Fiction Reviews: Week of 8/13/2007

Seven-time Spur Award winner Kelton has always been a masterful western storyteller of tales rich with historical detail, vivid characters and sharply defined plots. Here he concludes the Sons of Texas trilogy with the strongest entry, set in the mid 1830s. The Lewis family—brothers Andrew, Michael and James, and sister Annie—are foreigners in a strange land, raising their families and farming while Mexican and American cultures, politics, racism and tempers simmer over the possibilities of rebellion and independence from Mexico. During these years, the Lewises must deal with outlaws, the Mexican army, trouble-making American politicians, a slick smuggler and their continuing feud with the thieving and back-shooting Blackwood brothers. When war does come, the Lewis boys and one Blackwood go off to fight in bloody battles at Velasco, the Alamo and San Jacinto, and not all come home. Historical figures—Sam Houston, General Santa Anna, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett—have cameos and add depth and color to this superb saga of the Lone Star State. (Nov.)

On the day her father is buried, 21-year-old Adrianna Moore learns that he left the family fortune under the control of Richard Pope, his attorney and partner who has lusted after Adrianna for years. Pope informs Adrianna that she’ll get her money, but not how she thought: she must marry him in a week. Adrianna, wanting nothing to do with Richard, runs, but her flight ends when her car collides with a truck in rural Louisiana. The truck’s driver is Quinn Baxter, a brawny tavern owner. A deal is struck: while Adrianna’s car is being repaired, she’ll play piano in Quinn’s bar to make good for the damage done to his truck. Adrianna will also help out with Quinn’s teenage handicapped brother. To do this, she has to bypass Lola Oxnard, a slovenly Cajun housekeeper with a violent bent who’s determined to marry Quinn. As Adrianna and Quinn fall in love, Richard and Lola close in. The mawkish love story is as extreme as the plots hatched by the vile lawyer and the scheming backwoods gold digger, but Garlock’s many readers will be satisfied by the triumph of good and love over evil and greed. (Nov.)

The War of the Roses rages around the Lanyons in Exmoor, England, prosperous tenant farmers of the landed Sweetwater family. Peter Lanyon and his wife, Liza, bridle at his father Richard’s attempts to run their lives as Richard, who hides a dark secret, tries to raise the family’s station. Through war, intrigue and natural disaster, Peter and Liza love each other in their fashion, though each has a great lost love, and their mistakes come back to haunt them. As the Lanyons find favor with the Duke of Gloucester (who will be Richard III), it may be a case of being careful what you wish for. There’s not enough historical detail to place the Lanyons in their time and place, and the book’s pace is slow, but Anand, who writes the Ursula Blanchard mysteries as Fiona Buckley, has a light touch that carries this family saga. (Nov.)

Moving effortlessly from Paris to Dresden to Shanghai, Wagenstein (Isaac’s Torah) masterfully chronicles the lives of European émigrés and refugees in WWII Shanghai. The cast of this ensemble novel is large. Elisabeth and Theodore Weissberg, a German mezzo-soprano and her German-Jewish virtuoso violinist husband, flee Dresden to eke out an existence in Shanghai’s burgeoning Jewish ghetto, which ends up 30,000 strong as the Shoah begins. Hilde Braun, a German-Jewish actress, is living illegally in Paris aided by a mysterious Slav named Vladek, until events force them, separately, to Shanghai. Istvan Keleti, a homosexual Hungarian musician and drug-user, and Gertrude von Dammbach, a former call-girl-turned-baroness, are also among the persecuted and displaced, some of whom work with the Resistance to undermine Hitler. Wagenstein is impressive in his ability to move from the small details of individual displaced lives to a larger panorama of international intrigue: there’s a telling subplot about tensions between the Japanese, who occupy Shanghai, and the Germans, with whom they’ve formed an uneasy alliance; another revealing thread concerns the loyalties of Chinese Catholic nuns. Wagenstein brings to life a largely unknown chapter of Nazi persecution. (Nov.)

Allen’s dark and insightful novel depicts narrator P’s sobering descent into his gambling addiction. P, a Miami native, is a school bus driver and desperate gambler who spends his nights (and many of his days) in south Florida casinos. Both a surprisingly likable and an often despicable character, P is a perpetual loser with a $1,000-a-day habit who lies to his wife and scrounges in the seats of his bus looking for loose change the kids left behind. He takes the small amounts of cash that his destitute, dying mother offers him to support his obsession. P knows he’s sick, but he doesn’t want any help; he lusts for the next big score. Finally, his luck begins to change, transforming him from a broke degenerate into a legendary professional gambler in a signature black cowboy hat. The well-written novel takes the reader on a chaotic ride as P chases, finds and loses fast, easy money. Allen (Churchboys and Other Sinners) reveals how addiction annihilates its victims and shows that winning isn’t always so different from losing. (Nov.)

With Bungalow 2 still on bestseller lists, Steel checks in with a Bay Area earthquake that shakes up the lives of three beautiful, talented yet somehow unfulfilled women. Sarah Sloane, 30-something wife of Seth, a wildly successful hedge fund entrepreneur, and mother of two, has planned to perfection a high-ticket charity auction. The only thing she hasn’t counted on is the biggest seismic event to hit San Francisco since 1906 and the aftershocks it will cause in her marriage. Meanwhile, hot Grammy-winning 19-year-old singer Melanie Free, flown in to perform at the benefit, likewise finds her life overturned: following an on-stage triumph, Melanie throws away her platform shoes to assist disaster victims, admitting—much to the annoyance of her pushy stage mother and her TV actor boyfriend—that she always wanted to be a nurse. Sarah and Melanie face change with support from the 40-ish Sister Maggie Kent, a California nun whose good deeds draw the interest of recovering alcoholic and former AP photojournalist Everett Carson, who captures her in pictures. As marriage, faith and vows of chastity are tested, there’s nothing complicated to spoil the romance. Steel delivers a sparkly story with an uplifting spiritual twist. (Oct.)

Barone returns to the cradle of civilization in his sanguinary sequel to Dawn of Empire. Lord Eskkar, a former barbarian who earlier saved the city of Akkad from almost-certain defeat, and Lady Trella, an erstwhile slave and his wife, now rule the “biggest city on the Tigris.” Hoping to crush the bandits marauding in the countryside and extend Akkadian rule, Eskkar dispatches one band of soldiers south from Akkad and leads another north. In Eskkar’s absence, Korthac, a newly arrived Egyptian warrior posing as a trader, schemes to infiltrate the city with his followers and seize power. Korthac sends assassins to track down Eskkar, and bandits south to ambush the returning Akkadian soldiers. Inside the city, his followers attack the soldiers left behind to keep order and take a pregnant Lady Trella prisoner. The ruthless Korthac plans to kill Trella once his rule is established, but, unknown to him, Eskkar survives and is preparing to retake the city. The frenetic action might be predictable, but it’s never boring. The setting is convincingly rendered, and the characters—heroes and villains—are sharply drawn. Fans of ancient historical fiction will enjoy this instructive journey to the dawn of civilization. (Oct.)

Australian Rollins (Rogue Element) introduces a tough, wisecracking hero in his U.S. debut. When Gen. Abraham Scott—CO of Ramstein Air Base in Germany and son-in-law of the U.S. vice president—dies in a suspicious glider incident, Maj. Vincent Cooper, an agent of the U.S.A.F. Office of Special Investigations, gets the call. Recently divorced and drinking to excess, Vin knows his job is on the line as he travels to Germany to work with Special Agent Anna Masters. The two of them put together a case that grows to encompass an ever-widening ring of murders and takes them, in a particularly harrowing scene, to Baghdad. A shadowy international organization known as the Establishment appears to be behind the mayhem, and in the process of figuring out the group’s motives, the intrepid Vin gets beaten up, blown up, set on fire and shot a couple of times. Readers will look forward to more of Vin’s exploits in his next outing, A Knife Edge. (Oct.)

A monstrous scheme to create an evil superman through crude efforts at gene jiggering bedevils urban mercenary Repairman Jack in his 11th outing (after 2006’s Harbingers). When Jack, a New York City paranormal “fixer,” agrees to help Christy Pickering break up a relationship between her 18-year-old daughter and an older man, Jerry Bethlehem, he discovers Bethlehem is a violent criminal whose past includes abortion clinic bombings and a stay at a government-funded clinic conducting DNA research. Pickering is circumspect about her own background and her daughter’s paternity. When Jack probes unspoken links between Pickering and Bethlehem, his investigation intrudes inexplicably upon a shady self-help guru. Sinuous plot twists and shocking revelations abound, but Wilson manages to pull these wildly disparate plot threads together, and tie them dexterously to the series’ overarching chronicle of a battle between occult forces in which Jack serves as a reluctant but responsible warrior. Like its predecessors, this novel shows why Jack’s saga has become the most entertaining and dependable modern horror-thriller series. (Oct.)

Set in Manhattan in 1703, this spellbinding sequel to Speaks the Nightbird (2002) from bestseller McCammon finds Matthew Corbett, a 23-year-old magistrate’s clerk, on the trail of the Masker, a killer who stalks prominent businessmen. Matthew stumbles on the bodies of two of the Masker’s victims, including pederast Eben Ausley, the headmaster of the orphanage Matthew once reluctantly called home. Plucky Matthew, who becomes a junior associate of the New York branch of a London “problem-solving” firm called the Herrald Agency, discovers a possible link to the crimes in the person of an elderly amnesiac patient in a mental asylum who’s known as “the Queen of Bedlam.” Matthew and his cohorts later make a dangerous foray to the headquarters that the villainous Professor Fell maintains for young-criminals-in-training. McCammon brilliantly captures colonial New York and closes with a tantalizing cliffhanger that suggests more exciting sleuthing to come. (Oct.)

You may never look quite the same way at that punctilious little man down the street after reading this chilling first novel from Kinder, author of two well-received short story collections (A Near-Perfect Gift and Sweet Angel Band). Inspired by her own brush with a serial killer—back in the late ’80s her neighbor Robert Weeks was sentenced to life in prison for two murders and suspected of more—Kinder deftly limns the deadly odyssey of Arthur Blume, a middle-aged creative writing professor who manages to be both the most ordinary and the most monstrous of creatures. The well-paced action cuts between Blume’s Missouri present and horrific past in Georgia as the child of a psychotic teenage mother (which forms his view of treachery as the natural order and women as innately deceptive). Along the way, his slyly dropped clues—or are they red herrings?—add to the intrigue. Though one wishes that Kinder had gone lighter on some of the Southern-fried Freud, this artfully told tale of psychological suspense is as gripping as the spider webs Blume is so fond of studying. (Oct.)

Reprieved confidence trickster Moist von Lipwig, who reorganized the Ankh-Morpork Post Office in 2004’s Going Postal, turns his attention to the Royal Mint in this splendid Discworld adventure. It seems that the aristocratic families who run the mint are running it into the ground, and benevolent despot Lord Vetinari thinks Moist can do better. Despite his fondness for money, Moist doesn’t want the job, but since he has recently become the guardian of the mint’s majority shareholder (an elderly terrier) and snubbing Vetinari’s offer would activate an Assassins Guild contract, he reluctantly accepts. Pratchett throws in a mad scientist with a working economic model, disappearing gold reserves and an army of golems, once more using the Disc as an educational and entertaining mirror of human squabbles and flaws (Oct.)

McGlothin (Borrow Trouble; Down on My Knees; etc.) creates a sizzling slice of life in 1947 in his fourth novel. Located in St. Louis, Mo.’s the Ville, Ms. Etta’s Fast House—considered “the hottest joint this side of Chicago” where “couples boogied heartily to exorcise their work week demons, as others swayed to the soulful rhythms”—was the place to be for the young doctors and nurses of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, the local baseball team and the criminal element. But life in the Ville is forever altered when Baltimore Floyd strolls in with a gun and a plan to horn in on a crooked cop’s heroin trafficking operation. Simultaneously, the St. Louis Police Department becomes racially integrated, despite massive riots throughout the city and public outcry against it. As bodies pile up, Baltimore gets under the covers with a cop’s wife and soon faces a bogus rape charge, leaving residents of the Ville to try and save him. McGlothin weaves convincing historical elements into a fast-moving caper, and Baltimore Floyd is a delightful scoundrel. (Oct.)

Pezzelli (Francesca’s Kitchen; Every Sunday; etc.), brings his fans a light if sometimes trite story of two lovelorn men who form an unlikely friendship. Recent college graduate Carter Quinn has fallen in love with Elena, a beautiful woman with whom he has had little more than a conversation in which he learned she was from a small town in Italy. Carter has the somewhat unrealistic dream of traveling to Italy to pursue his newfound love. Not knowing the language, Carter turns to Giancarlo Rosa, a local music professor in Providence, R.I., for private Italian lessons, though Giancarlo is leery of taking on Quinn as a student. He does, of course, and Giancarlo’s broken heart—the result of a long-ago betrayal—begins slowly to mend itself. After a summer of intense study, Quinn leaves for Italy, and Giancarlo wonders whether he should again allow himself to love. Pezzelli makes readers want to believe in love at first sight, and his earnest storytelling should win over its share of readers. (Oct.)

The gripping second Strategic Solutions Inc. military thriller from Coyle and Tillman (after Pandora’s Legion) details the workings of a PMC, or private military contractor. The U.S. government, which wants plausible deniability if things go wrong, hires SSI to send a team to a corrupt, unstable Chad to train its army in counterinsurgency techniques. The authors dig into the contract negotiations, move through the operation’s organization and planning stages, and open out into training and the operation itself. Things begin to fall apart when stopping a secret shipment of yellow cake uranium destined for Iran takes precedence over the SSI team’s original mission. An overabundance of characters leaves little time for development, but the operational minutiae are absorbing (even the contract negotiations), and the action, which ranges from the desert to the high seas, explosive. The authors keep reader interest high from the intriguing beginning to the final promethean twist. (Oct.)

At the start of Benedict’s plodding debut, Kate Russell, a recent transplant to the sleepy town of Carystown, Ky., is convinced she knows where nine-year-old Isabella Moon, who has been missing for two years, is buried. Sheriff Bill Delaney is skeptical, especially after Kate admits that Isabella herself led her to the burial site in a dream. Even Kate’s only friends, Lillian Cayley and her daughter, Francie, doubt Kate’s claim. But Isabella’s disappearance is only one of the secrets that lurk beneath Carystown’s idyllic exterior. As Kate pursues the matter on her own, Delaney digs deeper into Kate’s own troubled past in South Carolina. Soon after the town’s intricate web of lies and the long-buried secrets of the Birkenshaws, Carystown’s richest family, come to light, Kate finds herself in a fight for her life. A predictable conclusion, underdeveloped characters and implausible subplots make for a less than satisfying thriller. (Oct.)

Gold Dagger Award–winner Indridason stumbles in his third Reykjavik thriller to feature Insp. Erlendur Sveinsson (after 2006’s Silence of the Grave). A few days before Christmas, Erlendur and his colleagues, Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli, look into the scandalous murder of Gudlaugur, a local Santa Claus, at a busy hotel. As Erlendur and his team scramble to find a motive for the seemingly senseless crime, disturbing secrets from Gudlaugur’s past begin to surface. In a hotel full of foreign holiday guests, Erlendur investigates everyone from a slippery British record collector to a sullen maid who reminds Erlendur of his own daughter. Snippets of a previous investigation involving child abuse distract from the Gudlaugur case. Despite a drawn-out climax where Erlendur tries to put all the pieces together, most readers will predict the terrible secret that led to Gudlaugur’s death. (Oct.)

Time Out Chicago books editor Messinger has a few gems sandwiched between predictably sardonic musings on failed relationships and poor life decisions in his debut collection. The opening piece, “Captain Tomorrow,” expertly captures a mixture of teenage summer malaise and a hint of innocence lost, but it’s not until several stories later, with the man-eating wolf farce “Not Even the Zookeeper Can Keep Control,” that the reader encounters something other than recycled humor. Ironic kookiness seems to be the order of the day: a child with a large head gets stuck in a fence; there’s a machine shaped like a large ear of corn and known as “The Hummingbird”; and there are several “hidden” stories wedged into the text. Scattered throughout are hints of Messinger’s talent, and these are found in stories that explore burgeoning teen sexuality—notably “One Valve Opens” and “The Birds Below.” The familiar-feeling patina of self-consciousness will turn off as many readers as it hooks. (Oct.)

Klasky emphasizes the importance of being true to yourself and having faith in friends and family in her bewitching second romance featuring fledgling witch Jane Madison (after Girl’s Guide to Witchcraft). Young librarian Jane believes getting into the elite Washington Coven, ruled by the prodigious Teresa Alison Sidney, is of major importance. If Jane wants to hold on to her familiar, her valuable book and gemstone collection and David Montrose, her hunky protector and instructor, she has to meet the coven’s standards for knowledge and skill. When slickly seductive Graeme Henderson starts laying it on suspiciously thick, and David insists that friendly coven witch Haylee can’t be trusted, Jane must decide what’s most important: trying to impress the popular coven snobs, or taking control of her power and doing what she knows is best for herself. Klasky’s moral lesson is obvious, but readers who identify with Jane’s remembered high school social angst will cheer her all the way. (Oct.)

Irish writer Donovan’s confounding third novel (after Julius Winsome) revolves around the overmedication of America, but fails to rise above a convoluted satire. Sunless—the novel’s self-named narrator—recounts the crumbling of his life in Salt Lake City. After Sunless’s baby brother is stillborn, his mother turns to prescription drugs. Later, his father is diagnosed with a terminal lung disease and is turned away from a clinical trial at Pharmalak (the pharmaceutical “castle” in Park City) for not having health insurance, leaving Sunless to watch his father slowly succumb to the “vines” that have invaded his chest. Spiraling down into his own addictions—first stealing pills from his mother’s stash and later learning to cook crystal meth—Sunless drifts through life in a drug-induced haze before finding himself back at Pharmalak under the care of the mysterious Dr. Fargoon, who is conducting a test of wonder drug Elevax. Donovan’s narrative minimalism is at odds with the myriad topics he addresses—drug culture in America; the fluid boundaries between life, death, the past and the present; Mormonism; the pharmaceutical industry; health insurance conglomerates—and the narrative thread can get lost in the jumble. This novel was well-received in the U.K., but U.S. readers may find it too simplistic. (Oct.)

More than 60 years after her death, Sicilian realist Messina (1887–1944) gets her first English translation, 10 stories published between 1909 and 1928 that focus on the downtrodden, poor and middle-class women of her native island. Two stories, “America 1911” and “America 1918,” explore immigration and emigration from expectant departure to unsettling return, while “Grandmother Lidda” takes the intimate perspective of an elderly mother left behind. In “Her Father’s House,” Vanna returns seeking refuge from her woeful marriage to a Rome lawyer, only to find she has lost her place in her family. Meanwhile, the deaf mute protagonist of “Ciancianedda” struggles to communicate with her new husband. Messina’s raw and psychologically deft tales render these women’s lives with pathos and dignity, and Magistro’s lucid translation is at once lyrical and immediate. Absorbing and culturally rich, these stories should help secure Messina’s place in Italian letters. (Oct.)

Donna Tartt meets Jamie Langston Turner in this engrossing novel from Christy Award–winner Tatlock (All the Way Home). Beth Gunnar has returned to her alma mater, Seaton Prep, to teach English. She is haunted by an unresolved mystery from her student days—the unexplained disappearance of a favorite teacher—but discovering what happened to Mr. Dutton is not all that absorbs Beth’s attention. She reconnects with a high school flame and becomes something of a surrogate mother to a precocious, charming student named Satchel Queen. Beth’s Christian faith also deepens, though Tatlock handles that theme with a refreshingly light touch. The dialogue is snappy, and Tatlock’s prose is charming (“There seemed to be no clear answer to the mystery that was Theodore Dutton, with all the whys left dangling before me like fruit gone bad on the vine”). Overall, Tatlock’s produced a winner and the ending offers a good setup for a sequel, although the twists and turns in the romantic subplot are predictable, the character of Beth’s “best friend,” Natalie, is underdeveloped, and it’s hard to believe that bookish and literarily sophisticated Beth doesn’t cotton to the symbolism in the book of Hosea, which her father patiently explains. (Oct.)

One of the two winners of the Gather.com First Chapters contest, Edwards’s provocative debut begins in the summer of 1850 as the debate over the expansion of slavery into the Mexican Cession territory prompts threats of secession and war. A slave revolt and rumors that the leader of the uprising is “roaming the countryside recruiting an army” further frays nerves in Charleston, S.C. When a local farmer is caught harboring a runaway, he is charged with a capital crime. The New York Tribune sends young reporter John Sharp to cover the trial; he quickly befriends planter Tyler Breckenridge, the scion of “one of the most powerful families in Charleston.” But as Sharp and fellow reporter Owen Conway uncover clues of a covert militia buildup, Sharp begins to suspect that Breckenridge is involved. As the emotionally charged fugitive-slave trial unfolds, Sharp and Conway rush to expose the secessionist conspiracy and head off war. Edwards fills the gaps in the record of the Crisis of 1850 to produce a plausible scenario that eloquently captures the fear and rivalries of the antebellum era, though many passages could use a healthy pruning. For fans of historical fiction—and Civil War fiction particularly. (Sept.)

At the start of this disappointing stand-alone thriller from bestseller Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club), 38-year-old divorcée Julia Hamill discovers a skeleton buried in the garden of the Boston house she’s just moved into; the ring found with the remains was in fashion in the 1830s, the fractured bones suggest murder. Flashback to 1830: medical student Norris Marshall, an outcast among his wealthier classmates, meets Rose Connolly in a Boston maternity ward, where Rose’s sister recently died of childbirth fever. When several gutted bodies turn up in deserted alleyways, Rose and Norris are the only ones to catch a glimpse of the killer, dubbed the West End Reaper. Norris, Rose and Norris’s fellow student, Oliver Wendell Holmes, race to uncover the truth behind the slayings, which will remind many of Jack the Ripper’s crimes. In the present, Julia is able to trace their progress with the help of a relative of the house’s former owner. Unfortunately, neither the present nor the historical story line maintains the suspense necessary for a whodunit spanning several generations. (Sept.)

This engaging but flawed election-time read, the fourth mystery (after 2004’s Plains Crazy) to feature Sheriff English of Benteen County, Kans., examines the nexus of politics and religion. English, up for re-election, faces stiff competition from a born-again Christian who tells voters they should oust the sheriff because his daughters have had abortions. When a deputy crashes into a school bus full of teens on a choir outing, the bus driver vanishes. Before English can figure out what happened to the driver, he must contend with a school shooting. The frequent shifts of point-of-view at times disrupt the narrative flow, while having both of the sheriff’s daughters named Heather is confusing. Still, the novel’s focus on hot-button political issues will help hold readers’ attention, and a setup for a sequel that gives the more intriguing Heather a central role may entice them to come back. (Nov.)

This gripping psychological whodunit, the concluding volume of Nadelson’s post-9/11 trilogy (after 2006’s Red Hook), presents a convincing portrait of New York City in the aftermath of the destruction of the Twin Towers. NYPD detective and Russian émigré Artie Cohen is adjusting to married life when he again becomes responsible for his troubled adolescent nephew, Billy Farone, recently released from juvie. As Billy’s parents are abroad, Artie is left to watch over him and help monitor his adjustment to the outside world. When Cohen’s boss, Sonny Lippert, gets a new lead in a very old child murder case, he attempts to drag Cohen away from Billy, with mixed success. Despite indications that Billy’s criminal tendencies may not have abated, Cohen labors to defend him to others. The power of the ending will especially resonate for readers of the earlier volumes, but even newcomers will be impressed by the author’s uncompromising vision of human frailty and the conflict between personal and professional duty. (Oct.)

This classy anthology of mostly original short stories from 21 renowned Windy City authors blends the blues, crime and Chicago, quite surpassing Akashic’s recent Chicago Noir. Several series heroes make appearances, including Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, Kris Nelscott’s Smokey Dalton and J.A. Konrath’s Jack Daniels. Stuart M. Kaminsky takes a different tack with “Blue Note,” a fine story of a poker game where the real stakes are a mother’s fingers. Two authors with acclaimed recent debut novels, Jack Fredrickson (A Safe Place for Dying) and Marcus Sakey (The Blade Itself), demonstrate equal talent in short form. Best of all are Michael Allen Dymoch’s “A Shade of Blue” in which a man claims to have witnessed a murder that took place 30 years earlier; D.C. Brod’s “My Heroes Have Always Been Shortstops,” which measures the depths of a Cubs fan’s devotion; and Barb D’Amato’s “The Lower Wacker Hilton,” about the death of a homeless man in Chicago’s underworld. This impressive volume has soul, grit and plenty of high notes. (Oct.)

Det. Constable Ron Perry runs afoul of his by-the-book superior, Det. Insp. Harry Clark, after the disappearance of Perry’s young niece, Elaine Oakley, in this pallid police procedural from Ashford, author of the popular Inspector Alvarez series (An Artful Death, etc.) under his Roderic Jeffries pseudonym. In the close-knit English town of Carnford, Perry quickly finds evidence that Elaine didn’t vanish voluntarily, and conceals his relationship with the kidnapping victim to remain on the case. Suspicion soon focuses on local farmer Stan Burrell, who was the last person known to have seen Elaine, but Burrell steadfastly denies his guilt. When Perry’s personal connection to the case is uncovered, he’s shifted to interviewing people who may have sighted the girl, an assignment that feels like a pointless dead end to the zealous officer. Clark’s opposition to Perry often borders on parody, making the tension between the search for the truth and the suspect’s rights less than compelling. (Oct.)

Jane Kelly, Oregon’s spunkiest PI-in-training, and her pug pal, Binky, sniff for clues in their rollicking third case (after 2006’s Electric Blue). The newest Dwayne Durbin Investigations client, Violet Purcell, is ultra gorgeous, ultra rich and ultra desperate: her prints are all over the silver tray that whacked her “favorite ex-husband,” Roland Hatchmere, on the morning of his daughter’s wedding. Other suspects include Roland’s estranged wife, Melinda, a manic Junior Leaguer; his first wife, Renee, a plastic surgery addict; and several members of the sleazy Columbia Millionaires’ Club. Dwayne must depend on Jane to do the legwork while he’s stuck at home, recovering from injuries and passing the time by spying on neighbors from his window. Soon he starts wondering what those Lake Chinook teens are really doing during their nocturnal parties at a house under construction, and sends Jane undercover to find out, adding another layer of mystery to the tangled plot. Jane’s cool, reader-friendly attitude makes this funny new series a winner. (Oct.)

The 17th in Akashic’s acclaimed series of original noir anthologies is the first with a non-Anglo setting (the two earlier non-U.S. locales were London and Dublin). The choice to collect Cuban stories was a smart one: it will expose American noir fans to other cultures, and readers interested in those other cultures will get a taste of noir. The authors will be unknown to virtually all American readers, but by and large, they prove themselves as capable of crafting grim and gritty stories of despair and irony as their more familiar counterparts. The standout is Mylene Fernandez Pintado’s “The Scene,” a short but searing portrait of trapped lives. As the unnamed narrator nears the end of his rope, he simultaneously faces eviction from his apartment and the impending death of his elderly mother, for whom he is caring. Pintado succeeds in using the genre without resorting to violence or sex, and this story should send readers in search of her other work, though most of it is available only in Spanish. (Oct.)

At the start of British author Forbes’s entertaining debut, a young woman falls to her death from the balcony of a dusty London church. Det. Insp. Mark Tartaglia and his team quickly discover that Gemma Kramer was lured there to meet a man calling himself Tom, who then delivered murder rather than the romantic suicide pact he promised. Searching the records, Tartaglia and his team uncover two of “Tom’s” other victims, formerly classed as suicides, as well as a suspicious death his instinct tells him is linked. Following the clues from two additional murders, Tartaglia and partner Sam Donovan nearly become Tom’s victims themselves just before discovering Tom’s true identity. The explanation of the killer’s motivation and MO isn’t entirely satisfying, but this minor lapse aside, this is an intelligently plotted, convincing and nicely textured read. One hopes to see more of the appealing cast of well-characterized police personnel in a sequel. (Oct.)

Maleeny’s second Cape Weathers mystery (after Stealing the Dragon) engages the reader without insisting that it be taken too seriously. While others have viciously lampooned the movie industry, Maleeny finds some new aspects to skewer when movie producer Grace Calloway hires reporter-turned-PI Weathers to probe the alleged suicide of Tom Abrahams, her high-powered Hollywood colleague. Soon Russian gangsters are calling on Weathers in his office, and he winds up with a gunshot wound in his side. Aided by the beautiful and deadly Sally Mei, Weathers finds evidence that the motive for Abrahams’s murder may be connected with creative accounting. The snappy writing and a parallel plot of drug-dealing Italian and Chinese mobsters keeps the pace lively and will resonate with Elmore Leonard fans. (Oct.)

Fantasist extraordinaire Wolfe (The Wizard) dabbles in time travel paradoxes for this charming tale of a monastic novice in postcommunist Cuba. As the years pass, Christopher, the son of an American crime lord, gradually loses touch with his family and decides against taking holy orders. He leaves the monastery and finds himself in the 18th century. This unexplained time slip, along with Chris’s equally mysterious jump to the late 20th century, are the only fantastic elements in what’s otherwise a fairly straightforward tale of derring-do on the high seas. Wolfe describes his plucky young hero’s rise from much abused common seaman to successful pirate captain, filling his story with duels, treachery, ship-to-ship combat and an abundance of accurate period detail, avoiding both the larger than life romanticism and the fantastical elements often associated with such pirate tales. Captain Chris is a laconic and rather unemotional narrator, which may put off some readers, but Wolfe’s elegant prose still makes this relatively minor effort worth reading. (Nov.)

This brilliantly conceived techno-crime thriller spreads a black humor frosting over the grim prospect of the year 2012, when China, India and the European System are struggling for world economic domination in an “infowar,” and the U.S. faces bankruptcy over its failing infrastructure. Sgt. Sue Smith of Edinburgh’s finest, London insurance accountant Elaine Barnaby and hapless secret-ridden programmer Jack Reed peel back layer after layer of a scheme to siphon vast assets from Hayek Associates, a firm whose tentacles spread into international economies. The theft is routed through Avalon Four, a virtual reality world complete with supposedly robbery-proof banks. As an electronic intelligence agency trains innocent gamers to do its dirty work, Elaine sets Jack to catch the poacher. Hugo-winner Stross (Glasshouse) creates a deeply immersive story, writing all three perspectives in the authoritative second-person style of video game instructions and gleefully spiking the intrigue with virtual Orcs, dragons and swordplay. The effortless transformation of today’s technological frustrations into tomorrow’s nightmare realities is all too real for comfort. (Oct.)

Rardin fuses spy girl with vampire slayer in this entertaining but derivative debut. Jasmine “Jaz” Parks, a martial artist turned vampire-hunting government agent, is assigned to protect top-notch operative Vayl, a 300-year-old vampire on the side of the good guys. As Vayl helps Jaz to hone her supernatural abilities and she tries to keep from falling for his Romanian charm, they track down a dirty senator in cahoots with Mohammed Khad Abn-Assan, a terrorist who’s making plans for a “Red Plague” spread through vampire-to-human contact. Rardin delivers all the paranormal touches that fans of Hamilton, Harris and Whedon enjoy, and Jaz’s jittery narration amuses, but the fang-filled plot, replete with action licks and paranormal theatrics, will have trouble standing out in this overcrowded field. (Oct.)

Alt-cultural folk strive to save Earth from digitized doom in this novel from the prince of gonzo SF. A computer mogul’s threat to replace messy reality with clean virtuality and by a memory-hungry artificial intelligence called the Big Pig propels nanotechnologist Ond Lutter, his autistic son, Chu, and their allies on an interdimensional quest for a golden harp, the Lost Chord, strung with hypertubes that can unroll the eighth dimension and unleash limitless computing power. Though he tries to unite the hard and the fuzzy sides of physics, Rucker (Mathematicians in Love) favors the flower power of San Francisco over the number crunching of Silicon Valley. His novel vibrates with the warm rhythms of dream and imagination, not the cold logic of programming (or, for that matter, plotting). Playing with the math of quantum computing, encryption and virtual reality, Rucker places his faith in people who find true reality “gnarly” enough to love. (Oct.)

Though the world-building remains top-notch, this slow-moving second installment of McIntosh’s epic fantasy (after Odalisque) appears mainly designed to set up more interesting action in later volumes. Ana, a virginal odalisque, is trapped in the idle harem of Boaz, the chaste, adolescent Zar of Percheron. Nearly every man who sees Ana desires and adores her, not only the Zar but also exiled warrior Lazar and the goddess-touched, shape-shifting dwarf, Pez. However, Herezah, the Zar’s mother, sees Ana as a dangerous threat to her supremacy in the harem, and she concocts a plan with chief eunuch Salmeo to bring about Ana’s humiliation and demise. A new setting eventually blows a fresh desert breeze through the stifling atmosphere, but the hundreds of pages spent building up to Ana’s escape attempt, including a disturbing scene of sexual torture at Salmeo’s hands, will have the reader sharing Ana’s longing to be anywhere other than the Zar’s palace. (Oct.)

As seen on film and TV, the Phantom Zone where Superman’s enemies are exiled is insubstantial and two-dimensional, much like this chronicle of the death of the cape-clad hero’s home planet. Best known for sweeping space opera (the Seven Suns series; Sandworms of Dune), Anderson briskly and blandly narrates these events as if voicing a news documentary, completely removing the tension from otherwise dramatic turns of fate. After young artist Lara rescues gifted scientist Jor-El from the Zone, their courtship is lost among a host of fragmentary subplots and minor characters with names pulled straight from the acknowledgments page. Would-be dictator Zod, who twirls his mustache in mostly solitary musings for nearly half the book, disconcertingly insists on conducting the wedding before descending into tiresome megalomania. Frustrated Superman fans will wish that Anderson had instead expanded on Lara’s brief private account of Zod’s ascendance and Krypton’s destruction. (Oct.)

Lumley fans will welcome this collection of seven longer Cthulhu Mythos tales from the prolific British author (Necroscope), on whom H.P. Lovecraft was an important influence. One of the earlier selections, “The Horror at Oakdeene,” set in an insane asylum full of inmates familiar with the Mythos, amounts to apprentice work highly derivative of Lovecraft. Another early effort, “Born of the Winds,” shows more originality by mixing the usual Lovecraftian imagery (e.g., “cyclopean submarine cities of mad angles and proportions”) with the Wendigo and Ithaqua, “wind-walkers” who first appeared respectively in tales by Algernon Blackwood and August Derleth. Perhaps most memorable is the 2005 title story, which, despite being set in Lovecraft’s haunted seaport of Innsmouth, avoids Mythos clichés and comes across as distinctly the author’s own. (Oct.)

Medieval alternate historians rarely conceive such wondrously convincing intrigue as Gentle has in this second installment of the First History series (after The Lion’s Eye). The action sweeps Ilario, a young hermaphrodite artist, from giving Caesarian birth to a daughter in Venice to befriending Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny in Alexandria-in-exile at Constantinople. A turn of fate sees a Chinese war junk taking Ilario first home to Iberia to negotiate with King Rodrigo and then to mighty Carthage, gloomy under the mysterious sunless Penitence but still capable of menacing the civilized world. Gentle’s fascinating protagonist, as clever with words as with line and color, plays off a colorful host of fine-tuned characters like the noble Captain-General Honorius, the Alexandrine castrato-by-choice spy Rekhmire’; and the handsome Ramiro Carrasco, Ilario’s would-be assassin and later slave. Historical figures like Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press, add depth to this rousing adventure, and the intricate plots allow plenty of room for Gentle’s subtle, ironic commentary on politics and gender. (Sept.)

In her second novel, Langan delivers a powerhouse creepfest that recalls, in the best way possible, the early work of Stephen King. Corpus Christi, Maine, was once a town of affluence, but since the mysterious paper mill fire in the neighboring town of Bedford (depicted in last year’s well-received debut, The Keeper) released dense sulfuric clouds that killed the surrounding forest, Corpus Christi has been in steady decline. When fourth-grade teacher Lois Larkin takes her class on a field trip to the now-abandoned Bedford, they’re exposed to a deadly virus that transforms the infected into ravenous, flesh-eating monsters. Rather than stick to zombie lit convention (mindless undead, endless chases), Langan invests her plague with a sinister intelligence of unknown origin, maintaining a skin-crawling tension as the vivid cast of characters succumb to murderous insanity, hunting down and tearing apart animals, neighbors and loved ones. Langan has the control of a pro, parsing just enough horrific details to allow the truly gruesome scenes to play out unbound in the imagination; this solid sophomore effort proves that The Keeper’s disturbing ability to burrow into readers’ heads and stay there was no fluke. (Oct.)

Historical romance master Kleypas reintroduces Cam Rohan, the wealthy half-Gypsy first seen in 2006’s Devil in Winter, in her latest page-turning Victorian. Rohan, manager of a London gentleman’s club, decides to do a favor for the distraught Amelia Hathaway, who is scouring brothels in search of her wastrel brother, Leo. Rohan, weary of his usual diet of beautiful-but-boring lovers, is bemused by and attracted to Amelia, a staid and proper spinster, and so he sets about making a presence of himself at the ramshackle Hathaway estate, sowing sexual tension as he does. As the standoffish relationship between Rohan and Amelia evolves into romance, the reappearance of Amelia’s former suitor throws an intriguing wrench in the works. The author’s sensitivity to the prejudice endured by the Roma (Gypsies) adds a measure of grim reality that is creatively offset by Rohan’s discussion of Roma beliefs and superstitions. Kleypas’s effortless style makes for another sexy exploration of 19th-century passion and peccadilloes, riveting from start to finish. (Oct.)

This fantasy-romance debut features faerie king Rain Tairen Soul, a man tormented by age-old grief: a thousand years ago, the woman he loved was slain in battle, and in his rage he laid waste to half the world. Now his people are dying out and the evil mages of Eld are rising again. When Rain hears the call of his lost soul mate, Ellysetta, he journeys to the neighboring kingdom to find her; when he claims a woodcarver’s daughter as his mate, he scandalizes the nobility of her country and rouses the interest of Eld’s wicked wizards, who come seeking her in order to get at Rain. The first book in a series, much of this volume is devoted to establishing the characters and their world, at the expense of plot. Though the extended courtship between Rain and Ellysetta can grow tedious, the story moves well enough to hold readers’ interest and draw them into the sequel (due in November), which should advance the plot significantly. A promising start, this series should have great appeal for fans of fantasy and will likely reward romance readers for whom patience is not a problem. (Oct.)

The latest contemporary romance from bestseller Phillips is a warm, sexy whodunit featuring powerhouse lawyers Molly Gifford and Daniel Hunter, who, despite success in the courtroom, are still plagued by abandonment issues: years in foster care have left Daniel scarred, while Molly’s boarding school experiences have left her desperate for a real family. After weathering another stunning disappointment from her mom, Molly leaves to track down her long-lost father, rejecting her smitten friend Daniel’s heartfelt attempts to help. But just as Molly settles down with her father and a promising new family, her father is accused of murdering his best friend and business partner. Despite the hurt she’s caused him, Molly successfully pleads with Daniel to join her on the case. Residing under the same roof—and the watchful, caring eyes of her new family—Molly and Daniel surrender to passion even as the case for the defense grows increasingly bleak. Phillips’s quirky cast is delightful, especially an outspoken grandma (known as Commander) and a potty-mouthed macaw; meanwhile, the romance generates sufficient heat and the pieces of the mystery fall together to satisfying effect. (Oct.)

In this collection of three shojo shorts, a shop sells magic items that grant wishes, but for a price. Rin and her sales clerk, an animated stuffed rabbit named Alpha, offer wares to a tree that falls in love with a dying musician, a stuffed animal who loves his shy owner, and a young amnesiac. The stories can be a little cloying, but are easy to follow and have some real drama, though the second story, in which the stuffed animal attempts to commit suicide, might be a bit much for young readers. There is something more magical about the first story, in which the tree, which has never flowered, puts forth buds and then blossoms in the presence of her beloved. Rin has a superficially sinister gloss, but she makes things come out all right in the end. The art is beautifully composed, with a lovely sense of space and emotion. The book doesn’t have a clear audience, though. It’s a bit mature (and occasionally dark) for younger readers, but the stories aren’t sophisticated enough for older teens and adults. Possibly it’s one of those books for children that older teens still read. (Sept.)

The first graphic novel by Australian cartoonist Ogden is actually a set of five short, wordless fables involving small, bug-eyed, long-armed creatures (who look a bit like one of the late Vaughn Bodé’s inventions). The first two are the simplest: in “A,” a creature is pursued by a caveman and (naked) cavewoman, who try to kill it for food; in “E,” it meets its doom in the desert, then wrestles with the difficulties of reincarnation. The other three stories are increasingly tragic, concluding with “U,” in which a city full of the little creatures is overrun by a murderous legion of hulking, ugly beasts. Ogden’s drawings are deliciously curvy and loopy (his characters’ movements obviously operate on Looney Tunes physics), and the book is full of clever bits of business, like the squalling rooster whose appearance in a few of these stories means “the next morning.” But he’s badly hamstrung by the language-free format—“I,” in particular, is difficult to comprehend—and these tales’ brutal streak isn’t quite mitigated by flashes of painful sappiness, such as a stuffed toy used as a symbol of innocence. Ogden is an enormously stylish artist, and he’s made an ambitious debut, but these parables aren’t quite worthy of his visual chops. (Aug.)

Niko Kanzaki and her brother, Atchan, are just scraping by, so when Atchan gets an offer to work as a teacher at the prestigious private school St. Lunatic High—complete with a house for the two of them—they jump at the chance. Niko plans on taking night classes there while working during the day. There’s just one problem. At night, St. Lunatic is a high school not for privileged humans—but for demons. Niko’s classmates are skeletons, pumpkin-heads and froglike creatures and the school nurse is a human-hating mermaid. As Niko tries, and fails, to fit in, she’s drawn to Ren-Kun, who looks almost human, though his wings come in handy when Niko gets into trouble. This manga is appealingly offbeat, though Niko’s hyperactive over-reactions to every obstacle can be grating. Each of the stories is straightforward, but there are always distracting antics by Niko’s demonic cohorts. The appeal of future installments is not to see the resolution of the predictable romance but to see what bizarre twists Majiko! throws in, whether it be the school chairman leaping through trees in a kangaroo suit or Niko marveling that with a giant mushroom growing out of her back she’ll never have to use an umbrella again. (Aug.)

Signature

Reviewed by Jeffrey Frank

Richard Russo’s portraits of smalltown life may be read not only as fine novels but as invaluable guides to the economic decline of the American Northeast. Russo was reared in Gloversville, N.Y. (which got its name from the gloves no longer manufactured there), and a lot of mid–20th-century Gloversville can be found in his earlier fiction (Mohawk; The Risk Pool). It reappears in Bridge of Sighs, Russo’s splendid chronicle of life in the hollowed-out town of Thomaston, N.Y., where a tannery’s runoff is slowly spreading carcinogenic ruin.

At the novel’s center is Lou C. Lynch (his middle initial wins him the unfortunate, lasting nickname “Lucy”), but the narrative, which covers more than a half-century, also unfolds through the eyes of Lou’s somewhat distant and tormented friend, Bobby Marconi, as well as Sarah Berg, a gifted artist who Lou marries and who loves Bobby, too. The lives of the Lynches, the Bergs and the Marconis intersect in various ways, few of them happy; each family has its share of woe. Lou’s father, a genial milkman, is bound for obsolescence and leads his wife into a life of shopkeeping; Bobby’s family is being damaged by an abusive father. Sarah moves between two parents: a schoolteacher father with grandiose literary dreams and a scandal in his past and a mother who lives in Long Island and leads a life that is far from exemplary.

Russo weaves all of this together with great sureness, expertly planting clues—and explosives, too—knowing just when and how they will be discovered or detonate at the proper time. Incidents from youth—a savage beating, a misunderstood homosexual advance, a loveless seduction—have repercussions that last far into adulthood. Thomaston itself becomes a sort of extended family, whose unhappy members include the owners of the tannery who eventually face ruin.

Bridge of Sighs is a melancholy book; the title refers to a painting that Bobby is making (he becomes a celebrated artist) and the Venetian landmark, but also to the sadness that pervades even the most contented lives. Lou, writing about himself and his dying, blue-collar town, thinks that “the loss of a place isn’t really so different from the loss of a person. Both disappear without permission, leaving the self diminished, in need of testimony and evidence.”

If there are false notes, they come with Russo’s portrayal of African-Americans, who too often speak like stock characters: (“Doan be given me that hairy eyeball like you doan believe, ’cause I know better,” says one). But Russo has a deep and real understanding of stifled ambitions and the secrets people keep, sometimes forever. Bridge of Sighs, on every page, is largehearted, vividly populated and filled with life from America’s recent, still vanishing past.

Jeffrey Frank’s books include The Columnist and Bad Publicity. His novel, Trudy Hopedale, was published in July by Simon & Schuster.

Mystery author Perry returns to holiday fare (after last year’s A Christmas Secret) and sends rumpled London policeman Runcorn to a lonely Welsh island for Christmas, where he gets pulled into the case of the murder of Olivia Costain, the town vicar’s lively single sister. Runcorn employs his bare-knuckle investigative skills in interviewing Olivia’s family and her various suitors, to the chagrin of the local constable, Sir Alan Faraday, whose pursuit Olivia rejected. Runcorn’s modest, unflashy ways carry this moody, understated mystery. (Oct.)

Archangel Gabriel and his three mischievous Prayer Ambassadors—Shirley, Goodness and Mercy—lend their celestial aid to three needy Christmas cases. Harry Alderwood, 86, prays that his increasingly forgetful wife, Rosalie, will agree to move into assisted living before he dies. Meanwhile, nine-year-old Carter Jackson begs God for a dog, even though his mother and father tell him that they can’t afford to keep a pet, while Beth Fischer’s mother prays that her divorced paralegal daughter, nightly engrossed in a World of Warcraft online game, will start a new life. The busybody angels work behind the scenes and provide a few delightful surprise twists as lives transform. (Oct.)

In “The Holiday Season,” the stronger of the two novellas with which Knight follows up Goodnight, Nobody, everyman narrator Frank Posey reminisces about the first winter of the new millennium. His father, Jeff, still struggling to regain a sense of normalcy after the death of his wife, refuses to spend Thanksgiving at the picture-perfect home of Frank’s elder brother, Ted. As the story progresses from Thanksgiving dinner to Christmastime, Frank humorously struggles with his sense of self while attempting to mediate between the two men, both of whom who consider him a disappointment. The collection then segues to the second novella and New Year’s Eve, where a series of interrelated characters ruminate movingly on love and loss. (Nov.)

The latest in the author’s Elm Creek Quilts series finds septuagenarian Sylvia Compson determined not to repeat past mistakes. Having married on Christmas Eve at Elm Creek Manor, the family homestead turned quilter’s haven, Sylvia and longtime family friend Andrew Cooper have to face the music and tell Andrew’s children, especially his bitter daughter, Amy. On the way, master quilter Sylvia plies at a long unfinished quilt she calls New Year’s Reflections, which she plans to give Amy in the hope of reconciliation. Elaborate memories of Sylvia’s German-American childhood include a long rift with elder sister Claudia. Chiaverini’s stitching is sound. (Nov.)

Van Liere’s seasonal confection (following The Christmas Hope) finds 60-year-old Gloria Bailey doing informal good works for needy cases seven years after her husband died, and her youngest son, Matthew, disappeared without a trace at age 17. With infinite good nature, Gloria fends off the complaints of her crabby widow neighbor, Miriam, annoyed by the constant riffraff at Gloria’s house, while Gloria still sadly hopes that wayward Matthew will somehow return. Meanwhile, 24-year-old Chaz McConnell, a hard-luck drifter and drinker with a good heart, starts his Christmas season job as a security guard at the local department store and is reluctantly drawn into the lives of the people around him. Everyone changes for the better in this tidy fable. (Oct.)

In veteran novelist Graham’s satisfying holiday latest, three jewelry store thieves stall out in a snowbank and have a disagreement that leaves only two of them standing. Meanwhile, the O’Boyle family is spending Christmas at their rural Massachusetts home, snowed in and bickering, until the doorbell rings. Brandishing guns, the two thieves threaten to kill Skyler, the family matriarch, who hopes that Kat, her college-aged daughter who has remained hidden upstairs, will figure something out. As the O’Boyles struggle to survive their horrific ordeal, they soon discover the strength of their family bonds in the face of despair. (Nov.)

Roberts’s sweetly vengeful dig at do-nothing husbands follows a smalltown knitting club of wives who are sick and tired of toiling over elaborate Christmas preparations that their husbands don’t appreciate. As they go on strike, the women try to stay in solidarity, while the husbands plan retaliation at the hardware store. Roberts revels in detailing the husbands’ awkward, often disastrous handling of tasks their wives habitually do for Christmas (taking the kids to see Santa, planning the party, doing up the house). By the end of this gently feminist sendup, each side learns to be grateful for the other’s efforts. (Nov.)

Stockings are peeled off as well as put up in this set of steamy Christmas romances from three Brava authors. Foster’s “The Christmas Present” finds Beth Monroe fleeing the hunk she has just spent a wild weekend with—who happens to be the best friend of her unfaithful fiancé. Kelley’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” maroons playboy Hollywood actor Jeremy Hunter in Two Creeks, Tex., to research the part of an itinerant preacher, with a curvaceous local teacher offering a different kind of lesson. Castell’s “Home for Christmas” brings together pregnant, abandoned LuLu Cahill and jilted Sebastian Moore, with snow, here as throughout, not being the only thing precipitated. (Oct.)