from the main attraction, but the historic action is taut and twisting. Fans of the series will clamor for more. (Nov.)

For Henry Powell, every day is the same: he wakes just before 7 a.m. to prepare for work at the men's clothing store he's worked at since he was 17. Now 31, he's ready to die of boredom. Henry briefly escaped from his small New England town via college, but family problems—his alcoholic mother and his emotionally icy father needed help and his brother had moved away—brought him back from college in the early '80s. Every now and then, an acquaintance from Henry's prestigious prep school stops by the store, but much of Henry's time is spent in fantasyland, where he is a famous rock musician or the subject of a biography. A romance with Cathy Nicholas, who works at a neighboring coffee shop, is promising, but that, too, peters out. As Henry's temporary leave from college becomes permanent and the years tick by, it seems nothing except the style of pants he sells will change. Until the store goes out of business on—wait for it—September 10, 2001, and change for Henry promptly ensues. Flock (But I'm Screaming Inside; Me & Emma) fills the flashback-heavy book with cultural touchstones from the era of big hair and unfortunate fashion and manages an optimistic conclusion to Henry's drab story. (Nov.)

Cash, pen name of sisters Pamela Cumbie and Jeffery McClanahan, delivers her third Domestic Equalizers novel (after My Heart May Be Broken but My Hair Still Looks Great), a read-in-the-bathtub West Texas caper featuring rodeo riders and identity thieves. Trouble comes to Salt Lick in the form of Quint Matthews, a former rodeo champ who asks beauty shop owners and "Domestic Equalizers" Debbie Sue Overstreet and Edwina Perkins-Martin to track down the identity thief who's been charging up his Visa. Quint, who happens to be Overstreet's ex-boyfriend, also has a second reason for coming to Salt Lick: to meet Allison Barker, a single mom whose 12-year-old daughter has assumed her mother's identity and "met" Quint for her through a dating Web site. As the Equalizers set up an online ruse to nab the identity thief, Quint's old pal Tag Freeman successfully woos Allison; a mysterious character stalks Quint; and Quint ends up the prime suspect in a possible murder. It all works out in the end, but not in a way readers would expect. The plot has its share of unlikely coincidences, but the order of the day is entertainment, and the book piles it on. (Nov.)

Lessing brings back fictional fashion-forward magazine Issues and its newly minted editorial honcho, sartorially challenged feminist Zoe, sister of She's Got Issues protagonist Chloe Rose. Publisher Dan Princely (aka Chloe's devoted new husband) has gone gaga for Zoe's agenda and gives her a mandate to revamp the magazine's usual fare of shoes, makeup and shopping into a manifesto of female empowerment, decorum and personal growth. Zoe renames the magazine Miss Understanding and gleefully introduces it to the staff as a didactic, humorless instruction manual. The staff, predictably, hate Zoe and are willing to go to any length to sabotage her: they include stylish nasties Sloane and Blaire; perennially drunken promotions department head Ruth; and even Dan's regal, evil mother, Anita. As the antics escalate, Zoe's droning, pompous rants on the evils of style and the necessity of fixing female friendship become longer, angrier and more Dworkin-esque, without being funny. By the time the book devolves into a schematic pitched battle between the united, righteous sisters and the psycho, infantile staff, it's hard to care about who's switching covers on the magazine right before it goes to press or how Zoe's running trials with pregnancy will play out. (Nov.)

In his debut novel, longtime Canadian English teacher Furey spins bleak material—orphans abused by sadistic priests—into a moving and uplifting story. Furey's tale takes place in a Newfoundland orphanage in the early 1960s. While the school is grim and the corporal punishment the students receive is brutal, the boys band together to create the families they all lack. The book is filled with vivid characters, like Oberstein, a bright Jewish kid who continually peppers priests with hypotheticals about church dogma, including whether spit could have baptismal uses. Hope is in short supply at the orphanage, and many of the boys fall victim to "the spells," dark periods of dread and depression. To create something to look forward to, a group of students decides secretly to train to run a marathon and they sneak out at night for training runs. The event creates a sense of drama and propels the story, but it also allows the boys to bond over a common cause. Inspirational without being mawkish, Furey's debut is a shoo-in for book clubs. (Nov.)

In an engrossing read, three-time Christy Award–winner Austin (All She Ever Wanted; Hidden Places) explores the lives of four women in smalltown Michigan during WWII. The unlikely quartet of heroines—a mouthy Italian, a farm girl desperate to go to college, a spinster schoolteacher who's inherited a fortune, and a bored housewife—meet and become fast friends when they take Rosie the Riveter jobs at a local factory. On one level, the novel is simply about the bonds that form among the principals, recalling Whitney Otto's How to Make an American Quilt and Lynne Hinton's Friendship Cake. But the subtext, as the title suggests, is about gender roles. Can and should women defy their husbands? What does the Bible say about wifely obedience? Such questions present themselves urgently to each of the four protagonists (and, one imagines, to many of Austin's female evangelical readers). Austin sprinkles some lovely images throughout—a newborn's fingernails "like drops of candle wax"—and a humorous depiction of inadvertently tipsy church ladies will have readers in stitches. All in all, Austin offers a very enjoyable journey to an earlier wartime America. (Nov.)

When Ruth Gilmartin learns the true identity—and the WWII profession—of her aging mother, Sally Gilmartin, at the start of Boyd's elegant ninth novel (after Any Human Heart), Ruth is understandably surprised. Sally, née Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré living in Paris in 1939, was recruited as a spy by Lucas Romer, the head of a secretive propaganda group called British Security Coordination, to help get America into the war. This fascinating story is well told, but slightly undercut by Ruth's less-than-dramatic life as a single mother teaching English at Oxford while pursuing a graduate degree in history. Ruth's more pedestrian existence can't really compete with her mother's dramatic revelations. The contemporary narrative achieves a good deal more urgency when Ruth's mother recruits her to hunt down the reclusive, elusive Romer. But the real story is Eva/Sally's, a vividly drawn portrait of a minor figure in spydom caught up in the epic events leading up to WWII. (Oct.)

The bestselling author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels and the 44 Scotland Street novels has always included one-offs and detours in his oeuvre (including The Criminal Law of Botswana). Here, he turns in an elegant contemporary reworking of the ancient Celtic myth of the dream-giver god, Angus, familiar from Yeats's poetry. Lovely, fair Angus is the son of the terrible club-wielding god, Dagda, who sired the boy by ravishing the lovely water nymph Boann. The young boy who charms birds and inspires marvelous dreams is soon snatched from his mother and raised by Dagda's other son, the grown Midir. After some trials, Angus eventually learns who his true father is and tricks Dagda into relinquishing power. Smith fluidly weaves in contemporary vignettes of the dream god's benevolent influence, touching the lives of honeymooners on a windswept northern island; of a teenage boy sent away to boarding school in Scotland who tricks his mother into revealing who his true father is; and of a Toronto woman bereft at the discovery that her husband is having an affair. Angus, who presides over love and youth is also, it turns out, kindly to pigs. He is nicely reimagined in this spare, polished work. (Oct.)

The fourth in Donati's popular Wilderness series (Into The Wilderness, etc.) takes the Scott family on a perilous journey to New Orleans on the eve of one of the War of 1812's climactic battles. The action begins with the dramatic rescue of Jennet Scott from captivity in the French Antilles. Her saviors include her husband, Luke, a prominent Montreal merchant, and Luke's Mohawk half-sister, Hannah, a physician. Jennet had given birth to a son, Nathaniel, during her captivity and enlisted Honoré Poiterin, a shady Creole merchant, to smuggle him to safety. The Scotts trek to New Orleans after discovering Poiterin and his grandmother have taken the child there and are claiming him as their own. In a city surrounded by two opposing armies, the Scotts find an ally in Ben Savard, the well-connected half-brother of a plantation owner. Out of a surfeit of characters (there are over 30 "primary characters" listed at the book's beginning), Hannah is the star—surviving two brushes with death, saving countless lives and still finding time to fall in love. The conclusion is predictable and the pacing uneven, but fans of epic historical adventures will be captivated by the exotic setting and intriguing story line. (Oct. 31)

A student's increasingly erratic dispatches over 27 days comprise this obsessive first novel by Bernhard (1931–1989), published to European acclaim in 1963. An unnamed medical student is sent from Vienna by his supervisor, an eminent surgeon named Strauch, to undertake "precise observation" of the surgeon's brother, a famous painter who has suddenly left the city for the "dismal" village of Weng. After "systematically inveigling" himself into the company of the painter under the pretense of being a vacationing law student, the student slowly feels his own mood and mental attitudes being subsumed by the painter's paranoid outbursts and disjointed monologues. Weng itself, located in a grim valley still bearing the grisly traces of WWII, is a hotbed of murky scandal: the landlady sleeps with the village knacker (handyman), while her husband, against whom she testified in a murder trial, sits in jail; a traveling show appears in the village displaying "deformed women and deformed animals"; a barn is torched. All are dutifully reported by the disintegrating student. Bernhard's glorious talent for bleak existential monologues is second only to Beckett's, and seems to have sprung up fully mature in his mesmerizing debut. (Oct. 19)

At the start of Edgar-winner Burke's well-crafted 10th novel of suspense (after 2005's Bloodlines), sociopathic killer Cleo Smith has just murdered a graphic artist, Richard Fletcher, who was a member of a large, bizarre California family, but Smith's motive for the killing remains obscure. Five years later, Fletcher's adopted son has been wrongfully convicted of the crime, and Burke's resourceful and compassionate reporter heroine, Irene Kelly, has written a story about missing children that has prompted a host of inquiries from desperate relatives who have lost their own children. When more bodies turn up and further clues point to involvement of Fletcher family members, Kelly, aided by her police detective husband, Frank Harriman, puts her life on the line to exonerate the innocent prisoner and uncover the disturbing secrets at the heart of the Fletcher clan. The many plot twists should keep readers turning the pages, even if the windup is a little improbable. (Oct.)

Flynn gives new meaning to the term "dysfunctional family" in her chilling debut thriller. Camille Preaker, once institutionalized for youthful self-mutilation, now works for a third-rung Chicago newspaper. When a young girl is murdered and mutilated and another disappears in Camille's hometown of Wind Gap, Mo., her editor, eager for a scoop, sends her there for a human-interest story. Though the police, including Richard Willis, a profiler from Kansas City, Mo., say they suspect a transient, Camille thinks the killer is local. Interviewing old acquaintances and newcomers, she relives her disturbed childhood, gradually uncovering family secrets as gruesome as the scars beneath her clothing. The horror creeps up slowly, with Flynn misdirecting the reader until the shocking, dreadful and memorable double ending. She writes fluidly of smalltown America, though many characters are clichés hiding secrets. Flynn, the lead TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, has already garnered blurbs from Stephen King and Harlan Coben. 5-city author tour; foreign rights sold in 10 countries. (Oct.)

Elmore Leonard fans who have not yet discovered Winslow (The Power of the Dog) will be delighted by his fourth thriller with its sympathetic antihero. Frank Machianno, a retired mob hit man known as Frankie Machine as a tribute to his efficiency, has put his past behind him and is living a tranquil life in San Diego running a bait shop and supplying restaurants with linens and seafood. When the son of a local mob boss asks for his backup in resolving a dispute with the Detroit mob, Frank agrees, only to find that he's been set up as the intended victim of a hit. Using his survival skills and street smarts, the executioner follows a trail of bodies to identify which of his past crimes has caught up with him. While the plot is familiar, Winslow has created plausible characters and taut scenes of suspense that will keep readers turning pages. Author tour. (Oct.)

The latest international thriller to appear under Ludlum's name, with its by-the-numbers plot and stereotypical characters, fails to do justice to the late author, who made his mark with such taut and compelling novels as The Scarlatti Inheritance and The Bourne Identity. Maverick U.S. intelligence agent Todd Belknap, known as the Hound for his superior ability to track his quarry, heads to Lebanon to try to find a fellow agent who has been kidnapped. Meanwhile, Andrea Bancroft, a brainy and beautiful hedge-fund analyst who has agreed to serve on the board of her family's mysterious foundation, begins to suspect that behind the Bancroft Foundation's benevolent facade lie sinister conspiracies. Unsurprisingly, those conspiracies intersect with Belknap's search. Throw in a secret cabal controlling world events and a high body count, and you have predictable genre fare. 600,000 first printing. (Oct.)

Having prepared the definitive edition of The Annotated Alice (1999), prolific polymath Gardner has now produced the perfect companion volume, the definitive edition of Carroll's long nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (1876). Carroll may have written The Hunting of the Snark for children, but this enigmatic tale in verse of a group of adventurers seeking a legendary creature is a lot less accessible than the two Alice books to the modern reader, whether young or old. Indeed, many will find the annotations to the various literary, linguistic and philosophical aspects of the work of more interest than the poem itself. Besides the original Henry Holiday illustrations, this attractive package includes an introduction by Adam Gopnik, a new preface by Gardner, an extensive bibliography and an appendix of Snark sites on the Web. Even Gardner fans who own the original Annotated Snark (1962) will want this one. (Oct.)

Look for a profile of Gardner in an upcoming issue of PW.

Off-field maneuvering takes center stage in the prolific Mara's tepid behind-the-scenes take on professional football. Jon Sabino, the general manager of the back-to-back Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, is a front-office genius, but even he's stumped when the team's star quarterback is seriously injured in a car crash just two weeks before the annual college draft. Under pressure to capture a historic third consecutive Super Bowl title, Sabino has to put together a deal to secure the first pick in the draft and take the can't-miss quarterback from Michigan, Christian McKinley. Mara (Wave and many biographies) juggles several subplots—a rival GM who hates Sabino and recruits a disgruntled employee to spy on him, a gifted young quarterback who spurns the NFL because of what once happened to his father's promising football career and a star receiver who's self-medicating to hide an injury—that eventually merge into a sappy denouement. The novel has its moments of tension and drama, but they're undercut by uninspired prose (one character is "faintly aware" twice on the same page) and paper-thin characters. (Oct. 27)

This breathless, elliptical little novel from Wagman (Mrs. Hornstein) pursues the shocking affair between Otto Von Ochsenstein, brilliant pianist and conductor of the Philadelphia Philharmonic, and his pre-teen neighbor. A Lolita at 11, with a pillowy lower lip that resembles "a tiny little behind," Hannah Elizabeth Gold is keenly aware of her effect on the illustrious patriarch whose family moves into the white stucco mansion next door. Otto is married to Charlotte Hec, a former ballerina of unparalleled beauty, and the two have a daughter, Juliet, who attends the local Catholic school with Hannah. None of it prevents Otto from training his binoculars on Hannah's window ("This is what everything in the universe hungers for," proclaims Otto). Smitten and slavish, Hannah performs nightly for him in front of her bedroom window and bends her talent at the cello to the whims of the maestro. Otto nurses Hannah's nascent genius, frees her from filial and school constraints, and utterly destroys her innocence and ability to feel for others. Hannah's acuity injects a cutting bitterness to this sharp little Nietzschean parable, marred egregiously by the relentless use of ellipses. (Oct.)

German writer Orths's recounting of the miraculous and ribald life of the 17th-century Basque transvestite Catalina D'Erauso proceeds with all the manic, guileful momentum of a classic picaresque. Raised primarily by her brother, Miguel, until the age of eight, Catalina's life is thrown into tumult when Miguel leaves for South America to take over the family's New World mining business. Catalina joins a convent and at the age of 16 escapes to pursue her brother, assuming the identity of a man, Francisco Loyola, to freely make her way in the world. Accompanied by the handsome Juan Bautista de Arteaga, a doctor she meets early in her adventure, Catalina, growing ever more comfortable living as a man, eventually tracks down her brother, but their reunion is far from the joyful occasion she once had hoped for. The author's and translator's enthusiasm for the material keeps nick-of-time escapes from becoming plot cheats, while tongue-in-cheek narration and action-packed episodes (Catalina has turns as a thief, soldier and cuckolder) feed the reader's urge to root for Catalina-as-Francisco. (Oct.)

The Blaisdell Street Artists Cooperative, carved out of an old Massachusetts college lab building in 1979 and "styled" after the Hotel des Beaux-Arts (or "Bozarts" for short) is petering out. Middle-aged playwright and resident schlemiel Stanley Noseworthy, whose most successful play was written 20 years before the book's present of 2004, has lived there since its inception and narrates. Stanley's romantic MO is to seek out arty 28-year-olds and stay with them "till the Bioclock d[o] us part": current partner Nina's clock has just gone off, just as young painter Rose Gately arrives at Bozarts. Intercut with Stan's gently annoying first person is a series of articles in the local paper, "The Day the Bozarts Died," detailing the history of the group and comically undermining Stan's perspective. Other than the "will-he-ever-learn?" aspect of Stan's romantic travails, the book lacks a central plot, but Duberstein (The Marriage Hearse) presents an entertaining tableaux of fractious minor artists (painter Monk Barrett, sculptor Arnie Cloud and installation artist Carla Freemantle, among others) trying do their work while managing the demands of conventional life. (Oct.)

Correction: The title of Pam Jenoff's A Fine Crack of Light (Reviews, Aug. 7) has been changed to The Kommandant's Girl and the month of publication to March 2007.

Set in 1972, Kuhlken's fourth mystery to feature the endearing Hickey clan (after 1994's The Angel Gang) follows 22-year-old Clifford Hickey, an aspiring folk singer, as he takes one last stab at a music career before heading to USC law school at the urging of his father, former cop and PI Tom Hickey, the eccentric protagonist of the first three books in the series. Clifford plans to perform at a jamboree in Evergreen, a small town in California redwood country, but shortly after he arrives at his half-brother Alvaro's camp in the woods, the cops storm the site. Alvaro escapes, but Clifford is taken into custody. Later, Alvaro is charged with the murder of a sheriff's nephew, and Clifford must try to prove his brother's innocence in a town filled with vengeful bikers, suspicious locals, crooked cops, rogue federal agents and pot-growing hippies. Kuhlken brings the social and cultural scene of the period vividly to life. (Nov.)

Levack's second 16th-century Aztec mystery (after 2005's impressive Demon of the Air) is another intellectual page-turner that will satisfy even those with no previous knowledge of the ancient Central American civilization. The novel picks up moments after its predecessor's dramatic conclusion. The complex and all-too-human Yaotl, a former priest, has just learned that he is a father and that his son is connected with a murder mystery he was probing at the request of Montezuma himself. As he tries to protect his son, Yaotl faces further challenges after he stumbles into a new inquiry involving a brutal killing and sightings of the dread god Quetzalcoatl that have driven the local population into near panic. The author matches impressive period research with tight plotting and the rare ability to make the inhabitants of a different world and time seem familiar. (Oct.)

In bestseller Brown's diverting fifth foxhunting mystery (after 2005's The Hunt Ball), "Sister" Jane Arnold, the 73-year-old master of foxhounds at central Virginia's Jefferson Hunt Club, and a host of anthropomorphized dogs, horses, foxes and birds have their work cut out for them. As Sister prepares for the winter hunt, arrogant arriviste Crawford Howard acquires an "outlaw" pack of hounds and proceeds to set up a rival event on land long used by the Jefferson Hunt, a plan that threatens to tear the community apart. "People are like teabags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water," notes Sister, who with her usual panache sorts out a murder, an attempted murder, an insurance scam and a huge sum of money gone missing from a local company. Cozy fans and animal lovers will be charmed, but the general reader may lose patience with the talking critters. (Oct.)

The first fiction collaboration between medical doctors Lee and Labriola (coauthors of the true crime studies Dr. Henry Lee's Forensic Files and Famous Crimes Revisited) introduces Dr. Henry Liu, a forensics expert who, like his primary creator, worked on the O.J. Simpson case, the Jon Benet Ramsey investigation and the JFK assassination. As the head of the high-powered Global Interactive Forensics Team (or GIFT), Liu investigates the murder of three young women whose naked corpses are found arranged in a triangle at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal in New York City. The promising setup, however, leads to an ordinary plot involving international white slavery. Admirers of the real Dr. Lee may be dismayed to see the pioneering scientific criminologist transformed into an action hero and babe-magnet, though CSI fans will find plenty to savor. (Oct.)

The shrewd, sassy protagonist of Bush's Jane Kelly series gets tangled in dangerous family politics in her lively second outing (after 2005's Candy Apple Red). The members of the wealthy, eccentric Purcell clan of Lake Chinook, Ore., are all crazy, warns Jane's rakish mentor Dwayne Durbin, but Jane, a PI in training, agrees to work for the handsome Jasper "Jazz" Purcell anyway. Jazz wants Jane to help assess the mental faculties of his aging grandmother, Orchid, who holds the family purse strings. With various kooky Purcells vying for an inheritance, Jane and her beloved pug, the Binkster, are embraced by Orchid. But the family's fishy history motivates Jane to investigate the long-ago death of Jazz's mother, Lily, who perished at a sanitarium. Meanwhile, Jane wrestles with ambivalence about her blossoming romance with Jazz—and her flirtatious relationship with Dwayne. Bush dials up the suspense when one of the Purcells is found dead. With her clever ability to handle the zaniest of life's circumstances, Jane won't disappoint readers. (Oct.)

The third gripping Augustus Riordan hard-boiled exploit (after 2002's Vulture Capital) launches the very human hero into action when he stumbles on the fresh corpse of a teenage girl in a San Francisco alley after helping his cross-dressing friend and assistant, Chris Duckworth, avoid a beating. The plot thickens when Riordan, a jazz bassist and veteran PI, fields a request from a distraught Ellen Stockwell, wife of an East Palo Alto police lieutenant and mother of an 18-year-old art school student, Caroline, who has been missing for three weeks. With Lieutenant Stockwell on administrative leave, Mrs. Stockwell says Riordan is her last hope. The gumshoe's search for Caroline leads him to further gruesome discoveries and forces him into the sordid world of Internet sexual predators. Riordan's street smarts and witty asides will make him a familiar—and welcome—figure to fans of Robert Parker's Boston PI, Spenser. (Oct.)

At the start of Bruen's dark tribute to the Irish fascination with the American dream, Stephen Blake is on the run after a bank heist, hoping to disappear in the desert near Tucson. He has the money, and his girlfriend, Siobhan, knows how to launder it. All he has to do is change his accent, his skin and pass as American. But John A. Stapleton, hit man for the IRA, wants more than his share of the swag, and the psychotic Dade, obsessively devoted to the music of Tammy Wynette, is wandering the Southwest like a slaughter wagon. Noir master Bruen (The Guards) effortlessly moves his story line back and forth in time, all his trademark pop culture references in place, the banshee of existential agony wailing loud. At times, though, the violence becomes cartoonish, and potential showdowns just do not rock—if you've got Frankenstein and the Wolfman in one castle, they really need to wreck some furniture for a few pages. Still, Bruen fans will be enthralled. (Oct.)

In Daniel's engaging second Guy Mallon whodunit (after 2005's The Poet's Funeral), an unscrupulous businessman, Fritz Marburger, offers Mallon, a smalltime poetry publisher and bookseller based in Santa Barbara, Calif., a chance to branch out. Marburger is willing to front the money to enable Mallon to publish a roman à clef by Sweet Lorraine Evans, a celebrity jazz singer. Despite the misgivings of his longtime manager and lover, Carol Murphy, Mallon succumbs to temptation and soon finds himself in bed with assorted unsavory characters. When the book deal implodes and a dead body turns up in the torched ruins of Mallon's warehouse, the publisher must clear his name by conducting an independent inquiry. Mallon is a sympathetic, flawed protagonist, though the solution is too obvious to satisfy those who want mental exercise from their mysteries. (Oct.)

Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage, lives secretly among humans in this entertaining if flawed postapocalyptic fantasy, the first in a new series from the pseudonymous Hunter (the author of Bloodstone and other paranormal romantic thrillers under her real name, Gwen Hunter). Even Thorn's friends, with whom she crafts jewelry, don't know she's a member of the new race that emerged in the catastrophe brought by winged "seraphs" a century earlier. When her ex-husband disappears, Thorn must use her only partially trained mage powers against the forces of Darkness. Outstanding supporting characters help compensate for a milieu with jarring inconsistencies (sugar is rare, but coffee and aspirin are common; no new computers have been built since most of humanity was wiped out, but the Internet is still an active source of commerce). The author's efforts to sex up the action with the concept of "mage-heat"—mages are uncontrollably lusty around seraphs—become tiresome, but the strong, cliffhanger of an ending bodes well for future adventures. (Nov.)

A present-day scientific odd couple who are longtime domestic partners, physicist Sharon Nagy and historian Tom Schwoerin, look into the fate of the Black Forest village of the title, which apparently vanished in the plague year 1348, in Flynn's heartbreaking morality play of stranded aliens in medieval Germany. Most of the narrative focuses on the consequences of the discovery in the 14th century by Eifelheim's pastor, Father Dietrich, of a crashed space ship carrying the "Krenken," horrific grasshopperlike aliens. Despite Inquisitorial threats, Dietrich befriends, baptizes and attempts to help the aliens return home. Flynn (The Wreck of the River of Stars) masterfully achieves an intricate panorama of medieval life, full of fascinatingly realized human and Krenken characters whose fates interconnect with poignant irony. Through human frailties, the very Christianity by which Dietrich hopes to save Krenken souls dooms them all. (Oct.)

At the start of bestseller Foster's lighthearted techno-thriller (after 2006's The Candle of Distant Earth), runaway scientist Taneer Buthlahee and his gorgeous Untouchable lover, Depahli, are planning a marvelous life far from the city of Sagramunda, India—with the cash Taneer hopes to make on the stolen fruits of his mysterious research. To help broker the deal, Taneer hires fixer Sanjay Ghosh, a determined former farmer with big dreams of his own. Hot on Taneer's trail are a company operative with orders from Taneer's former employer to do whatever's necessary to get the stolen goods back, as well as Taneer's father, who's sworn to kill his son for dishonoring the family with his theft. Also along for the ride are a Hindu fundamentalist drug addict bent on offering plenty of sacrifices to her blood-loving goddess, the cop who's trying to catch her and a man-eating tiger. SF elements make colorful window dressing for this unpredictable thriller, whose multiple threads Foster juggles like the professional he is. (Oct.)

Latro, the amnesiac visionary hero of Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete, reaches the Egypt known to Herodotus in Wolfe's splendid historical fantasy. Wounded in battle, Latro has only one day's worth of memory and must write down his experiences so he will know who he is every morning. In compensation, he's able to see gods and supernatural beings and does not distinguish them from the mortals around him. Gaps in the record and Wolfe's Haggardesque device of the manuscript found in a jar make Latro the most postmodern of unreliable narrators, aware that he's writing a text, uncertain of its meaning and unable to keep its entirety in his head. For all Wolfe assures us that ancient Egypt is not mysterious, Latro's journey makes up a leisurely, dreamlike, haunted house of a novel, which brilliantly immerses the reader in the belief systems of the time, drifting in and out of the everyday and spirit worlds until the two become indistinguishable. (Oct.)

A baffling situation gets more complicated in the second entry in Australian author Williams's Books of the Cataclysm series. A far-future Earth has been shattered into different, isolated zones where magic has replaced electricity and where humans uneasily share space with ghosts, golems and animated statues. Two young men, Sal and Skender, who were friends in the first book, The Crooked Letter (2006), undertake separate quests to rescue parents from the results of stirring up arcane turbulence, especially by creating a potentially dangerous homunculus that brings two souls back from the void. The motives of the people around Sal and Skender are unclear or questionable; their own long-term goals are uncertain; and the action breaks off before anything has been resolved except that they'll follow the homunculus's trail. The detail of Williams's imagined world and his characters' concern with the moral consequences of their actions compel interest, though readers will have to wait until the final installment to see whether all the pieces fall into a coherent, satisfying whole. (Oct.)

British author Gallagher's unrelenting novel of terror, set on an unprepossessing stretch of English coast, moves at a breakneck pace. Car dealer Frank Tanner's wife, Carol, is missing. Carol's 26-year-old sister, Molly Gideon, a recovered junkie, is sure her cold, violent brother-in-law has killed Carol. One suggestive piece of evidence in the case is a painting by Jack, Frank's six-year-old son, showing a sprawled body with an emergent rainbow that just might represent a shower of arterial blood. The boy insists that it is "a picture of mummy." Cold-blooded murders follow in the race to the climax. Chalk up another winner—brief, merciless and punchy—for Gallagher (The Spirit Box). (Oct.)

Ordinary bits of Americana show a dark and eerie aspect in the seven stories in Hirshberg's second collection (after 2003's The Two Sams). "Flowers on Their Bridles, Hooves in the Air" is set in the arcades of a dying seaside boardwalk where characters see their unfocused lives mirrored in the decaying rides and unwinnable games of chance. "Safety Clowns" uses the mundane routines of a neighborhood ice cream truck as a springboard for an incongruous tale of supernatural vigilantism. The title story recalls the oblique horrors of Robert Aickman's weird tales in its account of two American travelers abroad who find themselves caught up in the indecipherable but increasingly menacing rituals of another culture. Hirshberg grounds his dark fantasies in minute details of the everyday that give them a discomfitingly believable foothold in reality. His skill at drawing horrors out of commonplace situations peopled with credibly drawn characters distinguishes these subtle tales of the uncanny as some of the most effective and chilling in contemporary weird fiction. (Oct.)

In the latest kicky romance from Esdaile (Keepin' It Real), Philadelphia CPA Karin Michaels does a 180 for love when her firm lands an account with hunky rap star Jacques Bernard "J.B." Dubois. At J.B.'s insistence, Karin plans to fly to his Caribbean home to examine his books and determine the extent of his tax difficulties. When her boss decides to send another accountant to handle J.B., Karin makes an uncharacteristically bold move: she ignores her boss's wishes and accepts J.B.'s offer to fly her out on his private jet, ostensibly to make sure the "skittish client" doesn't bolt. Once she gets to St. Lucia, however, this conscientious accountant abandons her job almost entirely to engage in a heated affair with the rap giant. The relationship that develops between this unlikely pair is unique and engaging, and the author's rich descriptions of St. Lucia add an extra dimension of sensuality to the tryst. Karin's impulsive decision to ditch her duties and run off with a celebrity doesn't ever quite jibe with her serious, career-minded persona, but those with a sturdy suspension of disbelief should find a lot to like in this sunny, sexy romp. (Oct.)

Kuzneski elbows his way into the overcrowded field of the papal thriller with his sophomore effort (after 2002's racially charged The Plantation), combining the requisite plot twists and Da Vinci-esque secret histories with a Passion of the Christ-like attention to gore. And there's plenty of opportunity for gore: Kuzneski kicks off the action with a nasty crucifixion in modern-day Denmark. It turns out the victim is a Vatican priest, and his murder is just the first. Meanwhile, maverick archeologist Dr. Charles Boyd and his assistant Maria Pelati discover a 2000-year-old scroll underneath the Italian town of Orvieto that contains "a secret that would change... the history of the world—forever." Instantly, the two become the most wanted people in Europe, pursued by the Vatican, a large measure of Western European law enforcement and two freelance CIA agents. As the chase begins, more crucified priests are turning up across the globe, and the head of Interpol's new homicide division, Nick Dial, finds himself edging closer to the heart of a centuries-old coverup. Cat and mouse games accelerate and alliances shuffle as the overstuffed plot brings its numerous players together, but excessive detail and exposition-heavy dialogue slow the action. Despite its flaws, Kuzneski knows what fans of the genre want: compelling and well-researched history, high-tech 21st-century sleuthing and a lot of action. (Oct.)

Quirky visions of vampire love animate this collection of three original novellas by paranormal romance authors MacAlister (author of the popular Dark Ones series), Ashley (Penelope and Prince Charming) and Webber (The Remarkable Miss Frankenstein). In Ashley's contribution, "Viva Las Vampires," journalist Meredith Black pursues an interview with sexy Vegas hotelier Stefan Erickson, owner of Transylvania Castle hotel. Little does she know he's a real vampire, with designs of his own for her. Webber's entry, "Lucy and the Crypt Casanova," cruises on the irascible charm of lead Lucy Campbell, a klutzy TV talk-show hostess who's forced to team up with her no-good ex, a sexy vampire detective, for the sake of a hot story: a murder investigation involving an incubus, a rare monster that feeds on youth like vamps feed on blood. The strongest of the three, for its over-the-top sexual antics and fully realized farcical world, is MacAlister's "Bring Out Your Dead," a story that unites an undead life coach for zombies (and part-time English tutor), Ysabelle Raleigh, with an anxious vampire who takes her for his long lost "Beloved." Despite a few missteps (MacAlister's French-mangling spirit guide, for instance, tends to irritate rather than amuse), this fast, funny and twisty collection proves good to the last drop. (Oct.)

Three elements make the latest from Wiprud (Crooked) a laugh-out-loud triumph. First, its protagonist: ex-professional hit man Sid "Sleep" Bifulco, a wise guy relocated to a "dot on the map" fishing community called Hellbender Eddy, Pa., after turning state's evidence against his mob buddies. Although he's never dropped a line in the water—all he knows about his second career he learned in the slammer from magazines like Sports Astream and Rod & Rifle—he doesn't let that stop him from diving into the fishing pool nose first. Second, its supporting cast: Sid assumes that country folk are either ignorant or naïve, and despite their quirks—Little Bob videotapes his every waking moment; the state trooper's pregnant wife refuses to let her delicate condition get in the way of her X-rated movie career—they get to prove him wrong, to delicious effect. Finally, a bucketful of hilarious miscommunications gives the plot—which includes the accidental slaughter of a scumbag and a missing video recording of it, a guardian angel with a soft spot for assassination, and a secret from Sid's past that could turn his fishing buddy homicidal—a serpentine trajectory that makes this suspenseful black comedy a page-turning, one-sitting read. (Oct.)

Saga is a young girl who can safely be referred to as a bit of a control freak. Fastidious, hyperpunctual and always in charge, she even decides what kind of waffles her friends will eat. But after one fateful meeting with Sugar, an apprentice "snow fairy" that only she can see, Saga's orderly existence comes crashing down around her ears. Sugar is an adorable bundle of trouble in the classic "lovable scamp" mold, and her well-intentioned mischief spells constant disaster for her new human friend, even as it helps Saga realize that there's real value in stopping to smell the roses. As Sugar puts it, " 'Unexpected' sure is great, isn't it?" The book features a familiar cast of supporting characters—the stuck-up archnemesis, the loving grandmother, the geek boy who's secretly kind of cool—and the usual big-eyes-and-rosy-cheeks animation associated with the cute-and-perky moo style. This familiar formula, along with a dash of other cuddly, bumbling apprentice fairies (with names like Salt, Pepper, Turmeric, etc.) should prove an appealing dish for girls who don't care for the violence of Pokémon and yearn for more substance than Hello Kitty can provide. (Aug.)

The latest offering by the author of the award-winning Dogs and Water is a long series of drawings—almost scribbles—simple enough to be stuck on Post-it notes. Don't let this fool you; these almost-doodles make a deeply funny and moving book. Whether it's a scribble-headed guy spouting poetry or a woman having a conversation with the bird she's feeding, the short, goofy captions provide a spectrum of nuanced and subtle social commentary. Nilsen goes on quiet feet where few pundits go. Topics include terrorism, semiotics, the eight-fold path and Tide laundry detergent, the last two combined. "Nothing ever happens here, yet the impending cataclysm is always right around the corner," says scribble-head. Later he pulls a dinosaur from his pocket, which eventually dismembers him. The bird and the woman also contribute to the discourse, ending with her final "Do you want the terrorist to win?" Nilsen takes the banal catchphrases of contemporary culture and strings them together like a master DJ. Pushing back the boundaries of comic art a second time, the results are hilarious, whimsical and heartbreakingly real. (Aug.)

When Yamato Akitsuki first glimpses the beautiful track star Suzuka Asahina he experiences the bliss of love at first sight, yet never expects to see her again. However, not only does Akitsuki encounter Asahina again, he finds himself sharing an apartment building with her. Akitsuki has just moved to Tokyo and is the only male living in his aunt's apartment building, which also serves as an indoor bath complex—and he soon discovers living in a complex full of women isn't all that easy. Akitsuki must contend with party girls Megumi and Yuka, handle a mounting pile of chores and property damage, all while trying to not embarrass himself in front of Akitsuki—again. Seo's painfully accurate tale of growing up and first love is easy to relate to, even with the typical "harem manga" set up. Seo's art style nicely balances the story, both sensual and playful, with characters that show aspects of both maturity and naughtiness. (Aug.)

Why is it that all eternal wanderers in the comics and fantasy world are doomed to wear the same ragged trench coat and sport the same haunted eyes and face-shading hair? Pruett's Kilroy is just such a wanderer, a nocturnal figure of vengeance who is drawn to suffering and misery like a vampire to a fresh wound, and feeds off taking revenge on the evildoers he finds there. This collection is written by Pruett but features a variety of different artists, including Tim Bradstreet, Michael Avon Oeming and Phil Hester. The stories jump from one historical atrocity to the next, be it the Cambodian killing fields, Tiananmen Square or Sarajevo, imparting a modicum of historical knowledge along with Kilroy's tedious speech making about man's inhumanity toward man. Looking like nothing so much as a cut-rate Sandman, Kilroy deals out death in satisfyingly hideous ways to the killers of the innocent. But as the collection grinds on, the monotony of the black-and-white artwork starts to wear, as does the book's lack of cohesion. (Aug.)

The kingdom of Araimel has been put under a spell and only two survivors remain. The fate of the realm of Zyword itself rests in the hands of the talented spell caster, Princess Lunatia Araimel, the king's young daughter. Blessed by the Goddess, and indebted to those who did not survive, Lunatia journeys to the Supreme Council of the Holy Valstoke Church in hopes that she might learn the truth of Zyword's cruel fate. Created by former CLAMP member Akiyama, Zyword should be a breathtaking story of adventure, love and determination. Unfortunately it reads an awful lot like a video game, only without the excitement of interactive play. The plot is thin, and though the action sequences are extremely well drawn, it all feels flat. The artwork is beautiful, drawn with all of the elements essential to CLAMP's style, and Akiyama's attention to detail is supreme; the art essentially carries this book. Despite the backing of a big name and exquisite style, Zyworld is simply forgettable. (Aug.)