Fiction Reviews: Week of 8/20/2007

The irresistible third entry to the 44 Scotland Street series picks up with the residents of 44 Scotland Street where Espresso Tales left off and is as addictive as any book McCall Smith has written. Anthropologist Domenica has flown off to the Straits of Malacca to study modern-day pirates. Back in Edinburgh, Pat moves from 44 Scotland Street and develops a crush on fellow art student Wolf, whose strange ways hint at a darker subplot that involves Pat's flatmate. Pat moves in with gallery owner Matthew, who struggles with both a sudden fortune and a yearning for Pat. Meanwhile, child prodigy saxophonist Bertie becomes a reluctant member of the Edinburgh Teenage Orchestra at age six and later, on a trip to Paris, finds himself wonderfully unsupervised. Poet/portrait painter Angus is tormented by the theft of his beloved dog Cyrus. The proceedings sparkle with McCall Smith's trademark wit (“It was not always fun being a child, just as it had not always been fun being a medieval Scottish saint”), proving once again, he's a true treasure. Illustrations by Iain McIntosh enliven the text. (Nov.)

Gloss's austere latest (after Wild Life) features a wandering taciturn tomboy who finds her place in rural Oregon while the men are away at war. After she leaves home in 1917, 19-year-old Martha Lessen plans to travel from farm to farm in Elwha County, Oregon, breaking horses left behind by owners away fighting. She winds up in small town Shelby, where farmers George and Louise Bliss convince her to stay the winter with them after she domesticates their broncos with soft words and songs instead of lariats and hobbles. While breaking the town's horses, Martha meets a slovenly drunk, a clan of Western European immigrants and two unmarried sisters running a ranch with the help of an awkward, secretive teenager. When Martha's not making the rounds or riding through the Clarks Range, Louise tries her hand at socializing (or, perhaps, breaking) her, but Martha chafes at town dances, social outings and Louise's hand-me-down church dresses. Gloss's narrative is sometimes as slow as Martha's progress with the more recalcitrant beasts, but following stubborn, uncompromising Martha as she goes about her work provides its own unique pleasures. (Nov.)

Neurologist Durcan (A Short Journey by Car) dissects the ethics involved when politics, medicine and violence collide in this finely wrought novel about a neurologist turned biotech entrepreneur who travels to The Hague to witness his mentor's war crimes trial. Patrick Lazerenko is a punk teen in Montreal when he first meets Hernan García, the Spanish immigrant owner of a neighborhood grocery store. Caught trying to vandalize Hernan's store, Patrick is roped into working off the damages and soon finds himself attached to the García family. When Patrick sees Hernan's backroom medical consultations with local immigrants, he is inspired to become a doctor himself. Years later, a journalist exposes Hernan—dubbed the Angel of Lepaterique—as having been mixed up in the CIA-backed torture of subversive citizens in Honduras in the 1980s. Parallels to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are acute (and even overtly identified) as Hernan is accused of witnessing and aiding in detainee torture. Subplots involving a devious political think-tank, the long-expired romance between Patrick and Hernan's daughter and the goings-on at Patrick's company, provide a rich backdrop to the trial, but the centerpiece is the mélange of complex feelings that arise within Patrick, who finds himself simultaneously condemning and rooting for Hernan. (Nov.)

Elliot spoofs everything from survival adventures to celebrity charities to his own failed acting career in his goofy second novel. Narrator Chris Elliott's desire to “mount Mount Everest” ignites when he is mysteriously sent the diary of his great-uncle Percy, detailing Percy's failed Everest expedition. Hoping to unravel the mystery of Percy's disappearance, Chris and his best friend Wendell plan a trip up the mountain. Together they head to the Mountain Maniacs headquarters (where the décor is “retro Katrina chic”) and convince climber, bail bondsman and bounty hunter Duncan Carter to lead their expedition. With only pocket change to fund their journey, Chris recruits celebs to participate and underwrite the trek. Quickly in over their heads, the expedition members discover that if the elements don't kill them, Uncle Percy's secrets might. Elliot makes stupidity an art form (“the aircraft was.... constructed entirely out of yeast paste and horse hair”), but beyond the crassness and juvenile humor, there are a few flashes of sharp commentary. The work is more silly than satiric, and since Elliot doesn't take himself too seriously, perhaps the reader shouldn't, either. (Nov.)

Veteran playwright Anton opens her impassioned debut saga with a flock of egrets inexplicably diving into South Florida sugar cane fires in the early 1980s. James Henry Hampton, the tough-talking but well-intentioned patriarch of the family sugar cane plantation Hampton House, near Belle Glade, feuds with the local environmentalists and cane cutters' union to keep his lucrative enterprise thriving. He struggles to hold together his dysfunctional family, most notably his cokehead son Henny, but takes time out to bed his best friend wife. James Henry's daughter, Melisandra, lives in high style and buys a trophy husband, while his long-suffering wife, Grace, endures it all. The earthy Berlinda is the Hamptons' black housekeeper who delivers timely aid and dispenses family advice. Vivid scenes of harvesting and processing the sugar cane and the hot subtropical setting earn solid marks for Anton, who died in May of this year, and her over-the-top melodrama rages like a field afire. (Nov.)

Set in 1977, Carlson's debut novel centers on the flimsy premise that 42-year-old trouble-prone protagonist Ray Johnston is Elvis's separated-at-birth twin brother. Raylives in a trailer and contends with “his share of work problems, marriage problems, divorce problems, parental problems, identity problems, and, most definitely, financial problems.” Then there's his resemblance to Elvis, which used to be nothing more than an annoyance. But when his girlfriend Sheree conveniently locates his mother's journals and discovers he was adopted and was born on the same day in the same hospital as the King, Ray sells his story—that he's Elvis's long-lost twin brother—to a tabloid, but it isn't until he happens across Ned, the King's chauffeur, in a bar that things fall into place. When Elvis and Ray finally meet, Ray experiences a sense of homecoming that he hadn't thought possible, even though his brother refuses to acknowledge the relationship, insisting on additional research. Carlson's novel is built upon a rickety platform of coincidences, but Elvis-loving readers who can put their disbelief in check will want to add this to the collection. (Nov.)

Bestseller Cornwell's 15th novel to feature Dr. Kay Scarpetta (after 2005's Predator) delivers her trademark grisly crime scenes, but lacks the coherence and emotional resonance of earlier books. Soon after relocating to Charleston, S.C., to launch a private forensics lab, Scarpetta is asked to consult on the murder of U.S. tennis star Drew Martin, whose mutilated body was found in Rome. Contradictory evidence leaves Scarpetta, the Italian carabinieri and Scarpetta's lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley, stumped. But when she discovers unsettling connections between Martin's murder, the body of an unidentified South Carolina boy and her old nemesis, the maniacal psychiatrist Dr. Marilyn Self, Scarpetta encounters a killer as deadly as any she's ever faced. With her recent switch from first- to third-person narration, Cornwell loses what once made her series so compelling: a window into the mind of a strong, intelligent woman holding her own in a profession dominated by men. Here, the abrupt shifts in point of view slow the momentum, and the reader flounders in excessive forensic minutiae. (Oct.)

When a client who suspects his wife is cheating on him is murdered in Parker's 35th snappy Spenser adventure (after Hundred-Dollar Baby), the Boston PI takes it personally, not only because the case resonates with Spenser's past history with love interest Susan, but also because, like Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, Spenser feels he can't let a client get murdered without doing something about it. The repartee is up to Parker's high standards, and the detection is hands on and straightforward, with Spenser carrying the load. Since Spenser's aides, including the stalwart Hawke, outclass the heavies, Spenser has time to deal with the mysterious other man, Perry Alderson, whose academic background appears as suspect as his dealings with various subversive groups. This briskly paced cat-and-mouse game offers Spenser fans exactly what they've come to expect from the reliable Parker—no-nonsense action and plenty of romantic give-and-take between Susan and Spenser, who even find the subject of marriage intruding once more. (Oct.)

Veteran Peruvian novelist Vargas Llosa's appealing, nostalgic latest opens in the summer of 1950, as Ricardo “Slim” Somocurcio, a rambunctious teen in the affluent Miraflores section of Lima, meets 14-year-old nymph Lily. With her younger sister, Lily is masquerading as a wealthy, liberated Chilean girl to disguise her slum origins. She is soon exposed by a jealous schoolmate and disappears, but Ricardo is smitten. There are dashes of Vertigo and Last Year at Marienbad in what follows. As an adult, Ricardo's work as a translator for UNESCO takes him over the decades everywhere from late '50s Paris to the Beatles's London to gangland Tokyo. Everywhere he goes, his bad girl shows up in dramatically different disguises, denying she was his childhood sweetheart or that they've ever met before, but ravishing him completely. None of the characters is particularly nuanced, but Vargas Llosa is a master of description, and his gift for evoking sounds, smells and tastes makes each (often very graphic) encounter with Lily fresh. And with Ricardo's knack for being where the action is, whole “scenes” of the postwar period flare into view, as Lily's sexual perfidy eventually leads to serious trouble. The result is rich but not in the least deep. (Oct.)

Bewitched by the haunting violin she hears in the subway under Harvard Square, MIT mathematician Leela-May Magnolia Moore falls in love at first listen with mysterious musician Mishka Bartok. This ambitious but flawed romantic thriller is a post-9/11 reworking of the Orpheus myth by one of Australia's most acclaimed novelists. The nightmare begins with a series of terrorist bombings, overlapping with disappearances by Mishka. Leela starts tailing her lover, only to be snatched off the street and interrogated by members of a shadowy private security force. Their leader: none other than Cobb Slaughter, the former Special Forces op who has loved/loathed her since their blighted childhoods in the South Carolina hamlet of Promised Land. Is Cobb simply tormenting Leela for his own sadistic pleasure, or could the Australian-born Mishka really be a terrorist? Hospital (Due Preparations for the Plague) sends the anguished Leela across three continents searching for answers, but extended flashbacks and florid prose slow the pace. Despite the novel's timely, provocative premise, it unfortunately isn't only Orpheus who goes astray. (Oct.)

In the exceptional second thriller from British author Beckett to feature forensic anthropologist David Hunter (after 2006's The Chemistry of Death), the former GP investigates a suspicious death on Runa, a small island in the Hebrides. With the mainland official force preoccupied with a horrific train wreck that might have been the work of terrorists, Hunter must try to determine whether the victim was murdered. On Runa, Hunter finds a badly burned corpse with the feet and one hand oddly untouched, in a cottage that shows little fire damage. Could spontaneous combustion have been the cause? The suspense mounts along with the body count and the approach of a storm that cuts off the island from the outside world. While some plot elements may be a little too close to those of the prior book, Beckett does them better here, and is especially adept at blending first- and third-person narratives to heighten the tension. (Oct.)

Set mainly in late 19th-century England, Gallagher's ingenious horror thriller revolves around the extraordinary life—and death—of Tom Sayers, a real-life bare-knuckle fighter who, after retiring, briefly traveled the country staging reenactments of his most memorable bouts. While working as a manager for a touring theatrical company, Sayers falls in love with the troupe's leading lady, 22-year-old Louise Porter, who unfortunately doesn't share his feelings. Sayers also becomes the prime suspect in a series of mutilation murders and, while barely evading arrest, embarks on a quest to save Porter, who's become hopelessly entangled in an all-too-real occult legend. Bram Stoker and Aleister Crowley play minor roles. Combining the meticulous historical detail of Caleb Carr's The Alienist with gothic mysticism and Christian mythology, Gallagher (The Painted Bride) delivers a nicely macabre blend of fact and fiction. (Oct.)

Nersesian has carved out his niche with novels like The Fuck Up and Unlubricated about New Yorkers trapped in their own ugly lives. His sixth is similarly sordid but uncharacteristically fantastical. Over the course of a week in a counterfactual 1980, amnesiac protagonist Uli must navigate a reproduction of New York City built in Nevada after the original was destroyed. He quickly learns that the city is divided into territories run by Piggers and Crappers (“political parties, or gangs”) and he has been programmed to assassinate the Crapper candidate for mayor. Manhattan and Brooklyn belong to Crappers, the Bronx and Queens are held by Piggers; Staten Island is independent, and thus constitutes the swing vote in the mayoral and—more importantly—presidential elections. “Rescue City” consists of smaller, cheaper versions of the original: bridges are made of rotten boards, famous landmarks are redubbed corrupt versions of their real names (e.g., Rock and Filler Center for Rockefeller Center and Onion Square for Union Square), and the East River suffers from a clogged drain. Uli mingles with a wide array of desperate characters while trying to uncover his identity and determine what, if anything, he should be fighting for. Nersesian's novel is exceptionally bleak and bewildering, and his fans would expect nothing less. (Oct.)

The third novel from Lippincott (Mr. Dalloway) offers a curious, bittersweet study of the more or less unremarkable lives of three fast friends. Kathryn, Luke and Starling meet as children in their anonymous Midwestern small town on a 1931 summer's day, and soon become closer than siblings. The three eventually fulfill a childhood dream, concocted by Kathryn, to move to Manhattan, where they share an apartment. There, Kathryn attends college; Luke works his way up from the mail room at a major publishing house; and Star pursues acting, only to find that being biracial keeps him from getting major roles. Lippincott uses a very Virginia Woolf–like free and direct style to hone in on his main characters, and to triangulate them. He takes the three through high school (including some clunky sexual encounters), then shifts to clipped year-by-year recountings of the 1950s. The latter chapters reveal their struggles to fit into the arts culture. Most successful is the concluding section, set on September 7, 2001, in which Kathryn poignantly reflects on her life. The book's pleasures outweigh the many moments of overreaching. (Oct.)

After a career at the NEA and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ireland published her debut novel, Ana Imagined, in 2000, and follows it with this intriguing, sophisticated look at talk in marriage. Comfortable Bostonians Sarah and Michael are sorting out their childless 18-year marriage (the second for both) when Camila, a beautiful 30-something Latina, turns up claiming she's Michael's daughter. Michael, who already has a daughter from his first marriage, is “great-looking and mischievous and charming,” but hot-tempered and uncommunicative about his past, including his Latin American Peace Corps stint. As the consequences of Michael's continued stonewalling spin out, he prepares to visit Camila's mother. Sarah, meanwhile, seeks comfort in the arms of a man she meets on a train. Ireland is less after their story than the ways Michael and Sarah communicate, a pointed staccato rife with missed connections, misdirection and blithe ignoring. That chatter is also bombarded from the outside by TV, radio, periodicals and other organs of the culture at large, often with complex effects—especially for novelist Sarah, and particularly given the pointedly post-9/11 setting. So while the plot is contrived and the characters honed to razor-thin dimensions, Ireland gets uncomfortably close to what people say about what they do. (Oct.)

Retired U.S. Army colonel and law professor Smith makes an awkward fiction debut with a thriller set mainly in 1960s West Germany. Maj. Tom Cooper, U.S. Army, and Capt. Simon Berwick, of the British SAS, join forces to track down a neo-Nazi movement called the Fatherland Party after terrorist attacks take the lives of their wives and children. Desensitized by their loss, the pair easily take to their new purpose and mercilessly cut down their targets in an effort to discover the secret behind Fatherland, which is somehow connected with the mysterious death of Hitler's mistress Geli Raubal in 1931. Jarring anachronisms, like a Muslim terrorist blowing up a 747 over the Atlantic in 1965, don't help a predictable plot and an implausible premise. (Oct.)

Set in what appears to be Pennsylvania, Schreiber's sturdy second novel (after Chasing the Dead) features a classic thriller premise: people trapped in an enclosed space with a serial killer on the loose. When the police bring Frank Snow, a ruthless and possibly supernatural mass murderer, to soon-to-be abandoned Tanglewood Memorial Hospital for an MRI, Snow, of course, escapes and starts dismembering people. Security guard Mike Hughes, along with his wife and son, must travel through the hospital to find a way out. Cast members who are more than mere victims include the enigmatic Dr. Walker; the requisite beautiful woman, Jolie Braun, who may be having an affair with Mike; and the ghost of a suicidal ICU nurse. Luckily, there's a deeper mystery involving Dr. Walker and Snow, but unluckily it turns out to be irrelevant and ordinary. Working from the principle that less is more, Schreiber offers a lean scare tale that will resonate with slasher-film fans in particular. (Oct.)

Short story writer Nikitas fills his engaging, atmospheric first novel, set in upstate New York, with Swedish mythology and American carnage. The life of 15-year-old Lucia “Luc” Moberg, who dresses goth and rebels against her mother, irrevocably changes after a trip to the mall with her S.U.N.Y. professor father, Oscar. Stealing a few CDs for her friends from a music and video store, she runs to the bookstore to find her father and begs him to leave immediately, feigning illness. Unfortunately for Luc, far worse awaits the Mobergs in the mall parking lot—an armed gunman who shoots and kills Oscar. The murder sets off a violent chain of events that tears apart the Mobergs and their community. Fans of Joyce Carol Oates, who provides a blurb, will in particular enjoy this unrelentingly dark and brutal novel with its ironic twists. (Oct.)

Setting nine linked stories against a turbulent political background, Singer follows New York City journalist Susan Stern over two decades, as she flounders through a string of failed love affairs and maintains close relationships with Israeli relatives. Visiting her paternal grandparents in Haifa, Susan finds Israel relatively normal despite the 1982 Lebanon War. She loses some of her naïveté when her soldier-cousin, Gavi, joins a cult in the aftermath; after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Gavi's behavior becomes even more difficult to navigate. By that point, Susan realizes she still has feelings for an ex-boyfriend who calls in a panic to confess that a casual girlfriend is pregnant with his child. Susan's affair with a married man is told in tandem with a tale about her grandmother's difficult first years in British-occupied Haifa, while a maternal uncle who is a Jerusalem archeologist digs up a more recent, and more uncomfortable, truth. The latter revelation is touched off by 2002 reports of violence in Israel: Susan feels guilt and responsibility for the ongoing political crisis, but also a deep yearning for the country. Many story lines go unresolved, but the end result is a pungent composite portrait of a strong, complicated woman. (Oct.)

Unfulfilled expectations and the need for forgiveness drive this sophomore novel from Emmons (His Mother's Son), which slowly reveals the power of letting go and letting people in. Hayden Risley, residing in Hoboken, N.J., four months after 9/11, had years previously left Harvard and estranged herself from her two younger sisters; from the fragile mother she adores; and from her acidly demanding absentee father. Working as a hair stylist with coworkers who serve as a surrogate family, Hayden struggles with her past and, six years later, with her mother's death. When a new girl, Emory Bellew, starts working at the salon, Hayden is wary and suspicious. Emory, meanwhile, has her own history to come to terms with, one filled with loneliness and a gender identity crisis. The two rebellious friends eventually form a tentative and compassionate bond, one that leads them to Costa Rica, and to Hayden's father. Stubborn characters and some vivid hair salon–based moments make the most of a subdued plot and dry, sometimes sentimental dialogue, and the whole is made appealingly complex by the ambiguities in Hayden and Emory's relationship. (Oct.)

Percy's second collection (following last year's The Language of Elk) traces lives led in rural Oregon's fractured, mostly poor communities. The title story (selected for The Best American Short Stories 2006), presents Josh, a young man from small-town Tumalo who watches as men who signed up as Marine reservists for “beer pay” leave to fight in the Iraq War, including Josh's father. As Josh's unreliable first person details a deer hunt, the escapades of the town recruitment officer and the less-and-less frequent e-mails from his father, tension slowly builds. Set during a blackout, “The Caves in Oregon” follows geology teacher Becca and her husband, Kevin, as they explore a network of caves beneath their home, grappling to understand each other in the wake of a miscarriage. “Meltdown” imagines a nuclear disaster in November 2009, while the menacing “Whisper” opens with the accidental late-life death of Jacob, leaving his brother, Gerald, to care for Jacob's stroke-impaired wife. Percy's talent for putting surprising characters in difficult contemporary settings makes this a memorable collection. (Oct.)

Barclay (Bad Guys) tugs hard on the heartstrings with the tragic tale of Cynthia Bigge, whose parents and brother vanished without a trace the day after she had a tempestuous teenage argument with her father. Twenty-five years later, raising a daughter with her husband, Terrence Archer, in Milford, Conn., but still haunted by her family's disappearance, Cynthia goes on TV to talk about what happened and plead for clues. A mysterious phone call leads her to believe her father, at least, may still be alive, but as her excitement grows, so do Terrence's worries. It soon appears that someone is playing a unexpectedly vicious game with Cynthia's emotions, and that her family held secrets she never suspected. Though some plot twists require significant suspension of disbelief, skilled characterization and convincing dialogue more than compensate. (Oct.)

In Goffard's impressive debut, a darkly comic romp through the Southern California underworld, Benny Bunt, a 41-year-old dishwasher, finds his main escape in the Greasy Tuesday, a blue-collar bar in Costa Mesa. Among the recidivist misfits, his is a harmless familiar face. What they don't know is that Benny is a snitch who earns pocket money by ratting out his buddies to the cops. Enter one Gus “Mad Dog” Miller, a massive, bearded Vietnam vet, covered with prison tattoos; Gus holds court at the bar with outrageous tales of his exploits, military and criminal. Gus soon becomes Benny's best friend, and seeks his assistance in a contract killing. Only problem is, the police “botch” their surveillance and Benny ends up taking the fall for a double homicide committed at the Howling Head festival in the Mojave desert. Goffard's prose shimmers with intelligence and humor, and he has a keen ear for telling detail. Fans of such cultish neo-noir scribes such as Charlie Huston and Duane Swierczynski will be richly rewarded. (Oct.)

British author Hannah (Hurting Distance) weaves together two narrative voices to create this complex and occasionally forced thriller set in rural England. Excitable new mother Alice Fancourt calls the police, claiming her baby girl has been replaced by a nearly identical infant. Alice believes her husband, David, is responsible, but it soon appears that David's mother, the rich and formidable Vivienne, is up to no good. Det. Simon Waterhouse has a soft spot for the possibly delusional Alice, with whom he alternates narration, but his undeveloped character renders their relationship, or lack thereof, of little interest. More engrossing is Waterhouse's complicated friendship with his boss, Sgt. “Charlie” Zailer, a feisty, appealing woman with a major crush on her subordinate. When Alice and the baby disappear and the police reopen the murder investigation of David's first wife, some interesting discoveries are made, but readers enticed by the intriguing opening will find the payoff ultimately unsatisfying. (Oct.)

First published in Iran in 1988, this heartrending first novel recounts, using an unusual symphonic structure, the WWII-era dissolution of the mercantile Urkhani family in the provincial town of Arabdil. Rageful, narrow-minded patriarch Djaber terrorizes his children, sometimes with the enabling of his wife (“Mother”). Yousef, the eldest, is paralyzed in a childhood incident and becomes a family burden. The deep bond connecting twins Ida and her brother Ideen is broken first by Ida's banishment to the kitchen and subservient duties, then by her marriage and subsequent death. The central, triangular conflict is between Ideen, a gifted poet; his father, who thwarts his every literary advancement; and Ideen's elder brother Urhan, the favorite son, who dedicates his life to the family business. Over the course of the book's four movements, traumatic events reoccur, contrasted with the constants of daily life, and abetted by fluid shifts in time and perspective. Maroufi, who has been in exile in Germany since 1996 (when he was convicted of “insulting Islamic values”), forges a desperate cycle of self-preservation and self-destruction in this tense and sorrowful narrative.(Oct.)

The second entry (after The Draft) in Mara's National Football League series captures little of the excitement and drama of professional football. Prosaic and predictable, the novel follows the machinations of an unscrupulous head coach as he manipulates a devoted sports agent, his saintly client and three down-on-their-luck free agents. When Barry Sturtz asks the Giants to renegotiate the contract of his client, star tight end T.J. Brookman, Giants' management, on the advice of head coach Alan Gray, refuses. Brookman boycotts training camp, and Gray invites three free agents to camp to compete for his job: Jermaine Hamilton, a former Pro Bowler now out of the game and regarded as “a has-been”; Corey Reese, another former star felled by a career-threatening injury and facing bankruptcy; and Daimon Foster, an undrafted free agent chasing a dream. They don't know it, but Gray is using them as leverage against Brookman and plans to cut them no matter how well they perform. Besides the uninspired plot and fairy-tale denouement, the characters are one-dimensional and the narrative groans with hyperbole: “He'd been in [gridiron] battles that made Custer's Last Stand look like a dance recital.” This is a sports novel suitable for fans who equate football with war. (Oct.)

Best friends Nely Mendoza and Aggie Portero share a life-changing switcheroo in Castillo's spirited romantic comedy. Past 30, curvy wife and mom Nely and hot, no-carb spitfire shop owner Aggie are a little jealous of each other's life. But after the two switch bodies during a “transcendental meditation ceremony,” they realize that the other's grass isn't necessarily greener. Aggie, who's been yearning for marriage and a baby, experiences some reality checks while taking care of Nely's toddler, and Simon, Nely's cop husband, all the while handling Simon's manipulative mother. Nely's challenges as Aggie include rescuing her friend's shop from financial meltdown, fending off a stalker and figuring out what's up with Aggie's playboy pal, chef Kevin Sanchez. Although the trading places idea isn't a fresh concept, Castillo's effervescent style and likable characters sweeten the deal. (Oct.)

In 1920s Healdron, Okla., Tilly Anderson is an anomaly: she doesn't want a husband but she would like to have a baby. Tilly is also a third-generation moonshiner with a steady income, thanks to Prohibition. Rayford Sloan is the new sheriff, come to Healdron to shut down the stills. Like Tilly, he is serious about his work. They meet when Rayford jails Tilly after suspecting her of running 'shine. Tilly's cousin intervenes, and she's free the next morning, but the sheriff vows to follow her everywhere until he gets the proof he needs to shut her down. He makes good on his promise, and Tilly leads him on more than one wild goose chase, managing to deliver the 'shine while she's got him looking the other way. But he turns out to be more of a challenge than she expected. The attraction between them is immediate and strong, though Tilly and Ford spend most of the novel telling themselves that the relationship would be disastrous. The happy resolution isn't any surprise, but a few small twists elevate this sentimental and conservative romance a notch or two. (Oct.)

In an intriguing debut, Boyd takes on the Herculean task of exploring a murder/suicide from more than 16 points of view and time periods ranging from before the event in 1977 to three decades after. When Regina Clayton shoots her husband, Michael, after discovering his adulterous affair—and then turns the gun on herself—it sets off a chain reaction in the small North Carolina town of Riley, humorously described as “a worn-out 45, just looping around the record player playing the same old scratched-up song too many times to count.” The different points of view include the wife, her murdered husband, another cheating husband who is running scared, various neighbors, the murdered husband's lover, and a young bride who considers the murder/suicide a bad omen for her wedding day. There's also a wonderful reflection from an aging former cheerleader. It's difficult, and perhaps overly ambitious, to get inside the skin of so many characters, and some chapters are more successful than others. Although the book loses steam toward the end, Boyd is especially apt at portraying life's disillusionments. Though it's from a Christian publisher, religion bookstores won't find much spiritual content here; profanity and sexual themes make it likely they'll pass. Still, Boyd's competent writing and unusual format should appeal to general market readers. (Oct.)

K eillor's delightful latest addition to the Lake Wobegon series, set in the fictional Minnesota town known to legions of A Prairie Home Companion radio show fans, opens with a typically laconic musing: “Evelyn was an insomniac, so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that.” The author's storytelling skills come to the fore as he describes Evelyn Peterson, a sprightly 82-year-old whose secret life of romance and adventure is revealed after her death. Her daughter, Barbara, a please-everyone type with a fondness for chocolate liqueur, finds Evelyn dead in bed, and things snowball from there. Debbie Detmer, who made her fortune as an animal therapist for the rich and famous, is planning a grand commitment ceremony (on a pontoon boat in Lake Wobegon) to celebrate her relationship with a private jet time-share salesman. Meanwhile, Barbara plans to carry out her mother's wishes for a cremation ceremony involving a bowling ball filled with her ashes, and then there's the group of Danish Lutheran ministers stopping by Lake Wobegon on their tour of the U.S. Keillor's longtime fans may find some of the material familiar (he notes he's told this story “several hundred times... with many variations”), but there's plenty of fun to be had with the well-timed deadpans and homespun wit. (Sept.)

In his 27th work of fiction, Guggenheim fellow, National Book Award finalist and Pushcart Prize–winner Dixon explores an affliction that neither he nor his protagonist would seem to know much about: writer's block. Meyer Ostrower is an aging, accomplished fiction writer living in Baltimore who one day finds himself at a loss for words. As he rummages through his past looking for material, the factual events of his existence morph into fiction. The novel is a set of themes and variations on major episodes of Meyer's life, many of them imagined: there is his death, his wife's death, his sister's death, his mother and father's deaths, all in various incarnations, side by side with childhood memories and sexual fantasies. He catalogues a lifetime of injuries (ranging from a stickball scar to a small white mark where his typewriter's “line space lever went into his upper eyelid”), worries in typical neurotic fashion about his arthritis and his heart, and reflects on the dwindling number of letters in his mailbox. Although writing about writer's block risks relying on a tired conceit, Dixon not only pulls it off, but puts together a series of quirky and powerful vignettes about aging. (Sept.)

Composed in medieval England by an unknown poet and set in what were (even then) the old days of King Arthur, the tale of Sir Gawain begins when a magical warrior with green skin and green hair interrupts the Christmas party at Camelot with a bizarre challenge: “If a person here present, within these premises,/ is big or bold or red blooded enough/ to strike me one stroke and be struck in return” in once year's time, says the knight, “I shall give him as a gift this gigantic cleaver.” Pure, loyal Sir Gawain accepts the agreement: the adventures that ensue include a boar hunt, a deer hunt, and an extended flirtation with a noble lady, designed to test Sir Gawain's bravery, fidelity and chastity, and to explore—with some supernatural help—the true meaning of virtue. The Gawain-poet, as he is known to scholars, wrote in Middle English (reproduced here); though it is slightly harder to read than Chaucer, the grammar is more or less our own. Armitage (The Shout), one of England's most popular poets, brings an attractive contemporary fluency to the Gawain-poet's accentual, alliterative verse: We hear the knights of Round Table “chatting away charmingly, exchanging views.” This is a compelling new version of a classic. (Oct.)

Best-known for his gritty and uproarious prose poetry collection Letters to Wendy's (2000), Wenderoth began his career with two books of gimlet-eyed, world-weary, hard-hitting poetry. Now he returns to verse, favoring (as before) relatively short poems, often 12 lines or fewer, most of which crackle with a bleakness that's part gallows humor, part outrage, and part despair, as in “God's Plan,” quoted in full: “First you are caused to careen and/ or stagger/ through situations of indescribable appeal / and mind-breaking vertiginous sadness./ Then you are smothered.” Some of these bare-bones lyrics are stunning; others reach for an incisiveness or boldness they don't quite achieve. Longer meditative and narrative poems bookend and appear throughout the volume, offering a more complicated, nuanced version of Wenderoth's sensibility than the short poems do. Whether recollecting past slackerdom (“I moved my pills and little t.v. from city to city”) or considering his own or others' maladjustment (“Your soul is a million dollars cash/ and you're playing blackjack/ five dollars a hand.”), it's in the longer pieces that Wenderoth is at his most affecting, revealing the adversity and vulnerability behind the cynicism, and delivering some of the most authentically disenchanted poetry to come from Generation X. (Sept.)

Well known as the founder of Copper Canyon Press and the head of the protest group Poets Against the War, Hamill has also proven himself as a prolific poet and translator. This 16th volume of accssible, outspoken free verse pays frequent homage to Japanese and Chinese classics, and to the 20th-century poets Hammill has admired: Martin Espada, Kenneth Rexroth and especially Denise Levertov. Like his heroes, Hammill presents a model of honest, consistent, undisguised political engagement: he articulates not only a vision of peace with justice, not only his relish for work to achieve that vision, but his sense of the role that poetry can play: “We need the tale/ that spins the spell that gives us/ eyes to see.” He understands, too, that even the most energetic and committed poetry of protest may not always seize the day. Yet the power sympathetic readers are likely to find in his new collection has little to do with self-doubt, and everything to do with the sense that poetry can speak out clearly and try to change the world at least a little bit: “Here's to a poets' revolution,” he toasts, “to the joy/ of being always on the side that loses.” (Sept.)

The publication last year of Moriarty's novel Ultravioleta (Atelos) was greeted with such praise that its small press publisher sold out its first run. This book brings together many hard-to-find pieces from 12 collections of verse, making a writer who often works at book-length in nontraditional lyric modes seem suddenly much more immediate and accessible. Moriarty, who is the deputy director at Small Press Distribution, studied with Robert Duncan, and is closely associated with Bay Area poet Norma Cole (who provides an introduction). She has the former's baroquely elegant turns of mind and the latter's searching fluidity, but her subject matter—roughly, how one's self-perceptions form a language that one is always comparing to one's experiences—is all her own, and her lines have a tensile gorgeousness unlike anyone else's: “Love itself embodied perspective/ Flattened out into a map/ If you cause me to act.” The excerpt from Moriarty's extended meditation Nude Memoir, for example, takes in everything from Duchamp to narrative theory to “[a] child with the memories of a woman.” The result is a book that offers a sense of discovery, tinged at every turn with humor, “transposition problem[s]” and a “Blinding kiss.” (Sept.)

Short and inspiring, but rarely surprising, this collection of remarks, aphorisms and exhortations about the nature and purpose of poetry began in the late 1950s, when Ferlinghetti was just coming into his own as a Beat poet and publisher of City Lights Books. After 50 years of revisions and additions, his claims may not strike experienced readers as fresh—and some may even seem clichéd: “The state of the world,” his first page declares, “calls out for poetry to save it.” On the other hand, Ferlinghetti's very large body of fans (he is one of the bestselling 20th-century American poets) should find reason and justice in these eternal verities, couched in up-to-date lingo: “Poems are e-mails from the unknown beyond cyberspace,” for example. Beginning teachers of creative writing should also find Ferlinghetti's instructions of use: “Read between the lines of human discourse.” Two groups of aphorisms make up most of the volume, to which Ferlinghetti adds a short essay and two 1970s poems. “Modern Poetry Is Prose” encourages young writers to discover the “dark spirit of earth and blood”; “Populist Manifesto #1” hopes “Whitman's wild children,” however pressed down by modernity, will soon “Awake and sing in the open air.” (Sept.)

The eighth gathering of poems from Plumly (Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me) offers many beauties but few surprises. Onrushing, almost whispering, pentameters, divided into lyric meditations, depict the winters, summers, springs, snows, fogs, skies and greenery of Europe and of the American East Coast, where Plumly resides. We see “a winter city, night city, streetlights/ blurred in mist” (Prague); “glittering halves of oyster shells”; “first crocuses and the lavender called redbud” blooming on a college campus; even, in one poem called “Pastoral,” the “complexities of leaves,/ the umbels, whorls, bracts, and involucres.” Plumly remains as much a poet of elegy as he is a poet of nature: odes and memorials to other poets, living and dead, show “how we all change with time but don't.” Plumly can seem morbid, or bathetic, as in a sonnet called “When He Fell Backwards into His Coffin,” about a corpse found in a bathtub; he can also seem content with mere prettiness, speaking nothing but “Summer's/ language like sunlight on stone, light itself the stone.” Yet Plumly has admirers for good reason: few poets have sounded so often so comfortable at once with the recollections and strong emotions involved in autobiography, and with attention to a beautiful natural world. (Sept.)

Most notable in this slim debut is Lasky's recurring and refreshingly un-ironic awe of God, the soul and the spirit. Amid Brazilian bikini waxes, cheating lovers and trips to the 7-Eleven, Lasky negotiates a young woman's world with true belief: “Save me O Lord.../ Save me from abuse and wisdom and red hot sin.” Lasky deftly handles holy subjects in an unholy, and yet never disrespectful, manner. As well, she is rather adept at topics that could lend themselves to melodrama into affecting reading, as in the 10-part prose poem, “Ten Lives in Mental Illness,” in which subjects such as anorexia and panic attacks are broached with a fluidity and grace. Unfortunately, uncompelling dream images and tired stream-of-consciousness musings bog down much of this work. In one poem, Lasky wonders, “Maybe I will never have a baby/ No, that can't be true, out my womb/ the tiny babies of the universe will explode.” In the end it is Lasky's relationship to her God that inspires her best and makes this a surprising and worthwhile read: “To the fire in his heart and the fire in God/ That makes the whole world/ Thump in a beating music, heartbeats and mountains/ that makes the bluebird in the tree.” (Sept.)

Kinzie's strong opinions, fierce emotions and serious attention both to visual details and to philosophical claims have won attention both for her poetry (Drift) and ambitiously minatory literary criticism (The Judge Is Fury). Readers familiar with her devotion to poems as decisive wholes may be surprised by the ways her new poems look and feel like constellations of fragments, phrases and sentences scattered all over a big, wide, airy page. Yet, the mood can be grim: the titular sequence makes a star, and a tragic figure, out of Emily Hale, T.S. Eliot's friend and correspondent, who may, or may not, have waited decades for a marriage proposal from Ol' Possum that never came. Another sequence, “The Poems I Am Not Writing,” incorporates some verse and lots of prose: “Poems have entered my being,” Kinzie confesses, “only after a stupor of watching” a life imagined as a mineral ore, all “hard and serious.” Crisp and harsh, full of self-accusation, remembering “wistful hours/ of self-righteous/ need,” Kinzie's collection has few unambiguous joys; it offers, instead, the pleasures of attention, of a writer willing to smash her poems to smithereens and then rebuild them as she attempts to meet her own stringent demands. (Sept.)

The prolific Gordon here takes his cues from Ashbery—who picked this collection for the National Poetry Series—but also from poets ranging from Rilke to Peter Gizzi. In alternating pages of prose and spare verse lines, he plays freely in the realm between theory and lyric: “Sculpture seeks articulation of the air around it. Thus, a heron thrusting overhead mutes modernism.” Each of the 50 one-paragraph prose poems starts with a proposition and then attempts to both follow through on its initial lunge and also force the reader off the most obvious trails of thought, usually by tossing in a few surprises: an Ajax bottle, Alice Neel, a “dab of wisteria” and a strip of duct tape make appearances in two lines of one poem. Gordon closes each poem with an artfully clumsy rhyming couplet—“One packs in what one can, as the real point of art is the subtle reiteration of the is, ain't it? The way I see it, we're all partially tainted”—alternately lending irony and vulnerability. While this is a difficult book steeped in canonical and postmodern poetic traditions—meaning it won't appeal to everyone—it's packed with thrills and discoveries that might engender some discussion. (Sept.)

New England rural life, the daily headlines, old age and a Jewish-American childhood are the four topics around which the latest poems from Kumin (Jack and other New Poems) weave their likable, confident way. The much-revered, prolific New Hampshire writer presents herself as “a helpless citizen of a country/ I used to love,” tying objections to the war in Iraq to her past as “Sixties soccer mom” who marched in demonstrations; to her friendship with activists in the 1940s; and to her affection for horses and dogs, whose truth to their own natures make human violence look unnatural indeed. “Xochi's Tale” speaks truth in the voice of a dog explaining his mixed feelings about the USA. Several villanelles, the highlights of the collection, set their own obedience to the laws of poetic form against some frightening forms of lawlessness: a friend's uncontrollable clinical depression, for example, or the terror inflicted by U.S. troops in Iraq, who invade the houses of civilians, “punching kicking yelling... breaking down doors.” These poems are formally assured, never obscure and committed at once to social protest and to the facts of a memorable life. (Sept.)

This passionate debut from New York City–based Rasmovicz places him on an unfamiliar border, between the haunted generalities of Franz Wright and the hunted, bomb-damaged villages of Charles Simic. Rasmovicz's Polish heritage provides the collection's deep background; many poems depict the towns and fields of a wartime dream-state Eastern Europe—“fear thumping the air like a fog light.” Many of these poems find portents in crows, who represent both the history of warfare and the menace of our own personal deaths. “What tethers us to consciousness?” Rasmovicz asks, as if he would prefer never to have known. His scary landscapes, with their rivers, “looted tabernacle,” and “perfume/ ...of a neighborhood burning,” suggest a poet who cannot separate the tumult of political conflict from the “half-light of heavy overcast” in his own soul. Sometimes he lands too close to Simic, though he lacks (by far) the older poet's reserve. Rasmovicz is rarely a subtle, and often a melodramatic, writer (“desire continues/ hauling the broken cello of its body forward”). His music does not innovate—lines break on the phrase, some poems sound like speeches. And yet his images are vivid, the night of his soul dark on the page. (Sept.)

Tremayne's engrossing 17th Ancient Ireland mystery (after 2006's Master of Souls) finds series heroine Fidelma on the eve of her marriage. Political and ecclesiastical bigwigs have gathered for the ceremony. The tremendously unpopular Abbot Ultán also arrives to protest that Fidelma must uphold her long-ago religious vows by remaining celibate. Ultán soon turns up dead, and there's no shortage of suspects. Muirchertach Nár, the king of Connacht, who believed his sister-in-law had been wronged by Ultán, was spotted near the crime scene. The sons of a woman Ultán beat for worshipping a pagan deity also come under suspicion. When Muirchertach Nár is killed, Fidelma must determine whether the deaths were related. The solution to that riddle is so unexpected that it slightly strains credulity. Rich in historical detail, this series also reflects on many contemporary issues, including celibacy, gender and church leadership. Tremayne (pseudonym for scholar Peter Berresford Ellis) has produced another winner. (Nov.)

In this philosophical, quirky legal thriller set in Bari, Italy, attorney Guido Guerrieri (last seen in A Walk in the Dark) is in the throes of midlife malaise when he gets an unexpected and seemingly impossible case. Fabio Paolicelli asks Guerrieri to represent him in his appeal on a drug smuggling conviction that led to a 16-year prison sentence. Despite his confession, which Paolicelli says he made to spare his lovely half-Japanese wife, Natsu Kawabata, from being convicted along with him, he's convinced he was set up—and that his first lawyer, Corrado Macrì, was part of the conspiracy. Guerrieri is reluctant to take the case, but he does so for a host of mostly bad reasons, not the least of which is Kawabata's beauty. The mystery plot intrigues, but Guerrieri truly commands the reader's attention with his unflinching awareness of his own failings and his thoughtful musings on life and the law. (Oct.)

In Wiley's fast-paced debut, Chicago PI Joe Kozmarski witnesses a murder while on routine surveillance. His old police colleague, Bill Gubman, takes the 911 call, but is soon shot by the suspect, who remains unnamed and at large. Meanwhile, retired judge Peter Rifkin's employee Bob Piedras is suspected of killing his girlfriend, Le Thi Hanh, after a lover's tiff. Rifkin asks Joe, an old family friend, to find evidence that will prove Piedras's innocence. When Joe reluctantly agrees, Le's violent brothers begin to dog his every move. With all this going on, Joe's mother surprises him with an ill-timed request to take in his rebellious 11-year-old nephew, who insists on “helping” with the investigations. A wonderfully flawed everyman, Joe is unable to learn from past mistakes and constantly making new ones. Readers will applaud his efforts and hard-won small victories as he plods bravely forward in this entertaining read. (Oct.)

Relationships always drive Mayor's plots, but never more so than in this intricate, suspense-filled 18th Joe Gunther novel (after 2006's The Second Mouse). When Gunther's mother and brother are almost killed in a suspicious car accident, he helps Deputy Sheriff Rob Barrows narrow in on a local, lawless family with a grievance against the Gunthers. Meanwhile, the investigation of two similar but seemingly unrelated deaths leads Gunther's colleagues at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation to online chat rooms where older men pick up teen girls. Gunther's former lover, Gail Zigman, makes an appearance, but Lyn Silva, last seen in 2004's The Surrogate Thief, takes center stage as his new love interest. This book takes Gunther all over Vermont, offering occasional breaks from the tension with evocative descriptions of mountains and snow. Though Mayor is considered a regional writer, his books intelligently deal with subjects of national concern, and Gunther's crime-solving skills and personal charisma have broad appeal. (Oct.)

In British author James's darkly humorous 23rd police procedural featuring Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles and DCS Colin Harpur, a turf war between local thugs and the Albanian mafia over the drug trade leads to several murders and an intensification of the amiable cat-and-mouse game between Iles and Harpur—whose approach to ethical dilemmas is highly subjective—and sympathetic villains Mansel Shale and Ralph Ember. After ganglord Tirana is slain, Harpur's daughter's boyfriend becomes a suspect, adding a personal element to the inquiries, which naturally focus on his perennial adversaries. James's droll writing and well-hidden solutions will encourage newcomers to catch up on the previous books in the series. Those seeking a change of pace from more dour procedurals will find the time invested in this book amply rewarded. (Oct.)

At the start of this ingenious series debut from British veteran Heley (Murder at the Altar), Bea Abbot, recently widowed in New Zealand, has returned to London hoping for an empty house in which to grieve and put her life back together. Instead, she finds that her son, Max, recently elected to the House of Commons, has deserted the family investigation business, Abbot Agency, now destined for closure. To make matters worse, Max has hired Maggie, a young woman with pink hair, who has befriended a teenage boy, Oliver, and both are living in Bea's house. When caterer Coral Pyne, Bea's old friend, arrives saying she's been stiffed by a client and wants Bea's help recovering the money, Bea wants to tell them all to leave her alone. Nonetheless, feeling obliged to help Coral, she begins to investigate her claims and unknowingly finds herself one step behind a murderer. The cast of outrageous characters compliments a complex mystery. (Oct.)

Gorman and Greenberg (Stagecoach) have chosen an outstanding selection of 2005's novellas for this sterling anthology. Two of the best are from Transgressions, edited by the late Ed McBain: his own strong 87th Precinct story “Merely Hate” and Sharyn McCrumb's “The Resurrection Man,” a brilliantly told mystery that would burnish any literary collection. From Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine come Joyce Carol Oates's “Honor Code,” a study of an adolescent girl's misery; Doug Allyn's bleak ”Wolf Woman Bay”; Clark Howard's twisted double-cross “Arizona Heat”; and Steve Hockensmith's “Gustav Amlingmeyer, Holmes of the Range,” a comic tale of the cowboy Sherlock and Watson of the old West. Dick Lochte's “Diamond Dog” and Carole Nelson Douglas's “Junior Partner in Crime” contribute dogs, cats and grins, while Jeremiah Healy's “Grieving Las Vegas” may surprise fans with its darkness. Finally, Brendan Dubois's “The Temptation of King David” adds a special hook to a biblical tale. (Oct.)

Brightwell's unobtrusive 23rd Victorian historical mystery (after Mrs. Jeffries and the Best Laid Plans) adds a dash of holiday spirit to the adventures of Insp. Gerald Witherspoon and his housekeeper, Mrs. Jeffries. At the height of the Christmas season, Witherspoon is called in when Stephen Whitfield, a member of the upper class, is poisoned by foxglove slipped into his wine. Jeffries's below-stairs crew of irregulars track down those who were present when the fatal drink was poured, collecting rumors and gossip concerning the dead man and his family and friends. They soon find that Whitfield belonged to a tontine (an investment group where the last one alive collects the dead members' contributions) whose membership has been steadily dwindling. The writing lacks the wit of other Victorian series, such as Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb novels, and the characters often border on cliché, but readers looking for a light diversion will be satisfied. (Oct.)

The second and concluding volume of Tiptree Award–winner Valente's Orphan's Tales (after 2006's In the Night Garden), structured as a series of nested stories, is a fairy tale lover's wildest dream come true. A mysterious orphan girl, whose eyelids are darkly tattooed with the closely packed words from a seemingly endless number of fantastical tales, lives secretly in a palace garden. The girl shares her stories with the enthralled young heir to the Sultanate, who returns again and again to hear incredible yarns about one-armed heroes, hunchbacked ferrymen, giants, voracious gem eaters, conniving hedgehogs, harpies, djinns and singing Manticores. But with the wedding of the prince's sister Dinarzad (a not-so-subtle homage to The Arabian Nights) quickly approaching and harsh reality encroaching on the surreal garden, the orphan girl's stories finally run out. Cleverly examining and reconstructing the conventions of the fairy tale, especially the traditional roles of men and women, Valente has created a thought-provoking storytelling tour de force. (Nov.)

Rising fantasy stars Monette (Mélusine) and Bear (Whiskey & Water) subvert the telepathic animal companion subgenre so thoroughly that it may never be the same. The inhabitants of a cold and perilous world grounded in Norse/Germanic mythology depend upon the brutally violent wolfcarls, men who bond telepathically with huge fighting trellwolves, to protect them from monstrous trolls and wyverns from further north. When the northern threat suddenly intensifies, Isolfr, a young wolfcarl, and his wolf-sister, Viradechtis, a Queen wolf destined to rule her own pack, are thrust into key roles in their civilization's desperate fight to survive. The meticulously crafted setting and powerful, often moving rendition of characters and relationships—human and nonhuman alike—result in a brutal and beautiful novel about the meaning of honor. Never blushing as they consider the ultimate sociological, sexual and moral underpinnings of a “what-if” often treated as coy wish-fulfillment fantasy, the authors have boldly created a fascinating world that begs further exploration. (Oct.)

The whimsical adventures of sometime thief and con artist Flinx and his empathetic pet minidrag, Pip, are winding to a close in this penultimate installment (after 2006's Trouble Magnet) of their 35-year-old series. When not helping Bran Tse-Mallory and the Eint Truzenzuzex save the galaxy, Flinx has spent much of his life wondering about the identity of his father. Now he's traced his origins to the planet Gestalt, thanks to the dying words of a survivor from the Merliorare Society, a renegade eugenicist group. As if the native dangers of Gestalt weren't enough, Flinx is also being hunted by an assassin hired by the mysterious Order of Null. Flinx and Pip will have to survive ambushes, accidents and a deadly feud between rival groups of philosophers before they eventually find the information Flinx is after. Their breakneck journey will entertain the duo's many fans. (Oct.)

Straightforward explanations and linear plotting are in short supply in this stand-alone novel; rather, Grimwood's latest tale reads as if Kurt Vonnegut were writing manga for the producers of Doctor Who. The story starts in near-future Tokyo, where expatriate soldier Kit Nouveau runs an Irish bar. A runaway teenage girl, Lady Neku, hides $15 million in a train station locker and then tidily kills a mugger to save Kit's life, and soon both are deeply enmeshed in multi-layered clan wars. Kit's involves a reputed yakuza syndicate, various British police and spy agencies and several of his past and present lovers. Neku's concerns the alternate reality where she's a semi-immortal princess and the incipient bride to the heir of a rival family. The connections between the two are often vague, but Grimwood (Stamping Butterflies) stabilizes the story with uniformly compelling characterizations and vivid settings. Genre fans may find the book difficult to label, but readers with flexible expectations will find it easy to enjoy. (Oct.)

Best known for extraordinarily imaginative fantasy art, Barlowe (Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials) now sets his talents to writing equally compelling speculative fiction. Inspired by Paradise Lost, Barlowe conjures up the creatures who sided with Lucifer and were ejected from heaven, thrown down into Hell to become freakishly mangled demons. After innumerable eons of exile, the demon Sargatanas has started to dream of being reunited with God. Sargatanas amasses an army to aid him in overthrowing Lucifer's regent, Beelzebub, in an attempt to catch God's eye. In a flash of inspiration, Sargatanas adds human souls to his army, under the direction of Hannibal. Together, human sinners and once-rebellious demons unite to vanquish Beelzebub in an all-out war. Barlowe's interpretation is not for the squeamish, with its horrifically explicit descriptions of demonic behavior, but it's a compelling view of Hell and of a demon who seeks redemption. (Oct.)

Cyborg secret agent Lila Black learns that her worst enemy may be her own traumatic past in Robson's high-powered second Quantum Gravity installment (after 2006's Keeping It Real). Lila's first assignment was a disaster: she was forced to kill a friend to save elven rock star Zal, and now that friend, the elven necromancer Tath, lives inside her, commenting on her actions à la Jiminy Cricket. There's no cure for a tough job like diving headfirst into another, so now Lila is off on an undercover mission to Demonia to investigate the results of the recent quantum bomb explosion and learn how Zal managed to travel to Hell and become part demon. Her investigation is complicated by her cover as a journalist reporting on Demonian high society, as dangerous forces lurk behind the social whirl of luxurious parties. Robson's mix of magical and technological elements, intrigue and action should be just the thing for paranormal and fantasy adventure readers. (Oct.)

The second Sandor Dyle interstellar murder mystery (after 2004's Scarab) finds the laconic pattern analyst and his ex-cop associate, Marym Dunnis, among the passengers on a huge spaceliner making its maiden voyage. Also on board is much-hated former dictator Magnus Mercator, accompanied by his children and a handful of employees, all with their own secrets and agendas. Soon after a bomb destroys the ship's controlling AI, disabling security surveillance, Mercator is brutally murdered. At the captain's request, Dyle and Dunnis start untangling the puzzle in the manner of traditional detectives, using a series of examinations and interviews to unmask hidden identities, discover unexpected connections and discard faulty assumptions. D'Ammassa sticks to a conventional whodunit approach, avoiding futuristic jargon and basing his characters' behavior more on their emotions than on the high-tech gadgets they wield. The result doesn't break new ground, but is instead a pleasant, comfortable read about an intriguing team of detectives. (Oct.)

In Johnson's bold debut, a young woman faces sweeping changes to the ancient traditions and culture of her tiny island home. When 13-year-old Lana recovers a rare sacred jewel from a dying mandagah fish on her first solo dive, she hides it rather than accept the responsibility of becoming a mystic. Within six months, the mandagah are dying due to changing water conditions, destabilizing the island's economy, which depends on the fish and their jewels. To pay for her family's passage to the city-island of Essel, Lana becomes an apprentice to the sorceress Akua. When Lana learns Akua gets her powers from blood sacrifice, she's appalled, but soon she must strike her own terrible bargain to save her mother's life. Johnson's story is reminiscent of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books, but it suffers from incomplete world-building. If Johnson can get a better handle on her island culture, economy and magic system in future books, this proposed series could be a stand-out. (Oct.)

Horrors that defy description and challenge reader expectations charge the electrifying stories in this powerful debut collection. Barron synthesizes influences ranging from H.P. Lovecraft to hard-boiled crime fiction in nine ingeniously plotted tales whose many layers peel away to reveal highly original and viscerally unsettling premises. “Old Virginia” is narrated by a Cold War–era CIA agent, unaware that the chaos around him is due not to Communists but to occult forces escaping the control of the scientists he's guarding. In the period western “Bulldozer,” a Pinkerton agent discovers that serial killings are part of an elaborate occult ritual for placating a supernatural entity. The title story concerns a triptych of photographs used by a malign cult to snare acquisitive art collectors. Barron intensifies the emotional impact of his fiction by providing protagonists who ultimately realize that their doom is inevitable and drag the reader down with them. These vividly imagined and eerily credible stories herald a potent new voice in horror fiction. (Sept.)

In Novik's earlier fantasies (His Majesty's Dragon, etc.), readers soared to Europe and Asia on the wings of an intriguing premise: How would the Napoleonic Wars have played out if dragons not only existed, but participated in the war effort? The fourth part of Novik's engrossing answer sweeps readers off to Africa, where the cure to the disease that has decimated England's dragon forces may be found. The African adventures of British captain Will Laurence, his dragon Temeraire and their bedraggled band of aerial corps make up the book's latter half, which showcases Novik's knack for weaving dragons and dragon lore into a vivid, well-researched historical tapestry. In Africa's wild interior, dragons shepherd and feed from elephant caravans while protecting the native villagers. This protection includes waging war against England's slave-seeking colonists, a clash that Laurence and his band may not escape unscathed. Novik fills the conflict's lead-up with lengthy meditations on dragon civil rights and England's abolition movement, making for a fitful, pedantic first half. But most will find the richness of Novik's developing world—and characters—to be worthy compensation for the slow start. (Oct.)

The newest in Ward's ferociously popular Black Dagger Brotherhood series bears all the marks of a polished storyteller completely at home in her world. Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, is a cunning, stone-hearted vampire warrior devoted to killing the wicked, undead vampire slayers known as the Lessers; after an ill-fated visit to a hospital, Vishous falls instantly and unexpectedly in love with a human surgeon, Dr. Jane Whitcomb. Soon, Vishous has brought the unwitting human back to the Brotherhood lair, where she returns his feelings, opening up a potentially cataclysmic conflict—Vishous is, against his will, destined to become the Primale, a warrior with multiple vampire wives who's meant to ensure the survival of the species. Ward has by now become an expert at fleshing out the stories of her supporting characters—each with his or her own novel—without overpowering the central story, and while the romance between Vishous and Whitcomb is genre-typical, Ward isn't afraid to break with convention in challenging, gratifying ways. Though not recommended for newcomers to Ward's universe or romance traditionalists, this fix will give Brotherhood addicts a powerful rush. (Oct.)

This enticing debut novel from journalist Griffin follows Feenie Malone, a young part-time reporter at a south Texas town newspaper, struggling to make ends meet after her divorce. Hoping to get some respect in the newsroom, ambitious, independent Feenie begins pursuing a hot story involving her ex-husband and a felon, Rico Martinez, who appear to be in business together. Hunky, headstrong P.I. Marco Juarez offers to help Feenie investigate the criminal, but Juarez has his own agenda—namely, finding out who killed his sister, a cop, two years earlier. Though the strong leads' no-nonsense dialogue can wear early on, imminent danger and mutual attraction soften them nicely, giving this able suspense thriller a satisfyingly steamy core; Griffin's fully fleshed characters, dry humor and tight plotting make a fun read and a promising career kickoff. (Oct.)

Bestseller Graham's latest begins with Christina Hardy, writer of commercial jingles and reluctant communicator with the dead, moving into her grandparents' old Victorian home, just outside of Orlando, Fla. After some Ouija board experimentation at a housewarming party, Christina starts hearing from the ghost of a dead police officer, Beau Kidd, believed to be the “Interstate Killer” whose murder spree came to an end when the officer was shot 12 years ago. A new rash of highway killings has thrown doubt on Kidd's guilt, and the ghost is looking for Christina to clear his name; with the help of ex-cop Jed Braden, they may be able to stop the real killer before he murders again. Graham peoples her novel with genuine, endearing characters and keeps the grisly murders tactfully backgrounded, though more fastidious readers will note some holes in the busy plot. Graham uses the bond between Christina and the intelligent, charming ghost as an intriguing parallel to the evolving Christina-Jed relationship, giving a unique paranormal twist to this able romantic suspense. (Oct.)

Comics make a second outing in the venerable Best American series, with nary a fluttering cape in sight. This collection isn't about such heroes or villains, it's about humor, fear, the finely observed details of life, and things of a generally more personal and less world-threatening nature. That (as well as a predilection toward Midwestern artists) is what you get when Ware (Acme Novelty Library) is guest editor. The book includes work from 39 different artists, but it's hard to find a weak entry, even if the editors are cheating a bit by including sections from already thunderously (and rightly) acclaimed book-length works like Charles Burns's Black Hole, Miriam Katin's We Are on Our Own and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. Gilbert Hernandez contributes a particularly funny bit of his patented soap opera-comedy, while Adrian Tomine's selection from Optic Nerve, an epic of self-loathing and confusion, shows why he's one of the comics artists best worth watching. There are plenty of familiar names, and though the roster of usual suspects is starting to make comics anthologies look like annual class reunions, Ware has done a particularly good job here of celebrating the greatest, saddest and bravest in American comics. (Oct.)

Black, white and gray are the appropriate palette for this somber autobiographical narrative. Carey covers his experiences from his years as a child performer on Sesame Street through hip-hop stardom as “MF Grimm.” His simultaneous life as a dope dealer leads to a darker turn, as a drug-feud ambush leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. The story follows his subsequent time in prison and his current career as an entertainment producer. Along the way, he gives glimpses of the mother who fiercely defended him and the neighborhood that nurtured him, but he gives more stress to his exploits as a thug, his meetings with hip-hop stars he considered rivals and/or peers, and the hunger for money and recognition that led him to take dangerous risks. Wimberly's art reinforces Carey's raw script—solid dark masses engulfing graceful, jittery linework in the style of Eduardo Russo's 100 Bullets, but the full impact of Carey's experiences doesn't come through. So many things are happening that it's hard to remember who's doing what to whom, and why it matters. That's unfortunate, because Carey wants to make his life meaningful as he urges young readers to choose something besides “guns ands crime.” (Sept.)

Heavy metal is a rock 'n' roll genre known for guitar-worship, bombast and pomposity that serve to fuel young men's fantasies of heroism and machismo, sometimes with elder gods, their amoral mythologies and their inevitable return thrown in. In other words, it's a subject ripe for lampooning, and this graphic novel is one of the funniest takes on the clichés of the genre since This Is Spinal Tap. Upon playing a Frost Axe album backwards, black-clad metalhead twins Shawn and Sam discover their true arcane heritage, obtain the mythic Sword of Atoll and embark on a mission to conquer Hell itself. Demons, dark lords, Norse deities, a black metal band that really practices what they preach, armies of the damned and even Satan himself all turn up and provide fodder for hilarity that wouldn't stand a chance in Hell of being endorsed by the Church. Hilariously illustrated cartoon mayhem of the most entertaining order, this amusing tale ends much too soon, leaving the reader foaming at the mouth, hands upright and flashing “the horns,” anxiously awaiting more devilry and guitar solos. (Aug.)

In this yaoi tale of roommates—former high school classmates who are more than friends—the story structure replicates the reader's experience. First, we meet the boys as a female classmate bumps into them for the first time since graduation. They return home, and the reader isn't sure if their squabbling is because the girl's crack about them becoming “trendy homos” is so wrong or so right. As the girl spends more time with them, so do we, and we gain knowledge of their close relationship, just as a friend would. Finally, their involvement is confirmed, but by that point, they're realistic people instead of ciphers. Unlike many yaoi characters, the boys are instantly distinctive, both in appearance and personality. Chapters provide flashbacks to show not only who they are but who they were and how they came together. Their nuanced expressions are subject to multiple interpretations. If that's a bit too cerebral, there's an additional, more physical short story included about a boy who makes a friend by kidnapping and holding hostage a classmate he has a crush on. (Aug.)

Signature

Reviewed by Matthea Harvey

In Little Boat, her 11th collection, 2004 National Book Award–winner Jean Valentine continues her delicate lyric investigations. Her minimalist, elided style is like the quiet concentration of a bank robber trying to crack a safe. Doors spring open throughout this book, usually where we least expect them: “I sit underneath the cottonwoods—/Friends,/ what am I meant to be doing?/ Nothing. The door is fallen down/ inside my open body/ where all the worlds touch.”

In “The Eleventh Brother” (a poem based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Wild Swans”), Valentine focuses on a princess who, in order to change her brothers from swans back into princes, must weave 11 coats made out of nettles, and all the while, remain mute. Valentine is, after all, a poet who seeks insight and metamorphosis, but will wait for it patiently: “your sister had finished weaving your other arm,/ she dove down to give it to you// through the gray water. You couldn't/ take it. You wouldn't.” That ending—the noncomittal swing door of “either/or” is characteristic of Valentine's embrace of contradiction and complication.

When Valentine speaks in the voice of “outsider artist” Ray Masterson in “The Artist in Prison” (Masterson started making miniature embroideries while incarcerated, using threads unraveled from other inmates' socks), not only does her care and precision match Masterson's own meticulous work, but she moves beyond ekphrastic appreciation to an unexpected discovery: “I will trade// what—whole/ days when I was free// red shadow on the inside of my skull// for socks/ for threads.” Imagining one's way inside the brain naturally conjures up Dickinson, as does her use of exclamation marks (outbursts that combine exuberance and despair: “—Not see you!”) and her intimate conversations with God (here, Jesus). In “This Side,” the speaker describes carrying an antenna around like Mercury's staff, hoping to receive an indeterminate message, then adds with wonderful emphasis, “And I left/ a bowl of milk outside the threshold the night/ the souls of the dead return, & in the morning/ licked it where he licked.”

In “Strange Light,” a section of poems whose titles all begin with “Hospital,” the speaker is situated in the uncertainties of both life and death, present and past, euphoria and despair: “Us standing there in the past/ as we were/ in life/ you turning and turning my coat buttons.” This is how she leaves us, too—gloriously and terrifyingly unmoored. (Oct.)

Matthea Harvey's third book of poems, Modern Life, is coming in October from Graywolf. Her first children's book, The Little General and the Giant Snowflake, is due out from Soft Skull also in October.