Fiction Reviews: Week of 10/30/2006

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 10/30/2006

Against the Day Thomas Pynchon. Penguin Press, $35 (1,120p) ISBN 978-1-59420-120-2 Knotty, paunchy, nutty, raunchy, Pynchon's first novel since Mason & Dixon (1997) reads like half a dozen books duking it out for his, and the reader's, attention. Most of them shine with a surreal incandescence, but even Pynchon fans may find their fealty tested now and again. Yet just when his recurring themes threaten to become tics, this perennial Nobel bridesmaid engineers another never-before-seen phrase, or effect, and all but the most churlish resistance collapses. It all begins in 1893, with an intrepid crew of young balloonists whose storybook adventures will bookend, interrupt and sometimes even be read by, scores of at least somewhat more realistic characters over the next 30 years. Chief among these figures are Colorado anarchist Webb Traverse and his children: Kit, a Yale- and Göttingen-educated mathematician; Frank, an engineer who joins the Mexican revolution; Reef, a cardsharp turned outlaw bomber who lands in a perversely tender ménage à trois; and daughter Lake, another Pynchon heroine with a weakness for the absolute wrong man. Psychological truth keeps pace with phantasmagorical invention throughout. In a Belgian interlude recalling Pynchon's incomparable Gravity's Rainbow, a refugee from the future conjures a horrific vision of the trench warfare to come: "League on league of filth, corpses by the uncounted thousands." This, scant pages after Kit nearly drowns in mayonnaise at the Regional Mayonnaise Works in West Flanders. Behind it all, linking these tonally divergent subplots and the book's cavalcade of characters, is a shared premonition of the blood-drenched doomsday just about to break above their heads. Ever sympathetic to the weak over the strong, the comradely over the combine (and ever wary of false dichotomies), Pynchon's own aesthetic sometimes works against him. Despite himself, he'll reach for the portentous dream sequence, the exquisitely stage-managed weather, some perhaps not entirely digested historical research, the "invisible," the "unmappable"—when just as often it's the overlooked detail, the "scrawl of scarlet creeper on a bone-white wall," a bed partner's "full rangy nakedness and glow" that leaves a reader gutshot with wonder. Now pushing 70, Pynchon remains the archpoet of death from above, comedy from below and sex from all sides. His new book will be bought and unread by the easily discouraged, read and reread by the cult of the difficult. True, beneath the book's jacket lurks the clamor of several novels clawing to get out. But that rushing you hear is the sound of the world, every banana peel and dynamite stick of it, trying to crowd its way in, and succeeding. (Nov.)

It's a testament to July's artistry that the narrators of this arresting first collection elicit empathy rather than groans. "Making Love in 2003," for example, follows a young woman's dubious trajectory from being the passive, discarded object of her writing professor's attentions to seducing a 14-year-old boy in the special-needs class she teaches, while another young woman enters the sex industry when her girlfriend abandons her, with a surprising effect on the relationship. July's characters over these 16 stories get into similarly extreme situations in their quests to be loved and accepted, and often resort to their fantasy lives when the real world disappoints (which is often): the self-effacing narrator of "The Shared Patio" concocts a touching romance around her epilectic Korean neighbor; the aging single man of "The Sister" weaves an elaborate fantasy around his factory colleague Victor's teenage sister (who doesn't exist) to seduce someone else. July's single emotional register is familiar from her film Me and You and Everyone We Know, but it's a capacious one: wry, wistful, vulnerable, tough and tender, it fully accommodates moments of bleak human reversals. These stories are as immediate and distressing as confessionals. (May)

Dutch geology student Alfred Issendorf makes a wonderfully quixotic journey in this previously untranslated 1966 gem from Hermans (1921–1995), a Dutch novelist who worked in Paris. Alfred sets out for Norway's northernmost region of Finnmark with three other students to try to confirm their professor's dubious hypothesis that regional craters resulted from meteor impact rather than Ice Age glaciers. Insecure, exhausted, doubting his career choice and barely up to the physical rigor of trekking through the Arctic wilderness, Alfred begins to imagine that everyone—his companions and their mentors—is plotting against him. But he is determined to make his mark, mostly to compensate for the loss of his biologist father who fell into a mountain chasm when Alfred was six. The story takes an unexpected turn when Alfred loses his compass—literally—and reveals surprising reserves of fortitude and cunning. For all his anxiety and irony, he also proves a sympathetic narrator, particularly in the development of his relationship with Arne, one of his companions, who is in many ways his opposite. In this moving tragicomedy, Alfred's self-knowledge is achieved at great cost and offers him little hope. Hermans's portrayal of Alfred's existential transformation is deep and crystalline. (May)

Hall's sure-handed latest (after 20-plus novels) features Payton Daltry. who is a junior at San Diego State when Pearl Harbor is bombed on December 7, 1941. His friends and elder brother, Richie, join the service; Payton attempts to finish his degree and cultivate a faltering love affair with the fair and wealthy Bonnie, pregnant by a former boyfriend. Payton cements their tie by helping her find an abortionist, while he also tries to reconcile his profound social consciousness with the jingoism of a nation adjusting to total war. In short order, his work with a socialist newspaper, the Brand, puts him, for the next two-thirds of the novel, in conflict with almost everyone he knows. (There are entertaining cameos by Erroll Flynn, Jack Warner and others.) The last 100 pages summarize with little sense of character or progression: the novel jumps ahead to 1944 with Payton as a GI invading France. Hall (Warlock) glosses the combat experience wherein Payton's ideals are finally destroyed and his outlook shifts to fatalistic and melancholy acceptance. The story is eminently enjoyable for its splendid detail, but Payton's actions are seldom justified by his feelings, and as a narrator he never quite comes off the page. (Apr.)

Kennedy's tedious second novel (after The Tin Box) focuses on Annie Hillman, a mother of two in the middle of a divorce. Her 11-year-old son Eric's rare illness has racked up enormous bills and caused tension in the family, and Luke, her 13-year-old, longs to live with his father, Jack. When Annie loses her job, she moves the brood from Seattle to her hometown, Eagan's Point, Wash. A series of ads purporting to be from an admirer from Annie's past appear in the local paper, making Annie a minor local celebrity and later attracting the attention of a daytime talk show. The search for the ad author's identity is fruitless, but his unconvincing identity is finally revealed on the talk show. Hillman's writing tends toward the banal ("Funny what our minds keep from us.... What we refuse to accept and what we twist around to look like something that's easier to accept"), and many of the situations are too contrived to elicit the emotive reaction the author intends. (Apr.)

Anna, a graphic designer, may have a streak of gray in her hair, but she's still young and inchoate. Lewis, a dodgy loner, is on a late, misguided, oedipally fueled quest to avenge his twin brother's death following a car accident 20 years earlier. In alternating scenes—sometimes whole chapters, sometimes just a few paragraphs—Anna and Lewis meet, and, uneasily, inflame each other at a British seaside B&B. The place is owned by Anna's mother, Rita, who at 76 is vivacious but in shaky health; Anna has been summoned there by Rita's quasi- companion, retired actor Vernon Savoy, to look in on her. Anna, partially deaf (perhaps psychologically) since childhood, seems so vulnerable, and Lewis (who is tracking down the death car's driver), so blankly menacing, that as they come together murder seems as likely as romance. Vernon, meanwhile, has little patience for Anna's ambivalence toward Rita. The Welsh-born Azzopardi, whose Hiding Place was a Man Booker finalist, does certain kinds of interiority exquisitely, as when writing about Anna's obsession with Rita's tourmaline ring. But her extreme stream-of-consciousness style forces readers to fill in narrative gaps, offers few clues to Anna's feeling for Lewis and makes secondary characters (Anna's charming maybe-suitor Brendan; Lewis's thuggish-yet-sweet sometime-stepfather Manny) confuse more than thicken the plot. (Mar.)

McCarthy's debut novel, set in London, takes a clever conceit and pumps it up with vibrant prose to such great effect that the narrative's pointlessness is nearly a nonissue. The unnamed narrator, who suffers memory loss as the result of an accident that "involved something falling from the sky," receives an £8.5 million settlement and uses the money to re-enact, with the help of a "facilitator" he hires, things remembered or imagined. He buys an apartment building to replicate one that has come to him in a vision and then populates it with people hired to re-enact, over and over again, the mundane activities he has seen his imaginary neighbors performing. He stages both ordinary acts (the fixing of a punctured tire) and violent ones (shootings and more), each time repeating the events many times and becoming increasingly detached from reality and fascinated by the scenarios his newfound wealth has allowed him to create—even though he professes he doesn't "want to understand them." McCarthy's evocation of the narrator's absorption in his fantasy world as it cascades out of control is brilliant all the way through the abrupt climax. (Feb.)

Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, Matar's debut novel tracks the effects of Libyan strongman Khadafy's 1969 September revolution on the el-Dawani family, as seen by nine-year-old Suleiman, who narrates as an adult. Living in Tripoli 10 years after the revolution with his parents and spending lazy summer days with his best friend, Kareem, Suleiman has his world turned upside down when the secret police–like Revolutionary Committee puts the family in its sights—though Suleiman does not know it, his father has spoken against the regime and is a clandestine agitator—along with families in the neighborhood. When Kareem's father is arrested as a traitor, Suleiman's own father appears to be next. The ensuing brutality resonates beyond the bloody events themselves to a brutalizing of heart and mind for all concerned. Matar renders it brilliantly, as well as zeroing in on the regime's reign of terror itself: mock trials, televised executions, neighbors informing on friends, persecution mania in those remaining. By the end, Suleiman's father must either renounce the cause or die for it, and Suleiman faces the aftermath of conflicts (including one with Kareem) that have left no one untouched. Suleiman's bewilderment speaks volumes. Matar wrests beauty from searing dread and loss. (Feb.)

In his bittersweet fourth novel, McCann chronicles the imperiled world of the Slovakian Roma (Gypsies, to their enemies) from World War II through the establishment of the Communist bloc. After the pro-Nazi Hlinkas drown the rest of her family, six-year-old Zoli Novotna escapes with her grandfather to join another camp of Roma, where she discovers a gift for singing. At her grandfather's urging, she also breaks a Romani taboo and learns to read and write. She later becomes involved with poet Martin Stránský, and her poems, which draw on her Roma heritage, are promoted by Martin as the harbinger of a "literate proletariat" and a new Gypsy literature. Her growing fame, however, betrays her when the Communist government appropriates her work for its project to assimilate the Roma. Condemned by her own people and, as a Roma, alienated from the Slovaks, Zoli finds her way to a new home. The narrative switches between third- and first-person, though it is strongest when narrated by Zoli. McCann does a marvelous job of portraying a marginalized culture, and his world of caravans, music and family is rich with sensual detail. (Jan.)

This spirited paranormal romance is the latest in Krentz's Arcane Society series (which includes some novels, like the recent Second Sight, written as Amanda Quick). Clare Lancaster, like her parents and grandparents, is a member of the clandestine Arcane Society, an association of parasensitives who are dedicated to the study of the paranormal. Clare's extraordinary abilities as a human lie detector make even other paranormals uneasy, with the exception of her half-sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth's troubled marriage brings Clare to Arizona and into the family circle. There, Clare finally meets Archer Glazebrook, her biological father, but she also meets Jake Salter, another highly talented parasensitive who turns out to be on assignment from Jones & Jones (the investigative arm of the Arcane Society) to track down a possible plot to take over the society. The cabal he's after has some connection to the still-unsolved murder of Clare's objectionable brother-in-law months before. More murders follow, and Jake and Clare have to work together to save themselves and the society. Krentz delivers another evocative romance, complete with engaging dialogue and explicit sex scenes, but the real meat of the plot concerns the sleuthing: that a charismatic alpha male finally meets his mate is icing on another densely plotted Krentz confection. (Jan.)

In the exciting ninth Alexandra Cooper legal thriller from bestseller Fairstein (after Death Dance), the Manhattan prosecutor is confronted with the trial lawyer's greatest fear—a witness who's destroyed on the stand. When the defense attorney shows that Kate Meade, the lead witness in Cooper's circumstantial case against Brendan Quillian for the murder of his wife, Amanda, has concealed her affair with the defendant, this revelation of Meade's potential bias has a devastating effect on the prosecution's case. As Cooper struggles to recover, the case takes a whole new twist when a fatal explosion in New York City's third water tunnel, which is under construction, suggests that Amanda's death is connected with other violent acts in the Quillian family's past. While Cooper may engage in a few too many action sequences for legal purists, the crisp writing and Fairstein's enviable capacity to translate her own experience as a prosecutor into an accessible plot puts this series a cut above most entries in this crowded subgenre. (Jan.)

For readers who can't get enough of the religious suspense genre, here's a heaping helping of more of the same. When the unidentified body of a tongueless man turns up in the ashes of a suspicious fire in the Turin cathedral, home of the Holy Shroud of Turin, Marco Valoni, director of the Italian Art Crimes Department, investigates. This gruesome find reflects a pattern of tongueless men and mysterious fires that goes back many years and centers on the shroud. A history of Jesus' burial cloth through the ages alternates with a modern mystery involving several shadowy, anonymous groups of powerful, wealthy men, who either want to steal the sacred cloth or protect it. Marco and his band of art crimes cops and researchers must piece together who wants what and why. This was a bestseller in Europe, and while Navarro never gets up to Da Vinci Code speed, she does neatly solve the pesky problem of just why carbon dating puts the age of the shroud at the 13th or 14th century. (Jan.)

In 1865, nine-year-old Aurelia Caillard is taken from New York to Japan by her missionary uncle Charles while her ailing mother dies at home. Charles soon vanishes in a fire (not the one of the title), leaving Aurelia orphaned and alone in Kyoto. She is taken in by Yukako, the teenage daughter of the Shin family, master teachers of temae, or tea ceremony. Aurelia, narrating as an elderly woman, tells of living as Yukako's servant and younger sister, and how what begins as grateful puppy love for Yukako matures over years into a deeply painful unrequited obsession. Against a backdrop of a convulsively Westernizing Japan, Avery brings the conflicts of modernization into the teahouse, and into Aurelia and Yukako's beds, where jealousy over lovers threatens to tear them apart. In one memorable instance, Yukako, struggling to bring money in for the family, crosses class lines and gives temae lessons to a geisha in exchange for lessons on the shamisen, a seductive (and potentially profitable) string instrument. Eventually stuck in a painful marriage, Yukako labors to adapt the ancient tea ceremony to the changing needs of the modern world, resulting in a breathtaking confrontation. Avery, making her debut, has crafted a magisterial novel that is equal parts love story, imaginative history and bildungsroman, a story as alluring as it is powerful. (Jan.)

The ghosts of pre-Katrina New Orleans haunt Brite's latest culinary caper (after Soul Kitchen) in the form of great meals, good times and the carefree spirit that gave the Big Easy its nickname. Hardscrabble chef John Rickey and his lover, G-Man Stubbs, are still cooking up a storm at their restaurant, Liquor, and struggling to survive daily adventures in kitchen dysfunction reminiscent of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. The loose plot of this picaresque tale concerns Rickey's tribulations at crafting an all-wild-duck menu for Ducks Unlimited, a Cajun hunting club. Though Rickey's self-conscious fretting at all the possible disasters that could happen build an element of playful suspense, there's never any doubt that this will play out as a happy Cinderella story from soup to nuts. Brite does a fine job of evoking the Crescent City and its soul through delectable descriptions of its unique cuisine and the quirky characters who prepare it. This is fun foodie fiction, and readers will scarf it down as quickly as a plate of blackened crawfish. (Jan.)

On November 15, 1992, the men of the tiny Colombian town of Mariquita are forced by guerillas to join or die on the spot, which some do. The town's women enter a particularly grievous widowhood. Chapters covering the years that follow chronicle the town's decay and introduce women struggling to survive without men and without meaningful government. Cleotilde Guarnizo, a traveler seeking respite, is hired to be the schoolteacher. Dona Emilia laments the loss of clients for her brothel. Magnolia Morales, meanwhile, forms a group devoted to reminiscing about the men, which becomes a "magical whorehouse," where lonely women seduce men from neighboring Honda before they reach Dona Emilia's. After a storm washes away the access road leading to the village, the citizens no longer have contact with the outside world, and their haphazard magistrate Rosalba introduces the "Procreation Campaign," where 29 women have sexual relations with the lascivious priest (who turns out to be sterile). Throughout the narrative are short, first-person testimonies from the men, detailing their exploits (which sadden some while making others rejoice). Although Cañón, making his debut, crafts characters that shine, the book plods, only picking up speed when the women make a final attempt at uniting and reorganizing their community. (Jan.)

Naja Rodgers has always wanted to be her own boss, so when she's laid off from her awful office job, she begins pursuing her dream in earnest. At the encouragement of her best friend Vlora, she attends First Fridays, a monthly networking meeting for St. Louis–area African-American business owners and investors. Naja is skeptical of the catty women and the shyster, scope-a-date men, but then she meets Russ, a handsome and successful real estate developer who wants to partner with Naja on her Internet cafe business plan. They become romantically involved, but, in an uncharacteristic turn of events, Naja quickly loses her sense of self and allows Russ to control her life. As his demands escalate, Naja's headaches and misery increase, but it isn't until Russ hands her a brochure on liposuction that she resists. She and Russ split, but how will this affect business? Though the uneven pacing slows to a crawl more than once and Naja's descent into submissiveness strains credibility (ditto the root of Russ's domineering attitude), her by-the-bootstraps story should garner for Michaels (Counting Raindrops Through a Stained Glass Window) a loyal following. (Jan.)

At the vivid start of Hagberg's latest thriller to feature former CIA director Kirk McGarvey, al-Qaeda terrorists attack Camp Echo—the part of the U.S. base at Guantánamo where detainees deemed to be harmless are held while their release is arranged—and help some of these prisoners escape. It appears that Osama bin Laden is putting together a crew of naval experts to pull off an attack on a seaport on America's West Coast that will dwarf even the horrors of 9/11. As McGarvey, who comes out of retirement, and a tough, sexy Cuban-born CIA agent, Gloria Ibenez, prepare to fight off what al-Qaeda has code-named Allah's Scorpion, Hagberg (Soldier of God) once again displays his wide and deep inside knowledge of intelligence and military tradecraft—including details of how Osama and his men hide from American spy satellites. Too many tongue-twisting names of weapons and equipment might slow down the action for some readers, but the full thrust of the narrative soon takes on a life of its own. (Jan.)

Kellerman, the son of bestsellers Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, shows that his impressive debut, Sunstroke, was no fluke with this gripping psychological page-turner that echoes the best of Hitchcock. Jonah Stem, a young medical resident at St. Agatha's, a midtown Manhattan teaching hospital, heroically intervenes when he encounters an attractive woman desperately fleeing a knife-wielding assailant early one morning on a street near Times Square. After Stem kills the man in self-defense, he enjoys a brief celebrity, but his life soon becomes complicated when the woman he rescued, Eve Gones, seeks him out and the two begin a frenzied affair. Taken aback by Gones's masochism, Stem attempts to end the relationship, but soon finds himself stalked relentlessly. Kellerman artfully conveys Stem's descent into near madness, making the step-by-step degradation of a decent man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time plausible and chilling. Author tour. (Jan.)

Mosley returns from the vastly underrated Fortunate Son and from Fear of the Dark with a piece of what one might call "deep erotica": there's plenty of sex, and also plenty of motivation for it within protagonist Cordel Carmel's travails and ruminations, as far-fetched as they can get. After a charged-but-chaste lunch with young Lucy Carmichael (a blonde in her early 20s looking to be introduced to Cordel's art agent friend), Cordel, 45, walks in on Joelle (his longtime, non-live-in girlfriend): Joelle's being very consensually sodomized by a white man wearing a red condom, their (very well-endowed) mutual acquaintance, Johnny Fry. Cordel walks out quietly, without being seen. In short order, Cordel buys a porno video and gets enraptured with its sadist star, Sisypha; quits his freelance-translation gig; has conflicted, amazing sex with Joelle (who continues to lie to him); has unconflicted, amazing sex with Lucy (who seems very nice) and with voluptuous neighbor Sasha Bennett (who seems way crazy); meets Sisypha for an Eyes Wide Shut–like experience; seduces the young, ghetto Monica Wells; and finally, within the week, has his confrontation with Johnny Fry. Though it all, Cordel's thoughts on humiliation, submission, pain, family, aging and abuse manage to sustain the wisp-thin plot of this total male fantasy. (Jan.)

At the start of Peters's challenging second novel, his first to be published in English, 28-year-old sculptor Albin Kranz is relaxing on the terrace of his Istanbul hotel when he witnesses the murder of an American "who looked like Marlon Brando in old age" at an adjacent hotel. But neither his wife, Livia, nor the group of German art students the couple meet in Turkey, nor the clerk at the victim's hotel believes him, because Kranz is alcoholic, his brain in a feverish, nightmarish state. His first-person narrative is a stream of memories, fears and delusions ("I've become part of an alien organism"). Kranz's musings are interspersed with the almost equally opaque commentary of one of the art students. This ambitious book contains some striking bits of Turkish cultural travelogue and the kind of intensity one might expect from young artist intellectuals, but the oblique storytelling makes it a tough read. (Jan.)

Coming out young is tough enough, but poor Lily has the misfortune of doing it in a setting as gothic and claustrophobic as anything Faulkner could have dreamed up: Chattahoochee, Fla., where the largest employer is a mental institution. Her family is classically dysfunctional: an emotionally distant father and a failed beauty queen mother who believes her children ruined her life. Lily's mother is especially toxic—she watches while Lily nearly drowns early in the book—and grows more demented as the narrative progresses. Lily's preteen undercurrent of awareness that she is not like the other girls prompts her to determine that she's in love with her friend Rae; the two practice kissing one another with Rae's caveat that one has to pretend to be a boy. Lily keeps her lesbian yearnings mostly under wraps, but an encounter with another young woman gets her in trouble with her off-the-rocker mother, and her father's attempts to keep the family together can only do so much. The plotting in this debut novel is by-the-numbers, but Vickers's prose is polished and the characters are sharply drawn. (Jan.)

Raised on the road, Josephine Pickering loves her truck-driving daddy, Bobby, even though his sometimes-dark moods make him go silent. The only parent she's ever known (her mother abandoned the family shortly after Jo's premature birth), he lives and breathes country music and takes her with him on his truck routes though the U.K. where he picks up pretty hitchhikers, like singer Cosima Stewart. Jo, now a teenager, is discovering her sexuality and her independence, which isn't the easiest thing to do without a mother. She nurtures an infatuation with Cosima and her band, gets Bobby to take her to their shows and glows under their kindly attentions. When Bobby bottoms out the day after Jo loses her virginity to Cosima's boyfriend, Jo falls apart: she follows Cosima to California and spirals dangerously out of control. Her crackup, though, has its bonuses. Despite her violent outbursts, Jo is never malicious, and her most shocking acts are, in the end, a cry for love and for help. With its echoes of memories, country music and the love between a father and a daughter, Hall's debut manages to be both poignant and unsettling. (Jan.)

Best known for his numerous first-class nonfiction aviation histories, Boyne has also produced aviation sagas (such as Roaring Thunder), and here inaugurates a trilogy with mixed success. Vance Shannon and his twin sons, Tom and Harry, are big shots in the American aircraft world: all three men do stints as flying aces and as brilliant engineers, working with the likes of Boeing and Lockheed to develop new jet technology. From 1955 to 1973, Vance and his sons participate in the development of the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes, supersonic transports and Learjets, as well as missile and satellite technology. Events like the Sputnik launching, the Cuban missile crisis, the invention of the Polaroid Land Camera and the Volkswagen car craze all play in, as do figures like a former Nazi thug, a mistress who spies for French intelligence and POWs in Vietnam. The aviation history and tech talk are sparkling, but the plot is an anemic mix of family saga, corporate politics and various forms of espionage. (Jan.)

Parks's hardcover debut (after three paperback originals) follows Lexie, Meshell, Tracee and Tonya, four best girlfriends who think they know everything about each other. They don't, of course, and what they don't know might hurt them—or, at least, strain their bond. The women get together once a month for a night out in Atlanta, during which anything goes and (almost) everything is said. For fear of being judged, each harbors scandalous sex-centric secrets: Alexie, the clique's "conscience," meets a New York City firefighter on the Internet and has a fling with him; Meshell, the outspoken and overstressed attorney, unwinds with anonymous sex; Tracee has a wild exhibitionist streak; and Tonya, the materialist, is having an affair with her boss, a married man with two kids. Prompted by the ladies' revelations and emotional breakthroughs, Meshell and Lexie host an "intervention" instead of their usual night out. The erotic story makes for a fun and fast read, though the rotating first-person narration can get confusing and the ladies end up being more types than characters. (Jan.)

Former flight attendant Noël's valentine to high-flying single gals is Sex and the City at 37,000 feet, a fashionably dressed, ditzy romp up and down the jetports of major cities across America and Europe. Just when flight attendant Hailey Lane thinks her live-in pilot boyfriend, Michael, might finally pop the question, she catches Captain Cad with his pants down, forcing her to land a new apartment and a worthy boyfriend while finishing the novel she's writing. After a weekend of binge grieving with best pal Clay, the "born and raised in the OC" Hailey juggles dates with a pervy Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a wealthy businessman with performance issues and a Greek hottie with an Oedipal hangup. Noël's debut adult novel (she's written three YA novels) has some fun with the air-traveling public: the inane questions, the bad behavior, the mile-high club hookups. She also lobs a few barbs at an airline industry willing to sacrifice its workers' morale for the bottom line. There's never a doubt Hailey will land the right guy, the book deal and the great pad, and the romantic misadventures turn out to be no more memorable than a cross-country red-eye. (Jan.)

When a New England woman discovers her research scientist husband is cheating, she appeals to the clergy for guidance and unleashes high drama that pits religion against science in Kenyon's overheated debut novel. After finding pink panties in husband Conroy's suitcase, Bev Sloan seeks spiritual guidance from young replacement clergyman Dante (parish priest Father Nicolai has disappeared after allegations of sexual misconduct). Heavy-handed marriage counseling sessions and a few innocent dinners with Bev lead Dante, smitten with lust for Bev and battling a drinking problem, into a crisis of faith. Meanwhile, Conroy takes a mad scientist turn in his campaign for a promotion. Bev and Dante's courtship unleashes some serious bodice-ripping, and when Conroy remains unrepentant about his dalliances, jealousy and anger erupt in a murder, a tense jury trial and the discovery of a lethal, lab-cultivated aerosol rabies virus. Kenyon shows promise even while jumbling her busy narrative with incomprehensible science-speak ("Rhabdoviridae is an RNA virus family that includes haematopoietic necrosis virus, hemorrhagic septicemia virus"). A few more swipes with the editing pencil could help, but to her credit, Kenyon manages to rein her characters in nicely at the conclusion of this overwritten yet impressive medical thriller. (Jan.)

When blocked writer Tulia Rose hits it off with a handsome sidewalk artist while touring Paris, she's intrigued. Is he an admirer? A muse? A stalker? A potential lover? A guardian angel? Or is the stranger, Raffaello, the reincarnation of the Renaissance artist Raphael? As it turns out, the mysterious stranger might be all of these and more in this bittersweet debut by Canadian authors Buonaguro and Kirk. Tulia's investment-banker boyfriend, Ethan, has sent her from New York to Europe with the hope that time apart will give their relationship some much-needed space and allow Tulia to overcome writer's block. While she's entertaining fantasies of her sidewalk artist, Ethan pursues his own romantic endeavors, which serves as an impetus for Tulia to do more than think about Raffaello. The romantic European locales Tulia visits, including Paris, Venice and the Tuscan countryside, are dreamily described, but Raffaello comes across as creepy instead of seductive. Snippets from Tulia's new novel-in-progress pepper the narrative (she's writing a love story about Raphael), though these—dependant on saccharine romantic episodes and dreams—may turn off readers who aren't steadfast historical romance fans. (Dec.)

Bestseller Koontz's third Odd Thomas novel (after Forever Odd) offers an irresistibly offbeat mix of supernatural horror and laugh-out-loud humor. A resident of St. Bartholomew's Abbey, a monastery in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Thomas has the ability to see the spirits of the dead, a gift he has used to resolve mysteries and prevent future tragedies. As the story opens, the seer is unsettled by visions of bodachs, sinister ghostlike entities whose appearance precedes some dire tragedy. Thomas frantically searches for some sign that will help him head off disaster, even as St. Bart's is thrown into turmoil by the disappearance of one of its members. Thomas must figure out both the identity of the person or being behind the terror and the most effective way to restore peace to his haven. While newcomers may find the villain's underlying motive a bit over the top, the narrator's engaging voice should continue to give this series cross-genre appeal. (Nov. 28)

At the start of the lighthearted fourth yuletide mystery from the bestselling mother-daughter Clarks (after 2004's The Christmas Thief), Randolph Weed, "self-styled commodore," launches his newly refurbished boat, the Royal Mermaid, from Miami with a "Santa Cruise" to raise money for charity and reward 400 "Do-Gooders of the Year." Meanwhile, Weed's greedy nephew, Eric Manchester, has made a secret $2 million deal with escaped felons Bull's-Eye Tony Pinto and Barron Highbridge to keep them hidden aboard the Royal Mermaid until it reaches Fishbowl Island, where they can make trouble out of federal jurisdiction. Fortunately, there are plenty of Do-Gooders to foil the bad guys, notably the mystery mavens of the Oklahoma Readers and Writers group and sleuthing philanthropist Alvirah Meehan. Full of mystery-lite cheer but lacking in style and substance, this collaboration is never quite buoyant enough to really deck the halls for fans of the Clarks' superior solo efforts. (Nov.)

Wisecracking ex-NFL player Zack Chasteen hunts treasure—and people willing to kill for it—in Morris's offbeat third island-themed adventure (after 2005's Jamaica Me Dead). Zack, who now raises palm trees in Florida, embarks for Bermuda with his British girlfriend, Barbara Pickering, and loyal South American associate, Boggy, to deliver some magnificent Madagascar palms to Barbara's wealthy Aunt Trula. But they get sidetracked from landscaping when they discover a wetsuit-clad corpse—his eyes gouged out—tangled in the rocks offshore. Aunt Trula's good friend, Sir Teddy Schwartz, salvager and diver extraordinaire, becomes their guide and a possible suspect when Zack realizes that the murdered diver was after the legendary true cross, a Christian relic lost in a 15th-century shipwreck that has lured obsessed seekers ever since. Wry humor and engaging Bermuda history help propel the plot. Author tour. (Feb.)

Jason Regan, a severely schizophrenic child, is found drowned in a pond behind his family's home in this unusual, chilling mystery from Edgar-winner Cook (Red Leaves). Jason's mother, Diana, believes that her ex-husband, Mark, has murdered their son. The story is narrated by Diana's brother, Dave Sears, who comes to believe Diana has gone insane. Dave has good reason to think so; their father was a raving paranoid schizophrenic. Cook employs a curious narrative structure, dividing the story into two alternating sections: one in which Dave is being interviewed by a police detective about an unnamed crime, written in second-person, and another that Dave narrates in first-person. In the beginning it's unclear if a crime occurred at all; the police rule that Jason walked into the pond on his own. Then it appears that there was not only one murder but possibly two, three or even four. Cook reveals all the pieces of the shocking story with an absolutely steady hand. It's a bravura performance. (Jan.)

British author Sansom (The Impartial Recorder) launches a humorous new series set in Tumdrum, Northern Ireland, the small village that transplanted Londoner Israel Armstrong reluctantly makes his home. The nebbishy Jewish vegetarian shows up at the Tumdrum and District Public Library eager to assume his post as the new librarian, only to find the place boarded up and that it's his job to steward the beat-up mobile library instead. When he finally gets inside the library building, he discovers its 15,000 books are missing. Less astute than the detective characters in the novels he has devoured, Israel blunders through an investigation, making startling discoveries while suffering some hard knocks along the way. Israel's fish-out-of-water dilemmas and encounters with kooky locals will resonate with Alexander McCall Smith fans. (Jan.)

In this departure from his New Orleans novels featuring Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr (Rampart Street, etc.), Fulmer paints the sprawling vitality of 1920s Atlanta with broad strokes. Joe Rose, an itinerant love 'em and leave 'em–style thief of uncertain racial extraction who moves uneasily in both black and white Atlanta, finds himself in the middle of a murderous mess that highlights the city's rampant racism and corruption as well as the stark contrasts between privilege and poverty. A white cop guns down a Negro gambler, Little Jesse Williams, while a jewelry robbery mars a Yuletide party at one of Atlanta's finest mansions on the other side of town. Joe gets caught in a vise operated by a brutal detective, Capt. Grayton Jackson, intent on "solving" the crime in the quickest way possible. Little Jesse expires over the course of days, Joe promises to discover why he was shot and the odious Jackson squeezes Joe to recover the stolen jewels or pay the price for the crime. Occasionally florid writing clouds this otherwise vital effort from Shamus-winner Fulmer. (Jan.)

Ghostwriter Lee Bartholomew leaves London for Long Island to attend her mother's barefoot commitment ceremony in McIntyre's second engaging romp to feature the self-proclaimed neurotic (after 2005's How to Seduce a Ghost). Lee also hopes to snag a memoir gig from reclusive rock legend Shotgun Marriot, but faces competition from fellow scribe Bettina Pleshette. When the body of Marriot's son washes up on the beach, and then Pleshette's corpse is discovered on Marriot's East Hampton estate, the suspects include not only Marriot but also Lee's stepbrother's girlfriend, Frannie, whose fibs and shady past put her in the spotlight, as well as Frannie's son, caretaker of the Marriot estate, who's burdened by his own bumpy history. A strange Miss Havisham–like seamstress, who happens to have a riveting and dangerously familiar manuscript for Lee to critique, complicates Lee's hunt for the killer. This funny, complicated and wise mystery is sure to gain the author new fans. (Jan.)

Armstrong's debut falls short of its promising premise: having a murderer stalk the cast and crew of a top-rated reality TV series, Haunted Survivor, which is set in a spooky mansion in the Vermont mountains. Alban Bane, the Scottish-born, Burlington, Vt.–based detective assigned to the case, is alarmed by the copycat style of murder, which mimics that of his longtime nemesis, serial killer Tyler Hayden. The perpetrator can't be Hayden himself, though; Bane recently witnessed—and was unnerved by—his execution at San Quentin in California. (Moments before the lethal injection, Hayden whispered that he knew the identity of the man responsible for making Bane a widower.) The detective's psyche is further rocked when he finds several people linked to the Haunted Survivor case who also figured in the Hayden investigation. Suspicion is briefly cast on the program's ambitious, sexy producer, Abbey Chase, for whom Bane unconvincingly falls. Few genre fans will be surprised by the mystery's gory resolution. Author tour. (Jan.)

At the start of Shaw's promising first mystery, Cealie Gunther, an independent woman of a certain age, finds her granddaughter, Kat, in tears on a surprise visit to her widowed son in a Chicago suburb. Kat, a high school senior with excellent grades, is so upset after the death of a school custodian (the police, who at first ruled the custodian's balcony fall an accident, now suspect Kat's Spanish teacher of murder) that she insists on staying home and missing final exams and graduation. When the interfering Cealie pushes her way into Kat's high school as a substitute teacher, further violence and mysterious accidents, not to mention rude students and eccentric staff members, can't deter her from finding answers. A former lover, restaurant owner Gil Thurman, lends romantic interest. While Cealie muses too much on matters irrelevant to the main plot, humorous dialogue, a suspenseful climax and good character development should please cozy fans. (Dec.)

At the start of Haydon's lyrical sixth installment in her sweeping saga of musical magic and ancient prophecies (after 2004's Elegy for a Lost Star), the dragons of the world gather to mourn the loss of one of their oldest and greatest—whose demise leaves a weakness in their protective shield of the Earth. Ashe and Rhapsody, the Lord and Lady of Cymrian, also convene with their allies to prepare for the war looming between deadly powers that could tear the world apart. Rhapsody has the added distraction of caring for their infant son, Meridion, for as the heir to Cymrian the baby is an obvious target; he may also be the Child of Time, whose coming will change the world—and perhaps even the nature of Time itself. While deftly managing a large cast of intriguing characters in a story that's both grand and intimate but never predictable, Haydon moves all the pieces into place for the next volume. (Jan.)

In bestseller Hamilton's steamy fifth in the Meredith Gentry fantasy series (after 2005's A Stroke of Midnight), the fey former Los Angeles PI has given up detecting and fully embraced her duties as Princess Meredith NicEssus, potential heir to the faerie throne. Since the extremely orgasmic princess's foremost duty is to prove her fertility in order to gain the throne, she spends most of her time bedding her immortal sidhe royal guardsmen, giving each a fair shot as her future consort. All the group sex has a profoundly transformative effect: her men are regaining their full powers, and the long-dead faerie gardens are springing to life. But when Meredith and her merry men inadvertently find themselves in the territory of King Sholto, who has been betrayed by others in the faerie court, there's deadly danger even for immortals. Lots of earth-shattering, supernatural sex and a rousing climactic battle will have Hamilton's fans panting for more. (Dec.)

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's tales of legendary monsters running amok under the streets of New England, Kiernan's fifth novel (after Low Red Moon) to feature psychic sensitive Deacon Silvey and his supernaturally scarred family and friends is a hell-raising dark fantasy replete with ghouls, changelings and eerie intimations of a macabre otherworld. The story develops along two converging lines sketched in alternating chapters. In one, Deacon's adolescent daughter, Emmie, finds herself increasingly subject to weird presentiments and uncanny encounters that suggest she's more fey than mortal. In the other, a hard-boiled female demon-killer, Soldier, cuts a swath through Rhode Island's ghoul-infested underground on a vaguely defined mission that eventually brings her and Emmie together as partners. The complex plot springs abundant surprises involving forgotten cradle exchanges, mistaken identities and unexpected betrayals on its juggernaut roll to a memorable finale. Though more talky than Kiernan's usual, the story still manages an effective mix of atmosphere and action and resolves most of the major subplots. (Dec.)

This intense tale of real-life horror may remind some readers of Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment. On a whim, hit man Steven Benedetti, who's driving to Los Angeles from Oregon, stops in a small Northern California town to take in a carnival sideshow. There he picks up the Serpent Girl of the title (aka Carmen Mattox), and soon the bodies start to mount up. Carmen seeks emotional and sexual fulfillment in murder, while for Benedetti, the cool professional, it's simply business. Wasting no words on characterization, Garton (Live Girls) speeds the violent, X-rated action to its bleak, foreordained climax. (Dec.)

This solid collection of 10 stories spanning the galaxies and the career of British SF author Reynolds (Pushing Ice) demonstrates that his pursuit of truth is not limited to wide-angle star smashing. Not that stars don't get pulverized when one character is gifted (or cursed) with an awful weapon by the legendary Merlin, who finds it after a 10,000-year search in "Merlin's Gun." Mainly, though, Reynolds's protagonists find themselves in situations of betrayal, whether by a loved one's accidental death, as in "Signal to Noise," or by a trusted wartime authority, as in "Spirey and the Queen." Reynolds may not always convince that intelligence leads to moral behavior, but his fertile imagination can resurrect Elton John on Mars in "Understanding Space and Time" or make prophets of the human condition out of pool-cleaning robots in the title story. (Dec.)

Horror aficionados will welcome Morrish's all-original dark fiction anthology, the long-awaited sequel to Thrillers (1993). Each of the four contributors—Gemma Files, Tim Waggoner, R. Patrick Gates and Caitlín R. Kiernan—succeeds in sending intelligent chills up the reader's spine. Files's creepy "Pen Umbra," with echoes of T.E.D. Klein and William Sloane in its plot and language, is a standout, and Kiernan manages to work a few wrinkles into "Houses Under the Sea" that demonstrate how a skilled writer can use some well-worn Lovecraftian motifs to good effect. Waggoner also scores with the subtle "The Faces That We Meet," a compelling portrait of horror lurking beneath a suburban surface. Authors' notes illuminate the composition of each of the nine stories and novellas. (Dec.)

In romance veteran Brandewyne's latest entry, idyllic days in India in the 1830s are cut short for young Rose Windermere when her best friend, Hugo Drayton, is murdered, along with his parents. Fearing for their own safety, Rose's family moves back to England. Fifteen years later, Rose is shopping at the market when a strange man thrusts a letter into her basket and, before fleeing, cautions her to guard it with her life. Seeing the seal of Hugo's family on the letter, Rose surmises that it must concern the business of Hugo's cousin, and the veiled message inside indicates a lovers' rendezvous. Soon, however, Rose suspects she's being followed, and with a little investigation finds that her pursuer is Raj Khanna, a handsome Indian businessman, who's after the letter for reasons far graver than romance; amid rising suspense, Rose uncovers a plot to assassinate Queen Victoria and the truth about what happened to her beloved Hugo. Fast-paced, rooted in solid period details and supported by a fine cast of secondary characters—especially the scrappy street urchins who come to Rose's aid—Brandewyne's latest is another winning romp. (Dec.)

Once again, Liu has managed a brilliant blend of fantasy, action and romance in her latest Dirk & Steele novel, which follows the members of a paranormal detective agency. When electrokinetically gifted agency detective Blue Perrineau is blackmailed by his father, dying billionaire Felix Perrineau, he's forced to track down Felix's other son, Daniel—the brother Blue never knew he had. His search for Daniel takes him to a small Las Vegas circus that features Iris McGillis, a slinky shape-shifter with a lion act and a global fan base. After Blue saves Iris from an ecoterrorist sniper, they form an instant attachment, but he runs into trouble when he finds Daniel and, later, a dangerous flesh peddler—both of whom also have plans for the hypnotically sexy Iris. Liu brings her skewed universe to life with skill and conviction, grounding the comic-book plot with fully realized personalities and the workaday details of circus life. Though a bit drawn out, this entry will undoubtedly please fans of the series and should provide a fresh thrill for anyone in the market for an extraordinary romance. (Dec.)

Despite her best attempts at denial—"I am so not a witch"—Victoria Cartwright has inherited a legacy of magic, along with the key to a mysterious wardrobe, in Blair's third Witch novel (following the bestseller My Favorite Witch). Upon her beloved grandmother's death, Vickie receives the magic key to grandmother's old wardrobe—never before opened—and a promise that it contains Vickie's destiny. To Vickie's puzzlement, her destiny turns out to be an exquisitely preserved antique carousel unicorn. Though it's oddly familiar to Vickie, the unicorn is recognized right off by Scotsman Rory MacKenzie, a handsome loner, when Vickie appears with it on a television antiques show. The unicorn happens to be the handiwork of Rory's ancestor and the key to ending his family curse. The two meet and immediately set to bickering, first over Rory's manners—Vickie quickly concludes that he's "a lack-wit shoddy-mannered Scot with more beards than brains"—then over his designs for the unicorn. Of course, they're just working their way toward confronting their mutual attraction, but sassy dialogue, rich sexual tension and plenty of laughs make this an immensely satisfying return to Blair's world of witchcraft. Fans will welcome back familiar characters in supporting roles, but newcomers will take to it just as well. (Dec.)

This tepid follow-up to Anton's Midnight Magic picks up her 12th-century tale of three orphaned English sisters with Lady Emma de Leon, who has a peculiar gift: looking into a pool of water, she is able to see events before they happen. One such vision shows her the image of a man, all bronze skin and dimples, who will one day become her lover—but that happy knowledge doesn't curb Emma's shock when she finally meets her dream man, Darian of Bruges, a lowly Flemish mercenary who stands accused of murdering an English noble. Believing him innocent, Emma bravely and scandalously offers herself up as Darian's alibi for the night of the murder, ruining her reputation while saving Darian from the noose. Instead of granting Darian's freedom, the king orders Darian to marry Emma and forces both into exile. Though attracted to Emma, Darian secretly plots to abandon her, return to London and find the man who framed him. Emma persuades Darian to take her with him, and the two embark on a dangerous journey made even more perilous by growing desire. Restrained and conventional, this bland romance remains unredeemed by its appealing characters and playful repartee. Anton's fans will be sated, but new readers will probably seek out steamier, more enchanting fare. (Dec.)

This collection of Hornschemeier's short comics pieces displays the artist's enormous visual range—'60s-style gag cartooning, gritty caricature, spacey surrealism and a marvelous command of muted, flat-tone colors—as well as his consistently bitter, deadpan writing. He plays with forms and storytelling devices from the days when comics meant light entertainment, many of them filtered through his enormous stylistic debt to Chris Ware. (Even the book's flipbook design recalls Ware.) The best stories are the most surreal, like "Underneath," a wordless battle between two imaginary polar creatures, and "Everyone Felt It," a brief series of reactions without a context. But the overall tone is forced irony: in one typical sequence, a series of immaculate-looking pastiches (an old comic book, daily strips, a Sunday "Peanuts" setup) each end with a shaggy-haired hipster saying "Whatever dude." The book culminates in a suite of linked, flatly disaffected stories about television and escapism that never develop a point. Rarely has so much craft been applied in the service of so much unfocused nihilism, and the fact that Hornschemeier makes a gag out of it—a dumb cartoon called "Stupid Art Comics Are Stupid," followed by a harsh faux-academic critique—doesn't let him off the hook. (Nov.)

The second of three separate manga takes on this story, Del Rey offers the shojo (girl's) version of the tale that has had a deep impact on Japanese culture, also appearing as a novel, an anime and most recently a live action movie. Shy otaku (obsessive fan) Ikumi Saiki spends more time in the popular Internet forum Channel 2 than he does interacting with real human beings. Yet Saiki yearns to find love. An incident on a train leads Saiki to stand up for a group of women being bullied by a thug, and one woman, Mai Kohinata, seeks him out to express her thanks. With Channel 2 carefully guiding him, Saiki begins a courtship that he hopes will blossom into true love. From a makeover and a wardrobe update to learning to act with confidence, Saiki grows up both on and offline with Mai and all of Channel 2 looking on. Ocha adapts the story originally written by Nakano into a charming and heartfelt love story, finding an art style that seamlessly melds Ikumi's geeky charm with Mai's beauty. In shojo land, Train Man becomes a timeless love story. (Nov.)

An excellent story hook actually pays off in this amusing manga. Sabato is a "normal" teenage boy whose life has a big hitch: his family (mom, dad, two sisters) are all goth worshippers of the night who love nothing more than to freak him out. Time after time, Sabato brings girlfriends back to the house, only to have them run scared at the sight of goths in heavy makeup staging mock executions, dismembering dolls and engaging in all sorts of Adams Family–esque shenanigans. Most of the humor in this surprisingly funny volume derives from Sabato's hair-pulling frustration, which takes the usual adolescent complaints about one's family's power to embarrass to a new comic level. It's anyone's guess as to whether Sabato will learn a lesson about different ideas of normal after he's done running through all the available girls in his school and has run out of complaints about his playfully sadistic family. Mihara's artwork has a clean and condensed quality to it, while the book's already well-developed comic sensibility is highlighted by the helpfully quirky side notes inserted into the text to either explain relevant Japanese customs or simply point out something funny. (Nov.)

Strauss's first graphic novel—named after his Jenna Jameson collaboration How to Make Love Like a Porn Star—could be called a well-intentioned failure if its intentions weren't so hateful. A desperately unfunny satire of the porn industry, it follows the rise and fall of generic skin-flick queen Claudia Corvette through a convoluted time line littered with guns, knives, violent perverts, fiendish Middle Eastern types and breast implants. Strauss's plot makes almost no sense, and it's soggy with insiderish gags, rape jokes and sneering contempt for every one of his characters, whether they're the (inevitably venal) producers or (inevitably pathetic) consumers of pornography. Whenever the story threatens to develop some parodic bite, he spoils it with a batch of fizzled gags or, worse, overwrought scenes of degrading violence. The book runs through a catalogue of formal tricks, letting Chang cleverly switch his art style scene by scene—there's a "Dark Knight"–style video-screen montage, a big-head comic strip, some spoofs of X-rated video boxes, a mangafied high school scene, a mock centerfold, a sketched-out storyboard for a movie and (naturally) a whole lot of slick titillation. But even Chang's versatility and smooth, graceful line can't clarify the book's garbled storytelling or redeem its ugly attitude. (Oct.)

The final installment of this graphic novel trilogy leads up to an explosive and emotional climax. Guitar player Lem Taylor is left without the piano-playing Ironwood and is now on the run from the law and a racist mob. He seeks out Little Rock businessman J.L. Dougherty as his only hope for the future. The 80 pages read fast with only a few situations out of the way before the book's centerpiece, Lem's confrontation with his pursuers in the dark rainy swamps. The climax is grand and surprising, but fits the tone of his character. Callejo draws this world with thick lines and gray tones, continuing the dark feeling of blues clubs and rural Southern land lying under midnight skies. He's equally skilled at contemplative moments and visceral scenes of chase and violence. All the characters are expressive and deep. Lem's depiction benefits from this greatly, so you not only see his stress and suffering, but with only a few closeups, the pain behind the eyes is also clear. Bluesman mixes the mythic and dramatic with the nitty-gritty reality of the hard parts of life, just like a good blues song does. (Oct.)