Fiction Reviews: Week of 7/16/2007

Whitbread and Guardian Fiction Prize–winner Ackroyd has made a career out of charting London’s history, most recently in The Lambs of London and Shakespeare: The Biography. Here he turns to old Troy. In telegram- and steamboat-era Athens, the Greek Sophia Chrysanthis hastily weds German archeologist Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Obermann, mainly out of desire for an Indiana Jones–style adventure. Sophia quickly finds, however, that life with Johann approximates the Trojan excavation site (outside the Turkish village of Hissarlik) that Johann mines so lovingly: one jaw-dropping discovery follows another. But while Johann interprets the antiquities he finds using the Iliad, Sophia is left without a guide to her enigmatic husband’s true self. Unfortunately, although her predicament effectively mirrors the plight of Helen of Troy, and although the riddle of Johann’s identity is the very reflection of the Trojan horse’s portentousness, Sophia spends the greater part of the novel wincing and rationalizing. And a book’s worth of calculation is undone at the end when Ackroyd raises hallowed dust, but clouds the issues at hand. (Nov.)

This rollicking debut from former London ad exec Farooki weaves “an audacious network of lies as elaborate and brazen as the golden embroidery on [a] scarlet wedding sari.” Henna, an illiterate 13-year-old Calcutta shopkeeper’s daughter, is passed off as the educated 17-year-old daughter of a successful businessman in order to marry her into one of the city’s best families. The lie reverberates deliciously through three generations of Henna’s family: Farooki’s witty narrative winds its way over some 50 years, moving Henna, husband Rashid (“Ricky”) and daughter Shona from Calcutta to Bangladesh, Pakistan and London, where Shona elopes and raises her twin boys above a confectioner’s shop. Unflinching insights into Henna and others are well done, and allusions to literature and philosophy buoy them up. Farooki pulls off a lightly spun epic tale with effortless charm and more than enough delightful twists to keep pages turning. Even the characters’ most unexpected and disastrous choices seem somehow inevitable, and one is quickly resigned to rooting for the wily woman at the center. (Nov.)

Wells follows his Catahoula Bayou trilogy with this entertaining novel about imperiled Louisiana wetlands. Tom Huff, regional vice president of Standard of Texas Oil Company—“Big Tex” in fictional Chacahoula Parish—wants to route a pipeline through the treasured tract of bayou that Justin Pitre inherited from his grandfather. With the help of Juke Charpentier—a bully with a Big Tex expense account—Huff will do anything to gain access to Justin’s land. Compounding the threat are U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to dredge a shipping channel and Huff’s secret, illegal dumping of toxic waste in the bayou. Drawn into the center of this morass is Gov. Joe T. Evangeline, who, two years after his wife’s death, is having a hard time keeping up his bon vivant image. Julie Galjour, a smart and attractive attorney with the Department of Environmental Conservation, however, is determined to persuade the Guv to make the right decisions—and also, perhaps, to draw him out of his malaise. The plot’s many wild turns and feel-good ending may remind readers of Carl Hiaasen’s novels. Wells is a native of southern Louisiana, and his love of Cajun culture and its patois, food and ties to the landscape shines throughout. (Oct.)

Merullo, author of the Revere Beach series and Golfing with God, delivers a comic but winningly spiritual road-trip novel. Otto Ringling is a food-book editor and a happily married father of two living in a tony New York suburb. After Otto’s North Dakota parents are killed in a car crash, he plans to drive his ebulliently New Age sister, Cecilia, back home to sell the family farm. But when Otto arrives to pick up Cecilia in Paterson, N.J. (where she does tarot readings and past-life regressions), she declares her intention to give her half of the farm to her guru, Volvo Rinpoche, who will set up a retreat there. Cecilia asks Otto to take Rinpoche to North Dakota instead; after a fit of skeptical rage in which he rails internally against his sister’s gullibility, he accepts, and the novel is off and running. Merullo takes the reader through the small towns and byways of Midwestern America, which look unexpectedly alluring through Rinpoche’s eyes. Well-fed Western secularist Otto is only half-aware that his life might need fixing, and his slow discovery of Rinpoche’s nature, and his own, make for a satisfying read. A set piece of Otto’s chaotic first meditation session is notably hilarious, and the whole book is breezy and affecting. (Oct.)

Playwright and novelist Humphreys reprises his swashbuckling hero in this action-packed prequel to last year’s Jack Absolute. Back then, Jack was a British spy during the American Revolution. In this volume, Jack’s parents—an out-of-work actress and an itinerant soldier—leave the boy for much of his youth in the care of his drunken Uncle Duncan and abusive cousin Craster in the English countryside. Uncle Duncan’s untimely death leads to Jack’s reunion with his parents and a move to London, where he becomes a raconteur and fancies himself a poet. When the powerful Lord Melbury catches Jack in flagrante delicto with his mistress, he vows vengeance, but is instead killed by Jack’s father in a duel. To avoid retribution, Jack joins John Burgoyne’s 16th Light Dragoons and is posted to North America, arriving just in time for the battle of Quebec. Jack’s adventures in the New World are just beginning, however, as he’s captured by Indians, marooned in the wilderness over a harsh winter and reunited with the contemptible Craster—all the while wondering if he’ll make it back home to England. In Jack Absolute, Humphreys has created a rambunctious but lovable hero who should continue to win fans with each new adventure. (Oct.)

Though billed as a contemporary western romance, this sexy horse opera—loaded with tension, tearjerker moments and corny dialogue (“Dang, lady. You scared the hair right off my chest”)—also provides a surprisingly good mystery. Debra Walker is a 24-year-old cowgirl burdened with guilt and debt after her father dies and leaves her with a failing horse ranch. She blames herself for her father’s death and the ranch’s failure, and sells everything to move to the city and take a job with a tech business her father used to own. Then she meets J.D. Garrison, a hunky horse ranch owner who serves as her savior and love interest. Debra and J.D. are instantly smitten with each other, and as they flirt and tease, they discover her new boss, Robbie Nelson, is a womanizing crook with dark plans for the business and darker plans for Debra. As the sexual tension builds, so do the mystery of Debra’s father’s death (a strange car crash that also crippled J.D.’s best friend) and Robbie’s corporate shenanigans. The romance is well-constructed and entertaining, but the mystery wins out as the strongest draw. (Oct.)

Ordinary people find their efforts to heal their wounds complicated by relationships, emotional conflicts and unusual twists of fate in this affecting collection by Panning (The Price of Eggs). In “Tidal Wave Wedding” a gay man helps newlyweds search Waikiki beach for a lost wedding ring, with consequences that reverberate in his own relationship. Another story features a postal worker, recently disabled after a pit bull attacked her, who attempts to reclaim the affections of her husband by using her lawsuit winnings to finance his and her sister’s idea to open a frog leg restaurant. In the title story, a theater major copes with his divorced father’s circus-like antics as he deploys a miniature horse and a lemur to win back his ex-wife. In “Five Reasons I Miss the Laundromat,” a woman reminisces about the people she has encountered while doing the laundry—like the midget who curled up and fell asleep in a dryer. Other tales deal in the fall out of freak accidents, as occurs in the novella, “Freeze,” which dissects the impact of a bike accident on a couple’s already rocky marriage. The warmth and originality of these pieces demonstrate Panning to be an astute and empathetic observer. (Oct.)

British bestseller Faulks’s latest (after Human Traces) comprises the dark confessional of Mike Engleby, an intelligent but strange university student suspected in a woman’s disappearance. His journal-like account of his life, which begins in the turbulent 1970s and extends to 2006, includes day-to-day accounts of college life, pontifications on time, politics and the nature of thought, and flashbacks to his childhood—particularly the years he spent as a scholarship student at the exclusive Chatfield, where he was taunted and abused by his classmates (they, among other things, called him “Toilet”). As the journal progresses, his obsession with university student Jennifer Arkland deepens: he reads her mail, sits in on her classes, joins her political society and becomes involved in her student film. When Jennifer disappears after a party and is presumed dead, Mike finds himself under police investigation. The case remains open for over a decade, and Mike continues on with his life, but Jen is never far from his thoughts, and as he continues to return in his mind to Jen’s disappearance, he reveals more about that night and about himself. Though sometimes heavy with the tropes of self-deception and misdirection, this is a compelling psychological portrait of a man who is at once profoundly disturbed and wryly funny. (Sept.)

Briskly original and subversively funny, this novella from popular British writer Bennett (Untold Stories; Tony-winning play The History Boys) sends Queen Elizabeth II into a mobile library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a “common” activity. With “the dawn of her sensibility... mistaken for the onset of senility,” plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen’s staff to dispatch Norman and discourage the queen’s preoccupation with books. Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results. Bennett has fun with the proper behavior and protocol at the palace, and the few instances of mild coarseness seem almost scandalous. There are lessons packed in here, but Bennett doesn’t wallop readers with them. It’s a fun little book. (Sept.)

Kuipers’s haunting debut unfolds like a flip book of half-drawn images too swiftly ended, a compilation of tantalizing notes posted on a refrigerator by a single working mom and “Claire-bear,” her wistful teen daughter. Bittersweet, funny and achingly real, the nameless mother (an overworked obstetrician) and bubbly Claire communicate through these notes instead of talking, e-mailing or text messaging. Missives range from the daughter’s plainly impassioned (“Hi MOM! (Who I never see anymore EVER!)”) to her mother’s soothing, tough-upper-lip responses written during her breast cancer treatment. Kuipers captures the anxiety surrounding tragedy and conveys the importance of fully experiencing life. Although the format has its limits (notably in character development and narrative momentum), Kuipers delivers a strong, emotional reminder about the importance of loved ones, even through times of unceasing complications and challenges. (Sept.)

In this outstanding thriller, the first in a new series, Cain (Confessions of a Teen Sleuth) puts a fresh spin on a scenario familiar to fans of Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs. When someone starts dumping the bodies of teenage girls around Portland, Ore., after soaking them in tubs of bleach, Archie Sheridan, a police detective addicted to pain killers, turns for help to Gretchen Lowell, an imprisoned serial killer who once tortured him (the big scar on his chest “was shaped like a heart”). Covering the crimes is reporter Susan Ward, a smart-alecky punk with pink hair and authority issues. The suspense builds as the narrative shifts between Sheridan’s new case and his ordeal with Lowell, who in her own way is as memorable a villain as Hannibal Lecter. The damp Portland locale calls to mind the kind of Pacific Northwest darkness associated with Ted Bundy and Kurt Cobain. A vivid literary style lifts this well above the usual run of suspense novels. 200,000 first printing; author tour. (Sept.)

The latest from Singleton (Drowning in Gruel) is an engagingly comic but finally underpowered study of Harp Spillman, a once busy avant-garde artist whose metal sculptures dot the cityscapes of the American South. Harp’s heavy drinking has dead-ended his career; his existence is every bit as barren as the landscape of Ember Glow, the desolate patch of upstate South Carolina where he lives with his wife, an in-demand potter named Raylou. Harp gets the chance for a comeback when he is offered, on a tight deadline, a commission from the city of Birmingham. He dries out, and his AA buddies try to help, but sobriety and hard work do not necessarily make the world a less confusing place to him. Singleton has a flair for capturing Southern eccentricity, and Raylou’s imperturbable patience is just as funny in its way as Harp’s self-loathing. By the end, however, the book feels less like a cohesive novel than a collection of vignettes, some of which (particularly a late appearance by Harp’s filmmaker-wannabe mother) seem gratuitous. (Sept.)

Maya, the 17th-century Indian heroine of Speed’s The Temple Dancer, plays a minor role in this sequel, the middle volume of an epic trilogy that charts Mogul emperor Shah Jahan’s declining years. As the emperor secludes himself in Agra with opium and dancing girls, two of his sons—blustering bully Dara, who is the favored heir, and the austere, intelligent, and far more dangerous Aurangzeb—secretly contend for the royal succession. Various nobles, army generals and palace eunuchs alternately aid and betray each brother. Meanwhile, in distant Poona, Shivaji, a daring Hindu thief and dispossessed heir of a small kingdom, gathers an army to reclaim his inheritance—which brings him to the attention of the scheming imperial forces. Some of the book’s plot elements are resolved with startling abruptness, while others clearly await the concluding volume. But Speed offers a fascinating glimpse into a history unfamiliar to most Westerners. (Sept.)

In Thebo’s ambitious debut romance, Lottie Dougal, born and raised in Eudora, Kans., runs a stationery store in town and dispenses herbal remedies after hours. Newcomer James Emery is the town physician, and the townsfolk watch the pair’s immediate “courting behavior” in fascination. Meanwhile, the number of Mexican workers at the nearby troubled quarry keeps rising, but the population remains “invisible” to the white locals. By the novel’s halfway point, the idyll is shattered: James and Lottie’s romance is imperiled, and the quarry’s travails draw the town into an ugly confrontation whose focal points are Mexican-American banker Hector Rodriguez and us-against-them janitor Barney Lewis. Thebo is a skilled storyteller—her characters are carefully drawn, and their interactions sparkle—but the novel’s conventional romance runs on a different track than its social realist conflict. The two never fall fully into line, despite the liberal doses of humor Thebo injects throughout. (Sept.)

Stanford med student Spanogle’s high-energy sequel to 2006’s Isolation Ward shares its predecessor’s virtues and, well, flaws. Smart-alecky Dr. Nathaniel McCormick, starting a new life in the San Francisco Bay Area after quitting his job at the Centers for Disease Control, stumbles on photographs of living people with hideous facial tumors. Before they can die from their disease, however, the sufferers are being horrifically murdered in an apparent effort to prevent the authorities from noticing their condition. Lurking in the background is an unsavory gang of Chinese mobsters with a particular interest in the region’s biotech industry. McCormick hunts frantically for answers as the bodies pile up. Spanogle’s efforts at engineering poignant moments clunk more often than not, and his hero’s tendency to crack wise in dire situations strains believability, but he has an undeniable gift for creating tension and movement. For page-turning fun, this gory medical thriller has all the elements. (Sept.)

These three novellas from veteran Canadian writer Helwig deal darkly in regret, revenge and foiled ambition. In “The Man Who Finished Edwin Drood,” narrator Wicked Uncle reminisces about stealing his love, “the Dutchess” (she is Dutch), from her children and husband, Orland. The Canadian winter setting matches the prose—grim and cold—as Orland returns and Wicked Uncle wonders if the Dutchess would ever leave him. “The Music of No Mind,” transcribes the eponymous three-part lecture delivered by an embittered retired professor hired at the last minute to replace the original speaker—the narrator professor’s former rival who suddenly died. During his convoluted discourse—part anecdote, part rant, but all magnificently venomous—he, among other things, sullies the name of the dead and alienates his ever-dwindling audience. “A Prayer to the Absent” chronicles the restless wandering of Carman Deshane, a widower and retired Toronto cop who realizes “without that suit of clothes, he wasn’t there at all.” His wanderlust eventually leads him to a dilapidated cottage rented out by Norma, a lonely, stubborn woman with whom he shares a mutual dislike. Yet their connection keeps Carman in place. Helwig is a formidable talent, and his unpleasant characters are a pleasure to spend time with. (Sept.)

Readers who buy Podrug’s latest collaboration with the Robbins estate (following The Betrayers) will expect a Robbins-style erotic thriller. What they will get is dull, predictable and surprisingly tame. Madison Dupre, 34 and single, is out to secure her place in the rarefied world of antiquities by acquiring a $50-million Babylonian death mask for her employer, the Piedmont Museum of Mesopotamian Art. The mask’s legendary curse soon kicks in: at its unveiling, an uninvited Iraqi insists that it was among the treasures taken by looters from Baghdad’s National Museum of Antiquities following Saddam’s downfall. With her job, reputation and even freedom (the FBI thinks she’s in on the fraud) on the line, Madison sets out to unmask the looters, which turns out to be a very unsafe undertaking indeed. The incestuous, fiercely competitive antiquities world makes for an intriguing setup, but Podrug’s execution is clunky. The action is improbable, the dialogue hackneyed, the sex (a Robbins hallmark) pedestrian and scarce. Status-obsessed Madison is hardly likable. Robbins died in 1997; it may be time to let him rest. (Sept.)

Bestseller Monroe delivers what could be her wildest and most entertaining novel yet. Greed, betrayal and murder intersect as Wade Eddie Fisher, who looks “like a low-income Lenny Kravitz,” and Christine Thurman, the wife of super-successful video store entrepreneur J.R. Thurman, devise a plan to fake her kidnapping, collect $500,000 and get her out of her marriage. (A pre-nup would leave her with nothing if she divorced.) But after the shoddy plan is put into action and creepy thug Jason Mack comes onboard, things quickly disintegrate. J.R. offers to pay double for Christine’s immediate and safe return, setting into motion among the conspirators murderous plots and double-crosses. The narrative is fun but suffers from repetitive exposition and unsympathetic characters, though their nasty (or pathetic, depending) natures create enough surprises to keep readers piqued till the end. (Sept.)

Sharp’s second Charlie Fox thriller to be published in the U.S. (after 2005’s acclaimed First Drop) opens with a harrowing scene of the hard-hitting British bodyguard slowly bleeding to death in the frigid New Hampshire woods. Flashback to London: under the watchful eye of her boss and sometimes lover, Sean Meyer, Charlie reluctantly takes a job protecting recent lottery winner Simone Kerse and her young daughter, Ella, from Simone’s ex-boyfriend. Determined to find her long-estranged father, Simone travels to Boston with Charlie and Ella in tow. Charlie has her suspicions when a mysterious man approaches Simone, claiming to be her father, and these suspicions soon become frighteningly real when secrets about the Kerses’ past come to light, culminating in a gun battle that leaves Charlie struggling to piece together why a client shot her own bodyguard. Sharp expertly builds the suspense in a nonstop thrill ride that should win her many new American fans. Author tour. (Sept.)

At the start of bestseller Lashner’s superior seventh crime thriller to feature Philadelphia DA Victor Carl (after 2006’s Marked Man), two police detectives pay Carl a late-night call to inform him that Dr. Wren Denniston, the husband of Carl’s former fiancée, Julia, was found shot to death in his Chestnut Hill mansion earlier that evening. Since Carl, known for his malleable ethics, had been entertaining Julia at his apartment shortly before the detectives’ arrival in an effort to revive their relationship, he becomes a prime suspect in the doctor’s murder. Unsure whether his lover is setting him up, Carl must dodge a rogue’s gallery of villains who had their own reasons for wanting Denniston out of the way before he can uncover the real culprit and figure out Julia’s true feelings for him. Chandler and Hammett fans looking for a fix will be well rewarded. (Sept.)

Talking fashion and bloodsuckers is all in a day’s work for wide-eyed intern Kate McAlliston in Stivers’s sharp debut. When Kate takes a summer job working for Tasty, the “hottest young women’s magazine in America,” she discovers “blood-spattered” is not only a trend but the style favored by a nest of chic Manhattan vamps in stilettos. Lillian Hall is the elegant but oh-so-scary editor-in-chief of Tasty, headquartered in “The Dark Tower” of Oldham Inc., a media empire much like Condé Nast, one of the author’s old employers. As Kate helps organize the Tasty Girl modeling contest and choose the finalists, the blood-drained bodies start to pile up, including a freelancer’s poor little Chihuahua. Stivers’s sly satire capitalizes on the lingering allure of The Devil Wears Prada, the bubbly appeal of Ugly Betty, the campy joy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the drop-dead glamour of Fashion Week. (Sept.)

Film critic and author Overstreet (Through a Screen Darkly) offers a powerful myth for his first foray into fiction. The kingdom of Abascar is cloaked in gloom, sentenced to an ongoing “wintering” by a jealous queen, in which colors have been done away with and are only allowed in the royal court. But young Auralia, found as a baby by the river and raised by outcasts, has a talent for finding colors everywhere and bringing them to life in a way no one has ever seen before. The fate of the kingdom rests on what Auralia chooses to do and how the king responds. Overstreet creates a world with not only its own geography but its own vocabulary—it is haunted by beastmen, home to cloudgrasper trees, vawns (something like dinosaurs) and twister fish. There are Christian bones to the story—particularly in the mystery of the beast called the Keeper, who is “always moving about, but he likes to hide just to see who’ll come seeking”—which may be too obvious to some and not at all clear to others. Overstreet’s writing is precise and beautiful, and the story is masterfully told. Readers will be hungry for the next installment. (Sept.)

Set in 1900, Steffen’s debut presents a captivating view of life aboard a riverboat a century ago, but minimal character development makes it hard for readers to become attached to the novel’s protagonist, Emma Perkins, an Ohio woman who leaves her abusive farmer husband, Jared, to serve as a cook aboard her uncle’s riverboat, Spirit. Despite the often laborious work of providing meals for crew and passengers, Emma is glad to be free of Jared’s vicious physical and verbal assaults. At the same time, she misses her young son and daughter, sent by Jared to work at a neighbor’s farm. A love triangle emerges among Emma, Capt. William “Briggs” Briggham and Gage, Spirit’s solitary engineer, but subplots involving a riverboat race and the love life of Emma’s assistant, Lilly, detract from the potency of the primary plot line. (Sept.)

Rich detail, a plot that lasts for a solid eight innings and a genuinely likable heroine give Meyer’s conventional chick lit entry sparkle. At 32, Jacquie Stuart has pals who look out for her, an East Village miniloft that she owns, a managing editor’s job at a tiny but respected film magazine and a history of falling for guys who don’t want to commit. Witnessing her sister Alicia’s and her co-worker Samantha’s real estate–based romantic successes, Jacquie pitches an article to a well-paying women’s mag proposing that pretending to apartment-hunt is the ideal way to meet men (“a guy’s home doesn’t lie”) and gets assigned the piece. After meeting a few frogs, Jacquie clicks with Anthony, a documentarian living in Williamsburg. Jacquie makes sacrifices, and old patterns soon start to emerge, leaving her with hard decisions. Elements of the denouement are convenient to say the least, but Meyer gives Jacquie some terrific foils (in friends Courtney and gay man Jeremy), and has poignant things to say about the struggle to find the right person. (Sept.)

Natural disasters, difficult adolescences and morality tales make up Luvaas’s first collection of stories (after two novels). The diabetic groundskeeper of the title story composes a combination love letter / last will and testament for his widowed boss, confessing all his unexpressed longing and regret. His letter, rife with phonetic misspellings, pushes the story close to the edge of labored sentimentality. “Silver Thaw” suffers from the same feeling and follows curmudgeonly sisters Vi and Winnie as they, in their adjacent apartments, cope separately with a winter power outage. “Trespass” closes its story of a man having trouble keeping a drifter off his property by admonishing the reader to “Invite The Trespasser in to sleep in your house, make sure he’s comfortable and has all he needs.” Luvaas’s disaster stories are less instructive; tornados, floods and car wrecks demonstrate the vulnerabilities of modern life. The best stories concern youth; “The Sexual Revolution” tracks a pair of twins coming of age in the era of Elvis and the Red Scare, while “Original Sin” follows a boy from the same period sent to stay with a nonconformist aunt. Nostalgic detail fills out and enlivens the stories of growing up, but the adults remain largely unconvincing. (Sept.)

Marta Zinsser has made her nine-year-old daughter Eva, conceived through sperm donation, her whole world. The two move from Manhattan to a wealthy Seattle suburb, where Marta plans to run a successful advertising agency from home and be close to her ailing mother. Soon however, Marta’s bohemian ways stick out like a sore thumb among the impeccably groomed housewives of Bellevue. Pressured by a tenderly and believably drawn Eva to be a “real mom,” Marta signs up for school chaperoning and committee duties, with near-disastrous results. And when Marta falls for a handsome billionaire, she must decide whether to refocus her lone wolf self-image enough to allow a man to enter the picture. The alpha moms Marta detests are cartoonish, catty villains, and self helpese creeps into the plot gaps. But Marta is an intriguing heroine: she values freedom and toughness, but her jeans and combat boots mask vulnerability, heartbreak and fear of change. (Sept.)

Plot twists worthy of The Da Vinci Code dominate this agile first novel from Carrell (The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox), a thriller involving a lost Shakespeare play, The History of Cardenio. On a June day in 2004, at London’s rebuilt Globe theater, Rosalind Howard, “flamboyantly eccentric Harvard Professor of Shakespeare,” gives her friend Katharine Stanley, who’s directing a production of Hamlet at the Globe, a small gold-wrapped box. That evening, a fire damages the Globe, where Roz is found murdered in the same manner as Hamlet’s father. Roz’s mysterious gift, which contains a Victorian mourning brooch decorated with flowers associated with Ophelia, propels Kate on a wild and wide-ranging quest that takes her to Utah; Arizona; Washington, D.C.; and back to London. Every step of the way, as the bodies pile up, Kate narrowly escapes becoming the next murder victim. From Shakespeare conferences to desert mines, from the present to the past, this spirited and action-packed novel delivers constant excitement. Foreign rights sold in 20 countries. (Sept.)

Debut novelist Michna wastes no time getting to her subject matter: on the first page, Asia Swenson is told her breast cancer has returned and metastasized. As Asia braces herself to inform her parents and sister at a family dinner, her sister, Lucy, is preparing to announce her engagement. The plot charts Asia’s struggle to fight her disease, the accommodations she must make at work and her unwavering goal to be the maid of honor at her sister’s wedding. But the heart of the novel is the changing dynamics in the relationship between the sisters and Asia’s unexpected budding romance with Brandon Peters, the “slick” investment firm colleague who takes over her clients when Asia is too sick to work full time. While these relationships are believable, the parents are cardboard constructions; especially the father, who is almost nonexistent, even when he’s in the room. But the sisters’ sensitive dynamic and the portrayal of Asia’s manifold struggles ring true. It’s hard to imagine readers finishing this with dry eyes. (Sept.)

A fictive meeting between Henry James and Sigmund Freud forms the center of former Washington Post columnist Yoder’s effervescent novel, which follows two short fiction and several nonfiction titles. In 1908, a concerned William James asks Freud to make a trip to Rye, England, to meet with younger brother Henry, whose growing eccentricities worry his Boston-based elder. For his part, the younger James is at first bemused by Freud’s attempts to do a little short-term analysis, but grows more and more engaged as their conversations plunge into questions of unconscious motivations, sexual repression and sublimation. The story of Freud and James is told from the point of view of James’s sophisticated nephew, Horace Briscoe, who, in visiting his uncle, falls in love with a local girl, Agnes Fengallon, and seeks sex and love advice from the great doctor. Further twists ensue when it turns out that Agnes’s father is an Anglican archdeacon militantly opposed to psychoanalysis. Though the dialogue sometimes feels off, Yoder (Telling Others What to Think) catches the complex interplay of manners and beliefs that such a meeting between greats might have produced, and the distancing effects of Horace’s perspective work nicely. Fans of Henry James curious about his notoriously ambiguous sexuality will find Yoder’s speculations intriguing. (Sept.)

In this lyrical first novel about love and loss by a ghostwriter for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Alec, a former speech writer for Jimmy Carter, walks “like a pall bearer” from Heathrow Airport to North Wales to scatter the ashes of his late wife. Along the way, he meets and begins an affair with Fiona Edwards, the spirited and married operator of a Welsh bed-and-breakfast. Fiona’s marriage to her shepherd husband David is foundering on the shoals of mutual lack of interest and David’s pesticide-related illness that keeps him relegated to separate quarters. There are moral dilemmas aplenty, most notably when Alec discovers David near death in the same treacherous region where he just released his wife’s remains. North offers vivid descriptions of the Welsh countryside, capturing its local dialect, flora and fauna, and wild weather, but his romantic boomer tale—which includes some overwrought poetry and a few witty words on Carter’s handling of the Iran hostage crisis—is sometimes too idyllic. If Nicholas Sparks set a novel in North Wales, it would read a lot like this. (Aug.)

In the exciting eighth supernatural thriller from bestsellers Preston and Child (after 2006’s The Book of the Dead), FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast and his ward, Constance Greene, seek peace of mind at a remote Tibetan monastery, only to fall into yet another perilous, potentially earthshaking assignment. The monastery’s abbot asks them to recover a stolen relic, the cryptic Agozyen, which could, in the wrong hands, wipe out humanity. The pair follow the trail to a luxury cruise ship, where a series of brutal murders suggests the relic’s evil spirit might already have been invoked. Fans of earlier books focused on a thinly disguised American Museum of Natural History may find less at stake among the new cast of secondary characters, but the fate of Constance, who claims to have aborted the child of Pendergast’s villainous younger brother, remains a potent subplot. While not as frightening as others in the series, this entry still shows why the authors stand head and shoulders above their rivals in this subgenre. (Aug. 28)

Bestseller Harris’s exciting third Harper Connelly mystery (after 2006’s Grave Surprise) finds the psychic sleuth faced with her most challenging and heartbreaking job to date: locating the bodies of “runaway” boys who the people of Doraville, N.C., suspect have become victims of a serial killer. After Harper locates eight long-dead bodies, much to the surprise of skeptical Sheriff Sandra Rockwell, a mysterious figure attacks Harper. Though all Harper wants is to go home and recover from her injuries, the local authorities and State Bureau of Investigation agents demand that she stay in town to help with their investigation. The cold case heats up fast, attracting media attention as well as Harper’s friends, ailing psychic Xylda Bernardo and her doting grandson, Manfred, who make another gruesome discovery. Harper’s changing relationship with her stepbrother, manager and confidant, Tolliver Lang, lends personal interest. Harris dependably delivers fear with charming down-home finesse. (Oct.)

Benoit (Out of Order) is at the top of his game in his witty third novel as he once again explores the travails of Americans abroad. Mark Rohr, a first Gulf War veteran now bouncing for a bar in the coastal resort of Phuket, Thailand, is a natural action hero. The damsel in distress is the pretty, blonde and very American Robin Antonucci, who offers Mark $5,000 to help her locate her brother, Shawn Keller, missing since the mighty tsunami inundated Phuket. Naturally, nothing and no one is exactly what it seems as Mark and Robin, linked by mutual distrust and different needs, visit dives and diving shops, deal with gangsters and pirates and manage to stir up trouble everywhere they look. Benoit’s good guys have their faults and the bad guys have surprising virtues, leaving room for lots of unusual twists and turns. The lovingly rendered exotic locale is the perfect setting for this rough and rollicking story of adventure and romance. (Sept.)

Boston attorney Brady Coyne, a principled man in an often unprincipled profession, remains as fresh and appealing as ever in his 23rd outing (after 2006’s Out Cold). Brady is enjoying an evening at home in his Beacon Hill townhouse watching the Red Sox on TV when Robert Lancaster, the son of a former client, phones and insists Brady see his father, Dalton, that same night. Dalton’s about to leave the hospital after being treated for a savage beating from some thugs. When the lawyer and old client meet, Brady believes Dalton’s claim he’s conquered his gambling addiction, and hence couldn’t have been assaulted by men he owed money to. Brady soon learns Robert’s the one in debt to the mob, but his efforts to mediate are derailed when Robert’s kidnapped. Though the kidnapper’s identity and the final plot twist won’t surprise genre-savvy readers, fans will cheer Tapply’s engaging hero every step of the way. (Sept.)

In Greeley’s winning sixth Blackie Ryan novel (after 2006’s The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood), Ryan’s boss, the archbishop of Chicago, sends Ryan to check up on Malachi Howard-Nolan, a fellow priest who’s jockeying for a prestigious appointment. Blackie heads out to the compound where Nolan’s extended family has gathered for a reunion and discovers that matters are both simpler and more complex than he’d imagined. Nolan turns out to be obnoxious and ambitious, but also lazy and incompetent, so his ecclesiastical aspirations aren’t likely to come to much. When Nolan suffers a life-threatening attack of hornets, Blackie suspects someone in his rich, nutty family wishes him ill. There’s also romance afoot: Blackie’s strapping nephew finds himself attracted to Nolan’s charming niece. A few chapters narrated by the nephew jar, but strong character development, snappy dialogue and a multilayered plot make this one of the better entries in the series. (Sept.)

Poet Loomis (Vanitas Motel) makes an auspicious fiction debut with this mystery starring an aging Baltimore cop who becomes sheriff of his native Provincetown, Mass. Frank Coffin has to deal with a new boss intent on running the tourist town with an iron fist, a younger girlfriend uninterested in marriage but intent on having a child, a car that’s about to fall apart and memories of a multiple murder so horrific it drove him from his old job. Then, the strangled body of a vacationing TV evangelist, clad in an unflattering dress, turns up on the beach. Though the state police take over the case, various town worthies, including his boss, pressure Coffin into tracking developments. When he does, he discovers a powerful group has designs on the community and is willing to do anything to bring its plans to completion. Full of entertaining twists and sly observations, this is a perfect book for late summer reading. (Sept.)

Coel’s 13th Wind River mystery (after 2006’s The Drowning Man) is far more engaging than its bland title might suggest. The discovery of skeletal remains still bearing a long dark braid of hair opens deep wounds among the Native Americans who live on Wyoming’s Wind River reservation. Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden’s efforts to identify the woman, apparently a murder victim, cause tension with her love interest and law partner, Adam Lone Eagle, driving her to enlist the aid of their friend Fr. John O’Malley. A rash of threats and the murder of a woman Vicky questioned confirms her suspicions that members of a 1970s activist group, the American Indian Movement, are still on the rez and somehow involved in all the happenings. Bringing her trademark western flair to nonstop action, Coel keeps danger hanging over Vicky’s head as she follows a trail of clues to their startling conclusion. (Sept.)

Dangerous secrets unravel as two Catholic priests rekindle their forbidden romance in this steamy suspense tale from Schiefelbein (Vampire Vow). For Fr. Chris Sieb, manager of St. John’s Diocesan Center in Kansas City, the return of his old school-boy crush, Fr. Jack Canston, from Montana after 25 years is both a thrill and a day of reckoning. Their overwhelming feelings for each other lead Chris to reconsider not only his vow of celibacy but also his faith in his calling. The shocking suicide of another gay closeted friend, Fr. Eddie Gerhardt, who felt his homosexuality needed to be cured for him to be a good priest, adds more fuel to Chris’s midlife crisis. Both Chris and Jack must find the courage to make some hard choices. Schiefelbein presents the dilemma of gay priests with sensitivity, exploring the nature of “faith” in God and love: “Faith means loving when you don’t feel like it. It’s not letting fear decide what you do.” (Sept.)

Fans of hard-boiled PI Sharon McCone will welcome the first story collection from MWA Grand Master Muller, who shows she’s just as adept at writing western and ghost tales as detective fiction. Several of the 19 selections feature McCone or her engaging apprentice, Rae Kelleher. In the harrowing title story, McCone seeks a mentally disturbed man trapped somewhere in the rubble of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. The volume’s best tale, “The Wall,” focuses on the search for a missing teenager and the clues Kelleher unearths in a massive collage on the girl’s bedroom wall. Notable among the western tales, mostly set in turn-of-the-20th-century California, is “The Indian Witch,” about a boy’s brief encounter with a reclusive Native American woman. Muller’s penchant for social commentary may strike some readers as too politically correct, but all will appreciate her gift for good storytelling. (Sept.)

In McDonald’s fun, deft debut, set mostly in 1957, Sen. Prescott Bush has sent out the call: bring me the head of Pancho Villa, the late Mexican revolutionary. Aging writer Hector Mason Lassiter, author of pulp novels like The Land of Fear and Dread and Border Town, gets caught in the crossfire between Mexican nationalists and frat boys out to place Villa’s head in Yale’s Skull and Bones Society trophy case. Along the road to hell, Lassiter picks up a young love interest while dropping in on Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich on the set of Touch of Evil, but that doesn’t slow down the action (“it’s a tricky thing, firing for flesh wounds with a machine gun at close range”). Reminiscent of James Crumley’s Milo Milodragovich PI novels but Crumley lite, this slick caper novel touches chords of myth, history, loss and redemption just enough so you can hear echoes faintly under the gunfire. (Sept.)

Swedish author Lindqvist’s debut, a horror novel, offers few twists that won’t already be familiar to readers of modern vampire fiction. Oskar, a much bullied 12-year-old schoolboy living in a Stockholm suburb, notices that his next-door neighbor, Eli, has some peculiar traits: Eli only comes out at night, smells like death warmed over and is of ambiguous gender. Eventually, Eli reveals he’s a vampire who survives by feeding off the neighborhood lowlifes. Occasionally, his bite accidentally turns victims into undeads who, unaware of their vampirization, go on rampages that end in spectacularly gruesome fates. As sweet as the pure and wholesome friendship between Oskar and Eli may be, it’s the gory set pieces that propel the predictable plot. (Oct.)

Willis makes brilliant short fiction look easy in this collection of 23 novellas and short stories, which display a powerful range of sensibility, from poignant tenderness (“Inn”) and heartbreak (“Samaritan”) to close-to-the-bone satire (“Even the Queen”) and blackest savagery (“All My Darling Daughters”). The title novella illustrates many of Willis’s strengths. Starting from some inexplicable meteorological phenomenon like a blast of fetid air no one else in London’s Tube tunnels can feel or smell, “The Winds of Marble Arch” whirls its hapless narrator through one strange event after another, until finally his troubled marriage reaches an otherwise impossible transformation into “leaves and lilacs and love.” A bizarre snowstorm leads to a whole new fast-cut understanding of Christmas in “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know,” and another eerie blizzard brings the collection to a masterful close in “Epiphany,” opening a door between our puny reality and the Great Carnival around and above us all, even though we rarely perceive it. Willis’s gift promises that signs are everywhere; we just have to learn to recognize them. (Sept.)

Niven, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, and Lerner (Probe) offer a lively prequel to Niven’s 1970 classic, Ringworld. It’s 2650, some 500 years after the human colony ship Long Pass was captured by Citizens, those paranoid, two-headed beings better known as Puppeteers from the Fleet of Worlds. The Citizens of the Concordance have bred and nurtured successive generations of human “Colonists” from the Long Pass’s crew and embryo banks, while lying about their origins, telling stories about an abandoned colony ship adrift in space. When a team of Colonist explorers led by Citizen Nessus to study intelligent life on an ice-covered world also uncovers evidence that the Concordance has lied about the past, they’re determined to find the truth. Meanwhile, Concordance Citizens learn that the ruling Conservative policymakers have mishandled secret contacts with Earth and endangered the Fleet. Fans of hard SF will be well rewarded. (Sept.)

After a childhood of abuse and drug addiction, Jilly Coppercorn, last seen in de Lint’s Widdershins (2006), is well on her way to being “normal” as an art school student when she runs into Donna Birch, her only friend from the bad old days, at the start of this appealing urban fantasy set in Newford in 1972. Donna takes Jilly into a realm similar to this world, but where things have a way of working out better. It’s almost a paradise, a place where dreams are almost too easily realized, until Jilly realizes that the inhabitants are actually dead, souls whose lives were unfulfilled. She can continue pleasantly enough, but only by abandoning her responsibilities to all the people who helped her back in the living world. While much of this will resonate more with longtime fans of de Lint’s Newford series, the lucid writing and well-realized characters make this short novel accessible even to new readers. (Sept.)

Fleshing out backstory for the upcoming motion picture Jumper (based on Gould’s 1992 debut novel of the same name), this breakneck-paced SF adventure revolves around a character created specifically for the film. Griffin O’Conner, a precocious nine-year-old jumper (a person with the power to self-teleport), becomes the target of a ruthless cabal hell-bent on killing him. After assassins murder his parents in their San Diego home, Griffin barely escapes with his life by jumping to a location hundreds of miles away. But every time Griffin relocates, the mysterious operatives somehow track him down and kill those close to him. As the once naïve Griffin grows older, he learns to use his abilities in ingenious ways and ultimately embarks on a quest to avenge the deaths of his parents and others who died just because they befriended him. While series fans will almost literally be jumping for joy, newcomers may not fully appreciate the saga’s thematic scope and history without first reading Jumper and its sequel, Reflex (2004). (Aug.)

In this lively, accessible follow-up to Inda (2006), Smith dares to resolve several plot lines, in defiance of fantasy sequel conventions. Young prince and military genius Inda, forced to turn mercenary after conspirators engineered his exile from Choraed Elgaer, is gathering allies for a sea campaign against the piratical Brotherhood, while the Sierlaef, heir to the kingdom of Iasca Leror, savors Inda’s banishment and plots multiple intrigues. Inda’s attention soon shifts toward the ambitious Venn Empire, which wants to use him as a political pawn, and the increasing role of magic in these complex international conflicts, but home and family are always in his thoughts. Smith deftly stage-manages the wide-ranging plots with brisk pacing, spare yet complex characterizations and a narrative that balances sweeping action and uneasy intimacy. Occasional asides in the voice of later historical scholars are a bit disconcerting, but the device is very lightly applied and further demonstrates the depths of Smith’s world-building. (Aug.)

Ferrari’s rather grim debut blends Arthurian legend into the age-old tale of a bet between God and Lucifer. Nine-year-old Joby Peterson has a fairly ordinary childhood until he becomes the focus of “the same stupid bet” that Lucifer has suggested thousands of times before: if Lucifer can make Joby renounce God, he gets to destroy the earth and remake it his way. God isn’t allowed to interfere, but fortunately, his allies, from angels to Merlin, have fewer strictures. Joby grows up miserable and constantly accused of being gay and “not man enough” when he refuses to physically fight those who goad him. He finds brief respite in the quiet coastal town of Taubolt, the Camelot of his childhood dreams, but soon Joby must leave his haven and return to the struggle for his soul and the fate of the world. This dark fantasy for Left Behind fans achieves its narrow transcendence only at the cost of many pages and many lives. (Aug.)

With a nod to Jane Austen, Camp launches the Matchmaker series, set in 19th-century London and concerning the lovely widow Lady Francesca Haughston, mistress of romantic chicanery. When Francesca claims that she can get any marriageable girl engaged by the end of the season, Sinclair, the fifth duke of Rochford, accepts her wager, but only if he can choose the girl. The target he picks is Constance Woodley, a spinsterish young woman who’s been living with her uncle since her father’s death, hopeless for a future as anything but a chaperone for her spoiled younger cousins. Constance has no idea why Francesca has taken her under her wing, but doesn’t worry too much about it: she’s feeling alive as if for the first time, especially when she meets handsome Lord Dominic Leighton; unfortunately, he turns out to be Francesca’s brother and way out of Constance’s social class. While there are no surprises in this frothy concoction, Camp delivers another beautifully written charmer, sure to please fans of historicals, with enough modern appeal to pull in some contemporary romance readers. (Sept.)

Rusch continues her provocative interplanetary detective series with healthy doses of planet-hopping intrigue, heady legal dilemmas and well-drawn characters. On Jupiter’s moon Callisto, Hadad Yu, a glorified bounty hunter known as a Recovery Man, kidnaps Rhonda Shindo for delivery to the alien Gyonnese as payback for a reneged legal settlement. Meanwhile, Shindo’s preteen daughter, Talia, has just discovered that she’s a clone of her mother’s birth-daughter; left behind, she faces a doubly confusing world as lawyers, cops and her mother’s employer fight over child-custody rights. Meanwhile, Miles Flint, series protagonist and PI-like Retrieval Artist, discovers a secret in his dead mentor’s files—a secret that suggests his daughter, long thought dead, may be alive somewhere on Callisto. Rusch creates instantly sympathetic characters in a convincingly fragmented future wherein the petty mistakes of one culture translate to heinous crimes in another. Though Flint’s role this time around is meager (largely following the proverbial paper trail), alternating perspectives help other characters transcend their stock types; damsel-in-distress Rhonda proves refreshingly manipulative, and even the villainous Recovery Man wrestles with his convictions. Science-fiction fans should expect to be hooked. (Sept.)

Veteran romance writer Webb plunges into the Olympic-sized romantic suspense pool with a fictional Alabama town, Pine Bluff, that has more secrets than the deodorant shelf at Piggly Wiggly. So it makes perfect sense when one of Pine Bluff’s own, Clint Austin, returns from a 10-year prison stint to track down the killer whose crime he was pinned with. Meanwhile, Emily Wallace, whose damning testimony cinched Clint’s conviction, has also come back to town, determined that Austin will continue to pay for his crime—after all, Emily herself caught him with his hands at the slashed throat of her best friend, Heather Baker. Complicating their adversarial relationship, Emily and Clint were an item in high school. That’s the least, if most titillating, of the complications surrounding Heather’s death. As first Clint, and then Emily, investigate the convoluted stories of that summer night, the real murderer is out to stop them. Skillfully managing a big cast, Webb keeps the suspense teasingly taut, dropping clues and red herrings one after another on her way to a chilling conclusion. (Sept.)

Following a near-death experience, the owner of a vintage clothing store in Atlanta discovers that she can see dead people—and worse, hear them—in this sprightly but derivative series launch. When Nicki Styx awakens in the hospital after a heart attack, she doesn’t intend to let her newfound heart defect cramp her funky style—but a series of close encounters with ghosts might, particularly her meeting with a murdered friend, Caprice, who seems intent on dragging Nicki into the voodoo underworld. On the plus side, the clinical interest of sexy emergency room doctor Joe Bascombe (who’s researching near-death experiences) warms into a fascination with Nicki herself; he has more than a little trouble, however, accepting her otherworldly encounters. As threats to Nicki and her friends mount, lively writing may keep genre fans reading, but the episodic plot feels slight, and Nicki is frustratingly uninterested in her own backstory (for instance, Nicki is adopted, but shows little curiosity when Joe suggests his estranged wife might be Nicki’s identical twin). (Sept.)

Christmas brings changes and new romances in the third volume of Flower of Life. Five new short stories follow high school student Harutaro and his classmates as they plan their annual holiday party, but not without some complications. At the same time their masculine yet (unbelievably) female teacher, Shigeru Saito, struggles to end her affair with a married co-worker and deal with her newfound feelings for Majima—her arrogant, 17-year-old student. Classmates Takeda, Saki and Shota must overcome their own insecurities before enjoying an end of the year celebration with their friends. While Harutaro and his friends gather and finally come to understand the spirit behind Christmas, Shigeru crosses the final boundary between student and teacher and takes steps toward a dangerous relationship, while Majima remains apathetic toward her. Known for her success with traditional yaoi and shojo stories, Yoshinaga (Antique Bakery) creates another series of warmly emotional short stories. Her characters—cute, somewhat unsure, almost hopelessly romantic—face awkward and potentially embarrassing situations as they come into their own. The art style is delicate, slightly effeminate and works well with the heartfelt nature of the stories. (July)

Simmons’s first solo work is a moody, claustrophobic, haunting tale, told completely without words. Three teenagers meet in the middle of the woods to explore an old mansion and discover its secrets. Their curiosity and fascination with the mystery of the abandoned place is quickly replaced with dread and rising panic. Simmons takes full advantage of the page to dwarf these characters with their surroundings. Their emotions are expressed by the growing distance between them, as one girl draws enviously away from the burgeoning romance between the other two. The pen and ink drawings are filled with wonder: discovering an underwater town, watching the sunset from the roof. But it is no coincidence that in the latter half of the book, the black on the pages overwhelms the white as the house literally swallows them whole. With a simple story, Simmons has stretched his abilities as an illustrator to create a creepy comic that is quick to read but slow to shake. (Aug.)

Talk about a high concept that’s perfect for the Shonen Jump line of boy’s adventure comics: samurais versus aliens. In this book, aliens invaded Edo-era Japan and outlawed the samurai way of life. Centuries later, Gin Tama is a renegade ronin, who does various odd jobs to help his friend Shin get his family dojo back in business. The chapters are actually much more character-based than one would expect from such a far-out idea. The theme of not letting traditions die in the face of changes in society is presented by Gin and Shin holding onto the samurai way while the rest of Edo gives way to alien decadence. Not only is there some food for thought in the book, the adventures can actually be pretty funny. Characters occasionally break the fourth wall. In the first chapter, when Shin asks why Gin held off attackers for only one page, Gin confesses that’s still a lot for a manga artist to draw. Sorachi’s characters are designed very appealingly, but his line work could be stronger. There are many times when characters would look much better developed, as a book with this much panache demands. (July)

Centuries after the world is devastated by a nuclear conflagration, mankind finds itself under the heel of demonic beast-men who enslave men and force women into being their unwilling sexual playthings and brood mares. Opposing this tyranny are a group of superpowered warriors known as Angels, agents of a Christian empire on a mission to save the church’s abducted Holy Mother, and woe unto any miscreants who get in their way. The narrative moves briskly with nothing on its mind but bringing the mayhem and giving the reader furious action sequences, rendered in competent style while never skimping on gory depictions of dismemberment, concussive punch-outs served up by borderline-homoerotic leather boys, and gratuitous cruelty. But if most of this sounds familiar, it should; this series is a bald-faced clone of the seminal postapocalyptic superhero epic Fist of the North Star, right down to its Sergio Leone-esque wasteland and raven-haired, knuckle-cracking badass in a sleeveless leather jacket. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but there’s a very fine line between being influenced and crafting a shameless knockoff. (July)

Signature

Reviewed by Andrew O’Hagan

Novelists can no longer take it as an insult when people say their novels are like good television, because the finest American television is better written than most novels. Ann Patchett’s new one has the texture, the pace and the fairy tale elegance of a half dozen novels she might have read and loved growing up, but the magic and the finesse of Run is really much closer to that of Six Feet Under or ER or The Sopranos, and that is good news for everybody, not least her readers.

Bernadette and Bernard Doyle were a Boston couple who wanted to have a big lively family. They had one boy, Sullivan, and then adopted two black kids, Teddy and Tip. Mr. Doyle is a former mayor of Boston and he continues his interest in politics, hoping his boys will shape up one day for elected office, though none of them seems especially keen. Bernadette dies when the adopted kids are just four, and much of the book offers a placid requiem to her memory in particular and to the force of motherhood in lives generally. An old statue from Bernadette’s side of the family seems to convey miracles, and there will be more than one before this gracious book is done.

One night, during a heavy snowfall, Teddy and Tip accompany their father to a lecture given by Jessie Jackson at the Kennedy Centre. Tip is preoccupied with studying fish, so he feels more than a little coerced by his father. After the lecture they get into an argument and Tip walks backwards in the road. A car appears out of nowhere and so does a woman called Tennessee, who pushes Tip out of the car’s path and is herself struck. Thus, a woman is taken to hospital and her daughter, Kenya, is left in the company of the Doyles. Relationships begin both to emerge and unravel, disclosing secrets, hopes, fears.

Run is a novel with timeless concerns at its heart—class and belonging, parenthood and love—and if it wears that heart on its sleeve, then it does so with confidence. And so it should: the book is lovely to read and is satisfyingly bold in its attempt to say something patient and true about family. Patchett knows how to wear big human concerns very lightly, and that is a continuing bonus for those who found a great deal to admire in her previous work, especially the ultra-lauded Bel Canto. Yet one should not mistake that lightness for anything cosmetic: Run is a book that sets out inventively to contend with the temper of our times, and by the end we feel we really know the Doyle family in all its intensity and with all its surprises.

Andrew O’Hagan’s novel Be Near Me has just been published by Harcourt.