Fiction

Horan's ambitious first novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright's first marriage. Despite the title, this is not a romance, but a portrayal of an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early 20th century. Frank and Mamah, both married and with children, met when Mamah's husband, Edwin, commissioned Frank to design a house. Their affair became the stuff of headlines when they left their families to live and travel together, going first to Germany, where Mamah found rewarding work doing scholarly translations of Swedish feminist Ellen Key's books. Frank and Mamah eventually settled in Wisconsin, where they were hounded by a scandal-hungry press, with tragic repercussions. Horan puts considerable effort into recreating Frank's vibrant, overwhelming personality, but her primary interest is in Mamah, who pursued her intellectual interests and love for Frank at great personal cost. As is often the case when a life story is novelized, historical fact inconveniently intrudes: Mamah's life is cut short in the most unexpected and violent of ways, leaving the narrative to crawl toward a startlingly quiet conclusion. Nevertheless, this spirited novel brings Mamah the attention she deserves as an intellectual and feminist. (Aug.)

Flanagan's snarkily entertaining second novel (after A&R) is a smorgasbord of colorful personalities and riotous events that would only be slightly less at-home on a reality TV show. Bobby Kahn—a hotshot young TV exec whose first big hit was the game show I'll Eat Anything!—is fired after a scandal flares up when it's discovered that the producers rigged his latest reality show. Desperate to find another job before news of his firing spreads, Bobby accepts an offer to run King Cable, a family-owned and operated enterprise located in New Bedlam, R.I. Leaving the big city and having to downsize his ambition are bad enough, but managing and trying to subvert the egotistical whims of the King family heirs who run the network's three channels (one channel is dedicated to comic books) proves the greatest challenge. Though MTV senior vice president Flanagan is wryly philosophical about popular television's influence and base delights, he still manages to savagely skewer the medium. Granted, Flanagan's humor sometimes degenerates into mean-spiritedness (one character dies after his urine is accidentally administered intravenously), but his take on television's pathological weirdness is fun, fast-paced and unexpectedly endearing. (Aug.)

The sequel to Gore's debut Sammy's Hill (under film development) finds White House aide Samantha "Sammy" Joyce, now in her late 20s and suffering from irritable bowel syndrome, still handling crisis after crisis. Much trusted by now vice-president Robert Gary in her role as health research staffer, Sammy discovers President Wye is secretly drinking again. Then there's the president's father, who, while in a nursing home, may have been sexually accosted by an art teacher—and who dies leaving behind an out-of-wedlock infant. There's also the famous, short movie star, on drugs and with a very large head, who seems to be stalking Sammy. There are camel incidents on a conference trip to India, a reality TV show of the life of the former (and apparently senile) President Pile and possible leaks by a fellow staffer. There are any number of doings with Sammy's nearest and dearest, including highs and lows with Sammy's boyfriend, Washington Post journalist Charlie Lawton. The sense of overload may be intentional, but it's hard not to wish there were less. Still, the book is funny, and the wonk's-eye view of how legislation and trade deals get done (the author is Al Gore's middle daughter) is illuminating, and even inspiring. (July)

Kulish, a journalist who was embedded with a Marine attack-helicopter unit for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, draws on that experience for this satirical debut novel. Facing dismissal over an erroneous story of celebrity infidelity, New York Daily Herald gossip reporter Jimmy Stephens is given a second chance. The country is about to go to war in Iraq, and the paper's veteran war correspondent is laid up after being hit by a delivery truck. To save his job, a reluctant and clueless Jimmy assumes the position. In Kuwait, Stephens joins a Marine infantry company and hitches a ride in a Humvee with four typical Marines: profane and irreverent, but thoroughly professional when necessary. The tough Marines, of course, tease the "sissy-ass civilian reporter," but sharing privation and sporadic combat affect Stephens and his Marine companions in unexpected ways. Though the war has changed dramatically since the initial invasion—lending a strangely dated feeling to the narrative—a steady flow of Yossarian-flavored absurdity ("We're the pro-Iraqi forces, and the anti-Iraqi forces are the Iraqis") smoothes out the bumps in Stephens's odyssey. (July)

Maupin denies that this is a seventh volume of his beloved Tales of the City, but—happily—that's exactly what it is, with style and invention galore. When we left the residents of 28 Barbary Lane, it was 1989, and Michael "Mouse" Tolliver was coping with the supposed death sentence of HIV. Now, improved drug cocktails have given him a new life, while regular shots of testosterone and doses of Viagra allow him a rich and inventive sex life with a new boyfriend, Ben, "twenty-one years younger than I am—an entire adult younger, if you must insist on looking at it that way." Number 28 Barbary Lane itself is no more, but its former tenants are doing well, for the most part, in diaspora. Michael's best friend, ladies' man Brian Hawkins, is back, and unprepared for his grown daughter, Shawna, a pansexual it-girl journalist à la Michelle Tea, to leave for a New York career. Mrs. Madrigal, the transsexual landlady, is still radiant and mysterious at age 85. Maupin introduces a dazzling variety of real-life reference points, but the story belongs to Mouse, whose chartings of the transgressive, multigendered sex trends of San Francisco are every bit as lovable as Mouse's original wet jockey shorts contest in the very first Tales, back in 1978. (June)

Hagen (The Laments) rolls out the entertaining epic tale of the personable protagonist Tom Bedlam, beginning in Victorian London and ending in post-WWI South Africa. Along the way, Tom survives a rowdy boarding school, studies medicine in Scotland (where he changes his name to the more proper-sounding Tom Chapel), elopes to South Africa with his professor's daughter and fathers three daughters and a son. Tom is recruited as a battlefield surgeon during the Boer War, but the novel slows dramatically once the war is over and he settles with his family in the Johannesburg suburbs. His steady life as a surgeon and doting father dominates the story until WWI draws pacifist Tom back to London on urgent business. Tom's trip to wartime England satisfyingly rekindles the story's momentum, aided by plot twists that require the suspension of disbelief. Realistic period detail adds texture to the humor that frequently counters Tom's personal tragedies and sometimes dour outlook. Hagen's prose is surefooted, regardless of which continent, ocean or war his characters encounter. A few lulls pockmark this hefty book, but Tom is a sturdy protagonist and a magnificent relic from a world far gone. (June)

Alongside his achievements in 20th-century drama, Miller (1915–2005) published four previous works of fiction. This collection brings together six pieces that appeared in magazines at the end of Miller's life; all, in their ways, celebrate redemption through love. The blocked, aging writer of "The Bare Manuscript" hires a flesh-and-muscle six-foot-tall model, hoping to tap into the sexual vigor of his early genius by inscribing new work directly onto her body; what unspools are the sad story of his marriage and tender memories of courtship. In "Beavers," a country homeowner is mesmerized by the astounding energy of the beavers that appear one day in his pond, and whose redundant work seems to parallel the futility of human effort, yet also to bravely mimic human emotion. "The Performance" finds the Jewish head of an American tap-dancing troupe, in Berlin just before WWII, invited to perform in front of Hitler himself. A 13-year-old boy's life is transformed by getting a new puppy, or rather, by his sexual initiation with the woman who gives him the dog in the opening "Bulldog," while in the closing title story, an older man discovers a couple making love on the beach, triggering a flood of recollection. Miller's late work showcases inimitable writing and precipitous depths of longing. (May)

At the start of Griffith's intense third thriller to star Aud Torvingen (after The Blue Place and Stay), the stylish half-American, half-Norwegian lesbian ex-cop and self-defense teacher is still grieving over the shooting death of her lover, Julia, a year earlier. Also distraught over a recent violent incident involving one of her self-defense students, Aud welcomes the chance to leave Atlanta, accompanied by her friend, Matthew Dornan, to visit her ambassador mother, Else, in Seattle. There sabotage of a TV pilot in production that's been receiving OSHA and EPA complaints disrupts their vacation. Adding romantic tension is Victoria "Kick" Kuiper, a caterer and former stuntwoman, to whom both Aud and Matthew are attracted. Aud's ace investigation reveals political and environmental chicanery, but more importantly, leads to a surprising lesson about love. Lucid prose and great self-defense lessons are a plus. (May)

At the start of bestseller Child's winning 11th Jack Reacher adventure (after The Hard Way), the bad guys unceremoniously dump Calvin Franz, a former MP, from a Bell 222 helicopter "[t]hree thousand feet above the [California] desert floor." Trouble is, Franz was a member of the army's special investigation unit headed by Reacher—a one-time military cop who left the service to become a solitary drifter par excellence. A former colleague sends Reacher a coded SOS; the two rendezvous in L.A. and the game's afoot. More members of the band get back together, only to discover that Franz isn't the group's only casualty. As usual in Reacher's capers, practically nothing is what it seems, and the meticulously detailed route to the truth proves especially engrossing thanks to the joint efforts of this band of brothers (and two sisters). The author carefully delineates Reacher's erstwhile colleagues, their smart-ass banter masking an unspoken affection. The villains' comeuppance, a riveting eye-for-an-eye battle scene (hint: helicopter), is one of Child's more satisfying finales. (May)

In this scary, cerebral thriller from bestseller Connolly, his fifth to feature world-weary Maine PI Charlie Parker (after 2005's The Black Angel), Parker is haunted by the ghosts of his wife and daughter, who died under mysterious circumstances that left him guilt-ridden. Parker is drawn again into the darkest recesses of human nature when a new client, Rebecca Clay, retains him to protect her against a menacing stalker, Frank Merrick, who believes Rebecca knows the whereabouts of her father, Daniel, a child psychiatrist who vanished years before. Merrick suspects Daniel knows the truth about the fate of his own young daughter, whom Daniel treated and who disappeared without a trace while Merrick was incarcerated. Connolly is a master of suggestion, creating mood and suspense with ease, and unflinchingly presents a hard-eyed look at the horrors that can lurk in quiet, rustic settings. 12-city author tour. (May)

In Armstrong's assured seventh Otherworld paranormal romance, her first in hardcover (after Broken), pretty Jaime Vegas, a 44-year-old necromancer who can reanimate the dead, faces her biggest career challenge yet—freeing the trapped ghosts of six murdered children. Thankfully, Jeremy Danvers, Jaime's hunky and very Alpha werewolf boyfriend, tags along for this hair-raising ride. Jaime, who has made a living onstage and off by her ghost-whispering skills, is in L.A. as one of three celebrity mediums participating in Death of Innocence, a TV special that hopes "to raise the ghost of Marilyn Monroe," but instead uncovers a serial-killing cult intent on man-made black magic. Seeking justice for the lost children and punishing the dark arts practitioners don't prevent Jaime and Jeremy from finding time for love. Armstrong deftly juggles such creatures as werewolves, witches, demons and ghosts with real-life issues. The only disappointment? Marilyn's ghost never shows. (May)

Pringle puts what he learned in writing Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto—The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest (2003) to good use in his promising fiction debut, the first of a new botanical thriller series. His tough, shrewd hero, Arthur Hemmings, works as a researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, but is also a spy for the British Secret Service, which sends him after a greedy multinational corporation that has nasty plans to take over the world's food supply by using the single-sexed dandelion as its instrument. Sure, some of the prose is stiff and stodgy ("He was a nice man, she knew, a nice, considerate, widowed man who had several grandchildren of his own, and who had no idea that what was about to occur on his watch could so change both their worlds"), and Hemmings occasionally comes across as too good to be true, but these are small details in a brilliant concept. (May)

Bestseller Brown (Edge of Battle) takes the subject of his latest from current headlines—the rapprochement between Iran and Russia (the former wants to secure nuclear technology, the latter a new foothold in the Middle East). The emergence of an Iranian nuclear arsenal sets off a crisis, which the usual high-tech weaponry and clean-cut American flyboys (and now girls) deal with as effectively as ever in Brown's fictional world. The author presents his Iranian characters as more than cardboard villains, skillfully showing the influence of Islamic culture on their motivations. Of course, Brown also provides plenty of fast action and exotic hardware, like the XR-A9 space plane, plus such nice touches as a U.S. president who wants to make a space flight. Techno-thriller fans and aviation buffs will be well rewarded. (May)

McFadyen's outstanding sequel to his debut, Shadow Man (2006), provides a chilling reminder: "However bad things may become, evil men only triumph in the most important ways when we let them." FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett is barely back in fighting form six months after killing the man who murdered her family and best friend before she must deal with another threat. "The Stranger," a serial killer seeking revenge for a miscarriage of justice, has targeted 16-year-old Sarah Langstrom, who asks for Smoky's help after the Stranger kills Sarah's latest foster family. The Stranger's murder spree actually began on Sarah's sixth birthday with her biological parents and dog. Smoky's crackerjack L.A. Violent Crimes Unit whirls into action to catch a monster who inflicts pain on Sarah by systematically killing anyone she loves. Smoky's fierce first-person narrative and Sarah's eerie diary excerpts, supplemented by a great cast, lift this scary thriller far above the usual serial-killer norm. (May)

Pendarvis's second book (after The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure) sends up the mundane and extraordinary circumstances inflicted upon and by his misfit Southern eccentrics. His characters are quirky and grotesque, infuriating and hilarious, and his stories' unexpected twists are both impressive and thought provoking. In the title story, pubescent Henry lives with his mother and her uncle, attends a religious high school and is enmeshed in a brutal adolescence, marked by a visit from Jesus, a family medical emergency and a bizarre mission to New York with a former football coach. In "Lumber Land," the sole reporter of a small Alabama newspaper gets sucked into helping a private detective (also the scion of the publisher's family) follow a suspect deep into the woods. The slapstick use of the Heimlich maneuver sends Morton Fielding, the 72-year-old protagonist of "Outsiders," to the hospital. (Alabama residents and an errant nut are involved.) Though most stories are fantastically funny, "Courageous Blast," an oral history about the inventor of a chewing gum that has the unfortunate side effect of eating away stomach lining, is a stinker. Pendarvis hits the heart as often as the funny bone. (May)

Noted Romanian writer Tsepeneag spins out a blizzard of variations on a simple anecdote, marvelously echoing the fugue's repeated statement of subtly differing themes. In Tsepeneag's simple tale, a man is sitting on a bus, flowers in hand, concerned that he will miss the train he is hoping to meet—or is he catching it? At the train station, he waits impatiently for Maria (or is it Magda?) while watching the strange parade of humanity: peasants cradling giant fish, train engineers telling long-winded anecdotes, an Italian tourist struggling to understand the conductor's rapid-fire Romanian. Sometimes the scene switches suddenly, and our protagonist is at the beach or in prison; other times, the action shifts from him to other, unnamed characters, who watch his furious and ultimately fruitless attempts to maintain order. A few of the 25 segments fall flat or fail to adequately distinguish themselves, and none resolves (in fact, most loop back). Yet there is a sublime lunacy to watching objects lose their meanings, people exchange roles and the protagonist suddenly surge ahead quixotically, as when he (repeatedly) runs alongside the bus wearing a T-shirt emblazoned, in gold letters, "LOVE." (May)

Murr elegantly explores smalltown insularity and secrecy in this Commonwealth Award– winning third novel, following The Boy and The Genius of the Sea. Abandoned by his white father and his absent Indian mother, rejected by his intolerant London relatives, Rajiv Travers, 12 years old in 1954, is sent to stay with his father's other brother, Oliver, who has recently followed the love of his life, romance novelist Ruth, from New York City to tiny Pisgah, Mo. In short order, Oliver commits suicide, and Ruth becomes an uneasy guardian to this curious young boy, who shields himself from pain and prejudice with his quick wit and shrewd impersonations. Peerwise, Raj is quickly taken under the wing of Annie Celli, already a striking beauty, joining a group that also includes Annie's soul mate, the delicate and emotionally fragile Lewis. As the friends grow into young men and women, Annie finds herself torn between her devotion to the increasingly unstable Lewis (who witnessed his younger brother's murder) and her undeniable feelings for Raj. Murr takes a Faulknerian approach to his portrait of Pisgah, peopling it with minor characters whose eccentricities provide local color and shrouded gothic elements—one of which reverberates menacingly. Murr poignantly dramatizes love's capacity to effect change. (May)

At the start of this disappointing thriller from Kelman (The Session), artist Emma Colten, pregnant with her second child, is struggling to balance motherhood with her professional duties and the needs of her husband, Sam, a surgical resident at a prestigious Manhattan hospital. When a distinguished new cardiovascular surgeon, Doug Malik, arrives both as Sam's new boss and the Coltens' upstairs neighbor, Emma's life only spins further out of control. She suspects Sam of infidelity with Malik's attractive young protégé and is disturbed by the pleas for help from Malik's young daughter that she hears through her apartment's ceiling. Fearful of jeopardizing Sam's chances to become chief resident, Emma fails to alert the authorities of her suspicions that abuse is occurring. When she confides in the head of her son's preschool, an official inquiry leads to a cataclysmic confrontation. Some psychological insights will resonate with parents of young children, but others may find the characters insufficiently developed and the plot too fantastic to swallow. (May)

Veteran video game designers and coauthors of the World War II alternate histories Fox on the Rhine and Fox at the Front, Niles and Dobson reimagine the Pacific Theater in their latest historical novel. With the American navy still smarting from Pearl Harbor and (here's the twist) a crushing defeat at Midway, Gen. Douglas MacArthur secures control of the Pacific theater. After clearing the Solomon Islands—where the authors put MacArthur at the Battle of Bloody Ridge—the campaign moves on to the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. Following his triumphant return to the Philippines, MacArthur's march to Tokyo turns treacherous. The Japanese launch "mass suicide attacks" on Okinawa—an ominous prelude to an invasion of Honshu. Trouble, meanwhile, besets the Manhattan Project, and perhaps most ominous of all for the egomaniacal MacArthur, President Truman dispatches Gen. George Patton to the Pacific to command MacArthur's armored corps. With one eye on the Japanese and the other on Patton, MacArthur launches the long-anticipated invasion of Japan. Fans of alternative history will enjoy this imaginative but plausible what-if account of World War II in the Pacific. (May)

Set in Lake Charles, La., Causey's hilarious, pitch-perfect debut chronicles one day in the life of 28-year-old Bobbie Faye Sumrall, a magnet for mayhem who feels "a day without disaster would be a day in someone else's life." For starters, a faulty washing machine floods the trailer home she shares with her five-year-old niece. Then she learns that kidnappers are holding Roy, her rogue of a younger brother, for ransom and want nothing less than the tiara inherited from her mother that Bobbie Faye plans to wear as the queen of the upcoming pirate-themed Contraband Days Festival. After a simple bank trip turns into a nightmare and thieves get away with the tiara, Bobbie Faye commandeers a truck and its hunky driver, Trevor, for a wild chase through bayou country. Friends cheer her on, while others take bets on her next calamity. Causey doesn't miss a beat in this wonderful, wacky celebration of Southern eccentricity. (May)

Winner of the 2007 Arts Foundation Fellowship for New Fiction, McNay's uneven debut offers a glimpse into the life of Sean O'Grady, a chicken-processing–plant worker from the downtrodden outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland. When Sean learns that his brother, Archie, is being released from prison early, Sean, between Walter Mittyesque daydreams, scrambles to come up with the £700 of Archie's money he spent while his brother was locked up. After a bank refuses Sean a loan (he applies for it dressed in "fat-splattered overalls"), Sean turns to Albert, his uncle and co-worker, for help. Together, they formulate a plan, but it fails. The money problem is soon easily dispatched, but bigger trouble comes when Archie bullies Sean into taking part in a drug deal. Interspersed are stomach-churning tidbits about the food industry and Sean's recollections of his and Archie's childhood, in which Archie's rapid descent into a life of crime is revealed. Using a mix of street slang and Scottish burr (and third- and first-person narration), McNay convincingly portrays life in a small industrial town, though the phonetically rendered Scots dialogue can be tough going, and the plot doesn't truly take off until about halfway into the novel. Comparisons to early Irvine Welsh aren't unwarranted. (May)

This quirky apocalyptic gangster novel... wait a minute. Yes, you heard that right. Genre-breaking faith fiction writer Well continues his witty romps through the seamier side of Kansas City here, including characters Forgiving Solomon Long and Deliver Us From Evelyn. Rev. Daniel Glory has declared that the Rapture will take place on October 17 at 5:51 a.m., and evangelicals are happy to capitalize on his prediction. Enter "Kingdom Come," a re-creation of events in the biblical book of Revelation geared to bring the lost to conviction—and sell a few trinkets on the side. Church member Mark Hogan decides if the end of the world is near, why not buy a $22,428 luxury boat and borrow money from the mob to finance it? He won't be around to make the payments. Despite Reverend Glory's bestselling end-time book and talk show–circuit buzz, October 17 comes and goes, and Hogan must face the music. Well's hilarious gangsters are only outdone by the evangelicals he lovingly lampoons, and his clever dialogue will leave readers in stitches. Disappointingly, the book ends with the blatant "to be continued." But fans who laugh out loud at Well's delightful satire of the underworld and the evangelical world will be delighted there is more to come. (May)

Helen Johnson, the nine-year-old narrator of Taniguchi's slight debut novel, shoulders the burden of her war-scarred family's sadness. Watching Saigon's evacuation on television, Helen's parents are already suffering from post-traumatic depression: her deeply depressed mother was born in Japan after World War II, the child of a Caucasian soldier and a Japanese woman, while her father is haunted by his tour of duty in Vietnam. When her mother is institutionalized, Helen and her brother are sent to live with their uncle, Steve. A few conversations with Steve give Helen the courage to contact her mother's Japanese uncle, Hideo, in an attempt to understand her mother's past. Though Taniguchi divides narrative duties between Helen and Hideo, their voices are largely indistinct, and their need for connection forced. Very little actually happens, and most metaphors—like the ocean of the title—are flogged into uselessness. A more astute narrator might have risen to the challenge, but Helen is too naïve—even for her age—to carry it off. (May)

Joining a growing field of Austeniana—and, particularly, Darcyiana—Grange retells Austen's Pride & Prejudice from Fitzwilliam Darcy's point of view. Her device for doing so is an imagined diary of a clever sort: Grange reproduces, word for word and comma for comma, conversations from the original novel, but shifts the perspective to reported speech in Darcy's first-person, with his commentary on the encounters. Between the reconstituted passages, the reader is treated to Darcy's ongoing reflections on Hertfordshire society, his family obligations, his sister and, most crucially, Elizabeth Bennet and her family. There are also wholly invented conversations, most engagingly between Bingley and Darcy as they try to resist the pull of Netherfield Hall. On the whole, however, the diary is awkward in tone and lacks the polish and poise of Austen's creation (which some of the sequels have managed to approximate). There's a decidedly introspective quality to the observations not befitting the very unmodern, unintrospective nobleman. It simply doesn't sound like Darcy. (May)

In this enjoyable inspirational romance, Copeland shows the talent that has sold more than three million copies of her books. Marlene Queens returns to her childhood small town of Parnass Springs, Mo., to help wrap up an aged aunt's affairs. Her kinsfolk are "nuttier than a Payday candy bar," especially her 92-year-old Aunt Ingrid, who's involved in a hilarious running dispute with her ex-husband's widow over where his amputated foot should be buried. Copeland's characters are more intriguing than the standard faith fiction fodder: Marlene is the child of two mentally challenged parents, her father is dead, and she's never met her mother. As the plot unfolds, Marlene's former pastor's penchant for wild inventions enlivens the story. His son, Marlene's childhood sweetheart (now conveniently widowed), is waiting for Marlene to come clean about her past and resume their former relationship. The dialogue is snappy and often humorous, and Copeland has a flair for fresh descriptions ("dealing with Ingrid was like getting a caramel stuck in your back teeth"). Although some plot elements are a stretch, especially the longevity of Marlene's secret or a contrived disaster that brings things to a climax, readers will find this novel of much higher quality than the usual inspirational romance. (May)

When last seen in Acosta's debut, Happy Hour at Casa Dracula (2006), aspiring writer Milagro De Los Santos had fallen for wealthy, dashingly handsome Dr. Oswald Grant, a board-certified plastic surgeon and part of a vampire dynasty whose members refer to their condition as a "genetic autosomal recessive disorder." In this amusing sequel, Milagro has recovered from a vampirism infection and is living on Oswald's California ranch when she's informed she won't be allowed to attend the naming ceremony for his cousin's baby. While Oswald takes off on a humanitarian medical mission, Milagro must escape the subversive clutches of clan weirdo Willem Dunlop and Silas, Willem's "aide de corpse," whose terrifying Project for a New Vampire Century features a juicy sacrificial role for Milagro. Acosta doesn't spare the cilantro or the jalapeño in this addictive combo plate of romance and vamp satire. (May)

At the start of bestseller Clark's riveting new novel of suspense, Kay Lansing recalls her first visit as a six-year-old to the Carrington estate in Englewood, N.J., where her father worked as a landscaper. Twenty-two years later, she returns to ask the present owner, Peter Carrington, if she can use the mansion for a fund-raiser. The two fall madly in love, and after a whirlwind courtship, they marry despite the shadow of suspicion that hangs over Peter regarding the death of a neighbor's daughter two decades earlier and the drowning of his first wife four years before. After an idyllic honeymoon, the couple return to New Jersey, where a magazine article has caused the police to reopen the cases. The subsequent discovery of two bodies buried on the estate causes even Kay to doubt her husband's innocence. Clark (Two Little Girls in Blue) deftly keeps the finger of guilt pointed in many directions until the surprising conclusion. (Apr.)

Last seen in Split Second (2003), former Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have reached a crisis in their relationship in this less than compelling Washington political thriller from bestseller Baldacci. When Maxwell instigates a fight with the most intimidating bruiser she could find at a local bar and lets herself be beaten unconscious, despite her superior fighting skills, her partner suggests she voluntarily commit herself to a psychiatric facility. While Maxwell reluctantly undergoes treatment to find the childhood roots of her death wish, King probes the suicide of a scientist found on the grounds of Virginia's Camp Peary, a mysterious CIA facility. Both mysteries are fairly run of the mill, lacking the sharp twists and expert pacing that characterize Baldacci's fiction at its best. (Apr. 24)

Secret love affairs and real estate schemes drive Craig's lively 18th Martha's Vineyard mystery featuring retired Boston cop J.W. Jackson (after 2006's Dead in Vineyard Sand). While J.W.'s kids and wife, Zee, are off-island, Zee's friend Carole Cohen asks J.W. to help track down a stalker harassing her reclusive brother, Roland Nunes. A carpenter and Vietnam vet known as "The Monk," Roland lives in a cottage on a valuable plot of land. Carole, a realtor, worries that someone wants to scare her brother away. Could it be their cousin Sally Oliver, who wants to sell the land? The plot thickens with revelations about Roland's neighbors, provocative divorcée Melissa Carson and Melissa's financier fiancé, Alfred Cabot. The level of crime plaguing West Tisbury escalates from stalking to murder, leading to a resolution sure to satisfy loyal fans. (June)

In Andrews's outstanding follow-up to 2006's Sequence, geneticist Dr. Alexandra Blake, a forensic specialist working for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, finds herself caught in a web of intrigue when she takes on a cache of "Vietnamese trophy skulls"—smuggled into the U.S. by American soldiers 30 years earlier. In addition to cleaning the skulls before their return to Vietnam, Alex helps autopsy a John Doe who was recently killed with a bayonet. Andrews ups the ante with an old letter that Alex discovers in one of the skulls. The note hints at a civilian massacre during the Vietnam War and leads Alex to veteran Michael Carlisle, who served with Alex's late father in Vietnam. Alex becomes the target of a determined murderer, whose connections reach to the highest levels of government. The tight plot moves toward its explosive conclusion when a peaceful White House ceremony to return the skulls to Vietnam erupts into intense violence. Author tour. (May)

In Leon's 16th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, at once astringent yet lyrical, two rival police forces—Brunetti and his Venetian colleagues and the carabinieri—are both interested in a doctor who illegally adopts an Albanian infant. When three carabinieri break into the doctor's apartment and seize the child at night, they injure the doctor, leaving him mute. Much of the early action takes place in a hospital, and because Venetian hospitals appear only slightly less bureaucratic and Kafkaesque than their stateside counterparts, Leon's marvelous insights into Italian life, so sharp when she explores a military academy in Uniform Justice or glassblowers in Through a Glass, Darkly, aren't as fresh, sinister or compelling here. But once the IVs and bandages give way to vandalism at a pharmacy and the family secrets of a neo-Fascist plumbing tycoon, Leon regains her stride and the novel's last fifth is first-rate and masterful. Leon seldom delivers a "feel good" ending, choosing instead conclusions that are wise and inevitable while still being unsettling. (May)

Undercurrents of sexual exploitation pervade Diamond Dagger Award–winner Barnard's diverting eighth suspense yarn featuring Insp. Charlie Peace (after 2005's Bones in the Attic), who has left London for suburban Slepton Edge with his pregnant wife, Felicity. Tagging along is Felicity's father, egotistical romance novelist Rupert Coggenhoe. Felicity and Charlie soon discover that Rupert followed them to Slepton Edge less to be nearby than to escape rumors of a past illicit relationship, which soon plague him anyway, especially after he takes up with seductive, manipulative teen Anne Michaels. Anne, who leads a group of drama students harassing newcomers to Slepton Edge, craves attention and amuses herself with petty blackmail. When a murderer strikes, suspicions point in many directions, including a doctor who curiously left his practice to run for mayor and a local cop who's a macho "ladies man." An implausible coincidence on a bus undoes some of the thrill of the chase, yet Barnard's tale raises some unsettling questions about the "destructive power of children." (May)

Yuppie-turned-menial-job-hunter Helen Hawthorne, still on the run from her deadbeat ex-husband, is keeping a low profile with backbreaking work as a maid at Sybil's Full Moon Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in Viets's humorous and socially conscious sixth whodunit (after 2006's Murder Unleashed). Helen's sister warns her that her ex, Rob, is hot on her trail, determined to hunt her down and claim his settlement money, but the heads-up doesn't alleviate Helen's fear and anger when she spies Rob checking in at her place of employment. Her postmarital troubles soon take a backseat to the main mystery, though: six months earlier, a bank robber checked into the Full Moon and supposedly stashed his loot ($100,000) somewhere on the premises before he was killed in a shootout. Helen's co-worker Rhonda goes missing, and a new cleaning guy shows up who's a little too cute to be true before Viets ties it all together for some rollicking fun and felony tempered with a dash of Nickel and Dimed. (May)

When brassy South Carolina PI Bay Tanner uncovers the corpse of a newborn baby in her winning seventh outing (after 2006's Bishop's Reach), her brother-in-law, who happens to be a cop, tells her in no uncertain terms to stay out of it. But Bay is convinced that the strange charm the baby girl wore around her neck is the key to determining her identity, and the identity of her parents (who may be the baby's murderers). Meanwhile, a local real estate developer has hired Bay to find his wife. When the lovely blonde turns up dead, Bay must decide whether to help clear her client of suspicion. She believes he's innocent, but his drunkenly shacking up with another woman before his wife's body is cold doesn't help his case. If that's not enough, Bay's personal life heats up, as two men bid for her attentions. Wall once again delivers credible characters, a gripping plot and pitch-perfect local color. (May)

Commissario Alessandro Cenni delves into the secret lives of the members of the aristocratic Casati family in Assisi, Italy, after their American niece is murdered during Holy Week in Brophy's rock-solid debut. When Brooklyn transplant Rita Minelli turns up dead in the family cemetery vault, Cenni interrogates her relatives, who were not pleased when she came to live with them and don't seem especially sorry to see her go. Cenni is positive that one of the Casatis is the murderer; his only question, considering that each appears to have had either motive or the means, is who. The deeper he probes, the more this family makes the Borgias look well adjusted. This well-paced murder mystery carries the reader along even after the identity of the culprit becomes clear. Believable narrative twists combined with excellent characterization, rich dialogue and a finely depicted setting will please lovers of old-style deductive detective fiction. (May)

Karp's second comic police thriller (after 2006's The Rabbit Factory), set in the glitzy world of Hollywood moguls and wannabes, is an uneven blend of gallows humor and gore. When mega-producer Barry Gerber turns up drained of blood in a trash can, LAPD detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs, who had been hoping to enter a deal with the victim for a movie adaptation of one of their high-profile cases, are assigned to investigate. Their workload doubles when the A-list star of Gerber's last blockbuster, actor Damian Hedge, is abducted, apparently by the same person responsible for the producer's murder. Karp intersperses Lomax's snappy first-person narration with scenes from the criminal's perspective, eliminating most of the mystery and making the motive for the crimes obvious early on. Though brisk and cynical, this depiction of Tinseltown falls short of the standard set by Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty. (May)

This intriguing first in a new series from Freydont (A Merry Little Murder and four other mysteries featuring dancer Linda Haggerty) introduces mathematician and Sudoku whiz Katie McDonald. Katie, a self-professed geek who works for a hush-hush government think tank, returns to her hometown of Granville, N.H., at the behest of her former mentor, P.T. Avondale. Katie is shocked to find Avondale frail and preoccupied, his beloved puzzle museum in serious disrepair and dire financial straits. Before Katie can make sense of the situation, she discovers Avondale murdered in his office—slumped over an unfinished Sudoku puzzle that may provide a clue to the killer's identity. She tops the brash new police chief's suspect list and decides to solve the case on her own, not only to clear her name but to save the Avondale museum from the wrecking ball. Readers will want to see a lot more of the intelligent and endearing Katie. (May)

Camilleri's agreeable eighth contemporary police procedural featuring the crotchety but insightful Inspector Montalbano finds the Italian detective at home in Marinella enjoying the ministrations of his wife, Livia, after he was shot by a child trafficker in 2006's Rounding the Mark. But his recuperation is hampered by the demands of a new case: the abduction of Susanna Mistretta, an attractive university student and daughter of a geologist. Unable to trust his colleagues to handle the case properly, Montalbano focuses on subtle anomalies—such as the direction the missing girl's motorbike was pointed—that suggest the kidnapping is more than the simple extortion attempt it appears to be. The witty writing and acerbic protagonist should appeal to fans of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. (May)

Near-future San Francisco, lashed by climate-change storms, shelters a strange variety of stereotypical beings in Palwick's inflated third exploration (after Flying in Place and The Necessary Beggar) of social, technological, religious and ecological themes. Palwick's central conflict, anti-AI Luddites versus big business AI producer MacroCorp, sputters and fizzles somewhere behind two lengthy narratives of the same story—the fate of Nicholas, a brain-damaged child survivor of an African pandemic virus and adopted son of Meredith Walford, the daughter of MacroCorp's leader, Preston Walford, who dies of the virus and is soon "translated" into virtually immortal cyberlife, where he tries to remake society. Meredith and Roberta Danton, who suffers from state-prohibited "excessive altruism," try to save Nicholas from brainwiping with the help of "Fred," a soothing AI neo-Mr. Rogers, who turns into a verbose high-tech house. Younger readers may best appreciate this sprawling book. (June)

British author McDonald's outstanding SF novel channels the vitality of South America's largest country into an edgy, post-cyberpunk free-for-all. McDonald sets up three separate characters in different eras—a cynical contemporary reality-TV producer, a near-future bisexual entrepreneur and a tormented 18th-century Jesuit agent. He then slams them together with the revelation that their worlds are strands of an immense quantum multiverse, and each of them is threatened by the Order, a vast conspiracy devoted to maintaining the status quo until the end of time. As McDonald weaves together the separate narrative threads, each character must choose between isolation or cooperation, and also between accepting things as they are or taking desperate action to make changes possible. River of Gods (2004), set in near-future India, established McDonald as a leading writer of intelligent, multicultural SF, and here he captures Latin America's mingled despair and hope. Chaotic, heartbreaking and joyous, this must-read teeters on the edge of melodrama, but somehow keeps its precarious balance. (May)

A few years after Sword, a young man once known as Breaker, destroyed the Dark Lord of the Galbek Hills in The Wizard Lord (2006), his short-lived respite from defending the land of Barokan comes to an end in this solid second installment in Watt-Evans's Annals of the Chosen trilogy. As one of the eight magically empowered Chosen, Sword must protect Barokan against the possibility of its Wizard Lord going rogue. Now, the Wizard Lord's strange behavior has begun to worry the Chosen, and they must determine if his motivation to modernize Barokan is benevolent or if he intends to do away with magic in order to consolidate power. Though Sword's ambivalence about his violent duties makes him a reluctant hero, when it comes time for him to act, he does so swiftly and decisively. Fans of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance saga will find this series much to their taste. (May)

At the start of Australian author Rogers's inventive but disappointing debut, Walter, a four-year-old boy with sudden intimations of mortality, makes the mistake of banishing from his closet a monster who was actually his protector. This leaves him prey to the depredations of Henry, a former rogue medical student now aged over 150, whom we first meet in an unconvincing Boston of 1840, rife with such anachronisms as gaslights and doctors aware of bacteria. Henry is part of a circle of decadents who have conjured up a demon (the conjuring scene makes for one of the novel's especially vivid moments) but bungled their demonic deal. In a parallel world, Walter merges with the spirit of his protective monster, determined to protect his younger sister, Hope—Henry's next target. Rogers aims for a Neil Gaiman–style plot about evil versus spirituality, but lacks Gaiman's grace or charm. (May)

In this sultry contemporary Southern gothic from Shepard (Trujillo), Sanie Bullard, a 28-year-old frustrated writer, is stuck in a stultifying marriage and husband Jackson's dilapidated antebellum family mansion in South Carolina, where the couple has returned so he can study for his bar exams in peace. His brother, Will, is addled with peyote as well as the family's weirdness; sister Louise is stranger still. Sanie, at loose ends in the "eminently hauntable" family home, hears voices. Unafraid of the ghostly voices, Sanie sees the house—and the Bullards—not as monstrous but as a "frail, musty puzzle she wants to solve." However, the puzzle is stranger and far darker than Sanie imagines. This memorable short novel careens through the mundane realities of a Southern small town, from bizarre revelations of decadent family history and strange supernatural theory to a violent and unexpected conclusion. (May)

The exciting eighth entry in the Ring of Fire saga, about a temporally displaced West Virginia mining town and its impact upon 17th-century Europe, neatly wraps up two plot threads left unresolved by Flint and Weber's 1633 (2002). A mission is mounted to rescue the Grantville diplomatic mission that Charles I is holding captive in the Tower of London (along with an obscure politician named Oliver Cromwell), while Admiral Simpson's fleet of ironclad warships sets off to break the siege of Luebeck in a spectacular display of "shock and awe." While the technology that the modern Americans employ is decidedly useful, Flint and Weber emphasize the effect that the ideas of liberty, equality and the rule of law have, and not just on the peasantry and middle classes. The authors contrast those princes who try to forestall the judgment of history with those striving to achieve a transition from absolutism to democracy without bloodshed. Readers will eagerly look forward to further installments in this richly imagined alternate history series. (May)

Taking two minor players from earlier novels (Something Like Love and A Chance at Love), Jenkins pulls together a clever story of crime, class, race and redemption in late 19th-century America. After Black Seminole Teresa July's bank robbing career is cut short by a three-year prison sentence, Teresa is released to the probationary care of the wealthy Molly Nance, a compassionate Philadelphia woman charged with turning the young, tempestuous bandit into a respectable 19th-century lady. For Teresa, forsaking her beloved leathers and pistols for dresses and manners is a small challenge compared to dealing with Molly's son, Madison. Heart-stoppingly handsome, this polished gambler-turned-banker regularly ignites Teresa's fiery temper with his arrogance. As Molly realizes how well suited the two are for each other, she conspires to keep throwing them together until they realize their own hearts. As the fish-out-of-water hijinks come to their apex, Jenkins turns the tables on her characters, throwing Molly and Madison in with Teresa's boisterous frontier clan just in time for a threat from Teresa's past to resurface. Jenkins's sassy heroines, well-drawn secondary characters and seamless incorporation of black history result in a fresh, winning historical. (May)

LaRosa, a producer of the CBS newsmagazine 48 Hours, kicks off that show's true crime paperback series with this riveting account of the horrific 2004 murder of two young women living in the peaceful wine country of Napa, Calif. On Halloween night, Lauren Meanza awakes to the screams of her housemate, Adriane Insogna. Taking cover in the backyard, Lauren watches as an intruder escapes through a window; inside she finds Adriane bleeding profusely and their other housemate, Leslie Mazzara, laying unresponsive nearby. Neither survive. Police investigation of the murders focuses on Adriane's troubled relationship with boyfriend Christian and the many paramours of former beauty queen Leslie. When a look into Leslie's past leads law enforcement to a number of dead ends, and the suspects all fail to match DNA evidence from the crime scene, the investigation stagnates; new developments, however, eventually reveal another suspect. LaRosa's clear chronology and thorough research give the tale the weight of reality, while his skillful winnowing of details and novellike prose keep the pace up and the pages turning; anyone with a taste for true crime will happily gulp down this sharp, satisfying narrative. (May)

An illegitimate aristocrat faces a determined serial killer and an even more determined suitor in Grasso's latest, a charming but ultimately empty Regency romance. Belle Flambeau is one of seven sisters, the daughters of artistocrats who never married: a French countess, deceased, and an English duke they haven't seen for 15 years. As if her dubious parentage weren't barrier enough to wedded bliss, she's attacked by a serial killer, the Society Slasher, on the way home from her fiancé's and left with a scar across her face. Soon after her betrothed rejects her, Belle meets Mikhail Kazanov, a wealthy prince, who falls instantly in love. But because Belle refuses to go out into society for fear of being seen, Kazanov must contrive an elaborate scheme to court her while feigning blindness. Just when things seem to be going right, Belle is targeted both by the jealous women of the ton and the Slasher, who's determined to finish her off. Alternately entertaining and tedious, this romance features a delightful heroine in Belle, a solid counterpart in Mikhail and a witty supporting cast, but the Slasher mystery proves frustrating; not only is the killer's identity obvious, he never feels like a real threat. Though her characters are a joy, a lack of real conflict hobbles the promising setup. (May)

No good deed goes unpunished in the fourth Zack Walker mystery thriller from Barclay, which finds the newspaper reporter, family man and very reluctant hero just settling back into a semblance of middle-class normalcy after his last adventure (2006's Lone Wolf). That all changes when Zack tries to help good friend, former neighbor and professional dominatrix Trixie Snelling dissuade local tabloid reporter Martin Benson from running a story on her and her business. Not long after Zack tries, unsuccessfully, to persuade Martin to pull the story, Martin turns up dead, tied to a rack with his throat slit, in Trixie's bondage basement—and Trixie, the prime suspect, has disappeared. Zack sets off in search of answers, following a path deep into Trixie's troubled, violent past that could cost him his job, his family and his life. Barclay has a fine ear for dialogue, especially in scenes with Zack and his family, and his expert blend of humor and suspense make this a well-constructed, often witty mystery that's sure to please. (May)

With the plethora of zombie comics and films out there, the idea of one more hardly sounds appetizing. But no matter what genre Norwegian cartoonist Jason touches, he owns it. His style is too inventive and distinctive to be overpowered by any of the latest trends, and it's this art style that makes the book work. It's not that the plot is anything new: a young chef falls in love with a young prostitute, but a gang of zombies show up to complicate the romance. Being on the run from a flesh-eating horde has never been so funny. All the characters are anthropomorphized or birds, all lanky and resistant to big facial expressions. His storytelling is lean and every panel counts, with the action told in an efficient and droll manner with few words: there are only seven lines of dialogue in the entire book. The sweet but irreverent sense of humor reaches its high point with the little twist ending—it's romantic but not in any conventional way, further testimony to why Jason is one of the most dependable talents creating comics today. (Mar).

As collateral for her family's business debt, Haine has been taken in by the Otomiyas and sent to a fancy rich kids' school where she's at the bottom of the ladder. Still, she's outrageously cheery and somewhat simpleminded. She's also in love with the new student council president and school leader, but their differences in status mean she has to work hard to reach his class (in more than one sense). It's an old-fashioned premise—child swaps as business deals—that might fit in better in an old superhero title than in a modern shojo title. Haine's crush mostly ignores her, but why shouldn't he? She doesn't have much to recommend her, just unthinking determination. Tanemura's busy pages leave little white space, and the characters, drawn in stereotypical cute style, can be difficult to tell apart. All this overheated broad comedy—at one point, student outcasts let loose snakes on the council members—would be more palatable if the story didn't pretend to be set in a realistic present. Fans of Tanemura's previous hits, Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne and Full Moon, will doubtless find more to enjoy in this energetic but broadly comic story. (Mar.)

One of Ellison's major appeals is that he is able to capture so much of his never-ending imagination, his "dream corridor," into well-told tales. This collection of comics, as well as two illustrated prose stories, takes that appeal one step further, adapting some of Ellison's best stories into short and sweet comics. The book is overflowing with top talent, including writers Mark Waid (Kingdom Come), Gerard Jones (Men of Tomorrow) and Steve Niles (30 Days of Night). The art is equally strong: Steve Rude touches on the same epic science fiction look that he used for Nexus in "The Discarded." Richard Corben reteams with Jan Strnad for the gritty "The Man on the Juice Wagon." All the stories are introduced by Ellison, who finds himself in strange situations drawn with great humor by Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze). The strongest story is "One Life, Furnished in Poverty," adapted by Strnad and Paul Chadwick (Concrete). With only the smallest fantasy conceit, it's a sad and touching story with semiautobiographical touches. These comics adaptations add proof that Ellison isn't just a great fantasist but one of America's premiere short story writers (Mar.)

Adolescent sexual insecurity gets fed through a blender in this comic high school manga. After having been raised far away by his grandmother, 13-year-old Kohanamaru Taki is rushing through a train station on his way to rejoin his family. As so often happens in manga, he literally bumps into cute Nanao Higashiyama. As happens less often but still not infrequently, he discovers that he's switched bodies with her. When the two kids arrive at his (or, at the moment, her) home, they discover that the problem is the result of a family quirk. Everyone automatically switches souls with the person he or she is meant to be with. Deliberate and accidental body switches and much embarrassment follow. Kohanamaru has even forgotten that he has a hot twin brother who turns out to be Nanao's childhood love—unless it actually was Kohanamaru. The young people flounder entertainingly through mildly risqué situations, as when they take baths and find themselves looking at and (yuck!) touching the strangers' bodies that they're trapped inside. Omote's art is above average, and each page bristles with jumpy energy; unfortunately, the subject matter has been so thoroughly worked over by Ranma ½ and similar series that readers may be as apt to yawn as smile. (Mar.)

This African-American novel of the streets pits its young hero, Blak, against local gangs, his brother's killers and his own inner demons. Blak must come to terms with his extraordinary gifts—a magical ability that lets him fight, lead others and rap at a high level. The plot is a bit hard to follow. It's not always clear who are Blak's friends and who are his foes, and the role of an almost-otherworldly recording studio head is never completely defined, but the book has a driving story line that keeps flowing. The color art is striking and shadowed, full of jewel tones and fantastic motion—this dystopia has a beating heart you can see and feel on the page. The characters are similarly oversized: big and angry, or big and loving, or confused in deep and tragic ways. A few of the stereotypes are a bit unfortunate, but scenes like Blak's encounter with the devil himself in the sewers feel alive and scary. At times, it's hard to tell whether the story is taking place in Blak's own personal dreamscape or in some hell on earth, but it doesn't really matter. The story brings a manga-like intensity to this inner-city quest. (Mar.)

Like Emma Bovary, Delilah Goldgrab longs for a better life. A Queens yeshiva girl, Delilah is prayerfully remorseful after fornicating with young, opportunistic Yitzie Polinsky, and quickly marries mediocre rabbinical student Chaim Levi, who is unable to provide her with a house, much less the glossy upper-middle-class life she longs for. When Chaim accepts a position as the rabbi of an affluent Connecticut congregation, Delilah has the opportunity to indulge her ideas about happiness as the congregation's rebbitzin, with deliciously disastrous consequences. It's hard to like selfish, clueless Delilah or anyone else here: the pleasure of this novel is in its mercilessness, with Ragen (The Covenant) raising the stakes until the very end. (Aug.)

Jamie Whitfield, 36, lives on Park Avenue with her three children and her mostly absent high-powered attorney husband, Phillip, and works part-time as a producer for a prime-time news program. She hires Peter Bailey—29 and biding his time until he get funding for his software business—to plug the household's gaps and be a father figure to nine-year-old Dylan. The two, of course, are attracted to each other, and when Peter's money comes through, he doesn't tell Jamie. Phillip's temper tantrums when lacking pulpless orange juice or a wooden-handled umbrella are surprisingly funny, and a subplot where Jamie chases a trashy but potentially career-making story is strong. Jamie's co-workers are more realistically portrayed than her shallow friends, but even Jamie's children come alive when they root for mom's success. (June)

Four L.A. moms in their mid-30s are bored with marriage and child-rearing. Over meals in trendy eateries, devious Victoria has reasons of her own to persuade Helen, Leelee and Eliza to invent a dangerous, rut-defying game: they will all have affairs over the course of a year; they will confide only in each other; husbands of the four are off limits. Karasyov (coauthor of Wolves in Chic Clothing) gives a good sense of the stakes for each woman and works to give each a unique personality and background (Eliza has a magazine job; Helen's Korean-American; Victoria's mean and has a high-powered agent husband). But the four blur together, and flashes of inventive plotting flame out in an overheated ending. (June)

Conklin's acidic debut takes on "master class husband-hunter[s]" prowling the Big D. Ex–New Yorker Jenny Barton, 29, works halfheartedly for the Wall Street Journal's Dallas bureau, recovering from her recent split from also-journo Rafe. Rafe has taken up with Meg, an aging, very wealthy, very nasty, very married Dallas woman—prompting Jenny to go native and catch a rich Texan. Lessons from relentlessly blonde paralegal and divorcée extraordinaire Aimee and friends follow, including an injunction for Jenny to hide her Jewish background from Baylor Jones, heir to a ranching dynasty. Tepid Texas quips ("That's a Texas girl, always thinking about appearances") mix uneasily with "geek chic" Jenny's sharper observations. (May)

Borden's middling second novel (following Lucky Me) features Bitsy Lerner, 43 and a mother of two in the 'burbs, gets jolted out of her routines when she finds her husband, Alan, on the floor, overdosed on Vicodin. With Alan in rehab, Bitsy, shocked by her family's debt-ridden finances and crumbling emotional infrastructure, flashes back over her idyllic childhood, ambivalent college art studies and single-mindedness about marrying. In this dark finding-myself comedy, the arrival of housekeeper Bebe (courtesy of Grandma) and a focus outward and artward may save Bitsy's inner sanctum, sense of self and recalcitrant brood—just in time for Alan's return. (May)

Eva Lockhart, a 31-year-old management consultant who's not outdoorsy and who's very committed to her career, has had trouble finding a man in Denver. When she meets nice-guy Will online and he moves in, Eva begins to stress that she needs to cook and clean, satisfy his sexual needs and still run her business. Her misgivings are nearly forgotten when Will proposes. But planning the perfect wedding pushes her over the edge, and in a hard-to-believe turn, she gets hooked on speed. Though Eva's drug addiction is handled with all the finesse of a public service announcement, it's a pretty big departure for a chick lit heroine. (May)

When DeLillo's novel Players was published in 1977, one of the main characters, Pammy, worked in the newly built World Trade Center. She felt that "the towers didn't seem permanent. They remained concepts, no less transient for all their bulk than some routine distortion of light." DeLillo's new novel begins 24 years later, with Keith Neudecker standing in a New York City street covered with dust, glass shards and blood, holding somebody else's briefcase, while that intimation of the building's mortality is realized in a sickening roar behind him.

On that day, Keith, one half of a classic DeLillo well-educated married couple, returns to Lianne, from whom he'd separated, and to their young son, Justin. Keith and Lianne know it is Keith's Lazarus moment, although DeLillo reserves the bravura sequence that describes Keith's escape from the first tower—as well as the last moments of one of the hijackers, Hammad—until the end of the novel. Reconciliation for Keith and Lianne occurs in a sort of stunned unconsciousness; the two hardly engage in the teasing, ludic interchanges common to couples in other DeLillo novels. Lianne goes through a paranoid period of rage against everything Mideastern; Keith is drawn to another survivor. Lianne's mother, Nina, roils her 20-year affair with Martin, a German leftist; Keith unhooks from his law practice to become a professional poker player. Justin participates in a child's game involving binoculars, plane spotting and waiting for a man named "Bill Lawton."

DeLillo's last novel, Cosmopolis, was a disappointment, all attitude (DeLillo is always a brilliant stager of attitude) and no heart. This novel is a return to DeLillo's best work. No other writer could encompass 9/11 quite like DeLillo does here, down to the interludes following Hammad as he listens to a man who "was very genius"—Mohammed Atta. The writing has the intricacy and purpose of a wiring diagram. The mores of the after-the-event are represented with no cuteness—save, perhaps, the falling man performance artist. It is as if Players, The Names, Libra, White Noise, Underworld—with their toxic events, secret histories, moral panics—converge, in that day's narrative of systematic vulnerability, scatter and tentative regrouping. (June)