Fiction Reviews: Week of 4/2/2007

Family-fracturing secrets are at the heart of Lent's luminous third novel, a transcendent story about the healing power of love and art. Two decades after an intense romance curdles, hermetic Hewitt Pearce is living in his family's rural Vermont home, firing up his tractor for the occasional two-mile trip to the village, sometimes hiding in his hay barn, and producing prized custom ironwork when the spirit moves him. Upheaval arrives in the form of Jessica, a psychologically troubled waif with mysterious connections to Hewitt's late artist father. Then Hewitt learns that Emily, the girl he loved years earlier and whose life he has tracked from afar, is now a widow. Evocative flashbacks reveal his family's turbulent history, including Hewitt's days of sex, drugs, and rock and roll on a commune and his dark period of "death-by-whisky drinking" after breaking up with Emily. This sympathetic depiction of a decent man wrestling with his demons while deciding whether to revive an old love or open himself to a new lover is less visceral than Lent's astonishing debut, In the Fall, and less gritty than his second novel, Lost Nation, but it's no less magisterial and every bit as beautifully written. (Aug.)

Regret and jealousy consume the overweening protagonist of this frustrating novel by the Whitbread-winning author of Eve Green. Moira is a 27-year-old scientist whose 16-year-old sister, Amy, is in a coma, the result of a fall four years earlier. The accident is made more tragic because Moira, who was away at boarding school when her sister was born, took the new addition to the family as a personal slight and never developed a relationship with her. Instead, she ignored her family and later married Ray, an artist and doting husband. Now she would like to make amends with her sister, but it is too late. Largely told from the perspective of a fledgling adult reflecting on her childhood, the story feels like an extended therapy session, with narration alternating between third- and first-person, allowing a dissociation between the grown Moira and her lonely, moody adolescent self. Overall, there's an air of self-importance that's difficult to penetrate. (Aug.)

In the atmospheric latest from Handke (The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, etc.), a nameless female banker in a nameless northern European city decides for obscure reasons to repeat a journey to Spain she took years before, and to commission a nameless author from La Mancha to write her biography. The journey provides a hopscotch structure for the drifting narrative, marked by fantastic events that may or may not be taking place and by speculative conversations with the dreamlike figures the woman meets. As she travels, the woman is stalked, possibly, by a half-brother whose name may or may not be Vladimir. When the woman arrives in La Mancha, she dictates the details of her life to the writer, with no particular regard for order or veracity. An intrusive narrative voice interjects with rhetorical questions, exclamations and rambling philosophical asides. Much time is spent either denying the truth of what's just been said or in defining events, people or objects through a series of overturning negations. Though beautiful in spots and sometimes witty, the novel is inconsistent and repetitive. For die-hard Handke fans, the appeal of this metafictional fable is in its playful surrender to chance. (July)

Former lawyer Schmidtberger delivers a promising debut about love, friendship and anger-management. Iris Steegers is with Jeremy Eberle. Likewise, Ken Connelly is with Brett Manikin. After an unseemly incident on a plane flight in which Iris loses control, she is ordered to attend an anger management class and incidentally discovers that Jeremy might be carousing. Meanwhile, the day Ken's flippancy gets him fired from his proofreading job at a law firm, he finds Brett in bed with another man. The fallout from his bad day lands him next to Iris in the anger management class at Manhattan's West Side Y. What follows is a not always realistic but assuredly entertaining romp as Ken and Iris enlist each other to spy on their significant others, or ex in Ken's case. The results: a bit about what happiness really is, whether or not staying in a relationship guarantees happiness, and a whole lot about how friendships form and shape who we become. Though the narrative suffers from a surfeit of trite dialogue, Schmidtberger handles his characters with a sympathetic grace. (July)

Hilderbrand's sixth novel heaps on the trauma as a substitute for realistic connection in this heady mix of beach house, cancer, affair and mom lit. Connecticut housewife Vicki, diagnosed with lung cancer, has packed up her two kids for a chemo-commuting summer at the family's Nantucket cabin; sister Brenda, a newly minted high-powered assistant professor, has just been fired for having an affair with one of her students; Vicki's best friend, Melanie, newly pregnant, has discovered her husband is cheating. The three hit the tarmac of the tiny island airport, where they run into home-for-the-summer Middlebury senior Josh Flynn, who has a summer job there that he hates. Hardened cliché Brenda pines for her stereotypically weathered Australian lover. Melanie is a chronic complainer until she romances grim aspiring writer Josh, whom she has run into again and brought on as the house babysitter. (Josh thinks his old girlfriend should "locate her center" and "operate from a place of security.") Of the three women, only the suffering, stubborn Vicki, who keeps a list of "Things That No Longer Mattered" and cries when she can't seduce her visiting husband, draws readerly sympathy. There are some tender moments in Hilderbrand's latest beacher, but others are as irritating as sand in your swimsuit. (July)

Cohen's impressive second novel abandons the gritty waterfront of his Edgar-nominated debut, Red Hook, in favor of a rapidly gentrifying nook a few stops up the F train line. Shortly after 9/11 in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill, Jamel Wilson, a 16-year-old father and high school dropout who finds a sense of pride in his fast food gig, wants to listen to music in his courtyard, but his recreation is a profound irritation to his demographically diverse neighbors, each with domestic dramas of their own. Carol Fasone lives with her racist mother and Bosnian husband, Milosz, whom she's putting through engineering school. Mitchell Brett, a bored accountant, and his attractive but troubled wife, Kristin, are trying to have a child. Grace Howard, a West Indian lady, is a workaholic at a downtown insurance company hoping for a big promotion and some romance. Jamel's mother, Melba, sells real estate and struggles to keep Jamel off the streets. But when tempers flare over the loud music, the cops are of little help and the situation turns volatile. Despite an unsurprising climax, Cohen's tight plot, complex characters and vibrant cityscape create a convincing slice of urban life. (July)

Heavily influenced by post-9/11 paranoia, Moody's mostly successful trio of novellas pits its wayward characters against conspiracies sometimes entirely imagined. Dr. James Van Deusen, the loquacious, alcoholic, patently unreliable narrator of "The Omega Force," relies on his background in a "cabinet-level agency" and a mass market thriller to unravel a murky plot that, in his hobbled head, involves locals and a group of "dark-complected" individuals targeting the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. "K&K," the weakest of the three, takes the hidden tensions of a small insurance brokerage's office to an absurd level as office manager Ellie Knight-Cameron investigates a string of bizarre anonymous suggestions left in the office's suggestion box. Ellie's obsession isn't quite believable, and the novella ends abruptly, as if Moody gave up on it. "The Albertine Notes," the strongest piece in the book, describes a future New York after a dirty bomb destroys much of Manhattan. Kevin Lee fills his reporter's notebook for a story about the new drug of choice, Albertine, which transports users into their most pleasurable memories. Kevin succumbs to Albertine as well, and the layering of hallucination and reality that follows demonstrates why Moody has a reputation as a deft stylist. Two out of three ain't bad. (June)

This oddly flat thriller from first-time novelist Richtel opens with a warning in a dead girlfriend's handwriting, followed by an explosion in a San Francisco cafe. Nat Idle, who barely escapes, is perplexed by the note: his girlfriend Annie--from a very wealthy family involved in various opaque concerns--was swept off her sailboat four years ago and never seen again. Nat tracks down survivors of the blast, including waitress Erin Coultran, whose actions make Nat suspicious; when the home of aspiring novelist Simon Anderson, another survivor, catches on fire, Nat's suspicions intensify. Nat's investigations take him to Strawberry Labs, Annie's family company possibly named after Annie's childhood Labrador retriever. Despite intentionally short chapters à la The Da Vinci Code, Richtel (who writes the comic strip Rudy Parkunder nom de plume Theron Heir) has trouble bringing Nat to life or tension to the plot--in part because of Nat's first-person flashbacks to his relationship with Annie. Richtel's trying to do a brainy update of classic noir, but falls slightly short. (June)

In Lustbader's workmanlike second novel to continue the saga of Robert Ludlum's amnesiac assassin and spy (after 2004's The Bourne Legacy), Jason Bourne joins the war on terror. Troubled by visions of a woman dying in his arms, Bourne seeks psychiatric help, unaware that the doctor is an imposter who has tampered with the rogue agent's already messy and incomplete memories. That mental sabotage is part of a diabolical plan by Islamic terrorists to strike at Washington, D.C., led by Karim, a human chameleon who has fooled the CIA—and Bourne—into believing that he's actually deputy CIA director Martin Lindros. Aided by an attractive fellow agent who manages to overcome her distrust of Bourne, he races the clock to uncover the traitor within the intelligence community. Lustbader is less successful than Ludlum in dramatizing Bourne's inner torment—a feature that distinguished the character from many similar thriller heroes. (June)

Schulman (P.S.; The Revisionist) doesn't disappoint with this narrative spanning 24 terrible hours in the life of the Falktopf family on a certain September day. Husband and wife Gerhard and Suzannah, somewhat mismatched, struggle to come to terms with each other, the turns their lives have begun to take and their artsy downtown Manhattan existence. Suzannah is a 36-year-old former dancer turned stay-at-home mother of autistic son Nikolai, while choreographer Gerhard is autodidactic, worldly, anal retentive and unaffectionate, and has just been notified by his dance company's board that he is to be replaced by someone "committed to the spirit of the early Gerhard Falktopf" and that the company is trying to usurp his works, including his crowning achievement, yet-to-be-premiered A Day at the Beach. The Falktopfs watch (separately: Suzannah from their apartment, Gerhard from a nearby bank) in horror as the towers burn and collapse before fleeing to East Hampton. There, Gerhard and Suzannah navigate their troubled marriage and a few moral predicaments brought on by chance meetings with long-lost friends. Schulman's novel succeeds as a haunting, poignant remembrance. (June)

Moscow-based Senior Investigator Arkady Renko, in his outstanding sixth outing (after Wolves Eat Dogs), investigates a murder-for-hire scheme that leads him to suspect two fellow police detectives, Nikolai Isakov and Marat Urman, both former members of Russia's elite Black Berets, who served in Chechnya. Isakov, a war hero, is now running for public office. Renko must also look into reports that the ghost of Stalin has begun appearing on subway platforms and why several bodies of Black Berets who served in Chechnya with Isakov have turned up in the morgue. Despite repeated threats to his life, Renko stubbornly perseveres, seeking justice in a land that has no official notion of that concept. Smith eschews vertiginous twists and surprises, concentrating instead on Renko as he slowly and patiently builds his case until the pieces fall together and he has again, if not exactly triumphed, at least survived. This masterful suspense novel casts a searing light on contemporary Russia. 250,000 first printing. (June)

Though Michaels, who died in 2003 at the age of 70, is probably best known for his novel The Men's Club (1981), these 38 stories attest to his skill as a short story writer. Readers coming to Michaels's work for the first time will find the early, pointed stories from his noteworthy collections, Going Places and I Would Have Saved Them If I Could as well as some of his later works that have never been collected. Michaels's early stories are written with a frantic sexuality that displays his distinctive dark humor. In "Fingers and Toes," recurring characters Henry and Phillip weigh the value of their friendship against their encounters with the same woman through a set of urban hallucinations characteristic of the early stories. Raphael Nachman, the icon of Michaels's later fiction, is an aging mathematician at UCLA and a surprising foil to Michaels's usual kinetic energy. In the first Nachman story, the professor takes a guest lectureship in his ancestral Poland and tries to reconcile his analytical yet peaceful view of the world with his family's history. Fans of the author should be thrilled at having such a wide body of work between two covers. Simultaneous publication with the reissue of Michaels's novel Sylvia. (June)

This collection of 18 sketches, 10 of which appeared in the New Yorker, is Allen's first in 25 years. The animating comedy is part S.J. Perelman and part borscht belt: Allen piles the ludicrous on top of the ridiculous and tops it with an acidic lemon squeeze, and then just keeps the jokes coming. So when the babysitter in "Nanny Dearest" describes her boss—"Bidnick gorges himself on Viagra, but the dosage makes him hallucinate and causes him to imagine he is Pliny the Elder"—we laugh; when, in a piece making fun of the New York Times science page, "Strung Out," Allen notes that "to a man standing on the shore, time passes quicker than to a man on a boat—especially if the man on the boat is with his wife"—we groan. Sometimes the simplest pieces work best: man goes to New Age retreat and learns to levitate, but not to get back down. While this collection doesn't quite measure up to Allen's Without Feathers (1975), there are pieces here—for instance, the report on Mickey Mouse's testimony at the Michael Eisner/Michael Ovitz trial—that will put a rictus on your kisser. (June)

Humorist Notaro (The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, etc.) transitions to fiction with a comic mix of wife lit and smalltown suspense. When Maye Roberts's husband, Charlie, gets a tenure-track job at prestigious Spaulding University, childless, 30-something Maye leaves her tight-knit group of friends and job as a Phoenix reporter to move to the school's eponymous Washington State burg. While Charlie fits in easily, Maye, after a faculty dinner run-in with Dean Spaulding's wife, Rowena, feels lonely and bored. When she learns about the Sewer Pipe Queen pageant, a local tradition that guarantees the winner a town full of friends, she enters with her singing dog, inflaming Rowena further. As tensions thicken, Maye's rather notorious pageant sponsor, Ruby, may hold the key to Rowena's continuing rage and to the decades-old incident that sparked it. Though some of the plot falls flat, Notaro makes Maye's perspective strong enough to hold the story together, and the book is filled with the same winningly acerbic riffs that drive Notaro's popular essays. (June)

Leung gingerly reacquaints an estranged father and son who travel through China in this sagacious and lyrical debut novel. When Westen Chan's American mother died, his Chinese father, Xin, left him with his Caucasian great-aunt and uncle in rural Washington State, promising one day to return and take his son on a journey to Xin's village in China. More than 20 years have passed when Xin's invitation finally arrives. Westen is 32, but in many ways still childlike: insecure, resentful and stubborn. A virgin, he at least partially blames his romantic difficulties, with both men and women, on being abandoned by his father. Xin, now elderly, ill and trying to cope with his own guilt, is unsure if he can reconnect with his son. The two haltingly reintroduce and explain themselves, and while on the trip, Xin confides in Westen about the hardship he left behind in his village and shares ancient traditions. The stories of the two men, told in an alternating first person, become increasingly gripping: "Be careful about judging people without knowing all their history," says Xin, who also bears an unopened letter from Westen's mother to her son. Throughout, Leung handles the complex father-son relationship with care, and does a marvelous job negotiating the two men's fraught cultural and emotional legacies. (June)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants author delivers her first novel for adults, a treacly tale about the tribulations a trio of longtime friends encounter. For as long as she can remember, 21-year-old Alice has spent summers on Fire Island with her parents and older sister, Riley. Riley, 24, is a beach lifeguard, more boyish in both looks and spirit than sweet, feminine Alice. An island neighbor and Riley's best friend, Paul, whose father is dead and mother mostly absent, returns to the island after two years away and must decide whether to sell his family's house there. More importantly, he and Alice finally act on an attraction they've felt for years, but they keep their frequent nuzzling quiet so as not to hurt Riley. Riley, meanwhile, has her own problems that could ruin Alice and Paul's clandestine romance and just about everything else. Brashares's YA roots are on display: the girls and Paul act like high school kids (Riley threatens to move out of the house unless everyone butts out; Paul and Alice are stricken with the most saccharine of puppy love), and anything below the surface is left untouched. It's a beach read, for sure, but a mediocre one. (June)

In Temple's beautifully written eighth crime novel, Joe Cashin, a city homicide cop recovering from an injury, returns to the quiet coastal area of South Australia where he grew up. There he investigates the beating death of elderly millionaire Charles Bourgoyne. After three aboriginal teens try to sell Bourgoyne's missing watch, the cops ambush the boys, killing two. When the department closes the case, Joe, a melancholy, combative cynic sympathetic to underdogs, decides to find the truth on his own. His unauthorized inquiry, which takes him both back in time and sideways into a netherworld of child pornography and sexual abuse, leads to a shocking conclusion. Temple (An Iron Rose), who has won five Ned Kelly Awards, examines Australian political and social divisions underlying the deceptively simple murder case. Many characters, especially the police, exhibit the vicious racism that still pervades the country's white society. Byzantine plot twists and incisively drawn characters combine with stunning descriptions of the wild, lush, menacing Australian landscape to make this an unforgettable read. (June)

The team behind The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl returns with another breezy chick lit portrayal of a woman wronged and, eventually, empowered. When Kate Hollis's childhood chum Laura calls from their Vermont hometown and announces the arrival of Jake Sharpe, a mega rock star and Kate's high school sweetheart, Kate jumps on a plane from Charleston, S.C. (where she's a sustainable development consultant) and makes for idyllic Croton Falls. Through it's been 13 years, Kate still has a primal need to confront not only the boy who abandoned her before the senior prom, but the musical pirate who used her personal life as fodder for his most celebrated songs and cheated his high school bandmates out of deserved recognition and royalties. Chapters switch back and forth between the present and the pivotal middle and high school years where Kate (then Katie) and Jake did the first-love thing: readers get to see Jake's growing he's-just-not-that-into-you-ness and how (surprise!) their Zima-fueled love (it was the '90s) was idealized. While one spends much of the book wanting to shout at Kate to give it up, go back to Charleston and get on with it, McLaughlin and Kraus do get the nagging need for closure in even the shallowest relationships comically right. (June)

The women protagonists of Thompson's hard-hitting latest collection of stories (The Gasoline Wars; 1999 NBA finalist Who Do You Love) have, like the young army wife of "It Would Not Make Me Tremble to See Ten Thousand Fall," secret plans to wrest control of their life from husbands, boyfriends and mothers. Kelly Ann Pardee, a high school dropout stuck at home with a child while her army grunt husband is sent to the Middle East, wants to be a warrior, too. The teenage Jessie in "The Five Senses" has run off to Florida with an older man she is beginning to realize is violent and scary, and yet she is disappointed that her new fugitive existence isn't more exciting than her upper-middle-class life. Older women in these stories have been through the mill—of marriage, adultery, child-rearing. Mid-40s Melanie of "A Normal Life" marries Chad after a long affair, only to wonder if this new version of her lover is one she wants. In "Holy Week," seething sales agent Olivia Snow is too worn down by her job and single mom drudgery to upgrade her "subemployed musician" boyfriend or realize how at risk her 17-year-old daughter is. Thompson's talent is on full display. (June)

Former attorney Ghelfi's impressive debut introduces a compelling antihero, Alekei "Volk" Volkovoy. A brutal killer maimed in Russia's war against Chechnya, Volk leads two lives—one as a powerful gangster with a hand in virtually all underworld rackets, the other as a covert military operative. When Volk gets the chance to steal a previously unknown Da Vinci painting, Leda and the Swan, which has been concealed beneath another painting in a St. Petersburg museum, Volk enlists the aid of Valya, a beautiful assassin, in plotting the theft. After an ostensible ally sabotages the operation, Volk seeks vengeance. The twists and turns accumulate at an almost dizzying pace, building to a satisfactory resolution. Frederick Forysth fans will appreciate the crisp writing. This thriller could mark the start of a successful long-running series. (June)

Staking out uncomfortable territory between gonzo humor and something far more serious, this thrill-packed romp from novelist (Moist; Delicious) and screenwriter Smith is set primarily in Thailand. While vacationing, unemployed rock star Turk Henry, a recovering sex addict, tries to avoid the temptations of his many fans, a predicament sent up beautifully by Smith. Meanwhile, Turk's wife, Sheila, takes a group tour elephant ride—only to have her party kidnapped by Captain Somporn and his violent band of former narcotics policemen. The novel alternates between explicit sex scenes involving Turk and the fairly severe acts of violence against Sheila and her fellow tourists. As the situation turns deadly, Turk has to rouse himself to save his wife, a challenge that Smith manages to make more meaningful than just one man's waking from a cosseted cocoon. Humor and suspense rub up against each other uneasily throughout, but Smith's writing is sharp, and Turk makes a blundering, contradictory and very compelling lead. (June)

Kathryn Dance, an investigator with the California Bureau of Investigation, returns from Deaver's The Cold Moon (where she was a secondary) in this post–prison break pulse-pounder. Dance is the lead cop handling the escape of psychopathic killer Daniel Pell, dubbed "Son of Manson" by the press for his "family" of young runaways and his most horrendous crime, the murders of computer engineer William Croyton, Croyton's wife and two of their three children. The only child left alive, nine-year-old Theresa, is known as the Sleeping Doll. Pell, charismatic and diabolically intelligent, continually eludes capture, but Dance, a specialist in interrogation and kinesics (or body language), is never more than a few suspenseful minutes behind. Dance is nicely detailed, and procedural scenes where she uses somatic cues to ferret out liars are fascinating. The book sags in its long middle, but toward the end Deaver digs into his bottomless bag of unexpected twists and turns, keeping readers wide-eyed with surprise, and leaving them looking forward to more of the perspicacious Dance. (June)

Gagliano's debut crackles with the same energy that characterized Robert Crais's early Elvis Cole novels. Jack Vaughn, a disgraced New York City cop, has moved to Miami and become a personal trainer—"a gym rat for hire." Retired colonel Andrew Patterson, owner of Pellucid Labs and a former exercise client, offers Jack $100K for an unusual job: sinking the yacht that's parked a couple of hundred yards offshore behind the colonel's beach house, along with a dead man on board. Complicating Jack's decision is the fact that the colonel's daughter, Vivian, happens to be Jack's former lover, who left him for pornographer Randy Matson, the dead man on the boat. Jack resists the job for a while, but eventually climbs aboard, at which point very bad things start to happen. Gagliano's Miami is a jittery mix of beautiful women, handsome bad boys, thugs, smugglers and weird eccentrics, all of whom the author draws with panache. With Jack Vaughn's first outing, Gagliano makes an auspicious beginning on a promising new series. (June)

A 31-year old Japanese journalist finds refuge from her self-destructive impulses with a long-distance trucker in Akasaka's American debut. (She has published three novels in Japan.) Narrator Rei Hayakawa—bulimic, alcoholic, with voices in her head—intends to drink herself into a stupor after a humiliating appearance on a televised panel on juvenile delinquency, but instead, she has a mild freak-out in a convenience stores and meets truck driver Okabe Takakoshi, a former gangster, pimp and delinquent of the very type she has just tried to analyze on the panel. Rei instantly (and nearly without thought) abandons her life to accompany Okabe on the road. They, of course, become lovers, and though romantic clichés are sometimes a hairbreadth away, everything familiar is made strange through the lens of Rei's jumbled consciousness. (Kudos to Emmerich for a translation that impressively conveys the subtleties of Rei's self-loathing.) For a novel about sex and escape narrated by (arguably) a nutcase, the author's restraint and clarity of vision is most impressive: solutions are not easily realized, and the "love story" trashes the traditional mold. (June)

A trudging fascination with ancient rites hampers this disappointing debut novel about Mem, a professional girl mourner in contemporary Philadelphia paid top dollar to wail at local funerals. The women in Mem's family have been grieving for money since ancient Roman times, passing down to their daughters the art of crying on command. Though the profession is illegal, Mem's family persists with cultish zeal, with mothers training their children to cry by verbally assaulting them and threatening to abandon them. Mem distinguishes herself as a stunning wailer, and as her bookings increase, so does the level of interest from law enforcement. The necessity of the harsh training Mem receives is never questioned, nor is the demand for professional mourners in modern society made plausible. Though O'Donnell's prose is deft and accomplished, it suffers in service of an improbable premise that's short on plot and long on overstated themes of ritual, motherhood and feminine sexuality. Unfortunately, O'Donnell neither demystifies the past nor illuminates the peculiar present she's created. (June)

In his fifth novel, Martin (Maggie; When Crickets Cry) offers the same brand of sentimental Southern storytelling that has endeared him to readers. Just before T-boning her Impala into a train, a woman on a suicide run kicks her horrifically abused little boy, known only as Snoot—or to the state, John Doe 117—out of the car. Chase Walker, a reporter for the Brunswick Daily in Glen County, Ga., is assigned to follow up on the boy, whose abandonment mirrors Chase's own haunted past. The little boy, apparently mute, is an artistic prodigy who excels at chess and quickly works his way into Chase's heart. Martin's strength is in his memorable characters, especially Uncle Willie, whose fresh quips ("as out of place in South Georgia as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs"), penchant for Krispy Kreme doughnuts and mysterious past keep readers engrossed. Here, as in some of his other novels, Martin can't resist piling on unnecessary tragedies; his characters and their issues are enough to keep the pages turning. Although the plot needs fine-tuning, Martin's prose is lovely, and the flashback parallel stories of a grown man abandoned as a child and the neglected boy will ensure readers keep the Kleenex handy. (June)

Bestseller Connelly's dazzling 13th Harry Bosch novel (after 2006's Echo Park) reunites Bosch with his former flame, FBI agent Rachel Walling. Bosch must break in a new partner, rookie Iggy Ferras, when they're called to look into the execution of physicist Stanley Kent on a Mulholland Drive overlook. When a special FBI unit, headed by Walling, arrives and tries to usurp his case, claiming it's a matter of national security, Bosch refuses to back down. Walling's focus on the potential theft of radioactive material from the hospital where Kent was lending his expertise to cancer treatment and her unwillingness to share information only make Bosch more determined to solve the case. This is a quick read, almost half the length of Connelly's previous novels, but he spares no punches when it comes to complexity and suspense. The scramble to investigate threats to national security, justified or otherwise, is a timely subject and one on which Connelly puts a brilliant new spin. (May 22)

Set in the waning days of WWII, bestseller Leonard's disappointing 40th novel finds gunslinging U.S. marshal Carl Webster, introduced in 2005's The Hot Kid, on the trail of Jurgen Schrenk and Otto Penzler, German POWs escaped from their Okmulgee, Okla., detention camp. The pair wind up in Detroit in the care of Walter Schoen, a butcher and Himmler look-alike, with whose ex-wife, wisecracking bottle-blonde Honey Deal, Carl soon finds himself smitten. While married Carl contemplates breaking his marriage vows (Honey does anything but dissuade him), Otto disappears and a dysfunctional German spy ring—led by hard-drinking Vera Mezwa and her cross-dressing manservant, Bohdan—cozies up with Jurgen. Vera and Bohdan, meanwhile, are secretly planning to disappear, but Bohdan wants to put in the ground anyone who could later give them up to the Feds. Leonard's writing—line by line—is as sharp as ever, but the plotting is uncharacteristically clunky and the pacing is stuck in low gear. Leonard has written a lot of great books, but this isn't one of them. (May)

Special agent Barrett "Bear" Raines has some slippery fish to fry in Wimberly's cleverly constructed fourth procedural (after 2001's Strawman's Hammock), which hinges on the gruesome murder of Beth Ann Stanton, daughter of Florida senator Baxter Stanton. Raines, "a black cop in a white town"—that of Deacon Beach, just north of the Pepperfish Keys—is still smarting from his recent failure to tie the senator's wealth to dirty money. Eddy DeLeon, Beth Ann's boyfriend and a local criminal, becomes a key suspect after his tryst with Beth Ann on the day of the murder comes to light. When Sharon Fowler, an ambitious local TV reporter, offers to help Bear nail DeLeon, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent agrees despite his misgivings. The twisted killer—whose identity is a real shocker—challenges Bear to trust his gut instincts as well as standard investigative procedure. Wimberly is a top-notch writer with command of both his plot and the northwestern Florida coastal setting. (July)

British author Lovesey deftly blends suspense and humor in his excellent ninth whodunit to feature Peter Diamond (after 2004's The House Sitter). Diamond, a detective superintendent in Bath, though still traumatized by the murder of his wife, finds himself the object of amorous attention from two women, one an admirer who sends him anonymous letters. The curmudgeonly but astute sleuth also finds himself again at odds with his superior, Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, when his investigation into the separate hangings of a woman and her one-time partner suggests that both were murdered, contrary to the ACC's belief that they were victims of a murder-suicide. Fighting to devote precious time and resources to the inquiry, Diamond soon discovers evidence of a history of similar crimes and suspects the serial killer will strike again. While the solution isn't Lovesey's trickiest, its ingeniousness amply demonstrates that this classic series is still going strong. (June)

The 14 stories in this entertaining anthology from Shamus Award–founder Randisi span Tinsel Town history from the 1930s to the present and intersect, literally, at Hollywood and Vine. Top billing should go to Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch story, "Suicide Run," and to Lee Goldberg's "Jack Webb's Star"—the former for the detection and the latter for biggest laughs. Other highlights include Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens's reinvention of one of the Three Stooges, Moe Howard, as a detective in their clever "Murderlized," about the 1937 death of the Stooges' mentor, vaudevillian Ted Healy. Robert S. Levinson delivers a wicked portrait of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in "And the Winner Is...," which turns on her lackey's efforts to stop a Nazi sharpshooter at the 1960 Academy Awards. From Harry Bosch's visit to a photographer at Hollywood & Vine Studios to Moe's meeting at a coffee shop at that intersection, all the tales pay homage to the storied Hollywood street corner. (June)

The diverting new feline-themed cozy from British author Babson (Please Do Feed the Cat) takes readers to a remote castle where a wealthy business tycoon, Everett Oversall, lives surrounded by a harem of female employees. One of them, Vanessa, takes a fall and lapses into a coma. Vanessa's twin brother, Vance, who happens to work as a female impersonator, is sure that someone tried to kill his sister, so he dons her clothes, fakes amnesia and infiltrates Oversall's compound. There, Vance-as-Vanessa encounters a host of eccentrics, all of whom might have been jealous of his sister, who was Oversall's personal assistant. The only trustworthy member of the household is Vanessa's devoted cat, Gloriana, who proves crucial in sniffing out whodunit. If character development is a tad weak, Vance's constant efforts to keep up his feminine persona will keep readers' attention. (June)

Blending noirish police procedural with vivid images of life in contemporary Cuba, Padura has produced another gem in the third of his Havana Quartet (after Havana Black and Havana Red). Police lieutenant Mario Conde is roused from a post–New Year's Eve hangover by a call from his superior reporting the disappearance of Rafael Morín Rodríguez, a high-level official in the ministry for industry. By chance, Rodríguez and his gorgeous wife, Tamara, were high school classmates of Conde, who carried a torch for Tamara for many years. While she claims to be mystified by her husband vanishing, swearing that he was an honest public servant, Tamara remains high on Conde's list of suspects even as he struggles to master his desire for her. That desire threatens to compromise an already sensitive investigation. Padura's taut writing and lyrical images will impress even newcomers to the series. (June)

In this stylish, funny fifth caper (after 2005's Over Her Dead Body) from Cosmopolitan magazine editor-in-chief White, Buzz gossip mag reporter Bailey Weggins takes a moment off from tracking celebrity crime to hunt down a missing actor. Her one-time hunky fling, Chris Wickersham, calls on her for help finding his friend Tom Fain, who appears with Chris on the TV show Morgue, a C.S.I.-type drama shooting in New York City. Bailey and Chris learn that Tom had been having an affair with the producer's girlfriend and that he withdrew $7,000 in cash before he disappeared. Bailey's dogged pursuit of Tom's trail leads to his family home in upstate New York, where she discovers his rotting remains. Even when another member of the Morgue cast is murdered and Bailey also becomes a target of a very theatrical killer, her lively love life continues with a renewed flirtation with Chris and lingering attraction to another fling, documentary filmmaker Beau Regan. White's flair for pop culture and affection for single career women make this trendy romantic suspense cocktail an addictive read. (May 23)

Riggs's pleasing seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery (after 2006's Indian Pipes) finds her 92-year-old heroine, Victoria Trumbull, a poet and deputy police officer, becoming a playwright for a summertime stage adaptation of Frankenstein. The amateur theatrical troupe—which includes such locals as DEA agent Howland Atherton (playing the monster) and high school student Dawn Haines (playing Frankenstein's bride)—prepares for opening night under the dictatorial leadership of artistic director Dearborn Hall. The production is beset by tragedy when its eight-year-old star, Teddy Vanderhoop, goes missing, and his neighbor, also an actress in the show, is found murdered. Demoralized by the death and disappearance, much of the cast drops out, but Dearborn insists the show must go on—with farcical results. Riggs delivers yet another irresistible beach read. (May 29)

A one-time Argentine revolutionary exacts an inventive revenge on the ex-military man who once did him a horrible wrong in this superior crime novel from Uruguayan author Charvarría (whose 2001's Adios Muchachos won an Edgar). While visiting Havana, Aldo Bianchi, now in his mid-50s and living in Italy, falls in love with Bini, a spectacularly beautiful, not particularly monogamous 27-year-old woman. In the midst of his efforts to talk her into marrying him, he discovers that the now retired Uruguayan military officer who tortured him and killed his girlfriend years earlier is living in Havana, enjoying a happy life under the false name Alberto Ríos. Intent upon seeing harsh justice done, Bianchi employs every trick he can, including Bini's personal charms, to lure Ríos into a complicated trap. The author, who lives in Havana, brings to his novel a superlative narrative sense, keen feel for human behavior in desperate situations and a deep understanding of the nature of dictatorships. Charvarría is as adept at comedy as he is at tragedy. (May)

This curious time-travel novella from Hugo-winner Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others) is a gracefully told lesson about accepting fate—or, as better suits this medieval Arabian setting, the will of Allah. A Baghdad merchant discovers an alchemical device that can send a traveler back in time 20 years. Despite the alchemist's warning that "what is made cannot be unmade," and three illustrative tales about others' attempts to alter the past, the merchant is determined to return to an earlier time to save his long-dead wife. Half lyrical Arabian Nights legend and half old school cautionary SF tale, this skillfully written story and its theme of insurmountable fate may comfort as many readers as it makes uncomfortable. (July)

In this sprawling and vividly imagined fantasy, historical novelist Durham (Pride of Carthage) chronicles the downfall and reinvention of the Akaran Dynasty, whose empire, called Acacia, was built on conquest, slaving and drug trade. The Acacian empire, encompassing "The Known World," is hated by its subjugated peoples, especially the Mein, who 22 generations earlier were exiled to the icy northland. Having sent an assassin to kill the Acacian king, Leodan, the rebel chieftain, Hanish Mein, declares war on the empire. As Acacia falls, Leodan's treasonous but conflicted chancellor, Thaddeus Clegg, spirits the king's four children to safety. When the Mein's rule proves even more tyrannical than the old, the former chancellor seeks to reunite the now adult Akaran heirs—the oldest son Aliver (once heir to the throne), the beautiful elder daughter Corinn, their younger sister, Mena, and youngest brother, Dariel—to lead a war to regain the empire. Durham has created a richly detailed alternate reality leavened with a dollop of magic and populated by complicated personalities grappling with issues of freedom and oppression. (June)

The sequel to 2006's Heir of Autumn is another tangle of convoluted plots, age-old grudges and old-fashioned empire building seasoned with plenty of sex and violence. Eighteen years earlier, heroic young Brophy sacrificed himself to save the kingdom of Ohndarien, submitting to an endless sleep of terrible dreams induced by a curse called the black emmeria. Since then, the best efforts of sex-magic sorceress Shara have been unable to free him. But then Arefaine Morgeon, the ambitious teenage sorceress revered as a goddess in the kingdom of Ohohhim (the Opal empire), Ohndarien's rival—manages to awaken Brophy. She convinces him to come away with her to the ruined magical city of Efften, where he will finally be free of the taint of the black emmeria. If the Opal empire gains the magical powers of Efften, however, Ohndarien will fall. Carwyn and Fahnestock keep the plot and onslaught of characters churning forward; fantasy readers who missed the first book in the series—and even some who didn't—will find it a challenge to keep up. (May)

This first English translation of Verne's awkward hybrid of travelogue and coded detective story, originally serialized in 1902, centers on Dutch brothers Karl and Pieter Kip. In the novel's first part, which details nautical journeys around various Australian and New Zealand islands, the English captain Harry Gibson, of the James Cook, rescues the shipwrecked Kips. When mutineers Flig Valt and Vin Mod kill the captain, it's Karl and Pieter who are convicted and who spend the novel's second part trying to escape a horrible Australian penal colony. Descriptions of exotic destinations from Verne's own travel books help compensate for the lack of compelling characters. As for the detective story, readers know the murderers' identities, but not how they will be revealed, and the abrupt resolution turns on the manipulation of a photograph. Though readers hoping for an exciting adventure tale won't find it, this will nonetheless delight Verne enthusiasts with its scholarly commentary and original black-and-white illustrations. (May)

Fans of feminist fantasy will welcome the first in a new series from Australian author Douglass, set in the same world as her Axis and Wayfarer Redemption trilogies. Lady Ishbel Brunelle, saved from childhood death by the Coil, a serpent-worshipping clan that reads the future in disemboweled organs, has been betrothed to Maximilian Persimius, king of Escator, who's quite taken by his prospective bride. However, Ba'al'uz, the devious and mad brother of Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, whose realm includes DarkGlass Mountain, where the legendary god of chaos, Kanubai, is an unwilling prisoner, kidnaps Ishbel to be Isaiah's wife. In the end, Ishbel and Maximilian reunite in a cliffhanger climax that may or not be their final meeting. Ishbel drops out of sight for long periods while a host of other characters enter the action, but readers can hope this appealing heroine will play a more central role in future installments. (May)

Sword fighting and martial arts may not interest the typical Regency heroine, but Pickens, known for such traditional work as The Storybook Hero, fits them nicely into her new action-filled historical series. At Mrs. Merlin's Academy for Select Young Ladies, street urchins are trained in both the ways of society and the deadly arts, for the purposes of countering England's foes. On her first assignment, the resourceful Siena is charged with sniffing out a Napoleonic spy while posing as a courtesan in search of a new protector. Apparently one of the six highborn members of the Gilded Page Club has been smuggling documents in the guise of acquiring valuable old books, but who is it? As Siena challenges each club member to a series of competitions to win her favor, the sensuality of one prime suspect—the earl of Kirtland, a disgraced former officer in the Royal Army—threatens Siena's self-control and secret identity. The introduction of an enigmatic outsider and some helpful intervention from another of Mrs. Merlin's young ladies thicken the plot and build momentum for the sequel. Regency fans should enjoy this innovative and adventurous foray. (June)

In Adams and Clamp's latest, psychic tough gal Kate Reilly returns to find trouble coming from all directions: her gorgeous boyfriend's werewolf pack is trying to break the couple up; she's being sued for her part in a gruesome death; and the Thrall—evil, parasitic vampires who, last time out, tried to make Reilly their new queen—demand her help in finding a batch of missing vampire eggs. Loathe to assist the wretched bloodsuckers, Reilly reluctantly agrees when they promise to help find a cure for her brother, Bryan, who has been living in a zombielike fugue since his drug overdose years ago. In the course of her search, Reilly soon discovers that she's the target of a multipronged manhunt and must outwit killers bent on her destruction. Picking up where their bestselling Touch of Evil left off, Adams and Clamp jump straight into the action. Fans will happily rejoin Reilly's story, which features great chemistry between the leads and a swift pace; unfortunately, the overly complex plot will prove a challenge to those not already familiar with the unconventional rules of Adams and Clamp's world. (June)

Chaplain (Maj.) Jaime Richards makes a promising debut as a savvy-but-nurturing minister to American troops during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though she's an unconventional thriller protagonist, Richards leaves no doubt she's up to the task when, right out of the chute, she's the target of a kidnapping attempt—but not before she's reunited with a fatally injured college chum, Adara Dunbar. In her dying moments, Adara gives Jaime a silver pendant and a cryptic message, pleading with the chaplain to promise she'll complete Adara's mission. With Adara dead, though, her mission is a mystery, one that unfolds, labyrinthlike, over the course of the novel. Though hungry and sleep deprived, Jaime deciphers Adara's message, which leads her to the ancient city of Ur and a man who identifies himself as Adara's brother. His mission is to locate the biblical Garden of Eden—before others find it first—and Jaime is quickly drawn into the scramble. Following a popular formula, in which forces of good and evil race to locate religious artifacts, this one benefits from its wartime setting, which proves both prescient and dynamic. Unfortunately, Linnea fails to carry through the rich promise of her early chapters, delivering implausible plot devices and a disappointing ending. (June)

Bestselling author Joyce kicks off her Masters of Time series with a master's skill, instantly elevating her to the top ranks of the ever-growing list of paranormal romance authors. Her strong, smart heroine, Claire Camden, is a woman damaged by the violent deaths of her mother and cousin; her life revolves around her dreams, her beloved bookstore and her efforts to keep safe. Those efforts prove less than successful when her apartment is invaded one night by a band of warriors from the past who make strange, threatening demands. Soon, Claire is catapulted into 15th-century Scotland (a land she happens to have studied for years) with the help of a handsome medieval warrior named Malcolm. Malcolm is a Master, charged with protecting Innocents (a group that includes Claire), but he hides a secret that could lose him his soul. His quest is to defeat the evil Moray and retain the safety of his land and people; of course, unbeknownst to Claire, he can't do that without her. Steeped in action and sensuality, populated by sexy warriors and strong women, graced with lush details and a captivating story, this title may not set a new standard in the paranormal/time-travel romance genre, but it certainly qualifies as a superlative example. (May)

Three of Sturm's previously released graphic novels are gathered to create a Howard Zinn–like look at lesser-known episodes of America's past. "The Revival" is a short, sharp piece dramatizing the massive 1801 religious revival meeting in Cane Ridge, Ky. (the country's biggest ever), with the story of a traveling couple who arrive at the meeting with fire in their eyes and a dark secret pushing them on. In "Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight," successive waves of greed, racism and blind folly swamp a Western mining town in the late 19th century. Because the allegory for the evils of Western expansion is so blatantly rendered, it's by far the weakest segment. The strongest is the last and longest, "The Golem's Mighty Swing," which adds a welcome dose of lyricism. Building on scraps of early baseball history, the Negro Leagues and Jewish mysticism, Sturm weaves a parable on racism and spectacle around a barnstorming, supposedly all-Jewish team in the 1920s called the Stars of David. The more the players parody themselves as mystical Hebrews, the more they earn. Sturm's art changes with the time period, moving from the dark gothic style of "The Revival" to the last story's clean and airy nostalgia. (June)

Just when John Constantine was starting to be a bit rumpled, along comes another nattily dressed smart-ass who does business with the unholy darkness; this time, he's a little closer to being one of them. Templesmith's Wormwood is a preternaturally cheery corpse with an ever-present cigarette and pentagram tattoo on his forehead to match the psychotic grin. In this debut, the gentleman corpse comes across a plot by a cabal of demons to infiltrate the world of humans and generally lay waste to it all in the nastiest way possible. With a game pair of sidekicks—the hulking robot Pendulum and lithe punk assassin Phoebe—Wormwood does battle with a full complement of foul netherworld beasties. This material could come off as rank at worst and derivative at best, just another horror comic with a yen for desecrated corpses. But in a wry manner, Templesmith (30 Days of Night) tweaks a surprising amount of humor out of the overdone scenarios, cloaking it all in darkly layered and intricate art that recalls Criminal Macabre. One assumes more Wormwood tales will follow, along with more people suffering from, as a policeman refers to it, "extreme cases of, uh, death." (Apr.)

Featuring that certain kind of homespun fantasy appeal one would expect from a small press title that doesn't hide its melodramatic origins, the second volume of Evenfall works hard to win readers over and just about gets there. Soul to Keep picks up where the first collection left off, with the spunky and duskily beautiful 19-year-old Phoebe Shankar still stuck in a fantasy netherworld, unsure if she's alive or dead. Such existential queries are put to the side (even after she comes across her own corpse) when she has to go on the run from slavering beasts known as Nightling Stalkers. Helping Phoebe in her fight for survival and sanity are a helpful birdman named Donald and the quietly hulking warrior Sanamar. Planes of reality get breached with ease in this series, and it isn't long before Phoebe's boyfriend, Robin, has fallen into the same alternate universe (and accompanying dangers). Stathis has a fresh feel for his stock characters and a welcome embrace of dialogue; if the artwork were less juvenile in its execution, this might be a series with appeal beyond the junior high set. (Apr.)

Passion begets obsession in Bond(z), a compilation of yaoi love stories that explore the hardships two men face when they fall in love. In the opening story, Tomo and Keita are reunited and begin to rekindle the brief but passionate love affair that they started one sweltering summer two years earlier. Tomo finds his feelings for Keita bordering on obsession, and the two men struggle to deal with both their blossoming love and the secret they keep from their girlfriends. Similar themes are explored in subsequent stories, as the characters must overcome obstacles to pursue an intimate relationship with another man. Themes of obsession intermingle with the question of whether two men should be in a romantic relationship. Yaoi fan favorite Kawai, creator of the popular title Our Everlasting, brings her flair for creating sexy, believable characters with complex problems to Bond(z). Her lean, distinctive art style is appealing. The book does contain graphic sexual situations and is rated 18+. (Apr.)

An enigmatic painting by Gwen John created as the young English artist pined for her neglectful lover, Rodin, connects the disparate characters in this century-spanning sentimental tale. Forlorn Gwen paints a canvas of a corner of her Paris flat intended to "signify herself—calm, peaceful, content" and gives it to a friend, who misplaces it. So begins the painting's journey as it ends up in the possession of an artistically bankrupt teenager, an impoverished nurse, a downtrodden farmer, a scorned wife, an aging woman returning to Paris after a long absence and, finally, a promising art student, all of whom find either strength or solace in the valuable work. Though the men characters are less than convincing, Forster captures a wide swath of 20th-century European womanhood. (Aug.)

Quick (Northern Edge) takes readers into the cloistered world of the Ospedale della Pietà, a convent orphanage and music school. Narrator Anna Maria dal Violin, an actual violin prodigy and 18th-century resident of the Venetian Pietà, is among the orphanage girls who studies under maestro (and priest) Antonio Vivaldi. Anna Maria's strong spirit shines throughout, whether stealing into the Jewish ghetto to learn about her parents, struggling to master Vivaldi's grueling violin passages or doing penance for her independent nature. Quick creates a hauntingly authentic setting rife with cruel punishments and brief moments of grand rewards. Anna Maria's quest to discover her identity is the centerpiece, though readers may find it less intriguing than the other story lines (among them Vivaldi's relationship with renowned young singer Anna Girò). It's a noble effort that misses a few high notes. (July)

Finerman's debut novel chronicles the life of Victorine Laurent, whose beauty and ambition to "conquer Paris" leads her to become the favorite muse of Edouard Manet. Victorine poses for a portrait that will "change the direction of art forever," and the sexually charged painting indeed shocks the Grand Salon and helps Victorine capture the attention of the duke de Lyon, an adviser to Emperor Louis-Napoléon. The duke requests that Victorine become his mistress exclusively, and when she agrees, she must balance her feelings for Manet with her relationship to the duke and her rising notoriety. Finerman's juxtaposition of actual and fictional events and characters is far from seamless, and Victorine is too perfect to be believable. More attention to character and less to wardrobe would have lent needed depth. (July)

Prix Goncourt–winner Echenoz's fifth novel to be translated into English covers the last 10 years in the life of French composer Maurice Ravel, who in 1927 was 52 years old and at the height of his fame when he toured America. Echenoz is most keen on recording the human detail: Ravel's impeccable ablutions and wardrobe, his dainty size, his reading of Joseph Conrad's The Arrow of Gold and his triumphant tour across the United States. Upon his return and at the request of a friend, Ravel offhandedly composed his masterpiece, Boléro. However, lapses begin to intrude in his memory and eventually debilitate him. After harrowing brain surgery, Ravel died in 1937. Like his well-mannered subject, Echenoz's prose is stylish and delightfully soft-pedaled, expertly conveyed by Coverdale—leaving the sensation of a life lived exclusively for the creation of art. (June)

Cunningham follows The Green Age of Asher Witherow (2004) with a dense novelization of the life of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. An account of Rilke's baptism gives over to a chronicle of his time in Paris, where he ruminates on life and befriends sculptor Auguste Rodin. From Rodin's residence, the narrative episodically follows Rilke from his days as a sickly military cadet and his meeting the writer Lou Andreas-Salome—his muse with whom he travels widely—to an interlude with Lord Chamberlain's skeleton in a crypt and eventually to the double heartbreak of Rilke's father's death and his final parting with Rodin, which inspires the poet to wall himself away behind his writer's desk. Cunningham is a talented writer, although unwelcome shifts into second-person and passages rife with adjective abuse mar this ambitious undertaking. (June)