Fiction Reviews: Week of 2/26/2007

In this enjoyably tart art world sendup, winsome, aperçu-spouting Mia McMurray (think Party Girl-era Parker Posey) is a gallerista-one of the invariably decorative young women who act as a gallery's de facto concierge, and "who is always, always watching," as Mia herself puts it. A mysterious portrait by the recently late Jeffrey Finelli (killed by an errant cab in front of Mia's Simon Pryce gallery) gives the novel its winningly clumsy title and sets up its main conflict, between grasping art collectors and representatives of Finelli's estate. Former Mademoiselle and Woman's Day editor Ganek, herself a significant art collector, offers sharply drawn characters and convincingly savvy details. That the book's most important female collector is presented as a loudmouthed and overdressed refugee from Absolutely Fabulous gives a sense of its waspish humor. But Ganek stops short of crude caricature, and Ganek's portraits of the variously sneaky, ridiculous and pretentious art world denizens are tinged with affection and depth. The tone is sophisticated chick lit, and there's a sweet love story threaded in, but what most clearly animates this debut, and sets it apart, is a real sense that art matters. (June)

Britain's moneyed upper crust comes in for a slapstick razzing in this class-skewering 10th book (after novels Godchildren and Streetsmart) by Condé Nast U.K. managing director Coleridge. The titular much-married man is Anthony Anscombe, the thoroughly decent but naïvely innocent scion of a private English merchant bank family, who also happens to be a country squire responsible for the well-being of a picturesque village and 2,000 acres of "magical" land to which his family has held title for 370 years. The eccentric locals love Anthony, and Anthony loves haplessly: over four decades, he marries three unsuitable women, sires five children and shepherds five stepchildren through turbulent upbringings. Aside from his bank duties, which provide ample fodder for Coleridge's wry satire, Anthony is called upon to undertake a load of unpleasant chores, such as confronting his philandering father-in-law at the latter's "floating lovenest" and defending his rapist stepson, Morad. Throughout, Anthony remains the epitome of a gentleman, unfailingly patient with the demanding women in his life (the first a diva waif, the second a priggish homebody and the third a monstrous money-grubber). This well-informed comedy of stiff-upper-lip manners reads, charmingly, as if sprung from a writerly union between Iris Murdoch at the high end and Harold Robbins at the low. (June)

This engaging historical novel opens in A.D. 66, with Roman aristocrat Titus Petronius planning his suicide. Emperor Nero has falsely implicated him in an assassination plot, and the high-born Petronius prefers suicide to dishonor. Setting his affairs in order, he organizes an elaborate banquet for his close friends before he retires to his quarters to open his veins. Between sumptuous courses, elevated conversation and bawdy verse, Petronius muses on his past, and philosophical reflections on the meaning of life accompany a string of flashbacks, many of which detail the former governor's romance with a centurion's wife, Melissa Silia. Reviewing his career, Petronius realizes more attention to his mistress and less to the temptations of ambition would have avoided this disaster. Meanwhile, at the banquet, the grief of a young friend who cannot accept Petronius's refusal to flee to safety threatens to spoil the mood. Browner (Turn Away) has done his homework, and his meticulous description of a Roman banquet and its attendant rituals, as well as his account of first-century Roman politics, letters and even clothing styles, is immediately immersive. Browner creates with considerable skill a snapshot of Roman life-and death. (June)

Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam and Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed, whose violent misogyny-"There was no cursing, no screaming, no pleading, no surprised yelps, only the systematic business of beating and being beaten"-is endorsed by custom and law. Hosseini gives a forceful but nuanced portrait of a patriarchal despotism where women are agonizingly dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their sole path to social status. His tale is a powerful, harrowing depiction of Afghanistan, but also a lyrical evocation of the lives and enduring hopes of its resilient characters. (May)

Schine dispatches a love letter to New Yorkers and the dogs who own them in her seventh novel (after She Is Me), an ensemble novel centered on an Upper West Side street. Jody, a lonely 39-year-old musician/music teacher who's lived in the same rent-controlled studio since college, rescues a pit bull mix named Beatrice from the ASPCA. After eight months of blissful pet ownership, Jody bumps into divorced 50-year-old Everett while walking Beatrice and falls in love with the stranger after he shoots her a smile. George, a 28-year-old waiter, moves into the neighborhood when his younger sister, Polly, rents an apartment in Everett's building and acquires the puppy left behind by the last tenant. (He hanged himself; she names the pup Howdy.) Down the street live Simon, a reclusive social worker whose only joy in life is foxhunting, and Doris, an embittered, prep-school guidance counselor with no love lost for pooches. Orbits slowly begin to overlap as winter gives way to spring and then the summer of the 2003 blackout-an event that sends a few characters in unexpected directions. It may not play as well west of the Hudson, but the hometown dog-run crowd will find this heartfelt tribute curiously endearing. (May)

In a gritty debut, Vlautin explores a few weeks in the broken lives of two working-class brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan, who abruptly ditch their Reno motel after Jerry Lee drunkenly kills a boy on a bicycle in a hit-and-run. The two are case studies in hard luck: their mother died when they were 14 and 16, respectively; their father is an ex-con deadbeat; neither finished high school. Frank has had just one girlfriend, motel neighbor Annie, whose mother is an abusive prostitute. An innocent simpleton, Jerry Lee is left feeling suicidal after the accident, despite his younger brother's efforts (à la Of Mice and Men's Lenny and George) to console him: "It was real quiet, the way he cried," says Frank, "like he was whimpering." On returning to Reno, an eventual reckoning awaits them. Vlautin's coiled, poetically matter-of-fact prose calls to mind S.E. Hinton-a writer well-acquainted with male misfit protagonists seeking redemption, no matter how destructive. Despite the bleak story and its inevitably tragic ending, Vlautin, who plays in the alt-country band Richmond Fontaine, transmits a quiet sense of resilience and hopefulness. (May)

British historian Stott makes a stunning debut with this hypnotic and intelligent thriller, the first fiction release of a new Random House imprint. The mysterious drowning death of Elizabeth Vogelsang, a Cambridge University scholar who was almost finished writing a controversial biography of Isaac Newton, leads her son, Cameron Brown, to recruit Lydia Brooke, his former lover, to complete the book. That request plunges Brooke into probing two ostensibly separate series of murders: one in the 17th century claimed the lives of several who stood between Newton and the fellowship he needed to continue his studies at Cambridge; the other in the present day appears to target those who have offended a radical animal rights group. Brooke's work may be haunted by a ghost from Newton's time who guides her to a radical reinterpretation of the role of alchemy and the supernatural in Newton's life. Much more than a clever whodunit, this taut, atmospheric novel with its twisty interconnections between past and present will leave readers hoping Stott has many more stories in her future. (May)

A deadpan "Call Me Zits" opens the first novel in 10 years from Alexie (Smoke Signals, etc.), narrated by a self-described "time-traveling mass murderer" whose name and deeds unravel as this captivating bildungsroman progresses. Half-Indian, half-Irish, acne-beset Zits is 15: he never knew his alcoholic father; his mother died when he was six; his aunt kicked him out when he was 10 (after he set her sleeping boyfriend on fire because the boyfriend had been forcing Zits to have sex). Running away from his 20th foster home, Zits ends up, briefly, in jail; soon after, he enters a bank, shoots several people and is shot dead himself. Zits then commences time-traveling via the bodies of others, finding himself variously lodged in an FBI agent in the '70s (helping to assassinate radical Indian activists); a mute Indian boy at the Battle of Little Big Horn; an Indian tracker named Gus; an airplane pilot instructor (one of whose pupils commits a terrorist act); and his own father. Zits eventually comes back to himself and to an unexpected redemption. While the plot is wisp-thin, one quickly surrenders to Zits's voice, which elegantly mixes free-floating young adult cynicism with a charged, idiosyncratic view of American history. Alexie plunges the book into bracing depths. (Apr.)

Smith once again combines a loving depiction of ordinary life in modern Botswana with memorable characters and an engaging mystery in the eighth installment in his beloved No. 1 Ladies Detective series (after Blue Shoes and Happiness). Dr. Cronje, who's half Xhosa and half Afrikaner, consults Smith's sleuth, the gentle and insightful Precious Ramotswe, because patients at his hospital who have occupied a particular bed have been dying mysteriously at the same time of day. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe's recently engaged assistant, Grace Makutsi, threatens to break their longstanding association. Mma Ramotswe must adjust their relationship in order to retain Mma Makutsi's services. The author's subtlety of touch and humane portrayal of figures at all levels of society will continue to win him new readers even as his deepening of the ties binding the main figures will satisfy those who have followed the lady detectives from their first recorded case. (Apr.)

In this savage satire of Holocaust commemoration's misuses, Reich paints and pillories a culture of victimhood that, with its accompanying commemorative kitsch, all but eclipses the actual victims. Novelist Reich (The Jewish War) sketches a gallery of "Holocaust hangers-on," grotesques eager to hijack the Shoah for tawdry commercial and ideological purposes. Presiding over the strategic exploitation is Maurice Messer, a retired ladies' undergarment maker who has parlayed inflated claims of being an anti-Nazi partisan into the chairmanship of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; his feckless son, Norman, president of Holocaust Connections Inc., a brand consultancy with the motto "Make Your Cause a Holocaust" (of which Maurice is board chairman); Norman's daughter, Nechama, who has embarrassingly run off to join the convent across the street from Auschwitz; and Maurice's right-hand man, Monty Pincus, who expertly deploys melancholy over the six million to seduce women. Once the idea of the "Chinese Holocaust" (the "rape" of Nanking) or the "Native American Holocaust" gain traction, however, Maurice and Norman may not be able to control the results. Whether Maurice and Norman are rebranding "mountains of shorn hair" from Auschwitz for "an anti-fur organization eager to firm up its Holocaust status" or schmoozing ecumenically with a Holocaust-denying Arab terrorist, Reich's satire is broad, scabrous, cynical, over-the-top, often hilarious-and likely to cause a scandal. (Apr.)

Love comes up against obsession in Gowdy's seventh novel (following The Romantic), and the results are at times chilling, but not always believable. Single mother Celia works two jobs and is often forced to bring nine-year-old Rachel along to her nighttime gigs at a piano bar. Much to Celia's dismay, men are already drawn to biracial Rachel's exotic beauty, and she reluctantly turns down a lucrative modeling contract for the girl. Yet she's unaware that appliance repairman Ron Clarkson has an unhealthy fascination with Rachel that's escalating. Convinced that Celia is not a worthy parent for Rachel, Ron abducts the girl, soon involving his needy girlfriend, Nancy, and igniting an extensive investigation. Although set in Toronto's urban Cabbagetown neighborhood, the atmosphere feels smalltown insular and relies a bit too much on coincidental acquaintances to feel like a city setting. The kidnap plot is, for Gowdy, surprisingly conventional, but frequent glimpses into the childhoods of Ron, Nancy and Celia add depth, revealing the characters' motivations and inviting contemplation of what constitutes appropriate love toward a child. Ron remains too warped to be remotely sympathetic; more compelling are Nancy's conflicted loyalties and Celia's occasional brutal reflections on the sometimes greedy, possessive love between parent and child-a love not unlike obsession. (Apr.)

In bestseller Jackson's spine-tingling romantic thriller, the turbo-charged follow-up to Shiver (2006), photographer Abby Chastain, who played a major role in Shiver, finds she may have a half-sister in Eve Renner, the adopted daughter of Dr. Terrence Renner, former head psychiatrist at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, a shuttered asylum near (pre-Katrina) New Orleans. When "the Reviver," a tattoo-loving psychopath intent on revenge, almost kills Eve, the amnesia-plagued Eve fears Cole Dennis, her lawyer boyfriend, might be the monster, since she saw him at the scene of her assault (and a friend's murder), though Cole is released for lack of evidence. The body count mounts through many unexpected twists and turns as a grim Det. Reuben Montoya, Abby's fiancé, and his partner, Rick Bentz, try to puzzle out the killer's cryptic clues before he strikes again. A heart-stopping resolution suggests another heavy-breathing update might be in the works. (Apr.)

Love cures all that ails the troubled trio of "no-hopers" in this sentimental second novel by French literary sensation Gavalda (Someone I Loved; I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere). Camille, a talented artist exhausted by ennui and anorexia, cleans offices at night and cowers in a shabby garret by day. Philibert, the fastidious scion of a titled family, peddles museum postcards while squatting in his dead grandmother's Parisian manse, waiting for her estate to be settled. Philibert's roommate, Franck, a talented (and womanizing) chef with ambition to burn, motorcycles once a week to look in on his stubborn, ailing grandmother Paulette, an "inmate" at a retirement home. When Philibert finds Camille deathly ill one day, he rescues her from her icy garret and deposits her in his shabby but spacious home. Franck and Camille take an immediate dislike to each other, a sure sign that they're bound to fall in love-which happens, cutely, after they liberate Paulette. That's when, "for the first time, each and every one of them felt like they belonged to a real family." Gavalda's comically implausible and comfortably predictable novel of misfits is a Gallic charmer anchored by breezy and poignant storytelling. (Apr.)

Irish playwright Hughes follows up his successful contemporary crime debut, The Wrong Kind of Blood (2006), with another gripping and gritty whodunit set in his native Dublin. PI Ed Loy, who's still adjusting to his return to Dublin after two decades in Los Angeles, gets hired by affluent dentist Shane Howard, the son of a legendary local doctor, to locate Shane's errant teenage daughter, Emily. Loy quickly tracks down Emily, but the sordid intimate relationship she's enjoying with a cousin proves only to be the tip of the iceberg for the Howard family's dysfunction. After several murders, including that of Emily's boyfriend, Loy finds that the roots of the violence may be in the distant past. The sharp writing and strong local color distinguish this novel from the common run of thrillers, though the pileup of corpses at the end is an overly neat way of tying up too many loose ends. (Apr.)

An ugly murder is central to this compelling historical, but the focus is on one appealing family, the Strouds, in the backwater town of Ellis, Colo. Soon after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government rounded up all the Japanese residents of the West Coast and shipped them off to "internment camps" for the duration of the war. One of the camps is Tallgrass, based on an actual Colorado camp, as Dallas (The Chili Queen) explains in her acknowledgments. The major discomforts and petty indignities these (mostly) American citizens had to endure are viewed through the clear eyes of a young girl who lives on a nearby farm, Rennie Stroud. Rennie's obvious love of family slowly extends itself to the Japanese house and field helpers the Strouds receive permission to hire. The final surprise is the who and why of the murder itself. Dallas's terrific characters, unerring ear for regional dialects and ability to evoke the sights and sounds of the 1940s make this a special treat. Author tour. (Apr.)

Set on a fictional South Pacific island inhabited by black bantam pigs and a clan of nearly-naked eccentrics, this excessively zany British import has a raging conscience and a muted heart. Managua, a one-legged tribesman (most of his fellow inhabitants are missing limbs), is obsessed with transcribing Hamlet into island pidgin and finds his unconventional paradise disturbed when William Hardt, a white American lawyer, arrives to arrange reparations for natives whose limbs have been blown off by the landmines left behind years ago by the American military. Hardt soon witnesses a staggering array of peculiarities: the "the shitting beach" where villagers empty their bowels every morning; transvestite men forced into dressing in drag by parents who wanted girls; vision quests brought on by consuming "kassa," a red hallucinogenic paste. A few years after his departure from the island, Hardt's successful mission has drastic consequences for the island. Journalist Harding (While the Sun Shines) is an equal opportunity and brutally sharp lampooner, though he sometimes misses (notably in his invocation of 9/11 as a parallel to corporate America's exploitation of the island). Folly, silliness and cultural sucker punches come at full speed in this ribald, imaginative farce. (Apr.)

Readers unfamiliar with versatile author Sallis (Drive), slated to receive a lifetime achievement award at this year's Bouchercon, will get a flavor of his unique gifts in this collection of 41 short stories, many no more than two or three pages long. These are probably best sampled in small doses, so that the well-chosen phrases and haunting images can linger on the mental palate. A few, like "53rd American Dream," an account of a family of cannibals, and "Notes," an obscure collection of endnotes without a main text, fall flat, especially compared with the book's high points. "Others," an account of an isolated man living vicariously through personal ads, and "Alaska," a taut vignette about an emergency-room encounter between former lovers, are standouts, but virtually all the selections have at least one memorable moment. Some of the odd turns are reminiscent of Paul Auster's earliest works, and many successfully convey human loneliness and despair in a way that Cornell Woolrich would have found familiar. (Apr.)

This stark but engrossing portrait of contemporary rural Iran by Dowlatabadi, an acclaimed Iranian writer and outspoken proponent of artistic freedom, arrives under the auspices of the Association of American Publishers' Freedom to Publish Committee. A saga set in an isolated Iranian village, it concerns a family whose patriarch, Soluch, has recently disappeared, leaving his wife, two sons and one daughter desperate. The remaining family's struggle for survival runs smack up against a sinister plan from local wealthy landowners who are conspiring to usurp the remaining unclaimed land in the village-a barren, intractable plot known as "God's Land" that has been traditionally tended by the poor. The scheme divides the family, as Mergan, the matriarch, clings ferociously to her portion, while her sons, Abbas and Abrau, sell off theirs for petty change. At age 12, Hajer, the daughter, is forced to marry an older man for sustenance; she is bound and raped on her wedding night and thereafter imprisoned in her husband's home. Mergan, who is also raped, toils to keep her house in order for the day that her beloved Soluch returns. The story is relentless, but beautifully and incisively rendered, and imbued throughout with hope. (Apr.)

This sumptuous fable from Egyptian novelist Megid, winner of the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz award, is more a combination of interconnected stories than a single narrative, but its characters are united in their yearning for the "distant train"-at once real and metaphorical. The idle inhabitants of a remote train station settlement in Egypt's western desert wait desperately for a train to arrive. Imbued with magical, and quasi-messianic qualities, as well as the promise of jobs, the train vexes in its absence-flaming balls fly through doorways; an enchanted golden sea bass jumps from the air; Zeidan, a village elder, is seduced by a jinn (genie, evocative of Arabian Nights); Suad, a young widow, bares her bosom, inspiring men to madness and murder. Desperate for truth and restitution, many flee. Two brothers, Hamed and Gaber, trek to distant Arabia: not for Mecca, but for oil riches-a path that leads toward cannibalism and death. Ali, 14, heads to the city in search of the train-unsuccessful, he finds depravity and corruption, as well as Samira and Zeinab, two other runaways, now sex workers. Megid's prose is lush, and possesses with Marquezesque charm, and the novel's final message is hopeful: life must be seized, and cherished; salvation, whatever its form, will not come on its own. (Apr.)

When Lady Emily Ashton, an unconventional young widow, comes to London for the social season at the start of Alexander's highly enjoyable late Victorian novel of suspense (the sequel to And Only to Deceive), a presumptive heir to the French throne and a slew of robberies by a thief obsessed with Marie Antoinette soon become the talk of the town. The stakes rise after the murder of one of the thief's victims. As Emily risks her reputation to solve the crimes, she must contend with a mysterious beau, who woos her in Greek. The author deftly works in background material pertinent to Emily's life as well as period detail that never slows the narrative. Emily sometimes behaves in unlikely ways (e.g., visiting a man at his bachelor residence, getting on a first-name basis with a woman after a brief acquaintance), but readers looking for a lighter version of Anne Perry will be well rewarded. (Apr.)

The primal fear of maternal abandonment is twisted into this insistently dark, atmospheric novel by London Times literary editor Wagner, author of a story collection (Gravity) and nonfiction book on Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath (Ariel's Gift). Janet Ward, in a settled long-term relationship but suffering from dreamlike seizures, is shocked to suddenly inherit a house from her mother-whom she had always believed died when she was three. Upon her arrival at the small seaside stone cottage in the English north, Janet discovers she is not alone: a man named Tom has been given a key of his own. A torrid spell of stories and dreams from the past (an elusive mother, seal-women and demon lovers, journeys across the sea) follows, along with the present reality of Tom and Janet together in the cottage, trying to figure out who they are to one another and why their meeting feels like destiny. Much of the book is a drawn-out, portentous standoff between the two, and readers won't be surprised at their mutual attraction or the truth of their connection. The prose is overblown and repetitive, and layers of symbolism further weigh the story down, but Wagner's lyrical vision of Janet is palpable through the haze. (Apr.)

Bestselling Robards (Vanished, Superstition, etc.) adds psychological spice to a familiar love-on-the-run plot. While FBI Special Crimes Unit agent Nick Houston goes undercover to track down the drug dealers who killed his sister, ski-masked burglars break into the Alexandria, Va., townhouse shared by Katharine Lawrence, special assistant to the CIA deputy director of operations, and her boyfriend/boss Ed Barnes. The intruders kill Katharine's friend Lisa and almost kill Katharine, who cannot convince them she doesn't know the location of the safe they came to rob. Despite wounds and a concussion, Katharine flees into the arms of good-looking neighbor Dr. Dan Howard, who drives her to the hospital where she wakes up unsure of her memory or who she is. Not knowing which of her protectors she can trust, questioning clues that don't make sense, unfamiliar even with her own face and figure, Katharine has nothing to go on but her instinct, which tells her to run. Nick, meanwhile, reveals his true identity (to Katharine's surprise but not to readers') just in the nick of time. A page-turner that moves too fast to dot every plot-related i, Robards's 23rd novel again spins satisfaction out of appealing characters who fall in love and bad guys who get justice. (Apr.)

Gabbay's second historical thriller to feature Jack Teller falls short of the high standard set by his debut, The Berlin Conspiracy (2006). Teller, who in 1940 is working as a Hollywood stuntman, has to leave town fast after having an affair with the wife of studio head Charlie Wexler, who hires a hit man to deal with Teller. Lili Sterne, a German film star whose career is on the skids, asks Teller to accompany her to Lisbon, Portugal, to help her childhood friend, Eva Lange, who may be in danger from the Nazis. Teller and Sterne get into all kinds of trouble during their European travels, meeting the duke and duchess of Windsor as well as various spies and counterspies. Teller, who finds himself mixed up in a conspiracy to deliver England into Hitler's hands, must figure out how to save the British Empire while still avoiding the hit man. There's plenty of action, but a surfeit of dialogue, flat characters and skimpy geographic detail, especially given the exotic locations, undercut the energetic storytelling. (Apr.)

Darraj, who edited Scheherazade's Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing, makes a capable debut with this collection that follows Palestinian-American émigré families in South Philadelphia. Darraj succeeds admirably in suggesting the diversity of Palestinian-Americans: the four friends Nadia, Aliyah, Hanan and Reema each comes from a family with its own story of exile. Nadia's mother, a doctor's daughter, discovers in "The New World" that the mysterious "tall, slim blonde woman" whom she nicknames "Homewrecker Barbie" was her husband's former green-card wife. Aliya spends "An Afternoon in Jerusalem" at the Dome of the Rock where a hijab-wearing woman, noticing her crucifix, welcomes her in and shows her how to wrap her hair. After suffering the patronizing attitudes of her husband John's parents and graduate school colleagues, Hanan makes "The Journey Home," reconciling with her parents and practicing her mother's craft, basket making, with commercial success. In "The Scent of Oranges," Reema's mother retells her refugee camp experience, specifically for her daughter. Darraj's first-person narrators are not distinct, and her vignette-like stories remain at the edge of plot. There's a passionate sense here of inheritance as a two-way street that transforms immigrants and their children, but Darraj doesn't quite connect the dots. (Apr.)

British author Milton (Nathaniel's Nutmeg and five other nonfiction books) makes an impressive fiction debut with this comic thriller set in 1969. Edward Trencom, the owner and operator of London's pre-eminent cheese emporium, holds the title Life President of the Most Worshipful Company of Cheese Connoisseurs. During a tour group's visit to his shop, a mysterious Greek gentleman accosts Edward and prompts him to explore his family history. To his dismay, Edward discovers that many of his ancestors met violent and suspicious ends, including one who died of poisoning alongside Lord Byron. Edward finds that all the deaths were somehow connected with covert plots against whoever was ruling Greece at the time. The international intrigue is a little thin, but Milton's amusing depiction of the world of cheese fanciers and their quirky personalities should delight even those who aren't fond of dairy products. (Apr.)

Veteran chick lit and YA author Frankel (Hex and the Single Girl; Fringe Girl) delivers a kooky romp about a wedding gone very awry. Penny Bracket, a spoiled new-money Jersey girl, hates her $15,000 wedding dress, but loves her fiancé, Bram Shiraz. So when she receives an "I can't go through with it" note from Bram just before she's due to march down the aisle, she's upset. Penny's mother, Esther, couldn't be happier-Bram, she thought, never was right for Penny-but maternal rage takes over, and when she finds him packing his suitcase in his hotel room, she knocks him out with a champagne bottle and whisks his unconscious body to a hidden room in her mansion. While Penny tries to mend her broken heart by shopping with best friend Vita, Bram's father, Keith, gets hot on Esther's tail-er, trail-as he searches for Bram. Esther's attraction to Keith thaws her icy heart for the first time since the long-ago mysterious death of her cheating husband, Russell. Secrets are revealed, heads are cracked, and protection orders are issued as Keith realizes Esther kidnapped his son, and Penny learns the reason Bram left her. A too-swift and confusing climax gives way to a haltingly fluffy ending. Frankel's latest is clumsily over-the-top yet insubstantial. (Apr.)

In her debut novel, former party girl Cooper smartly focuses on the fringe freaks who fueled the nightlife in the nauseatingly hip late 1990s South Beach: über-publicist Ricky Pascal, petulant heiress Amy, sexy felon John Hood and a host of bar workers and bar hoppers who hobnob with the rich even as they scramble to make their own rent. Rachel Baum-poet, aspiring publicist and hard-partying diva-narrates the frenetic scene from a prime VIP-room seat. The air kissing, photo-ops and drug-and-liquor indulging is the price of admission to the much more subtle seduction of Rachel and her entourage. "South Beach was a town in the business of seduction," Rachel notes. "Sometimes the sheer, overwhelming beauty of the place and its inhabitants was so sharp, it was almost painful." Rachel's love affair with the South Beach party scene ends when her search for "stability versus chaos" takes precedence over the addictive charm of a community that so readily forgives and forgets every destructive bender she (and everyone else) goes on. But it hardly matters: South Beach-and all of its neon-vodka-narcotic glamour-is a much better draw than the predictable mellowing of a party chick. (Apr.)

Modern China is on full display in this mixed bag of 14 stories in which memories of the Cultural Revolution are interwoven with the (mostly shallow) highs of freewheeling capitalism. Qi touches on a wide array of Chinese cultural touchstones and moments in the country's tumultuous recent history, but loose narrative structure and thin characters diminish most stories' resonance. "Teacher Yu" charts the punishment and expulsion of a Nanjing language teacher for substituting the poetry of Tu Fu for the teachings from the Little Red Book (Qi's father suffered a similar fate), while "Love Me, Love My Dog," delights in the absurdity of wealthy housewife lapdog culture. Mayor Fagui Chen, the protagonist of "Buddha's Feet," exemplifies ambition, but an ironic turn abruptly ends his quick rise. "The Test or The Little Rice Wine Pot," examines China's preference for boys and the resulting abandonment, adoption and abortion. Two economical stories, "How Was Your Dance Today?" and "The Swallow: Not Exactly an Interlude" enter a more lyrical realm. Readers looking for an intro to post-Cultural Revolution Chinese fiction would do better to turn to Geling Yan or the late Wang Xiaobo. (Apr.)

An African boy's tribal-tradition transition into manhood sends him on a wild, dangerous journey in this slight adventure yarn. In year 1170 of the Islamic calendar, 15-year-old Bayu of the Muslim El-Mudi clan of Mombassa sets off on his mandated journey to Mount Meru in east Africa. Not only Bayu's, but the lives of the individuals and clans he meets along the way are steeped in legend and myth, providing occasional lush passages of fantasy. The action builds slowly during Bayu's first weeks of walking, and the questing hero's meditations are less than riveting ("What I needed to follow wasn't some path other men had made, but rather my own way"). Things pick up about halfway into the novel when Bayu is kidnapped and held hostage by the mysterious King Shina, who is protected by a savage leopard-an animal crucial to the mythology of Bayu's own people. His escape requires luck and all his acquired skills. The writing, however, is flat, so the tribal battles, evil spirits and man-eating crocodiles come off as mildly interesting set pieces. A thin story and imprecise prose make this feel like a stretched novella. (Apr.)

The 21st Alex Delaware novel (after 2006's Gone) from bestseller Kellerman contains fewer twists than usual for this contemporary thriller series. Once again, Delaware, an accomplished psychologist, teams with his friend Milo Sturgis, an LAPD detective, to probe a mystery, though this time there's considerable doubt as to the nature of the puzzle. Teenager Tanya Bigelow, whom Delaware treated as a child for obsessive-compulsive disorder, consults him because her aunt Patty, who raised her, conveyed a cryptic message just before she died, apparently confessing to a crime. Shortly after Delaware and Sturgis start investigating, one of Patty's former neighbors turns up dead, the first in a series of corpses that appear, possibly as a result of the duo's turning over old rocks. Since the identity of the killer is revealed relatively early on, the final sections are short on suspense. (Mar. 27)

In his sixth book, Cole wants to write "something highly controlled/ that is the opposite," and he succeeds. Once a poet of great formal control and dense, sometimes inscrutable lines, Cole (Middle Earth) now writes simply and sparely, mixing autobiography, eros and the natural world in a voice that buzzes with emotion. Single-lined stanzas accentuate the poems' spareness, placing great pressure on each line. Cole can devastate ("I'm sorry I cannot say I love you when you say/ you love me,"), declaim in deadpan ("I have a fever which I'm treating with gin") or plainly declare ("I'm tired of just being a man"). Many poems look grief in the face, addressing a dying mother, an ex-lover, flowers and animals, an absent god, the disappointing self, even the 43rd president, with whom Cole admits to a degree of fellowship-a rare sentiment these days, especially in poems-a common fear of "some unbroken animal/ circling in the dark wood." There are a very few moments when the feeling drains, but mostly this intimate, honest voice surprises. Poetry "is stronger/ than I am and makes me do what it wants," Cole writes of the bullying that has produced his best book to date. (Apr.)

Hip, humorous, ironic, winking and deceptively footloose, the 17 stylish poems and sequences of Rohrer's fifth collection take a skewed look at the politics and passages of contemporary life. Written in jagged columns, these free verse poems weave their way in and out of public and personal spheres, always careful-sometimes overly so-to keep the reader at a playful distance. Surreal details ("Money burrows/ its way to the very core/ of the Earth") meet political protestations ("In the president's dream... / .../ I do not kill him./ Even in his own dream I do not shake his hand") in poems that take a fittingly indignant stance on an era when so much is wrong that it seems difficult to pinpoint anything. Rohrer (A Green Light) is also capable of great tenderness: "You were so sad: goodbye: I was so sad." The book also maintains an abiding fascination with 19th-century poets, with references to Claire, Shelley and Coleridge, among others ("I think I hear one of Keats' short poems"), who hang in the background of Rohrer's laid-back romanticism. There's a certain slacker mentality to these poems, which is both off-putting and appealing. Whatever one thinks, these poems are often startlingly accurate representations of their times. (Apr.)

In the mid-'60s Shapiro met, collaborated with and imitated-with impressive facility-the first generation of the so-called New York School, especially Ashbery. Four decades later, his smart, many-sided oeuvre includes books on art history and theory, and the nine volumes of spiky, demanding verse from which this volume selects. "Can I see you today for the whole day? How long will that be?/ Here is a present for you. A silver brain?" says one of Shapiro's many poems that explore the outer edges of sense. Shapiro's poems often retain his mentor's puzzling strangeness and charm, though without Ashbery's supple syntax; they also have a penchant for collage, Romantic lament combined with seeming nonsense, self-consciously postmodern self-description ("secret waves are breaking: abundance, enigmagram"), and varied length and form. Connoisseurs of difficulty have long found much to love in Shapiro's work. Yet as the collection swivels and swerves toward the present (and 10 new poems), Shapiro shows more of his learning in modern art, music and Judaica, as well as more of his emotional life, as in a quiet 2002 elegy: "It is not our custom to pray in the direction of the Tower of Babel/ And it's all ordinary, the stars, the stuff of love." (Mar.)

In the searching, extended meditations of her fourth collection, Gregerson (Waterborne) draws relationships between disparate subjects and historical periods with masterful assurance, trying to head off the dizzying sensation of loss or perhaps to prolong its effects. Often, the desire for divine reassurance is tempered by a cerebral wryness in response to witnessing desperation and suffering firsthand. In a poem about September 11, Gregerson writes, "There are/ principles at work, no doubt:/ beholding a world of harm, the mind/ will apprehend some bringer-of-harm"; intellectualization artfully circumvents uncontrolled emotional response. Gregerson's elastic line lengths and flexible stanza structures figure her poetic access to recent and remote events and people, which are interwoven to create a fabric that can withstand the present. Gregerson self-consciously strives toward an understanding of universal order she knows she can never have: "The world so rarely/ let's us in." The poems are strongest when Gregerson's local, natural world becomes a portal to the metaphysical, and poems on mythological subjects and other artists are at times less moving. But at her best, Gregerson's compass points surely through a landscape in which "what was/ the future-cinnabar, saffron, marigold,/ quince-becomes the past." (Mar.)

Originally released in 2003 as an expensive, limited-edition art book featuring photographs by Deborah Luster, Wright's poetic book-length meditation and report on life in three Louisiana prisons is now widely available for the first time. To portray the lives of those she met when she and Luster visited these prisons, Wright's method is accretion, her form the list. Registering a bevy of voices, from the poem's own twangy consciousness ("The redhead here is a photographer and I'm her humble factotum") to prisoners' hopeless missives, Wright (Steal Away) attempts to report what she sees, like a journalist telling it slant. She includes stock-takings of things brought in from outside ("Count your blessings// Count your stars (lucky or not)// Count your loose change"), haunting prison factoids ("Tennessee's retired chair available on eBay"), possible quotes from prisoners ("I've always had the willies") and poetic advice ("Remember the almighty finger on the wrong-answer button"). Piled one atop another, these verbal shards create a harrowing vamp that is as much a compassionate portrayal of prison life as it is about the fragmentary way anyone comes to know anyone else. Wright gets better with each book, expanding the reach of her art; it seems it could take in anything. (Mar.)

Young is up to his old tricks again, cracking wise and surreal on all things animal, vegetable and mineral. This eighth collection-and McSweeney's/Believer Books' first poetry title-opens with the admonition: " 'They won't attack us here in the Indian graveyard.' / I love that moment" and proceeds to list other odd things loved and hated. It's hard not to smile for a poet who puts "time's finked imbroglio" and "the Age of Sweaty Dreams" in the same poem, or claims he thought the poetic form ottava rima was "a Renaissance hooker." The humor and energy of Young's poems often lie between a childish giddiness about life's oddities and an adult's bewildered sadness. Add some surreal language play ("just another ex nihilo yoyo grazing/ on the classical radio waves") and you've got the typical poem by Young (Elegy on Toy Piano). He does what he does as well as anyone can, at times brilliantly, but some of these poems risk becoming shtick ("Every bird knows/ only two notes constantly rearranged," admits Young). This volume could be three-quarters as long and twice as good. Nonetheless, Young has mastered his own style and way of thinking in poems. Only a rare poet can make a reader simultaneously cry and laugh this way. (Mar.)

Few books of poems have sported more apt titles: in 29 earlier books, the almost implausibly prolific Goldbarth (Budget Travel Through Space and Time) has mentioned almost every poetic topic, many that no poet before him has tried. Sometimes encyclopedic, sometimes chatty, given always to digressions, Goldbarth has written his long-lined free verse about ancient Near Eastern crockery, collectible figurines from the '40s, Jewish mysticism, "the cookbook used by Madame Curie," "a spirit from the quantum (and therefore invisible) universe," cancer, bereavement, sex, lust, underwear, "native gourds" and "meteor rubble," Keats, coin collecting and "the first of the many McDonald's Happy Meal toys/ that Jeremy received with his McNuggets." Goldbarth's breathless trivia is an end in itself, but it also becomes a means to simpler obsessions, shared with older sorts of lyric poetry. Why do we fall in love, and how can we stay in love? What do children owe their parents, and what, if anything, does America mean? Goldbarth (who has won two National Book Critics Circle awards) badly needed a new selected (his last one came in 1983); this long collection is just right for this poet of excess and enthusiasm, always hoping to show, and often showing, how "the world// not only works but networks." (Mar.)

Known internationally as the founder and editor of Jacket, the first (and best) large-scale Internet poetry journal, Tranter, since the 1970s, has enjoyed another, broader reputation in his native Australia: readers there see him as a leading figure in Australia's slippery, intellectual, urbane, post-'60s, postmodern poetry scene. This (rightly) big third selected is the first to sample his whole career. Here are the racy early-1970s poems whose sharp fragments protest middle-class complacency, Australian traditions and the Vietnam War, "when the new alphabet soup of the earth/ is raised into a flag." Here are Tranter's declarations of literary rebellion, showing "a gift to stir up fevered passions/ in a fit to envision a disastrous future." Here are his hymns to Sydney, regrets about his rural youth, and later reconciliations with bourgeois householdry and fatherhood: "would we be satisfied/ with our childhood," he asks, "if it happened again?" Here, too, are Tranter's many, repeated, successful experiments with traditional forms: sonnets rhymed and unrhymed, sestinas, Sapphics, pantoums and haiku, among others, including some of Tranter's own inventions. Tranter's cool, cosmopolitan versatility, with its eye on an ambivalent future, has yet to attain the international reputation of his bitter, backward-looking Australian rival, Les Murray; with this big collection, that may change. (Feb.)

In the two long poems and 17 shorter lyrics of her dazzling third collection, Rekdal's gaze lights variously on a Viking ship, horror movies, her Chinese grandmother's mastectomy scars and "armor on display." Rekdal (A Crash of Rhinos) writes with a strong rhythm and an eye for captivating imagery. Her speakers are often enthralled by small details such as a moth's "shoulders covered with fine and surprising fur," leaving her and her reader "looking and looking at what I won't release." The speakers of these poems find themselves similarly caught in narratives: "Every story has its archetype, doesn't it?" asks the speaker of "Post-Romantic," reflecting on the last patient of a legendary leper colony who lingers "in the belief she could not step outside." And in the excellent extended title poem, Sir David Brewster's 1830 invention is the backdrop for a narrative about a relationship in Dublin where "last week,/ they tried to set off a bomb on Grafton." Just as a kaleidoscope refracts and changes the object viewed, Rekdal's subjects and protagonists are often unable to tell themselves from the stories they've been told. Rekdal's new poems remind us that "every simple form could be converted,/ beautified by being combined." (Feb.)

DiPiero's motto might be, "Here I am again trying to say/ what I see." The eighth volume and first selected from this San Francisco-based poet and art critic (Brother Fire) shows a scrupulous, if grim, observer and listener, one whose weighty clarities have grown more moving and more profound with time. DiPiero's first books, from the '80s, examined Italian-Americans in working-class environs, Italians in Italy and the long tradition of seasonal lyric throughout the Western world: "moon, stars, soon day breaking,/ the grave dream dreamed elsewhere." In his '90s books, DiPiero's concisely organized sentences grew more complicated, and more rewarding, even as they maintained his bleak wisdom. From these works through Skirts and Slacks (2001) and into 15 new poems, realistic panoramas and still lifes combine an interest in gloom, dirt and grit-"the taste of pitch and bus fumes and leaf meal," for example,-with a critic's eye for arrangement and composition. Short lines and pithy advice ("tell what you know now/ of dreadful freshness and want") suggest Stanley Kunitz, though other pronouncements convey a basso profundo all their own: "We die, or kill, or let be killed," one poem decides, "then wake to other minor terror,/ to our intensest selves." (Feb.)

The first of two long poems that make up this volume from the prolific co-editor of Verse charts a troubled relationship among the cubicles at a declining paper mill. "Farewell faithful smokestack!" Henry writes, his lines by turns ironic and deadly serious, toxic and mysterious. Using quotes from such poets as James Schuyler, James Merrill and Henri Cole to propel each of the 31 parts, the poem "More Dangerous Than Dying" sneaks up on a narrative and backs away from it: "How late we came into the story/ not as protagonists but as props." In the title poem, Henry pushes language further, cycling through lines that circle desire until the poem itself is "stripped," literally and figuratively-from six-line sections to two lines-fading into "surrender" and ending with "darkness." By continually matching different lines together, Henry surprises ("Some days the tongue needs a prophylactic/ Medusa could use a snaky excuse") and puzzles ("This matter of suffixes suffices/ No wonder the pages allow it to travesty") and challenges readers to drift in a fragmentary, linguistic sea. At times, it feels like a complex pattern of interesting lines without much at the center. Nonetheless, Henry (Quarantine) remains a poet to watch. (Feb.)

Though the 50 poems of Montana-based farrier and poet Craig (Can You Relax in My House) center around landscape and farm work, they consistently confound and disrupt expectations of pastoral poetry, veering wildly from romanticized notions of farm life toward threatening, obsessive, and even bizarrely surreal narratives. There are gay donkeys, a fierce boxing match between hawk and rabbit and constant judgments from opinionated horses. Craig's speaker is conscious of the artifice of the poems, offering trickery and confusion, and sometimes indifference. In one poem, a man holding a shotgun over the speaker complains, "You poets are always sad./That's about all you can do is be sad." At times, Craig rejects his audience completely: "I will pull the blinds/on you, reader. Good bye." Each poem is stacked with absurd reverie, cinematic observations and hilarious, winking descriptions, à la James Tate. They are also willfully uninterested in profounder implications: "people eating/ popcorn resemble/ praying mantises/period." At the book's heart, however, is a moving admission of the true power reading literature can invoke: "It's like I'm standing in a crowded/ public place, having my clothes/ removed briskly by a single flick/ of a powerful finger,/ over and over again." (Feb.)

In his intense and mournful fifth collection, Shepherd (Some Are Drowning) mixes myth, TV, street lingo and fidelity to the poetic tradition to create poems that elegize a world which, as in the phenomenon after which the book is titled, is distorted and bent out of shape. Opening with a series of stunning, possibly autobiographical revisions of the Orpheus/Persephone myth ("One death/ or another every day, Tanqueray bottles/ halo the bed and she won't wake up/ all weekend"), Shepherd continues through cautionary tales for an era when almost everything seems unsafe ("I left my love of me behind/ to fester in the slough of cast-off self/ -regard, with other toxic wastes, condoms/ I forgot") and redressed literature for a darkened age ("Ophelia/ sings flowers in hell to all the goodnight/ ladies"). A 9/11 poem confesses to the obsession TV engenders: "I have watched twin towers fall/ a dozen times." Shepherd's rigid stanzas and ear for music in a minor key spread this bad news beautifully. (Feb.)

Edgar-finalist Rosenfelt's riveting sixth legal thriller (after 2006's Dead Center) brings independently wealthy Paterson, N.J., lawyer Andy Carpenter to the defense of a very special domestic violence victim, Yogi, a golden retriever alleged to have bitten its owner. Andy uses the court system to spring Yogi from an animal shelter's death row and adopt him, adding the dog to a small family that includes longtime pet golden Tara. But when the gang goes for a walk that leads to a joyful reunion between Yogi and a woman named Karen Evans, Andy learns Yogi is actually Reggie, presumed dead five years earlier after the conviction of Karen's brother, U.S. Customs Inspector Richard Evans, for the murder of his fiancée, Stacy Harriman. Suspecting Richard's innocence, Andy tackles the case like a dog on a chew toy, undeterred by an intricate web of deception involving a possible government coverup. No shaggy dog story, this puppy's alive with reliable Rosenfelt wit and heart. (May)

In bookseller Claire Malloy's sprightly 16th outing (after 2006's The Goodbye Body), a Renaissance fair descends on Farberville, Ark. Claire, nervously contemplating her imminent marriage to police detective Peter Rosen, finds plenty of distraction when Edward Cobbinwood, a member of the Renaissance fair group, confides that he has come to Farberville in search of his long-lost father. Fearing that her late, unlamented husband, Carlton, was Edward's father, Claire spends time with the fair's organizers, hoping to discover the truth. A house fire claims the life of a mysterious woman named Angie, and the subsequent murder of a talented artist complicates everything. Nimbly sidestepping official attempts to keep her out of the case, Claire, as always, fingers the culprit, this time in a denouement worthy of Dame Agatha herself. Though this installment isn't up to the high standard of The Goodbye Body, Hess fans will find much to entertain them while eagerly anticipating Claire's wedded bliss in upcoming episodes. Author tour. (Apr.)

In the action-packed 13th adventure (after 2006's Mourning Dove) of Special Investigator Ella Clah of the Navajo Tribal Police, an anonymous tip alerts her team to the murder of waitress Valerie Tso, whose body the killer arranged in a kneeling position "as if in prayer." Ella soon recalls similarities to a crime she investigated years earlier during her time off rez in Los Angeles-one of several connections she makes between current and long-ago crimes. Valerie's mother, Lena, is a close friend of Ella's mom, but Lena's desire for swift vengeance puts the families at odds. As more deaths occur, Ella seeks to apprehend the killer before the Fierce Ones, the vigilante group Lena has called on, extract their own version of justice. The symbolism at several murder scenes points Ella to the church where her father, murdered 10 years earlier, once preached, and also to the congregation shepherded by her romantic interest, Rev. Bilford Tome. The Thurlos enrich the mystery plot with detailed reference to Navajo beliefs in tension with modern Christianity. (Apr.)

Kennealy's breezy first in a new mystery series introduces San Francisco entertainment critic Carroll Quint, whose enemies include far more malevolent people than the movie actors incensed by his negative reviews. A serial killer calling himself Thanatos (the Greek personification of death) e-mails Carroll clues with an Alfred Hitchcock angle. Soon, aging movie star Montgomery Hines, an acquaintance of Carroll's and his one-time starlet mother, suffers a fate lifted from Psycho. After another cryptic e-mail from Thanatos, Carroll gets an urgent call from screenwriter Charlie Leeder, only to later find his corpse being picked clean by birds. Carroll's connections to the victims make him a suspect in the eyes of the police, and he begins to sense he's also tumbled into a Hitchcock plot. Kennealy (The Other Eye) infuses even high stakes moments with a sense of lighthearted fun, and the plot is trickier to puzzle out than one might expect. (Apr.)

Set in late 1980s New York City, Coleman's gritty fourth Moe Prager mystery is somewhat less surprising and realistic than its acclaimed predecessor, The James Deans (2005), which won Shamus, Barry and Anthony awards. Prager, an ex-cop turned PI, has a cryptic encounter with his old friend Larry McDonald, the NYPD chief of detectives. Larry slips him a covertly recorded tape of an interrogation of a snitch claiming to know the secret behind the murder of Dexter Mayweather, a major-league drug dealer in the early 1970s. When McDonald himself turns up an apparent suicide, Prager calls in a variety of favors from old friends to sift the truth behind Mayweather's death, even as his marriage hits a lull, leaving him vulnerable to an attractive young Hispanic detective. Less sharply written than earlier books, this effort builds to a fairly predictable solution. (Apr.)

At the start of Henry's intriguing third mystery to feature Maxie McNabb (after 2006's The Tooth of Time), the 64-year-old Alaskan leaves home-and her mini-dachshund Stretch-to help a widowed, injured acquaintance, Karen Parker Bailey, in Hawaii. Hobbling on crutches, Karen needs Maxie's assistance packing up to move back to Alaska, but Maxie's reluctant good Samaritan work turns hazardous: the first night a prowler almost breaks in, the next day Karen's plumbing is sabotaged. Maxie senses Karen is concealing something when she overhears a whispered phone call. Maxie hires Jerry, the conveniently just-fired plumber's assistant, to help with the move. When Karen goes on ahead to Alaska, Maxie rents an RV so she can tour the island with Jerry until their flight home. But the real danger closes in as they travel to a park, the Refuge, which, of course, turns out to be anything but. Despite a touch of cuteness, Maxie is good company, and she teams with Jerry to entertaining effect. (Apr.)

Criminal justice professor Lizabeth Stuart investigates her paternity and her long-lost mother's checkered past in Bailey's fourth mystery (after 2003's Old Murders), a story rich in history if not suspense. Raised by her grandparents in Drucilla, Ky., Lizzie never knew her mother, Becca Hayes, who abandoned her at birth. Now 39 years old and on the verge of engagement to her boyfriend, police officer John Quinn, Lizzie is especially determined to understand her past. With help from Quinn and PI Kyle Sheppard, she connects her mother to Chicago gangster Nick Mancini, who was stabbed to death in 1969. After 22-year-old Becca, who was Nick's girlfriend and the chief suspect, disappeared without a trace, musician Robert Montgomery confessed to the crime. Decades later, Lizzie's effort to track down the key players in this drama takes her from her home in Gallagher, Va., to Chicago; Wilmington, N.C.; and finally New Orleans. New readers might wish for more character development, but series fans should be pleased. Author tour. (Apr.)

In Hamilton's diverting 11th cozy featuring Lara McClintoch (after 2006's The Orkney Scroll), the Canadian globe-trotting antiques expert first faces peril from an Asian organized crime gang, the Golden Lotus, angered by the efforts of Mounty Sgt. Rob Luckza, her significant other, to end its terrorizing of the Chinatown of an unnamed Canadian city that resembles Toronto. Lara keeps a low profile until an old friend, Chinese art historian Dory Matthews, asks her to go to New York to bid on a rare Chinese silver box, but the desired item is brazenly stolen from the auction house. After Dory's sudden death, Lara learns that her friend's will requested that she pursue the box. Lara travels to Beijing, where a series of narrow escapes leaves a trail of bodies in her wake. Despite the often-clunky exposition (both of Chinese history and of the motive behind the crimes), longtime series fans will enjoy seeing McClintoch in action in China. (Apr.)

In this captivating third installment in Marillier's historical fantasy series (after 2006's Blade of Fortriu) set in the sixth-century Scottish Highlands and Ireland, Faolan of the Uí Néill clan-bard, assassin, spy and adviser to the Pictish King Bridei of Fortriu-must complete three difficult missions. For Bridei, he must track down a cleric named Colmcille. For his own peace of mind, he must return home to Erin and confront his past. (Ten years earlier Faolan faced an impossible choice that shattered his family and left his eldest brother dead.) For his deceased comrade Deord, he must bring news of the warrior's death to the man's family in Cloud Hill, a task that lands Deord's impoverished 16-year-old daughter, Eile, and her toddler in Faolan's care. Faolan brings Eile back to the court of King Bridei, where they find themselves enmeshed in a plot against the king's half-fey son, Derelei. Despite some anachronistic instances of liberated female behavior and a few discordant modern colloquialisms, this episode will appeal to series fans and new readers alike. (May)

Australian editor Strahan (Best Short Novels: 2007) gathers 24 stories from a wealth of standard and New Age publications for a provocative anthology that will satisfy readers looking for fresh, contemporary work that stretches both SF and fantasy boundaries. Walter Jon Williams's bittersweet "Incarnation Day" and Cory Doctorow's oddly touching "I, Row-Boat" extrapolate current bioengineering and robotics trends into far-flung times and places. Kelly Link's elegiac "The Wizards of Perfil" and Peter S. Beagle's perceptive take on siblinghood, "El Regalo," skew family relationships into bizarre and endearing new shapes. Still others, especially Elizabeth Hand's exquisite "The Saffron Gatherer" and Margo Lanagan's terrifying "Under Hell, Over Heaven," defy categorization, offering flashes of primal recognition of the peaks and valleys of human emotion. Except for a few forays into gory violence (possibly influenced by current video gaming), these stories all refract experience into kaleidoscopic new worlds-strange, dangerous and lovely. (Apr.)

Former naval officer McDonald makes an auspicious debut with a military SF novel that through her heroine proves the maxim "amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics." Lt. Jodenny Scott, who's suffering from survivor's guilt after the destruction of her spaceship in an unexplained accident, pulls some strings to get a berth on a new ship, the Aral Sea, which turns out to have a dysfunctional chain of command. Inventory discrepancies, missing robots and officers who either disappear or experience unusual accidents suggest that all is not well. Meanwhile, a troubled petty officer begins to experience visions of the aliens who created the system humans are using for interstellar exploration and commerce. The author captures the flavor of day-to-day life in a military organization and neatly ties the alien mystery with other plot threads at the end, though some of the romantic elements are a bit out of place and the mystery angle may remind cartoon fans of a Scooby-Doo episode. (Apr.)

In this action-packed sequel to Crossover (2006), Australian author Shepherd revisits the far-future multiracial capital city Tanusha, where two factions, the League and the Federation, war over the future of the planet Callay, and the enigmatic android heroine, Sandy, gets caught in between. The personal complicates the political as the League sends a delegation, and Sandy, as ex-League, worries that they want her back even as the Tanushans fear that she'll suddenly switch sides. As the Federation and the League struggle for ascendancy, Sandy must learn to trust Ari and Ayako, a covert ops team looking for the Tanushan underground. Lurching from crisis to crisis, Sandy, for all her abilities, must learn to depend on others, even as she finds that her struggle is more than just a job-she now has something worth fighting for. Beneath the glitz of snazzy weaponry, unstoppable heroes and byzantine political machinations is a very real struggle about the nature of humanity and trust. (Apr.)

Emshwiller (Mister Boots) avoids human-alien first contact clichés in this stark novel about two aliens, Lorpas and Allush, stranded on Earth. Fifty years earlier, their parents came to visit Earth-and waited in vain for a return flight home. Lorpas, a young man, has never known his own planet and scrapes by at the edges of human society, while Allush, a young woman, lives in the isolated alien enclave of the novel's title, hidden in the mountains somewhere in the western U.S. Alternating between their first-person perspectives, Emshwiller chronicles in spare prose Lorpas's journey to the secret city and the immediate attraction between him and Allush. But no sooner have they made their joyous acquaintance than visitors from their ancestral planet arrive, and each must decide whether to return home or remain on Earth. This carefully crafted, ambivalent story depicts alien and human alike struggling just to get by. (Apr.)

At the start of Butcher's superlative ninth Dresden Files novel (after 2006's Proven Guilty), hardboiled wizard detective Harry Dresden learns that someone is killing Chicago's minor wizards. Joined by his police friend, Sergeant Murphy, and his Amazonian apprentice, Molly Carpenter, Harry discovers that his brother, Thomas, is a prime suspect. As a Warden of the White Council, at war with both the Red Court of blood-drinking vampires and the White Court of psychic vampires, Harry has to go into action. And there's plenty of that, including a battle with ghouls on the lakefront that turns into a gripping flashback of another encounter with ghouls some years before in New Mexico. The large cast features such finely drawn characters as gangster Gentleman Johnnie Marcone and Harry's first love, Elaine Mallory. This installment is sure to get a lift from The Dresden Files TV series, which debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel in January. Author tour. (Apr.)

Hugo-winner Ed "Emsh" Emshwiller (1925-1990), best known for his covers for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy, was one of the most popular SF artists of his day. In this heavily illustrated and meticulously researched survey, Ortiz (Arts Unknown: The Life & Art of Lee Brown Coye) hits the high points of his subject's career, commenting knowledgeably on such topics as the influence of the surreal artists Dalí and Tanguy on Emsh's work. Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick held Emsh in such high regard he sought his input for 2001: A Space Odyssey. When Emsh finally put away his brushes and devoted himself to his pet project of abstract stop-motion films, Ortiz makes the cinema terminology accessible to the lay reader. The author also traces the development of Ed's wife, Carol, from an uncertain mother of three to a successful writer of SF (see review above of The Secret City). (Apr.)

Amateur detective and aspiring journalist Tressa "Calamity" Jayne Turner returns for her fourth novel (after Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun), in which she goes back to school, hunts for a campus criminal and finds more trouble than a drunk coed with daddy's car. Enrolling in college for the fourth time, Tressa's looking to get a real degree in journalism and just maybe a raise at the Grandville Gazette. Unfortunately, Tressa isn't a great student, just squeaking by in her Carson College classes until the final project in her investigative journalism class, coupled with a string of unsolved campus crimes, lights a fire under her barely passing bum. Thanks to her cousin Frank and his fiancée, Dixie (Tressa's least favorite person and a hilarious foil), she might have her story: Frank's theory points to someone in his criminal law class. Of course, it's not nearly that simple, and Tressa finds that her investigation may lead to a fate worse than failing. Funny and endearing, with enough side characters and plots to keep the pages turning-Tressa's maid-of-honor duties, conflicting crushes and her live-in grandma's hot new beau-Bacus's book is another crowd-pleaser; fans of Janet Evanovich will see shades of Stephanie Plum in this spunky Iowa sleuth. (Apr.)

In this second installment of the Carlisle series, Pierce weaves a Regency tale studded with intrigue and steamy love scenes, as Fayne Carlisle meets his match in the mischievous, enigmatic Lady Kilby Fitchwolf. Whisked to London by her recently deceased parents' best friend, Kilby quickly finds herself in a compromising position when Fayne's father, the duke of Solitea, dies in her bedchamber. Although Kilby denies any impropriety, ladies' man Fayne has his doubts-and his desires, making the beautiful Kilby an enticing mystery, charmingly naïve but surprisingly bold. Kilby, however, has more important things to worry about, including a violent brother with a dark family secret and nefarious plans for her future. As Kilby searches for the truth behind her parents' death, she and Fayne indulge their passions and discover shared feelings of hurt and loss. But with Kilby attracting countless suitors and ardent proposals, Fayne knows he must overcome his bachelor's instincts and claim Kilby as his own. Mysterious villains round out a plot rich with unexpected twists, witty dialogue and charming characters. (Apr.)

The third entry in Sparks's contemporary vampire series, following the kicky Vamps and the City, raises the stakes-in more way than one-as a vampire hunter unwittingly pushes the vamp underworld to the verge of war. CIA "Stake-Out" agent Emma Watson takes her job personally, having lost her parents to vampires six years earlier. Ambushing vamps in New York City's Central Park, Emma neither suspects nor particularly cares that there are, in fact, two vampire factions: one evil, bent on destroying humanity, and the other good, having eschewed people blood for a synthetic substitute. One of the good guys, Scottish vamp Angus McKay, has been assigned to stop her nightly patrols, but instead finds himself falling in love. Soon Emma's deep-rooted beliefs are coming unmoored: undeniably attracted to Angus, she can't bear the thought of loving-or even trusting-a vampire, but she's left without a choice when Angus's ex-lover decides to capture them both as a gift to her evil overlord. Sparks's plot, though it lacks the satirical snap of her previous vamp novels, serves the romance between Angus and Emma well. Though it should please her fans, Sparks's latest probably won't win her any new readers in a market saturated with vampire-human love stories. (Apr.)

With this tedious return to Romney Marsh (after Beware of a Virtuous Woman, etc.), Michaels hits her series' first speed bump, eschewing the light comedy for which she's known in favor of high drama and intrigue. The result is a contrived romance with more bluster than action. The story kicks off during the war of 1812, in which Spencer Becket is battling American troops. A blow to the head sends him back to his family's island enclave with no memory of how he survived. However, a pregnant Mariah Rutledge soon arrives to fill in those gaps and deliver Spencer's son, a child he can't recall conceiving. The Beckets welcome Mariah into the fold, but keep her in the dark about their privateering past. Sensing they're holding back, Mariah spies on them and forces herself (twice) onto a ship bound for danger. That a new mother would desert her baby just to prove herself to the in-laws is absurd, anachronistic and unfortunately all too typical of this story, an awkward marriage between gaiety and gravity. It's easy to get the sense that, in trying to do too much, Michaels just skims the surface of character and plot. (Apr.)

An attractive expanded and color-enhanced version of the Depression era story that was nominated for an Eisner award as Best Single Issue/One Shot in 2002. Afraid that he's just a burden on his family, 13-year-old Tucker Freeman lets himself be driven away from home and jumps on a freight train heading west. His inexperience makes him vulnerable to all the angry, desperate people looking for any way they can survive during America's economic collapse, but fortunately he's taken under the wing of Elijah Hopkins, an elderly colored man who introduces him to the cooperative hobo subculture. In the company of other social castoffs, Tucker discovers that he does have choices of how to live and where to go. Vollmer's script, based on family reminiscences, rings true; his dialogue has the vocabulary and the rhythms of real people talking, and the characters behave in the sometimes mean but sometimes generous way that real people do. Without glamorizing the characters or their surroundings, Callejo's art creates a solid setting in which Tucker's experience can reveal squalor or grace. Like Huckleberry Finn, this story doesn't pretend to solve the whole society's problems, but it does show a small, convincing human victory. (Mar.)

In the title story of this second volume by 100 Bullets writer Azzarello of his jet-black, ultraviolent western set in a corrupt Reconstruction-era town, the universally despised, mean-as-a-polecat new sheriff (and former Confederate soldier) Wes Cutter sets about investigating a series of gruesome murders. But the motives and victims are intimately tied to the town's muddy history, and Cutter finds himself targeted as the next job for the undertaker. The main story is preceded by three shorter character sketches, fleshing out Cutter's personal history as well as the backstories of his wife, Ruth, and a former slave turned bounty hunter, Atticus Mann. The stories are built around a series of flashbacks in which colorist Patricia Mulvihill's palette shifts from dusty, twilit tones to sunbaked sepia. The artwork-two chapters drawn by series cocreator Marcelo Frusin, the rest by Daniel Zezelj and Werther Dell'edera-is as stylized and chiaroscuro-laden as a vintage noir movie. What trips up Azzarello's story, though, is its combination of nastiness and understatement-there's a lot more cussing and bleeding than there is exposition. The book's deep shadows, oblique images and thick dialect impede clarity, and it takes several readings to even make sense of the brutal, surprising conclusion. (Mar.)

Provocative ideas animate this story by revolutionary female manga artist Takemiya. After seeing how uncontrolled humanity wrecked Earth, survivors form the Superior Domination and decide to move to other planets and improve on nature: henceforth, all children will be computer-designed for rationality, then purged of all memories at puberty so they can be supervised by a "mother" machine. Sometimes, however, testing discovers that the child is a Mu, a hyperemotional and uncontrollable telepath, who are driven underground by the S.D. Having been raised as a normal boy, 14-year-old Jomy desperately resists contact by the Mu, especially the news that he is an exceptionally powerful latent telepath who is destined to lead the Mu back to Terra. Meanwhile, cold-blooded Keith is rising in the ranks of the military forces designed to keep a rejuvenated Earth clean of Mu contamination. Takemiya's layouts are inventive, but her art is a bit fragile for space opera; in particular, her people look too wispy. Her story, though, is uncommonly compelling as it begins grappling with characters who, despite their one-sided upbringings, are looking for the same thing: Terra, family, a place to call home. With echoes of The Matrix and A.E. Van Vogt's Slan, this looks like the start of an interesting journey. (Feb.)

Hipp's original manga is a story of revenge, brutal and primal. All the standard plot points concerning retribution are done early on, but freshened by his attractive art. Of all the Western artists illustrating with a manga influence, Hipp has definitely created one of the most unusual and satisfying approaches. His action scenes flow, brimming with plenty of power and drama. His characters' environments are strangely dark and atmospheric. The character designs are striking, especially the bandaged lead. But Hipp is not well served by his own writing. In the early chapters narration is overbearing and muddled. Characters spout dialogue that is sometimes awkward when it should be dramatic. These flaws soften the blow of a comic that could hit real hard, although the book improves as the plot takes over. The two forces behind the epic battle that takes up the second half of the book run into each other to start off the spectacular fight. The visuals are what's strongest here: many of Hipp's shortcomings are easy to forgive given what he can do with a comics page. (Feb.)

Like many people, Lasko-Gross's protagonist, Melissa, has had a difficult girlhood; like an increasing number of people, her creator has drawn short, anecdotal, "semi-autobiographical" sketches as a first graphic novel. In a series of brief stories that capture the heightened emotional pitch of adolescence, Melissa grows up in a family of hippies who briefly send her to a experimental education school. She goes out on the road with a band her father's working with; she visits her racist grandfather; she's sent to a child psychologist and very quickly learns not only how to outsmart him but how to use psychological tactics with people who bully her. Having worked her way up from being ostracized because she's in the "special studies" group to being ostracized because she's in her middle school class's highest reading group, she concludes that " 'special' is just a nice way of saying retarded or stupid or weird." Lasko-Gross's artwork is a delicately shaded refinement of the caricatures young Melissa draws to mock her rivals. Her knack for odd, distorted anatomy that neatly conveys facial expressions and body language owes something to Lynda Barry, as does her half-cutting, half-sympathetic attitude toward characters obsessed with the pecking order in middle-school cliques. (Feb.)