Fiction Reviews: Week of 7/30/2007

Inspired by English poet William Wordsworth's continental romance on the eve of the French Revolution, Tipton's debut novel depicts the poet's lover, Annette Vallon (1766–1841), as a Loire Valley Scarlet Pimpernel. History records Wordsworth met Vallon while in France, departed for England when the revolution darkened, but came back to see her and their daughter, Caroline (born in 1792), even after he proposed marriage to an Englishwoman. Tipton begins this fictional account with 16–year-old Annette listening to her father and Thomas Jefferson discuss wine. Six years later, her virtue lost to a dance tutor and her father killed in a grain riot, Annette falls in love with the then unknown English poet. Their idyllic interlude inspires his best work, but soon his political associations place him in danger, forcing him to flee with Annette's help. Pregnant and on her own, Annette recalls early training in hunting and horsemanship to survive the Reign of Terror and beyond, with Caroline in tow. Tipton's descriptions, à la Tracy Chevalier, of how masterpieces are created alternate with the spirited heroine's adventures, making for an uneasy balance, but Annette—and those who help her along the way—are believable in their struggles through the best and the worst of times. (Nov.)

An inchoate evil is hard at work in each of the 11 stunning, loosely linked stories from Brown (Driving the Heart and Other Stories), set in harsh, sparsely populated northern New England. A dark realism is established in the title tale, where a young boy drifts through the turbulent aftermath of his depressed sister's drowning, his family despondent, his pastor sanctimonious. Such angst—sometimes leavened with wry humor, but more often just unsettling—is pervasive. In “Afternoon of the Sassanoa,” a weary father's ego sinks the family sailboat, with unforeseen consequences for his son. In “Tree,” an old woman's blithe nephew levels the woods her late husband's family had nurtured for generations. And in “A Fair Chance,” one of the few stories with anything close to a happy ending, a young recovering alcoholic saves the life of his AA sponsor and employer. Ravaged by despair, numbed by grief and lurching toward unattainable love, the people of these gothic stories somehow never totally self-destruct. Brown's deep sympathy for his flawed characters endows these polished shorts with brilliant appeal. (Nov.)

Irish author O'Connor (Star of the Sea) delivers a highly stylized post–Civil War period pastiche centered on Redemption Falls, a tumultuous frontier town in the Mountain Territory (presumably in present day Utah or Montana). Told through the posters, correspondence, poems/songs, newspaper articles and interview transcripts collected in the early 20th century by a university professor (and nephew of one of the book's prominent characters), the narrative follows acting governor James Con O'Keeffe as he feuds with his ravishing wife, Lucia-Cruz McLelland, about the mute 12-year-old drummer boy Con takes in and wants to adopt. The boy, Jeddo Mooney, is in a bad way and unaware that his tenacious older sister, Eliza Duane Mooney, is hiking from war-ravaged Louisiana to find him. (Her journey is its own mini-epic.) Con's past as an English criminal who barely escaped the noose and his behavior as an American politician demonstrate his noble but flawed character, while a chorus of minor voices add texture to a narrative already rich with a medley of languages, dialects and clashing cultural mores. The novel is complex, ambitious and at times difficult (many characters are uneducated, and their journals and letters prove to be occasionally impenetrable). O'Connor succeeds as a ventriloquist who brings to life a wide cross-section of Americana. (Oct.)

The Alaskan wilderness provides a formidable backdrop for Foreman's detail-rich though meandering first novel. In Toehold, with a population of 200, an Arctic “bush village,” a collection of surly characters have their quirks, but this is no quaint Northern Exposure hamlet. Subsisting on a diet of moose, caribou and the beer down at Sweet-ass Sue's Pingo Palace, the town's citizens see simply surviving the winter as a source of pride. Like many residents, fiery Mary Ellen “Mel” Madden, originally from Mudsuck, W.Va., came to Toehold with “just no place left to go.” But thanks to Cody Rosewater, the town's taxidermist and “go-to” guy, Mel soon learns how to track, hunt and trap. She puts her new skills to work by hanging out her hunting guide shingle. But her first client, a smarmy Hollywood producer, may prove to be more dangerous than the golden grizzly they set out after. Plenty of shots get fired, and somewhere in the harsh landscape love starts to bloom. While the depiction of life in the Alaskan bush can be striking, the romance is less than stirring, and some sluggish prose and big chunks of character backstory slow things down. (Oct.)

Pritchett (The Venus Tree) retells the saga of Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) from the perspective of Bill Lewis, a modern-day high school teacher who is writing a book about the explorer. Shuttling between the early 19th and 21st centuries, the twin narratives contrast the historic exploits of Lewis's life with the more mundane events of Bill's suburban existence. Lewis explores the Northwest Passage, makes Indian policy as governor of the Louisiana Territory, becomes peripherally involved with the traitorous Aaron Burr and takes his own life only three years after his return from the West Coast. In the present, a clinically depressed Bill, prone to suicidal thoughts tries to finish his book while dealing with a deeply troubled marriage, a teenage son with an eating disorder, a student who drops out of school after becoming pregnant and a dangerous flirtation with a friend's wife. Pritchett raises classic questions about the nature of heroism and society's need for (and treatment of) heroes. Oddly, however, Lewis the adventurer remains muted, while Bill's disintegrating life, with all its quotidian disappointments and conundrums, is heartbreakingly affecting. (Oct.)

The author of Trainspotting gives a master class in gallows humor in his first story collection since The Acid House (1995). Three of the five stories take place in the U.S., and Welsh relishes punishing ugly Americans. In “Rattlesnakes,” a trio of vapid hedonists lost in the desert are forced to perform sexually degrading acts by an unhinged illegal immigrant, while “The DOGS of Lincoln Park” finds a bitchy Chicago princess throwing a hissy fit over her missing papillon, Toto, who she fears has landed in her Korean neighbor's crock pot. Page-turners both, but the characters are too easily satirized. More likable is the narrator of “Miss Arizona,” an aspiring auteur whose interviews with his filmmaker hero's ex-wife turn increasingly creepy. Welsh shines in the title story, about an ex-pat skirt-chasing bar owner in the Canary Islands, and the novella, “The Kingdom of Fife,” set in a glum Scotland town. Narrative duties in the last are shared by “wee” Jason King, a former jockey and current compulsive masturbator and table football champion, and Jenni Cahill, a horse jumper and local gangster's daughter. That a story featuring a gruesome decapitation, dogfighting, equine death and rampant wanking can produce such an amiable effect is testament to Welsh's delightful degeneracy. (Sept.)

One of the crime genre's rising stars, Huston (Six Bad Things) delivers a stunning, darkly comic coming-of-age novel, set in the summer of 1983 in an unnamed Northern California town. Four teenage boys, out of school and experimenting with drugs, booze and sex, find trouble fast when they break into the home of the notorious Arroyo brothers to retrieve a stolen bicycle. In the process, they stumble on the Arroyo family's main operation, a meth lab. In a classic moment of naïve bravado, they steal part of the stash, setting off a downward spiral of events that will reopen the door to the town's dark past, when an earlier generation of criminals, including one of the boy's fathers, controlled the streets. Huston's natural gift for dialogue shines as he recreates the language of teenage males, in all its crude and often hilarious glory. Most importantly, Huston has the courage to both unsettle and entertain the reader, and his story resonates long after its disturbing final scenes. Author tour. (Aug.)

Two resilient New Jersey lawyers find themselves way out of their league when one of their clients proves to be especially hazardous in this engaging first novel from former federal prosecutor Liebman (Shark Tales). Friends since childhood, Camden residents Junior “Junne” Salerno and Mickie Mezzonatti both worked as cops, both took law courses at Rutgers and both passed the bar—eventually. Their clients are mostly street criminals, and they're fairly adept at working the system as long as the cases are simple. Then they're retained by Rodrigo Gonzales, a jailed Salvadoran drug lord who wants to be released on bail so he can escape. If Mickie and Junne are unsuccessful in obtaining Gonzales's release, they face an unpleasant fate at the hands of vengeful gangsters. Levity is provided by Mickie frequently trying to get the deeply closeted Junne to go out with girls, a subplot that feels artificial in a thriller otherwise rich with sharp, crackling dialogue, memorable characters and local color. (Sept.)

Told in the form of a diary, Turner's third Sarah Agnes Prine novel is set in 1906 in the Arizona Territory, with 43-year-old Sarah widowed and living in a house built by the man she had refused to marry, Rudolfo Maldonado. Her former hired help, Rudolfo is now one of the richest and most unscrupulous men in the territory. Sarah, the mother of several grown boys and the center of her large clan, is being courted by her neighbor, Udell Hanna, and though she is attracted to him, she is not so sure she wants another husband. The novel bustles with a large cast and period western atmospherics. Turner also depicts a host of domestic and frontier dramas (family strife, concerns about bandits, border disputes). Sarah's independent streak and sometimes wily nature will endear her to contemporary readers. Part western, part romance, part imagined history of the evolution of American womanhood, the novel is well researched and manages to be at once entertaining and thoughtful. (Sept.)

The Patterson bestseller factory has turned out another high-drama thriller, this time in collaboration with Honeymoon coauthor Roughan. Kristin Burns, a New York City nanny and aspiring photographer, is devoted to the two children under her care, but her desire for their father, Michael Turnbull, leads her to a risky, torrid affair with him. Kristin's anxiety about her guilty secret is heightened by a series of frightening nightmares centering on a vision of four body bags being loaded onto gurneys in front of a prominent Manhattan hotel. Her nightmares also feature recurring encounters with dead people, including her father and the pediatrician who abused her as a child. Kristin's breathless, superficial narration doesn't generate a lot of reader sympathy or interest in figuring out the source of her macabre experiences. (Sept.)

This slim volume eloquently displays two sides of the venerated Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) with two highly contrasting tales of the fantastic. “Somewhere a Band Is Playing,” the quieter piece, explores journalist James Cardiff's unexpected attraction to the rural town of Summerton, Ariz. Summerton's secrets unfold with Bradbury's hallmark pacing, gentle and inexorable, and the plot arcs just as gently into the fantastical before circling back to Cardiff himself. Framed by engagingly wistful lyric verse, this classically appealing Bradbury fantasy is at distinct odds with the prickly and disturbing “Leviathan '99.” In this space-faring homage to Melville, the dread comet Leviathan takes the whale's place, and Queequeg becomes the enigmatic telepath Quell. The result, while not at all comfortable, cogently packs Moby Dick's psychological complexity into a quarter of the space, despite the padding of lengthy quasi-Shakespearean dialogue. Bradbury's brief summaries of each novella's decades-long path to completion invoke the extraordinary length of one of the most distinguished careers in speculative fiction. (Sept.)

Three no-longer-so-young “irony boys” and their put-upon wives and girlfriends write, drink, pace the streets of contemporary New York City and occasionally manage to publish a novel or two in this biting remake of George Gissing's 1891 novel New Grub Street. Writer Jackson Miller is willing to give the masses what they want, so long as his star rises. Eddie Renfros, his best friend, is dejected, determined to hold onto both his literary ideals and his increasingly wandering wife, Amanda, who, like Jackson, is bent on worldly success. Henry Baffler is an ascetic devoted only to his craft; and Margot Yarborough is the stern, self-reliant daughter of an aging, cruel literary critic, painstakingly making her way through a novel about lepers in Louisiana. By novel's end, Amanda, Margot and Jackson are all treated to a meal (or several) at Grub, the restaurant favored by the literary elite they long to join, but the costs are many. The author of The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish and Hunger, Blackwell offers a sharp take on the market-driven foibles of fiction and publishing. The milieu is familiar; the characters' grasping behaviors blur and strain credibility. Caricature, however, is the point here: Blackwell nails the contemporary forms taken by some very old ambitions. (Sept.)

Bestseller Davidson is at the top of her form in her 14th culinary suspense novel to feature Colorado crime-solving caterer Goldy Schulz (after 2006's Dark Tort). As the Christmas season approaches, Goldy is thrilled to be catering not only a breakfast for the local library but also an elegant dinner for Hermie and Smithfield MacArthur, rich Southern transplants to Aspen Meadow. But when the body of Drew Wellington, the disgraced former DA, turns up in the library, Goldy is once again forced to put her recipes on the back burner and find the murderer. Discovering that Wellington was dabbling in antique map collecting, Goldy must track down a priceless map and steer clear of Wellington's fellow collectors, ex-girlfriends and clients. Further complicating matters are sightings of the allegedly deceased Sandee Brisbane, the young woman accused of murdering Goldy's ex-husband and then supposedly perishing in a forest fire. Readers will happily sink their teeth into Goldy's latest case and come away hungry for more. 11-city author tour. (Sept.)

TeBordo offers a twisted take on adolescent suburban life at the end of the 20th century in his third novel (after The Conviction & Subsequent Life of Savior Neck; Better Ways of Being Dead). An unnamed 12-year-old narrator details the summer after his mother's death, when, ignored by his grieving father, the boy develops a crush on the “little bit older” neighbor Maria and begins receiving spam e-mail sent from his dead mother's e-mail address. Soon, the narrator's inbox is flooded with offers from his dead mother for herbal remedies, pornography, prescription drugs and mortgages, and the boy and his father are buying every item that comes their way. As the summer progresses, the e-mails from his mother peter out and Maria suddenly stops coming over. Alone and facing an increasingly volatile father, the boy becomes fixated on the last message sent from his mother; his quest leads him to an electric carving knife and a potentially disastrous decision for him and his father. TeBordo's wit and minimalist prose carry the slow-starting novel, and sprinklings of wry humor keep the narrative from become too macabre. TeBordo has crafted an unsettling portrait of the dark undercurrents of youth and loss. (Sept.)

In this awkward but diverting tale, Brewer (The Poet of Tolstoy Park) recounts the story of the search for his beloved golden retriever, Cormac, who goes missing while Brewer is on a book tour. Brewer begins his “mostly true” Marley cash-in by introducing readers to Fairhope, Ala., where life is genial and, perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, quite sophisticated. Brewer also introduces us to Cormac, who is lovely but not unique in the dog kingdom. (His distinguishing features are loyalty, fear of thunder and an ability to “speak” in throaty moans.) Unfortunately, much of the narrative is filled with mundane details (the type of coffee Brewer buys for his bookshop), unpiquant filler (a none-too-funny chapter on rousting a squirrel from the garage with Cormac) and banal descriptions of plot points, such as Brewer's purchasing of the underground electric fence that keeps Cormac in the yard. But in the latter third of the book, which covers Brewer's weeks-long search for Cormac, the amiable, talky style gains a welcome clarity and momentum, leading to a satisfying denouement, for dog lovers in particular. (Sept.)

Strieber's epic sequel to 2006's The Grays blends equal parts science fiction thriller, supernatural horror and provocative spiritual speculation. As struggling author Wylie Dale works on his latest novel, which revolves around an upcoming date when the earth “crosses both the galactic equator and the solar ecliptic”—a time that the Maya predicted would mark the cataclysmic end of this age—he begins to uncover evidence that what he's writing about is actually happening on a parallel earth. If nothing is done, on December 21, 2012, gateways will open into this world and reptilian invaders will not only enslave humanity but feast on their succulent souls as well. While Strieber's exploration into the existence and import of the soul isn't exactly profound, it is wildly entertaining. Fans of apocalyptic page-turners like King's The Stand and Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer will enjoy this ambitious—and audacious—tale as it invokes everything from rectal probes and Ann Coulter to the destruction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. (Sept.)

With its flat characters, overly technical exposition and a plot implausible even in the wake of The Da Vinci Code, art historian Charney's debut disappoints. When a priceless Caravaggio altarpiece disappears from Rome's Santa Giuliana church, the police call in renowned art historian Gabriel Coffin to investigate. Coffin detects a pattern after a rare Kasimir Malevich Suprematist painting disappears in Paris and another Malevich is stolen from London's National Gallery soon after being purchased at Christie's. As potential forgeries are uncovered and the thieves taunt those on the trail of the missing art with riddles and ransom demands, Coffin and his fellow art experts must race to recover the stolen masterpieces before they disappear forever. Despite his extensive knowledge of the art world's criminal underbelly, Charney delivers a story so bogged down with minutiae that even the most dedicated reader will get stuck. (Sept.)

British author Stourton's ambitious debut paints a complex, if often predictable, portrait of collegiate hedonism and friends bound by a terrible secret. As an awkward first-year at Cambridge's Tudor College, James fears he'll never join the ranks of his privileged classmates. But when a chance encounter introduces him to a close-knit group of friends devoted to scaling the college's buildings in the dead of night, James finds himself drawn into a world of excess and adventure. Francis, the group's charismatic leader, is adored by the beautiful but aloof Jessica, on whom James harbors a secret crush. The group is rounded out by Lisa, with her eye for shady business deals, and Michael, the blustery jock. After Francis's father, Lord Soulford, cuts off his son's monthly allowance, the friends hatch a plan to maintain their lavish lifestyle that will have disastrous consequences for years to come. With undeniable echoes of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, the novel juggles too many story lines to sustain the suspense needed for such a complicated tale. Still, Stourton is a name to watch. (Sept.)

Ford (Full Circle; Last Summer) bridges the gap between gay romance and mainstream fiction in his latest. Ben Ransome, a 40-something marine biologist living modestly in Monterey, Calif., is anxious about his 16-year-old daughter's summer stay. It's been nine years since they've seen each other, and when Caddie arrives, she's a bit icy toward her wayward father. Ford explores vividly and honestly a teen girl's longing for love and a place in the world. He then furthers the theme of finding one's self when Ben meets Hudson, a Ph.D. candidate in town to investigate an unfinished Steinbeck manuscript. The men bond over stories of Steinbeck's Monterey and instantly become pals. As Caddie finds a man of her own and a heretofore straight Ben grapples with his feelings for Hudson, Ben also learns a few things about fatherhood. A deft sense of place and a handle on romance—both Ben's and Caddie's—that's neither sappy nor shallow will help set this one apart. (Sept.)

A child abduction with elements of the Elizabeth Smart case triggers this pallid romantic suspense novel from Edgar-finalist MacDonald (The Unforgiven). When she was nine, Tess DeGraff witnessed the knifepoint kidnapping of her teenage sister, Phoebe, by a wild-eyed man with a ponytail who warned her that breaking her silence would lead to her sister's death. Phoebe's abused corpse was found shortly afterward, and a local sex offender, Lazarus Abbott, was executed after Tess described the abductor and pointed to him in court. Two decades later, DNA evidence exonerates Abbott, and Tess becomes vilified in Abbott's New Hampshire home town, leading her to some awkward amateur sleuthing to uncover the truth. Her implausible relationship with Ben Ramsey, the attorney representing the Abbott family, fails to distract readers from identifying Phoebe's real killer, hidden by only a scant handful of red herrings. (Sept.)

In this unusual novel, Locke, a writer for NBC's Tonight Show, takes readers on a surreal journey involving a magic carpetbag, with mixed results. David Connors is a Chicago video games art director who has let alcohol and an inability to get in touch with his feelings separate him from his wife and two young children. The Christmas season only exacerbates these feelings, and he throws himself out of his 39th-floor office window. When his life is spared, a magic carpetbag he's discovered provides endless objects that hold clues to his past. Together with an unhappy single woman he meets at a restaurant (a relationship that never quite makes sense), he boards a train and begins a strange trip to a bizarre yet familiar town. References to the need for reconciliation with God are inserted in a few places as pieces of David's past come together. In the climax, David experiences a recreation of an incident that has haunted him as an adult. The story requires maximum suspension of disbelief, as David finds forgiveness, explains his story to his wife, then faces his fears again in the closing pages. Faith fiction readers who enjoy a magical element to their stories should find this to their taste. (Sept.)

After a lyrical opening that promises a profound and insightful look at life on the mean streets of Kansas City, Mo., Parker's debut loses its way. Cicero Day, illegitimate biracial son of one of the city's late mob leaders, plots to flood the U.S. with a new superdrug while looking for opportunities to kill and maim, purely for sadistic pleasure. Day's lack of interest in a news report that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to ban religion from “schools, libraries, privately owned businesses, and the Internet” says less about his character than it does about the novel's scattered nature, as this implausible potential shift in the law appears without any context or follow-up. Readers should be prepared for some purple prose (“The solstice bids farewell and the equinox comes to pass. Life explodes with vibrancy, then diminishes as the Earth tilts on its axis”) and a story with little substance to offset the gore. (Sept.)

Ah Lung, the youngest son in a family of silk producers, is kidnapped and forced into slavery in McCunn's underpowered latest. Though Ah Lung signs a labor contract that promises generous wages and a limited term of employment, once he begins the journey to Peru from his native southern China, he discovers the wages are nonexistent and his chances of surviving the contract are only slightly better than those of surviving the voyage to Peru. While he endures being shackled in an overcrowded ship's hold, a failed mutiny, a shipboard fire and a cholera outbreak before being unloaded and forced to do backbreaking work in a guano mine, his family, especially his wife, Bo See, and sister Moongirl, search for him. Bo See decides to grow an additional crop of silkworms to finance her husband's rescue, and Ah Lung perseveres in the harshest of conditions. McCunn has done an enormous amount of research into both Chinese slavery and silk production, and though the information is fascinating, it tends to overwhelm her narrative and undermine its tension. The book has an epic sweep, but the reading experience is only partially satisfying. (Sept.)

A woman solicits a reunion with her former lover at the end of the 19th century in Thompson's debut novel, embarking on an overwrought reappraisal of her tragic past. At a notorious East Village anarchist watering hole (and also the last known address of her former secret beau, Jimmy Roberts), Mary Jane records in her notebook the events that have led her and her husband, the painter Edwin Romanzo Elmer, to New York City: the death of their only child, Effie; their estrangement and reunion with Edwin's imposing and wealthy brother, Samuel; and their family and social circle's tension-fraught relationships. Mary's days of secret escape are contrasted against Edwin's private turmoil as he struggles to secure a place at the National Academy of Design, while his thoughts are distracted by his wife's suspicious absences. Though the novel covers the course of a week, flashbacks expand the story's breadth and scope. Portentous prose may make a tough go of the novel's first half, but narrative urgency grows, albeit slowly, as connections between the characters are revealed. Readers fond of late 19th- century literature will appreciate this florid trip back in time. (Sept.)

While novels featuring a love affair between the multiple personalities of two psychopathic serial killers are certainly rare, any points Nasaw might have earned for originality are canceled out by the improbable plot of this fourth E.L. Pender adventure (after 2004's Twenty-Seven Bones). British psychiatrist Alan Corder has spent years trying to cure Ulysses Maxwell, an in-patient at a prestigious Oregon treatment facility, of his murderous alternate identities. Maxwell, who's obviously clever enough to game the system, gets an unexpected ally when the attractive and deranged Lily DeVries arrives at the center. After Corder hosts the two killers at his house, they butcher him, his wife and their psychiatric attendants and make their escape. Soon ex-FBI series hero E.L. Pender and Dr. Irene Cogan, a psychiatrist who was kidnapped and tortured by Maxwell, take up the pursuit. Though Nasaw raises interesting questions about identity and sanity, his superficial answers leave this blood-soaked action yarn lacking genuine thrills or chills. (Sept.)

Death forges a supernatural bond between two lonely teenage boys in Barzak's well-intentioned and morbid first novel. Fifteen-year-old Adam McCormick is haunted by the earthbound ghost of his murdered classmate, Jamie Marks. Boy and ghost are drawn to one another by their shared outsider status at school, with the ghost providing support (and a surprising homoerotic romance subplot) for Adam as he survives a disastrous relationship with the sexually predatory Gracie (the classmate who discovered Jamie's body), a scary encounter with the ghost of a murderess and a troubled home life with his older brother and constantly arguing parents. Adam and Jamie's ghost eventually run away and find shelter in an abandoned church, where Adam is tempted to join Jamie, and Jamie delays moving to the next level in the afterlife. Barzak admirably defies convention by not having the two boys search for Jamie's killer, but the replacement plot—one of a bizarre coming-of-age—doesn't always meld well with the narrative's fantastical elements (closets, called dead space, are portals between worlds; ghosts burn memories to keep warm). The macabre tone won't work for readers looking for another Lovely Bones, but the novel's approach to familiar material is refreshing. (Sept.)

A lovely ghost helps a grieving young widow expose some shocking truths in O'Rourke's (The Man Who Loved Jane Austen) quaint romantic suspense tale. Three months have passed since Susan Mark's husband, Bobby, vanished while piloting a flight over the Indian Ocean, and Damon St. Clair, her colorful (and funny) partner at St. Claire & Marks, the “official consultants and appraisers to Christie's,” urges her to take some time off to heal. Susan heads for her late great aunt's house in Freedman's Cove, R.I., that's haunted by the spirit of a distant relative, Aimee Marks. Making a love connection with local artist Dan Freedman frees Susan from her grief, and Dan also helps her learn about Aimee, who may have committed suicide by leaping off a lighthouse in 1910. The blossoming romance is interrupted by another plane crash, this time involving Damon, who miraculously survives, though his recovery delays the delivery of an important message that will change Susan's suddenly endangered life. Sweet, light and as comforting as a mug of peppermint tea, O'Rourke's latest will please her fans. (Sept.)

Moser (Mozart's Sister) frames this novel as a journal written by Jane Austen, following her life from when she falls in love with Tom Lefroy at age 20 until she is an established writer in her late 30s. Those familiar with Austen's life will recognize many of the circumstances—the loss of the beloved family home at Steventon when her father retired to Bath, the death of her sister Cassandra's fiancé, her mother's many illnesses. However, they may not recognize Moser's Austen, who mopes about pining after guys, resents her parents, worries regularly about whether she is a real writer and reflects on her faith in God (which was important to Austen, but which she was reticent to discuss). Austen's voice comes through in extensive quotes from her letters—paragraphs and even occasionally pages. Since these are mostly unmarked, readers may not recognize them as Austen's words, but their vivacity and wit often make them stand out from the rest of the writing. Some aspects of the book are charming, and it is an easy introduction to Austen's life. However, it fails to be compelling as it devolves into simply tracking events as they occur, and does not capture Austen's spirit. It will likely disappoint both Austen devotees and historical fiction fans. (Sept.)

Thefirst book in 10 years from former U.S. poet laureate Hass may be his best in 30: these new poems show a rare internal variety, even as they reflect his constant concerns. One is human impact “on the planet at the century's end”: a nine-part verse-essay addressed to the ancient Roman poet Lucretius sums up evolution, deplores global warming and says that “the earth needs a dream of restoration in which/ She dances and the birds just keep arriving.” Another concern is biography and memory, not so much Hass's own life as the lives of family and friends. A poem about his sad father and alcoholic mother avoids self-pity by telling a finely paced story. Hass also commemorates the late Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, with whom he collaborated on translations; condemns war in harsh, stripped-down prose poems; explores achievements in visual art from Gerhard Richter to Vermeer; and turns in perfected, understated phrases on Japanese Buddhist models. Through it all runs a rare skill with long sentences, a light touch, a wish to make claims not just on our ears but on our hearts, and a willingness to wait—few poets wait longer, it seems—for just the right word. (Oct.)

Perhaps the most popular modern poet in the world, the Chilean-born Neruda (1904–1973) won the Nobel Prize for an enormous body of verse that includes introspective lyrics of love and lust; sinuously enthusiastic “elemental odes” to artichokes, watermelon, salt, Walt Whitman and the human eye; declamations in favor of the labor movement, the Communist Party and the working people of any nation; and involuted late poems of self-doubt. Perhaps no serious writer of verse since Whitman has combined so much scholarly attention with so much enthusiasm in a broad international public: unlike some Latin American peers to whom he paid homage, Neruda even at his most ambitious remained clear in his passions. Memoirist, critic and translator Stavans has culled this useful portable volume, with its facing-page English and Spanish from his far larger (1,040 pages) Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), while adding a few translations not included there: translators include Robert Bly, W.S. Merwin and Stavans himself. A particular attraction is Scottish poet Alastair Reid's version of “Autumn Testament,” Neruda's mid-career retrospect: “I've been a great flowing river,” the poet asserts, “with hard ringing stones, with clear night-noises,/ with dark day-songs.” (Oct.)

The 20th volume in America's most popular annual poetry anthology series is perhaps the most esoteric. McHugh, an unusual poet herself, who says she is “Fond of the textures of a text, the matter of a letter,” has tried to assemble what she feels is a cohesive anthology rather than simply a gathering of favorite poems from this past year's literary magazines. As ever, some familiar names—former editors and famous poets—appear: John Ashbery, Billy Collins (“Who has time for sunlight falling on the city”), Robert Creeley, Louise Glück, Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, Galway Kinnell. But there are also a number of representatives, such as Rae Armantrout and Christian Bök (“selves we woo/ we lose// losses we levee/ we owe”), from off-center traditions. A few of the newbies tend toward the experimental, such as Ben Lerner and Danielle Pafunda: “Do he & he have a big muscle in the arm from the aiming?” All and all, this is a riskier than usual volume, though also full of familiar pleasures. Certainly it attests to poetry's continuing vitality. (Sept.)

In his ninth collection of poems, Ramke—a Yale Younger Poetry Prize winner, Denver Quarterly editor and questing poetic experimenter—engages with contemporary American politics, philosophical and literary traditions, and an oblique version of autobiography. “Can you tell the casualty from the cause?” he wonders, in “Yeats Was Asked (To Write a Poem About the War),” one of several looks at America's current embattled state. Elsewhere, in these 26 rambling, often several page, free verse meditations, Ramke describes a historical insane asylum in which, “When a patient could properly behave at tea, he was released”; recalls the dying days of a famous mathematician; thinks about child- and fatherhood; and engages in his trademark intertextual and etymological wonderings: “the word fear is related to fare and it fits.” In this mature work, Ramke remains a difficult, sometimes obscure poet, related at times to Ashbery and Jorie Graham, but also a stylist very much of his own invention. And amid dizzying references, brilliant points of emotional clarity and depth shine through: “we are afraid of everything, just not all the time.” (Sept.)

The intelligent, quotable sophomore effort from Waldrep (Goldbeater's Skin) finds a neat balance between clear declarations and head-spinning fragments, and a neat balance, too, between compact page-long lyric efforts, on the one hand, and the series of documentary poems on which the collection turns, which describes the walled gun emplacements (“batteries”) on the Marin headlands in California, once important naval sites, now part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which the poet explored in 2003. Each battery gives its title to a poem (“Battery Mendell,” “Battery Bravo”); each poem integrates what Waldrep saw there (including tourists, concrete and graffiti) with the paradoxes of American empire, the ways in which we are “the new Athens, the new Rome.” Waldrep shows a historian's care for evidence in these short, grave poems that try so hard to take long views. Other works range from pellucid prayer to word salad, with attractive stops in between for mysterious wisdom (“Everything in the world is a knife,/ everything in the world cuts a little from you”) and for bizarre comedy (”Shirts! Though I have not yet worn you/ I appreciate your valor and discretion/ in this difficult moment”). Waldrep has a fine ear and an unresting mind: the combination makes this volume resonate. (Sept.)

Brown's forthright debut opens with an intimate address to a sister: “I tell you this story because it is/ the story we need/ to believe our offal is divine.” The poems that follow fuse together the speaker's harrowing history: her birth to an unwed teen, a stepfather's abuse and her teenage escape in a car packed with all her belongings and half a tank of gas. Despite its excesses and reliance on the well-worn imagery of a dusty and impoverished South, this is a striking collection. The strongest poems are those stripped of commentary, in which rough memories are offered as strange discoveries, as in “Jessica Meyers in the Corn”: “In puddles of seeping/ groundwater, I plugged in electrical cords and her skin/ burned black.” These brave confessions, apologies and recollections lay everything bare: “I want nothing/ but truth between us, but I am afraid.” (Sept.)

Trinidad's 13th collection is a cinematic recuperation of the more and less significant people, places, encounters and objects that compose the movie of a life. In these loquacious, unfettered and sometimes playful poems, Trinidad painstakingly recalls divas, artists, friends, lovers and his mother. In looking back, the poet couches his memories in pop culture and formal experimentation: his “Nature Poem” is a clever arrangement of movie titles (“How a Tree Grows in Brooklyn/ Autumn Leaves// Lost Horizon/ Gone with the Wind”), and “Gloss of the Past” is an indulgent prose catalogue of pink lip gloss names (“Fluffy Moth Pink... Turn Pale Pink”). In rambling, accumulative elegies in long lines or prose, a “jar of Topaze cream (a yellow jewel embedded in the lid)” is one of many relentlessly remembered details that accrue toward simple, moving admissions, such as: “I miss my mother.” The long closing piece, “A Poem Under the Influence,” is a confessional and discursive look at the past by an obsessively collecting and recollecting mind that admits: “Better to look pinkly through a glass at the tarnished past,/ count my blessings (on both hands), and call it a day. But I have to ask: why...” (Sept.)

Juvenile mockery of poetry and the American poetry establishment, as well as excited reverence for both, are the themes of Minnis's second collection. Sixty-eight prose “Prefaces” open the book, chastising career-minded poets (“You should not think of getting a job with your poetry.../ .../ Poetry careers are a bad business”) while spelling out her own manifesto: “I want to write a poem because I don't feel very boring!” In the middle are nine extended examples of the kind of lyric that filled Minnis's debut, Zirconia, in which dots, periods or ellipses sprawl across the page, interrupted by lyric outbursts: “if you will promise....... to be a young girl.../ ......... I will give you a moustache.” Many, most even, may find these dots distracting or annoying, though it's interesting to ponder their meaning. The book closes with alternately compelling and silly prose and verse pieces, including an anti-résumé: “1996/ No car.// Apply for no teaching jobs. Don't publish book.” Petulant, clever, sometimes funny, sometimes irritatingly flippant, Minnis's poems will inspire questions as to whether this work qualifies as poetry at all, though some readers—fans of, say, Bill Knott, at his silliest—may find much to like. (Sept.)

Part travelogue, part exploration of desire, this book-length poem, Stonecipher's sophomore effort, revolves around an intimate address to an unnamed other. Stonecipher (The Reservoir) favors short, sparse couplets, which house often repeating imagery and phrasing. This gives the work a sense of movement and narrative, although one can't help stumbling over the rampant use of double entendres and pseudoerotic language (“And I can't wait to get home, sublime/ destination, to kiss you in all the places we know/ the French words for... and all the places we/ don't”). The fact that place and person become less important, and indeed less tangible, than the emotional reaction they inspire in the poet, which is explained rather than evoked (“can you understand/ the astronomy of my tears?”) is the book's largest weakness. Where Stonecipher shines is in her use of the tension between line and syntax, especially when the sonic and imagistic are given equal weight (“a mind/ crisscrossed by a captive// tiger eyeing/ the cardinal// points of its/cage”). This long poem succeeds in presenting a voice as nostalgic for the desire that was its original impetus as it is for the possibility of return to a geographical place. (Aug.)

Praised to the skies by Harold Bloom and given a MacArthur “genius” award and a Bollingen Prize, Wright has never been easy to dismiss nor easy to follow. His book-length sequences and prophetic utterances draw on almost all fields of human endeavor, from West African musical traditions to Newtonian and quantum physics, yielding work of almost unsurpassed ambition and density. This terse series of short free verse stanzas, split into five shorter sequences called “equations,” marks a re-emergence of sorts, being (along with two more volumes announced for 2007) the poet's first book since his 2000 new-and-collected, Transfigurations. Admirers will enjoy the heady compression, the polyrhythms created by Wright's religious ambitions, on the one hand, and his scientific learning, on the other: “Who would go into the river/ to recover a seed, or sit/ with a blacksmith and bard in high/ lament?” asks the first equation. “Bound by a complexity/ of wave, the river/ becomes a consonant/ intrusion, the singular/ flow of a constant point,” explains the fourth. Unlikely to win broad applause, Wright's new work could win over a few more readers: thoughtful ones, not polymaths, perhaps, but fellow poets, who hear in his complexities a welcome challenge. (July)

Delany's intriguing series opener introduces young constable Molly Smith, who almost literally stumbles across a rare murder victim in peaceful Trafalgar, British Columbia. The deceased, Reg Montgomery, was a widely distrusted newcomer planning to develop a luxury resort outside the town, making for a long list of suspects. The community is further divided by Smith's mother's plans for a public memorial to American draft resisters who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War. Struggling to recover from the death of her husband, build a career on the force and win the approval of her hippie parents and hard-edged Sgt. John Winters, newly arrived from Vancouver with his own set of personal problems, Smith throws herself into solving the case. Delany (Burden of Memory) carefully sets up the conflicts, resolving most but not all in anticipation of the next assignment, and begins what looks to be some extensive character development for the otherwise archetypal Winters and Smith. (Oct.)

Parker's fourth Sugawara Akitada mystery (after 2006's Black Arrow), set in 11th-century Japan, manages to outplot its superb predecessors. When exiled and disgraced Prince Okisada is poisoned on Sado Island, a penal colony, Akitada is recruited by a shadowy pair of high-ranking government officials who devise a risky plan to find the killer. While the local governor's son has been arrested for the murder, suspicions linger that he was framed by high constable Kumo Sanetomo as part of a plot against the emperor. Akitada, disguised as a convict, infiltrates Sado Island and suffers physical abuse from corrupt guards and police as he uncovers indications that the prince may have ingested the fatal blowfish toxin by accident. The fast-moving, surprising plot and colorful writing will enthrall even those unfamiliar with the exotic setting. The Shamus Award Parker won with her first Akitada short story may soon have company. (Sept.)

No good deeds go unpunished in Pomeroy's high-energy second Abby Silvernale whodunit (after 2006's The Dark End of Town). Abby, a young widow who waits tables at the InnBetween in Bantam, N.Y., drives flamboyant travel writer Germaine LeClair home after a car accident, only to see the very drunk Germaine threaten her 92-year-old adoptive father, Norman Smith, with a gun. Germaine is visiting her old hometown either to renew her ties with her sisters and Norman, a famous sculptor suffering from Alzheimer's, or to kill him because she suspects him of murdering her adoptive mother, Wanda. By chance, Abby has just been asked to work as Norman's “amanuensis,” a position from which she furtively investigates Wanda's death and Germaine's past. Abby's a lovable, loose cannon sleuth who does what she wants when she wants, poking and prodding until she finds the truth. (Sept.)

Notre Dame faces its football rival Georgia Tech, and the campus is packed, but there's plenty of action off the field in McInerny's rollicking 11th collegiate mystery (after 2006's The Letter Killeth). Roger Knight, a professor of Catholic studies, and his PI brother, Philip, are ready for the onslaught of alums from both schools, but not for the events that call up the revival of Southern distaste for Notre Dame's position during the Civil War. Before the weekend is over, two students seeking revenge for the South have committed a prank that could lead to their expulsion, and their alibi makes them prime suspects when a woman is found murdered in a local motel. Naturally, Roger and Philip take the case. The wit and wisdom of the two brothers and vivid descriptions of the Notre Dame campus enhance a twisty plot that will delight McInerny's devoted fans. (Sept.)

The mysterious strychnine poisoning of scholarly Jewish immigrant Simon Michaels leads to one of the more complex and somber cases in the career of Greenwood's Australian Jazz Age amateur sleuth Phryne Fisher (Urn Burial, etc.). Fearing that the killing may signal a rise in anti-Semitism, affluent community leader Benjamin Abrahams hires Fisher to clear the name of his tenant, bookseller Sylvia Lee. Fisher, only slightly distracted by Benjamin's devastatingly handsome son, quickly exonerates Lee and dashes off in pursuit of the theory that Michaels was killed for a coded message that might be related to the local Zionist movement. Compared with some of the other entries in Greenwood's popular series, the mood is more serious and the identity of the murderer more mysterious, but fans will have no cause for complaint. (Sept.)

In this jumbled sequel to Antiques Roadkill (2006), Allan (the pseudonymous husband-and-wife writing team of Max Allan and Barbara Collins) burdens a simple whodunit with too much sentimental ornament. Recent divorcée Brandy Borne has her hands full with her aging, scatterbrained mother, Vivian, who has just announced her retirement from local theater. To keep Vivian busy and generate some cash, Brandy suggests they open a stall in the new antiques mall in their small Midwestern town of Serenity. Then the two women find a retired schoolteacher dead at the mall, apparently killed by her pit bull. Vivian insists the woman was murdered, but the official investigation comes up empty. Brandy and Vivian also detect a bit, but to little practical effect, eventually stumbling on the solution by chance. Brandy's rambling narration and Vivian's dotty escapades may not hold the attention of hardcore mystery fans, but antiques addicts will enjoy the “trash 'n' treasures” tips. (Sept.)

Darcy Cavanaugh, R.N., takes a working vacation on a Caribbean cruise ship in Calvert's fluffy third nautical mystery (after Aye Do or Die). Most of her fellow vacationers are aspiring mystery writers, and Darcy is there to give a medically correct presentation—enhanced by advice from her beau, federal agent Luke Skyler—on various ways their fictional perps can commit murder (cyanide's out, anthrax and vampire fangs are in). Someone takes Darcy's advice a little too literally and knocks off a famously ruthless literary agent. The suspects just happen to include Angela Skyler, Luke's mother and a would-be novelist who joined the cruise in hopes of landing a book contract. Darcy's gentle mockery of mystery writers and engaging narration as she searches for the shipboard killer make for a droll light read. (Sept.)

Without the character list, glossary, maps and author's note, a reader could get lost in Jecks's 23rd Knights Templar mystery (after The Dispensation of Death), but the tale, set in 1324 Exeter during Edward II's corrupt regime, is no less gripping for its complexity. Esteemed Knight Templar turned investigator Sir Baldwin de Furnshill reluctantly joins London's fledgling parliament after the Bishop of Exeter suggests that the king's French wife might be part of a conspiracy against the throne. Soon an inquest into several mysterious deaths uncovers further evidence of a plot centered on the nefarious work of John of Nottingham and Richard de Langatre, necromancers who have found a way to assassinate prominent personages using “mommet” dolls and bone needles. Fear and speculation spread with the discovery of several corpses, including a royal messenger buried in a rubbish heap. Stirring intrigue and a compelling cast of characters will continue to draw accolades from fans of the author's hefty historicals. (Sept.)

Spectacular scenes of chaos and horror in a flood-drenched Chattanooga invigorate Priest's third Eden Moore fantasy (after 2006's Wings to the Kingdom). A devastating storm swells the Tennessee River to dam-breaking levels on the eve of Eden's planned move into a new riverside apartment complex. With the gushing waters comes a tide of corpses sunk in the river for more than a century, now animated and organized by a malignant force with an inscrutable purpose. When psychic investigator Eden realizes that the zombie army is converging on historic Read House, she draws a connection to the ghost of Caroline Read, who haunts the building trying to resolve a hushed-up 19th-century atrocity. Although talky and too dependent on convenient last-minute information, Priest's tale crackles with action and occult thrills, especially in the scenes of the inundated city reeling under the double assault of Mother Nature and the supernatural. Fans will find this her most assured outing yet. (Oct.)

In addition to their individual quality, the 16 stories in this rollicking collection amply demonstrate Hugo-winner Swanwick's impressive versatility. Characters vary from feuding prospectors on a heat-scoured Venus in “Tin Marsh” to clients of “The Bordello in Faerie.” On one end of the mood spectrum are the three elegantly wry adventures of Darger and Surplus, roguish postapocalypse con artists; on the other is the gentle “Triceratops Summer,” told in a matter-of-fact, laconic style that at first seems to show wonderful things becoming commonplace and then reveals that the familiar can still be wonderful. Swanwick (The Iron Dragon's Daughter) pulls apart overused situations to see what makes them tick and then constructs fresh, surprising plots from the pieces. The locked-room mystery may seem hopelessly stale, but not when it's “A Small Room in Koboldtown,” where voodoo beings and sleazy politics abound. Readers tired of conventional fantasy and SF will find this collection of intriguing characters and lovingly told stories deeply refreshing. (Sept.)

Greenwood, creator of the popular Forgotten Realms world and the Band of Four series (The Dragon's Doom, etc.), spins a chilling Norse-inspired tale of the Niflghar, dark elves inhabiting the cold, subterranean universe of Dark Below. The Niflghar stole the young Orivon from the surface world as a child and turned him into a slave. Now a tall, strong blacksmith, Orivon serves the beautiful and devastatingly cruel Nifl-she, Lady Taerune Evendoom. During a slave uprising, Taerune loses an arm, marking her an outcast from beauty-worshipping Niflghar society. Though Orivon swore to kill Taerune slowly and painfully at his first opportunity, they must instead become allies so Orivon can find his way back to the surface. The dark elves' endless political machinations and foolish, deadly power plays render them entirely unsympathetic, but Orivon's brooding fury will do little more to endear him to readers who prefer a bit of warmth and light to balance the chilly caves of Dark Below. (Sept.)

A titanic battle that pits vampyre against vampyre in a war that will determine for eternity whether the undead will coexist with the living caps the conclusion to Clegg's majestic Vampyricon trilogy (after The Priest of Blood and The Queen of Serpents). Aleric, the foreordained Priest of Blood, recounts his escape from the gladiatorial penal colony Aztlanteum with his lover, Pythia, and their efforts to find a haven where they can safely indulge their vampyre needs. Fate draws Aleric inexorably to Myrryd, the former home of Medhya, Queen of Serpents, who was banished beyond the Veil for her overreaching ambitions but who schemes to sneak back and enslave the world under vampyre dominion. Empowered by Merod, the Great Serpent who spawned the vampyre civilization, Aleric raises an army of vamps and mortals for a cataclysmic clash described with the vivid color and intense imagination that have been the saga's hallmarks. Clegg crafts a fitting finale ornamented with prose that modulates between the sensual and regal and that distinguishes his series as one of the more memorable modern vampire epics. (Sept.)

Somers packs his techno-thriller debut with enough gunplay and explosions to satisfy a Hollywood producer. Earth is now the System of Federated Nations, governed by the Joint Council and policed by local cops and the hard-nosed System Security Force (SSF). Most people are have-nots, struggling to get by through any means. Avery Cates is one of them, a respected 27-year-old bodyguard and assassin for hire working in Old New York. When Avery kills a cop by mistake, SSF chief Richard Marin hauls him in and gives him two choices: execution or taking on the Herculean task of assassinating the founder of the Electric Church, which creates converts by killing people and transplanting their brains into robot bodies that quash free will. The job would be a lot easier if Avery wasn't being hunted by a couple of cops who don't know when to quit. Somers's plot sprints along through the nicely detailed (if slightly unoriginal) world, but the characters are the real prize in this entertaining near-future noir. (Sept.)

Mignola (HellBoy) and Golden (The Myth Hunters) create a haunting allegory on the nature of war, fusing the poignancy of Hans Christian Anderson's “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” the supernatural chills of Dracula and the horrors of WWI and the subsequent influenza epidemic. Years after Capt. (and Lord) Henry Baltimore is infected by a demonic vampire bat while wounded near the Ardennes forest, he summons three friends to a mysterious meeting. Demetrius Aischros is the merchant sea captain who had taken Baltimore home to Trevelyan Isle, where they found Baltimore's family dead and his wife resurrected as a vampire. Thomas Childress Jr. is a nobleman and deserter who learns about the vampire infestation from Baltimore, his childhood friend. Dr. Lemuel Rose is the surgeon who treated Baltimore's war injuries. Together they help Baltimore face a final showdown with the terrible Red King. Stark monochrome illustrations from Mignola enhance this dramatic tale of war and fear. (Sept.)

The superior melding of fantasy, humor and detection seen in Majestrum (2006) is displayed to even better advantage in Hughes's second chronicle of Henghis Hapthorn, a “discriminator” (or consulting detective) on an alternate Earth. Aided by his “intuitive inner self,” Osk Rievor, and his faithful grinnet, an AI housed in an ape-cat body, Hapthorn accepts a request from wealthy socialite Effrayne Choweri to find her legendarily devoted and romantic husband, Chup, who vanished after looking into the purchase of a small spaceship. When the sleuth finds that several others who had considered buying the vessel also disappeared, he poses as a prospective buyer, only to be captured by a super-intelligent fungus seeking to expand its experience of reality by leeching the thoughts and knowledge of others. Hapthorn's wry first-person narration recalls Bertie Wooster, and Hughes effortlessly renders fantastic worlds and beings believable. News that a third adventure is in the works will surely please fans of many genres. (Sept.)

Serbian speculative fictionist Zivkovic's latest novel to be released in the U.S. (after 2006's Seven Touches of Music) isn't so much a literary work to be read as it is one to be reveled in. Like a great work of abstract art, this surrealistic novel—about five women who contend with fate in very different ways—is layered with subtle symbolism and nuance, and should be savored slowly so that the profound, and sometimes disturbing, existential underpinnings can be duly discerned. Featuring story lines about a schoolgirl who can see into other people's dreams, an institutionalized woman with the ability to know the future, a world-weary fortune teller who stumbles across true divination, a skier who's offered unconventional wisdom on a mountaintop and an elderly woman who loses her will to live when her alarm clock breaks, this montage of stories is as enlightening as it is entrancing. (Sept.)

In her steamy follow-up to Surviving Demon Island, Burton introduces demon hunter Shay Pearson, a member of the Realm of Light, the good guys dedicated to keeping back the demon menace. She's on a mission in Sydney, Australia, to locate the Diavolo Diamond heir, sexy surfer and half-demon Nic Diavolo, and bring him back to agency headquarters by any means necessary; once there, Nic's to meet his brother, who will determine if Nic will band with the Realm or with their sinister enemy, the Sons of Darkness. Spotting him in nothing but low-slung board shorts, however, gives Shay other ideas—like, for instance, satisfying her lust for his rock-hard abs. Nic, meanwhile, is oblivious to the demonic forces within him, save for a recurring dream of long-taloned beasts clawing at his feet and worshiping him—dreams he begins to fear are visions of what's to come. Burton brings the heat, jazzing her otherworldly suspense plot with numerous passionate interludes, without letting the explosive good vs. evil saga flag. Hot sex, fierce battles and an impending sequel make this title worth hunting down. (Sept.)

A young society dame with a flair for matchmaking does whatever it takes to ensure her eclectic family's well-being in Boyle's latest Regency romance. After four years of corresponding with her nearly betrothed, the beautiful and resourceful Miss Felicity Langley is poised finally to meet Aubrey, the newly titled duke of Hollingsworth—and gain the wealth to take care of her family's financial woes. What Felicity doesn't know is that her pen pal all along has actually been Aubrey's scheming, ruthless grandfather; the real Aubrey, meanwhile, has been serving as an army captain under the name Thatcher, having denounced his inheritance a dozen years before. Returning to Sussex, Aubrey learns of the duke's arrangement with Felicity and decides to break all ties with her. But when he meets her, as Thatcher, setting off immediate sparks, both face a secret dilemma: Aubrey torn between taking a stand and giving in to love, and Felicity between overwhelming passion and the long-distance relationship she believes will save her family. A terrific crew of supporting characters keep afloat the mistaken-identity plot, making this a full, satisfying read with emotion and laughs throughout. (Sept.)

The final installment in Jackson's medieval trilogy (after Impostress and Temptress) finds a witch and a warrior drawn together for the battle of their lives. In 13th-century northern Wales, a man named Gavyn is on the run from his own father after killing, in self-defense, the ruthless sheriff of Agendor. Meanwhile, a sorceress named Bryanna is leaving her home in the south of Wales, traveling north at the beckoning of a powerful vision and hoping to gather the four jewels that haunt her dreams. When Gavyn and Bryanna meet by chance, their banter is touched by humor and sexual longing, and it isn't long before an ethereal episode of lovemaking binds them together and their dangerous journeys become one. Trying to stay a step ahead of Gavyn's father and the man who murdered Bryanna's mother, their quest for the jewels makes a tense, fast-paced adventure complete with paranormal beings and mystical powers. This fine finale combines romance, suspense and mysticism to make a top-notch read. (Sept.)

The first seven issues of this superior dystopian sci-fi tale are collected in a deluxe volume. In the year 2162, a madman named Kazushi Nikken creates giant hybrids of humans and animals—elephants, rhinos, camels, giraffes—and brainwashes them into an army of fearless killers. But the United Nations liberates the “elephantmen” (they're all given that pejorative “e-word,” no matter their species) and integrates them into society. That's the setting for plenty of metaphor about racism, xenophobia and globalism; against this backdrop we meet hippo Hip Flask, who works for a government agency and is trying to recover a certain African idol. But Obadiah Horn, the world's most successful and high-profile elephantman, wants it too. Brief stories do a great job fleshing out the world and the major players as the larger mystery of Hip and the Idol unfold. Visually, the various artists give a nod to great dystopias past—Blade Runner via Neuromancer via Brazil—but the sepia-tinted color palette and soft, painterly shading set it apart. The character designs in particular are spectacular, and the whole is a lightning-fast but addictive read (July)

A bestseller in Europe, Le Tueur has finally reached America. A French hit man has long been at the top of his game, but the psychic weight of his crimes is slowly catching up with him, and, after he botches one job and attracts a policeman determined to bring him down, he may be breaking down just when he needs his skills the most. The French have long been masters of moody noir films like Band of Outsiders or Le Samourai, so The Killer carries some heavy expectations. Fortunately, Jacamon's art is more than up to the task. His layouts are exciting, equally adept at choreographing brutal action, placing the “camera” for maximum suspense, and playing with panel borders to convey the protagonist's gradual mental breakdown. His figures are reminiscent of Darwyn Cooke's (The Spirit) cartoony realism, using deceptively simple lines and expressive faces to suggest far greater depth to the characters. Saturating panels with washed-out greens, blues and yellows, he changes palettes to establish shifts in location or flashbacks. The story is slight and a little disjointed, relying too heavily on self-consciously “cool” narration and abrupt flashbacks to pad out a by-the-numbers plot. Fans of Goddard or Melville should enjoy how well Jacamon captures their aesthetic on the page. (July)

This entry into the demon hunter genre is the story of Tobei, a feudal-era ne'er-do-well damned to hell for his transgressions, but he's offered a way out; if he can collect 108 sins roaming the land of the living in corporeal form in the present day—known as “Toga”—within 108 days, Tobei's own sins just may be pardoned. All of that is set up in the first nine pages, and from there the story wastes no time getting down to the action. With the mystical Togari cudgel as both his weapon and receptacle for collected sins, a butt-naked Tobei begins his mission in earnest, doling out the violent, speed line–laden carnage expected within the genre. With a talking dog to keep an eye on him and the culture shock of finding himself in the modern world, Tobei merrily beats a bloody swath through his quarry and takes the reader on an exhilarating ride into sheer chaos while wasting little time on such considerations as plot, characterization or even basic logic. The occasionally murky illustrations move the story along at a rapid pace, and the reader could do far worse for brain-optional manga kicks. (July)

Murase (Nancy Drew) unravels a typical high school narrative of anxiety and self-loathing through highly stylized visuals and an array of text fonts. Aki is a high school student who lives in the shadow of her brother's reputation and is haunted by his death. At school, she's the brunt of jokes and harassed by most of her classmates. Luckily, her insecurities make room for her alter ego, Kai, to come forth and intimidate the mean girls. Murase is obviously a talented illustrator, but whether her illustrations can lend themselves to graphic fiction is another question. The flourish of each panel often distracts from the narrative, and Murase has difficulty balancing the visuals with the story itself. The dialogue is stale and unimaginative, and the characters too flat for such artistic talent. Readers may even find the story obscured by the graphics and multiple fonts used throughout, and the ending is especially confusing. The law of “show, don't tell” still rings true, and Murase could benefit from more scenes illustrating Aki's brother's perfect reputation, or condensing the multiple verbal attacks she is subjected to. Me 2 has promise, as does Murase, but needs a clearer presentation. (July)