Fiction Reviews: Week of 10/15/2007

In this intriguing collection, Oates writes fictional death scenes for five canonical American writers, adopting elements of their signature styles with mixed results. The Poe story, written as a diary in the months after Poe’s death, doesn’t quite dole out its revelations with Poe-like abandon. Emily Dickinson’s end is set not in 19th-century New England but in the 21st-century New Jersey suburbs, where an Emily Dickinson “replicant,” complete with enigmatical utterances, is purchased by a tax attorney and his wife to liven up the house, but ends up highlighting the banality of their existences. Samuel Clemens’s death is set, menacingly, against his penchant for befriending adolescent girls, a habit deplored by his spinster daughter, Clara. The prize story, however, is “Papa at Ketchum 1961,” where Oates inhabits Hemingway’s terse style to show the great man going down in a paroxysm of psychoses. This brutal turning of Hemingway against himself sparks a torrent of rage like that of early Oates novels such as Them. It marks an explosive ending to Oates’s peculiar fantasy game, one that begs to be treated at length. (Apr.)

Welsh-born Dunthorne delves in his debut into the mind of a troubled 14-year-old boy obsessed with his virginity, his parent’s failing marriage and the dictionary. Growing up in Swansea, Wales, Oliver Tate is curious about everything going on around him. Fixated on the personal lives of his parents and neighbors, Oliver compulsively keeps a log of his observations, activities and thoughts, many of which revolve around his new girlfriend, Jordana, she of the fully developed breasts and snogging experience. The two become inseparable and eventually wind up together in the sack. Oliver also believes his mother is having an affair with a family friend, and his growing suspicion leads to a half-baked investigation that only complicates matters at home. As Oliver and Jordana’s relationship plays out and the truth about Oliver’s mother is revealed, Oliver takes some lumps and learns a few lessons. Some readers will be turned off by Oliver’s cruelty—among other things, he bullies an overweight girl at school and poisons Jordana’s dog—and others by his precociousness (his log entries include word-of-the-day vocab lessons), but Dunthorne’s creation is a true original. (Apr.)

Graham moves her focus from the U.K. royals she portrayed in Gone with the Windsors to America’s royal family in this imaginative fictionalization of the Kennedy clan’s evolution between the world wars. The story is told from the perspective of Nora Brennan, an Irish immigrant nanny who watched over the Kennedy kids beginning in 1917. Though Nora adores each child, she grows especially fond of Rosie Kennedy, whose learning disability makes her the runt of the overachieving litter. Throughout her years of service, Nora discovers that beneath Mrs. K’s prim and proper exterior is a “heart as hard as the hob of hell,” only outdone by Mr. K’s unrelenting pressure on his sons to succeed at any cost. Meanwhile, Graham guides readers through the family scandals, political triumphs and petty squabbles that lead up to WWII, which will change the lives of the Kennedy family and their faithful nursemaid forever. Though it’s billed as a “bittersweet comedy,” the Kennedys are easier to pity than to laugh at, and their lives are marred by tragedies that Nora suggests Joe Kennedy brought on himself. The family gets a very sympathetic if sometimes soft-focused treatment that should find a readership among those who came of age in the era of Camelot. (Mar.)

Kunstler’s name is mostly associated with nonfiction works like The Long Emergency, a bleak prediction of what will happen when oil production no longer meets demand, and the antisuburbia polemic The Geography of Nowhere. In this novel, his 10th, he visits a future posited on his signature idea: when the oil wells start to run dry, the world economy will collapse and society as we know it will cease. Robert Earle has lost his job (he was a software executive) and family in the chaos following the breakdown. Elected mayor of Union Grove, N.Y., in the wake of a town crisis, Earle must rebuild civil society out of squabbling factions, including a cultish community of newcomers, an established group of Congregationalists and a plantation kept by the wealthy Stephen Bullock. Re-establishing basic infrastructure is a big enough challenge, but major tension comes from a crew of neighboring rednecks led by warlord Wayne Karp. Kunstler is most engaged when discussing the fate of the status quo and in divulging the particulars of daily life. Kunstler’s world is convincing if didactic: Union Grove exists solely to illustrate Kunstler’s doomsday vision. Readers willing to go for the ride will see a frightening and bleak future. (Mar.)

Helms’s mesmerizing debut novel (after story collection American Wives) takes readers to Ankara, Turkey, in the mid-1970s, where 12-year old Canada lives with her mother, Grace, and her father, Rand, whose intelligence career is shrouded in secrecy and sends the family to far-flung locales. By the time they’re posted to Ankara, Canada is grappling with the inevitable insecurities and yearnings of puberty, and Grace feels trapped in a loveless marriage. Even when Rand is home, he shows little interest in domestic affairs, leaving Grace mainly to socialize with other Western expatriates and a small circle of wealthy Turks. Partly as a consequence of having lived so long in a world of secrets and cover stories, Grace hasn’t learned how to relate to people (or how to let them relate to her), while Canada is mired in her own parallel, secretive universe of cruel adolescence. Helms uses dazzling imagery to mine the cultural and economic divides between the diplomatic enclaves and Turkish Ankara, as well as the chasm between Canada and Grace, which widens as they seek validation outside their home, with unforeseen consequences. Elegant prose and exacting insight illuminate Helms’s tale of intrigue and deception. (Mar.)

Hershon’s third novel (Swimming; The Outside of August) is a stylish account of a German Jewish young woman’s often brutal odyssey to the post–Civil War American Southwest. After a family tragedy in Berlin, Eva Frank flees in shame and guilt to Santa Fe with her new husband, Abraham Shein. Abraham and his older brother, Meyer, are successful dry goods merchants, and once Eva and Abraham arrive in Santa Fe, Eva’s narrative becomes a fish-out-of-water story as the promises Abraham made to her fail to materialize. Abraham, an abusive philanderer with a gambling addiction, wants a child, and Eva wants Abraham to build them a proper house. Eva—hoarding her dowry—begins scheming ways to abandon Santa Fe and establish a better life in San Francisco, but fleeing from unstable Abraham is a dangerous proposition. Though sometimes stilted, the novel, with its colorful cast, setting and redemptive conclusion, eventually wins the reader over. (Mar.)

D’Souza follows up the promise of Whiteman (2006) with this moving portrait of a Indian-American family. Narrator Francisco D’Sai descends partially from a small group of Konkans, former Hindus converted to Catholicism by the Portuguese in the 16th century. His American mother, Denise, met and married his father, Lawrence, while working as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. The couple moves to Chicago, where Francisco is born and where Lawrence is obsessed with assimilation and achieving the American dream. In contrast, Francisco’s uncle Sam, whom Denise insists they sponsor to America, is a much more soulful man who retains his Indian identity. Sam tells fabulous tales of Konkan culture and is adored by both Francisco and Denise, whose infatuation with India persists even as her love for Lawrence dwindles. The author moves deftly from character to character, detailing Denise’s Peace Corps days and subsequent suburban boredom, Lawrence’s grim struggle up the corporate ladder (his mission to earn acceptance by a country club is particularly sad) and Sam’s search for purpose amid his troubling love for Denise. D’Souza puts a fresh spin on the theme of cultural alienation, and he achieves something even more universal as he shows how the characters are alone together in their family. (Feb.)

In Drew’s well-intentioned if overwrought first novel, cultures clash as a teenaged Kurdish girl and an American boy fall in love over the objection of the girl’s father, a Muslim Kurd living in Istanbul. Sinan, a shop owner, tries to keep his American upstairs neighbors, Marcus Hamm and his family, at arm’s length. But this is impossible after an earthquake devastates Istanbul, and Sinan and his family end up living in a tent city provided by American missionaries. Marcus, the director of a missionary school, lost his wife in the earthquake; she was found dead, shielding Sinan’s son, who was buried alive for three days before being rescued. Now, Sinan watches as his America-obsessed daughter, Irem, falls in love with Marcus’s bipolar son, Dylan, and his impressionable younger son, Ismail, slowly becomes converted to Christianity at the camp. The story moves inexorably toward a climax in which Sinan’s Muslim pride and Marcus’s Christian proselytizing collide with predictably tragic results. Though some may find the ideological conflict that provides the narrative thrust too textbookish, Drew, who lived in Istanbul at the time of the Marmara earthquake, effortlessly transports readers to a wrecked Istanbul and finds shards of hope in the mountains of rubble. (Feb.)

The latest installment to Laurens’s Cynster series (The Truth About Love; The Taste of Innocence) takes readers back to the 19th-century London of private investigator Barnaby Adair for a satisfying blend of mystery and romance. When attractive society belle Penelope Ashford enlists Barnaby’s help in finding four kidnapped orphan boys, Barnaby is as intrigued by Penelope as he is by the case; her reputation as “something of a firebrand” and her dedication to her work at Foundling House far outstrip her desire to conform to society’s wishes—a worldview not unlike Barnaby’s. Penelope insists on accompanying Barnaby through every step of his investigation, and with some input from an old friend at Scotland Yard, the pair begins navigating the slums of London’s East End in search of a “burglary school.” As the orphans’ fate begins to slide into focus, so, too, does Barnaby and Penelope’s attraction for one another. That attraction, palpable from their first meeting, slowly builds to a gratifying crescendo without overpowering the story, which, though light on plot twists, clips along at a fast pace with enough charm to delight both fans and new readers. (Feb.)

Julia Morrison is still grieving the death of her grandfather when she finds out she’s the “family representative” for Hacienda Esperanza, the estate he left behind in the Philippines when he went into exile. On arriving there from San Francisco, Julia finds a mansion replete with kin who tell her legends of her Spanish ancestors, while her grandfather’s cryptic notes lead her to seek out an orchid, discovered by an aunt several generations ago, that purportedly can work miracles. Over the course of settling her grandfather’s affairs, Julia finds out she can’t own the Hacienda outright, but the more she sees of the country and of her handsome young lawyer, the more she contemplates staying on. Julia’s naïveté and attachment to the estate at times prove overly sweet, but her wide-eyed perspective is tempered by depictions of the life of those outside the gates: Emman, a boy growing up outside the mansion who takes it upon himself to protect the American woman, and Manalo, a Communist freedom fighter hoping to place control of the mansion in Filipino hands. The latest swirling romance from Martinusen (Eventide) draws tension from the setting, which includes a smoky threat from a nearby volcano, and from a nicely turned plot. (Feb.)

Gabriel Tucker’s gargantuan trust fund has allowed him to spend his life traveling and partying, so he’s none too pleased to receive a letter informing him that his uncle has blown all the money in the trust, and the only thing Gabriel has left is a crumbling hotel on South Beach. Gabriel finds the Venus De Milo Arms inhabited by a lip-synching tranny, an AIDS-afflicted gossip columnist, an elderly woman obsessed with her wardrobe and a performance artist named Marina, whom Gabriel promptly falls in love with. Their lives intertwine along with those of a Cuban refugee-cum-supermodel and a fashion designer obsessed with making South Beach’s gaudy dilapidation the new chic. As Marina struggles with the past that keeps her from returning Gabriel’s affection and the Venus de Milo Arms is threatened with becoming the next pile of rubble on the road to progress, Gabriel starts to realize that the old hotel may be the only place in the world that he can call home. Antoni delights in describing in pornographic detail the absurdities of South Beach (drugs, sex, freakish locals), but he never gets beneath South Beach’s chipped veneer. The light treatment has its moments, but it isn’t quite satisfying. (Feb.)

Schlink’s first novel, The Reader (1997), became a U.S. bestseller after it was an Oprah pick. That book, and his next, a short story collection, raised moral questions about Germany right after WWII; his latest, following two crime novels, takes up that line of inquiry and may be his most powerful and disquieting. The title refers to a pulp novel discovered in fragments by the narrator, Peter Debauer, and to Debauer’s quest to find the book’s pseudonymous author, who seems to have an uncanny knowledge of the conditions and landmarks of Debauer’s own youth in postwar Germany. This mysterious work, with similarities to The Odyssey, offers tantalizing clues to a deeper mystery, that of the identity of Debauer’s father, reported dead after the war. Debauer’s youth, failed career and love life play out against authoritatively detailed scenes of Nazi degeneracy, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the stark differences between East and West Germany. As in his previous works, Schlink’s protagonist is a flawed character who elicits the reader’s understanding but not affection—until the poignant denouement. (Jan.)

At the start of this overly complicated thriller from bestseller Box, his first stand-alone, siblings Annie and William Taylor, ages 12 and 10, witness a gruesome murder in the woods outside the small Idaho town of Kootenai Bay, nicknamed “Blue Heaven” for its abundance of retired LAPD officers. Annie and William make a run for it after they’re spotted by the killers, a group of crooked LAPD cops who retired to Idaho eight years earlier after pulling a complicated heist in California that left a man dead. Rancher Jess Rawlins becomes the children’s only hope of survival after they take refuge in his barn. Jess must stay one step ahead of the killers, who have volunteered to “help” the local authorities investigate the children’s disappearance. Annie and William’s mother is frantic, as the scheming officers try to persuade her the children are gone for good. A subplot involving a retired California detective pursuing the original robbery case adds too many extra characters and undercuts the suspense. Readers expecting the same brisk story lines as the author’s Joe Pickett crime novels (Free Fire, etc.) will be disappointed. 100,000 first printing; author tour. (Jan.)

Former YA author Rosoff delivers an affecting buddy story about two adolescent boys in 1960s Britain. An unnamed man recounts his time as a disgruntled student at St. Oswald’s boarding school; upon ditching an outdoor physical education class jog, he stumbles upon a mysterious fellow teen named Finn who lives alone and off the grid in a hut by the sea. The protagonist, enraptured by his newfound friend, makes it his business to spend as much time as possible with Finn, a major challenge considering school curfews and that the hut can only be accessed during low tide. Weeks go by and Finn falls ill, setting the stage for a surprising revelation that will dramatically transform both boys. Rosoff’s unconventional coming-of-age tale is elegantly crafted, though some readers might be turned off by the narrator’s unrelenting cynicism (particularly in his handling of another Oswald schoolboy), and the warning shots the narrator fires off about global warming are unnecessary. Nonetheless, Rosoff elegantly portrays how we often become who we need to be. (Jan.)

Relationships are brought to the limit in Delinsky’s splendid latest exploration of family dynamics. On a rainy night, Deborah Monroe and her teenage daughter, Grace, are driving home when their car hits a man. The victim, who turns out to be Grace’s history teacher, is unconscious but alive. Although Grace was driving, Deborah sends her home and takes responsibility for the accident when the cops show up. Deborah is juggling a lot: as a family doctor, she is in private practice with her über-demanding widower father, who is trying to hide a drinking problem; her son, Dylan, is vision impaired; her mother’s death continues to affect the family; Deborah is still dealing with her ex-husband’s new, separate life; and her unmarried sister, Jill, has just announced she’s pregnant. Grace’s guilt about not taking responsibility for the accident makes her withdraw from friends and family, and the accident victim turns out to have a more complex private life than anyone imagined. The author seamlessly resolves relationship issues without sentiment, throws in a promising romance for Deborah and offers a redemptive scene between Grace and her grandfather. Delinsky combines her understanding of human nature with absorbing, unpredictable storytelling—a winning combination. (Jan.)

Reading much like an extended episode of CSI, Smith’s repetitive debut chronicles the travails of Grace Descanso, a San Diego crime scene technician and single mother who once had a promising future in pediatric cardiology. After a deadly shooting at a crime scene, Grace is plunged into a cat-and-mouse game that forces her to confront her traumatic past. When her five-year-old daughter, Katie, is kidnapped and Grace receives a series of cryptic riddles, she races against the clock to save Katie. Grace must also uncover the dirty secrets of the Center for BioChimera, a biomedical research institution and hospital with ties to her past and Katie’s disappearance. Grace turns to her ex-lover, a CNN reporter, for help, and together they must figure out the full extent of a medical nightmare stretching from California to Guatemala. Despite a nail-biting premise, Smith can’t maintain the suspense, and the reader soon tires of following Grace as she solves riddle after riddle. Those familiar with thriller genre conventions may solve the mystery of Grace’s past long before it’s officially revealed. (Jan.)

Like a terse American Psycho, this first novel from British writer and actor Glynn suffers from familiarity even as the voice of the narrator, Peter Crumb, fascinates. Believing he will kill himself in a week, Crumb decides to succumb to his id and do whatever he pleases—and killing people is near the top of his list, along with making witty social observations. His particular mental illnessrequires him to have conversations with a crueler version of himself while butchering London neighbors, misusing prostitutes and making the Marquis de Sade’s most ferocious work look like part of the Nancy Drew series. Crumb’s monumental appetite for carnage and self-examination drives what there is of a plot. While the reader definitely believes in Crumb, the problem is that in an age of reality shows and slasher movies even the worst degradations have lost their power to shock. Glynn’s visceral prose convinces, but the sell-by date on this novel passed long ago. (Jan.)

Bestseller Paretsky, who has tackled weighty issues in her V.I. Warshawski detective series (e.g., the Holocaust in Total Recall), weaves a gripping contemporary novel around three farm families—the Grelliers, Fremantles and Schapens—that can trace their Kaw Valley, Kans., roots back to the 1850s, a time of violent clashes between antislavery and proslavery forces in “Bleeding Kansas.” Their shared history is no buffer against the storm of changes that begin with the arrival of Gina Haring, a lesbian Wiccan. Chip Grellier, after being expelled from high school, enlists in the army and is killed in Iraq with devastating effects on his family. The Schapens’ fundamentalist doctrines come to the fore when they discover “a perfect red heifer” in their dairy herd that may be a path to riches as well as to the second coming. Meanwhile, Gina stirs prejudices and passions to a fever pitch. Paretsky taps a different vein and strikes gold in this timely tale of fear and conflict in heartland America. Author tour. (Jan.)

At the start of Edgar-finalist Read’s gutsy second Madeline Dare novel (after 2006’s A Field of Darkness), Dare, a 26-year-old former debutante, takes a job in the fall of 1989 as a history teacher at Santangelo Academy, an unorthodox “therapeutic boarding school” in western Massachusetts dominated by its authoritarian cape-wearing headmaster, David Santangelo. When a student, Mooney LeChance, reveals that his girlfriend, Fay Perry, is pregnant, Dare keeps Mooney’s secret while the couple is confined to “the Farm,” a punishment dorm in the woods. The book’s first half focuses on character—the woefully misguided souls who teach at Santangelo, the students in all their dysfunctional glory—but the action picks up when Mooney and Fay die from drinking poisoned punch after a birthday party at the Farm, and Dare is arrested for her role in preparing the fatal beverage. While some characters, like the social-climbing parents who drop in between vacations, verge on stereotype, Read graphically depicts the depressing underside of a supposedly elite private school. (Jan.)

Montreal-based translator Smith debuts with nine stories, some of which hit the mark. In “The B9ers,” a man forms a support group for people who have had benign tumors removed, and that’s where the action stops: a weak subplot involving fraud by a representative of an orphanage fails to give the story much bite. In “Isolettes,” a woman has a baby with the use of her friend’s sperm, yet when catastrophe strikes after the birth, the general airlessness of the writing makes it hard to access her feelings. Similarly, the collection’s longest story, “Jaybird,” profiles an ambitious actor led into an extremely revealing performance by his agent’s secretary under false pretenses, but the denouement unfolds mutedly. Smith’s poise finds its best home in “Extremities,” which follows a pair of gloves from one owner to another and finally through a murder, and in the title story, in which a woman ages forward too rapidly, and then backward just as rapidly. (Jan.)

a haunting coming-of-age tale set in an emerging nation groping for identity,the first novel from MIT research scientist Iagnemma follows his story collection, On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction. Working his way across the country at 16 in 1844, Elisha Stone dreams of becoming a naturalist after running away from his aging Massachusetts minister father and ailing mother three years earlier. He signs on as an assistant to survey expedition leader Silas Brush, but the guide, a ne’er-do-well named Ignace Morel, disappears as the party is set to depart for the unexplored northern Michigan peninsula. Ignace’s wife, a beautiful half Chippewa woman named Susette, takes over as guide at a time when woman guides were unheard of. Back in Massachusetts, the Reverend Stone, who is slipping unknowingly into opium addiction, receives a dramatic letter Elisha has sent to his mother, who has died. Impulsively, the guileless minister sets out to find Elisha, ostensibly to tell him of his mother’s death, but also to reconcile with his son. The plot is marvelously structured, and the secondaries (including humbug Jonah Crawley and his teenage clairvoyant fiancée, Adele Grainger) add real color. Beautifully written and outstandingly researched, Iagnemma’s first novel is a keeper. (Jan.)

Japanese author Kitahara depicts in these six tales the plight of single women struggling for success in early-to-mid-19th-century Japan. These young women protagonists are gifted artists or fledgling entrepreneurs who have lost the protection of men, either by the death of fathers or divorce from husbands, and dare to make a name on their own, often with dire consequences. In the title story, owner Okaji is struggling to keep her new restaurant, Moegi (“the budding tree”), afloat despite a famine and competition from her ex-husband’s more established restaurant. In “Love’s Chill Wind,” a schoolteacher resolves to maintain a school her deceased father founded. Moreover, these proto-feminists have to fend off pesky matchmakers and importunate advances by hardly well-meaning suitors, such as the married man in “Innocent in Love,” who seduces out of spite his childhood friend, now a successful designer of ornamental hairpins. Kitahara also elegantly portrays the dilemma of the young Oichi in “Forget-Me-Not,” who must make a painful compromise in love for the sake of her art. The timeless conflicts of Kitahara’s characters will resonate with today’s readers. (Jan.)

Musicologist Maggie Gallagher and friends arrive in New Orleans from Washington, D.C., for a much needed vacation. On the grave of a legendary voodoo priestess, Maggie makes a wish for a “hot fling.” Later that night, she hears strains of the mysterious sonata she’s been hired to authenticate coming from a Bourbon Street bar. Ren Anthony, the man behind the keyboard, is the leader of the Impalers, a bar band specializing in drippy ’80s pop. He’s also a vampire, or rather, a lampir (an immortal energy sucker rather than a blood guzzler), and in mortal life was Renauldo D’Antoni, a composer born in 1785. Ren, believing all the women he loves are doomed, tries to avoid relationships, but sparks fly when Maggie walks into the bar. Whether or not Maggie can change Ren’s mind about getting involved is pretty much all the plot there is, but Love (I Only Have Fangs for You) lets the good times roll while they find out. (Jan.)

The fourth installment of McCarthy’s toothsome Vegas Vampire series (following Bled Dry) finds sexy Gwenna Carrick, a 900-year-old vampire, living at the casino owned by her brother, Ethan Carrick, the current president of the Vampire Nation. She meets Metro police detective Nate Thomas at a crime scene and offers her help in cracking a case involving an Internet vampire slayers group. Nate is grieving over the death of his sister, and Gwenna has been divorced from Vampire Nation vice president Roberto Donatelli for 300 celibate years. Sparks flare into true love very quickly—inflaming Gwenna’s jealous ex-husband, who quickly orders a hit on Nate. Worse challenges await the lovers, as McCarthy delivers her latest with fang-in-cheek flair. (Jan.)

When Claire Trowling’s sister Becca vanishes from her home and leaves her husband a note telling him not to worry, Claire embarks on a search that takes her to old family sites in North Carolina and England. As she seeks her “skizzer” (childhood lingo for sister) and uncovers pieces of the Trowlings’ family heritage, including a famous pendant with sacred significance, Claire rediscovers her Christian faith and begins to understand long-cherished family secrets. This debut novel from Kiesling is a quick and engaging read, with well-described settings and a sweet romance. However, the writing suffers from abrupt transitions between and within scenes. Becca’s reason for her sub-rosa departure is never quite convincing, with too little backstory about Becca’s husband. Readers may finish the novel wondering what purpose was served by all of Becca’s melodrama. Still, this plot hole is outweighed by the novel’s strengths, which include an adventurous story, a compelling protagonist and thoughtful musings on the real meaning of sisterhood. (Jan.)

Henderson culls the year’s best short stories, poetry and essays from lit mags and small presses and proves once again that the small venues are great sources for discovering new writers and staying current with the lions. Nam Le’s hard-hitting “Cartagena” starts off the collection with a stark portrayal of a Colombian hit man in over his head. In Stephanie Powell Watts’s “Unassigned Territory,” a reluctant young black Jehovah’s Witness finds herself searching for meaningful human connection while handing out Watchtowers in backwoods North Carolina. In Rick Bass’s subtle and brilliant “Goats,” two aspiring cattle barons roam the outskirts of Houston, buying scrawny calves while keeping tabs on an aging rancher suffering from dementia. Herb Golbert remembers Saul Bellow in “A Genius for Grief,” while the posthumously published poem of Liam Rector, who committed suicide earlier this year, evokes a Pulitzer winner contemplating his failure to love (“That’s where I truly fucked up./ I couldn’t”). Steven Millhauser’s “The Dome” offers a creepy if all-too-plausible view of the future in which communities seal themselves off beneath plastic domes. Hipsters and boomers alike will find something to appreciate in this powerhouse. (Dec.)

Writer-artist Arias-Misson’s fourth novel (after The Return of the Mayan to Manhattan) is recounted by an unnamed narrator in a voice so matter-of-fact that the monstrous taboo of incest becomes almost mundane. After his “tender rape” by a housemaid at age “four or five,” an incident he suspects inspires his incestuous yearnings, the narrator revels in the feel of his mother’s silk underwear, seeks sex with older women at age 13, and by 16 is his mother’s lover. Their feverish relationship lasts for more than two decades, until he beds his daughter (her mother is absent from the narrative) when she turns 16; he later leaves his daughter’s boudoir for his sister’s, and the reunited siblings settle into sensual middle-age cohabitation in Paris. Arias-Misson and his sexually insatiable narrator detail consensual acts of sodomy, bondage, golden showers, fanciful and sometimes violent role-playing and sex during menstruation with a precision that would make de Sade smile. The graphic sexual intensity is sure to engage readers who like their erotica with a literary bent, but the novel’s dispassionate depiction of incest and unrelenting jubilation at perversity for perversity’s sake will for many come off as plainly played for shock value. (Dec.)

German author Erpenbeck (The Old Child & Other Stories) observes the machinations of a repressive political regime through the eyes of an adolescent girl in this slim but dense novella. The story is set in an unnamed tropical capital where the sun always shines (probably Argentina, the translator notes) and narrated by a girl who parrots what she hears from her parents, emigrants from a snowy faraway place very much like Germany: her father is a highly placed minister whose job is to “maintain an equilibrium,” that is, to torture people; and her mother is a pampered homemaker who prefers to insulate herself from reality. The young narrator begins to notice how things are changing: shops are closed up, the railroad is abolished, food is rationed and people in her life begin to disappear or are detained and abused by the police. Half-truths, hearsay and speculation form the slippery foundation of the narrator’s knowledge, giving readers an intriguing vantage point from which to view a country in turmoil. (Dec.)

While not as twisty as True Evil (2006), bestseller Iles’s new thriller injects both depth and novelty into a genre convention—the jealous husband who’s tipped off to his wife’s infidelity. When Laurel Shields, a 35-year-old mother of two, discovers she’s pregnant, she can’t be sure her physician husband, Warren, is the father. Meanwhile, Warren is in trouble with the IRS. Laurel believes his obsessive search for a document in their Athens Point, Miss., home is related to a federal Medicaid fraud investigation focusing on his medical partner, Kyle Auster. As the Feds prepare to swoop down on Warren and Kyle’s office to collect the evidence of false billings and bribes to patients without any actual illnesses, Warren takes Laurel and their two children hostage. Iles squeezes every drop of suspense out of the prolonged standoff between the doctor and the police. While the ending may be a little too pat to be plausible, Iles avoids turning Warren into a clichéd bad guy by making his descent into madness understandable. (Nov.)

In her enlightening forward to this newest gathering of avant-garde poet Mac Low’s work, Tardos makes the case that Mac Low (1922-2004) had an over-arching interest throughout his career in creating “things of beauty,” a bombshell of a statement considering Mac Low’s oeuvre, made up in large part of Zen-inspired “chance” experiments and ungainly language clusters like “Ugolino, / re oN rlin / Dysentery / Eille eZzato paRently.” Mac Low’s work has always been interesting, but beautiful? This collection, which follows two previous selections, does the best job to date in providing a window into Mac Low’s unique perspective on what constitutes poetic beauty, showcasing a wide range of his poetry, from earnest political juvenilia to concrete-poetic text experiments, and featuring the previously less represented work Mac Low did in his last 20 years. Mac Low’s more personal, less overtly process-generated, lyrics reveal the modernist and Romantic roots of Mac Low’s sensibility. “No. no. no. Hear! The between,” he wrote in 1946 in “Hear I here,” laying out his lifetime preoccupation with “betweenness.” Mac Low continued to listen dutifully until his death. This book provides a rewarding testament to his ability to transcribe what he heard. (Jan.)

Ashbery’s original, seminal Selected Poems crowned the first half of a career that has largely defined American poetry since the middle of the 20th century. One could think of that first Selected, published in 1985, as the summation of Ashbery’s philosophical period, in which the poet self-consciously interrogated the grip—or lack of one—language exerts on the world at large, most notably in poems like “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” This new volume—beginning with poems from April Galleons (1987) and ending with Where Shall I Wander (2005)—presents the first panoramic view of Ashbery’s second phase, in which he explores, celebrates, sends up and revels in the American vernacular. Encompassing the surreal (“You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns”), the tender (“Everything was spotless in the little house of our desire”), the self-deprecating (“There was I: a stinking adult”) and the quietly, utterly haunting (“Those who came closest did not come close”), Ashbery seems to hit every possible note in his scattershot manner. Of particular interest are extended selections from the book-length works Flow Chart (1991) and Girls on the Run (1999). This is an essential book. Along with the original Selected (Penguin), we can now see the full impact of the most representative poet of the last 50 years. (Nov.)

Over the course of the five sections of Zucker’s third collection, the poet examines wifedom as it functions in language, motherhood, religion and science (“The first wife was a hard-working molecule”). Zucker (The Last Clear Narrative) attempts to unpack the many meanings of the word “wife”: “if the language would slip I could see what limber chance remains me.” Always hovering is the “husband”—of whom the speaker says, “here comes my husband again and / my mind, I’m describing; context”—and the shadow of a real or imagined lover, who haunts the poems. Zucker’s formally supple pieces range from shorter lyrics to discursive, meditative sequences; the book closes with a series of chatty, confessional poems titled “Autographies,” in which the poet continues to plumb personal experience, often in a disarmingly direct fashion: “Shall we discuss married sex?” By turns meditative, fearful, angry and loving, at their most scattershot these poems about marriage, fidelity, lust and motherhood can be disorienting for the reader, perhaps intentionally so. (Nov.)

Bukowski’s chatty free verse (and fiction) about disappointment, drunkenness, racetracks, flophouses, lust, sexual failure, poverty and late-life success amassed an enormous following by the time of his death at age 73 in 1994. Billed as the last book with new Bukowski poems in it, this hefty collection also culls from his prior books, and it is all of a piece: the warnings about lost potency, the ironic takes on ailments of mind and body, the comradeship with everyone down at the heels, down on his luck, or down to his last shot of booze. Bukowski’s best poems have an exaggerated, B-movie black-and-white aura about them. One new poem warns “that/ nothing is wasted:/ either that/ or/ it all is.” In another, “hell is only what we/ create,/ smoking these cigarettes,/ waiting here,/ wondering here.” Near the front of the volume comes a page-and-a-half-long verse manifesto, “a poem is a city,” that might describe what Bukowski could do: “a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers,” it begins, “filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen... banality and booze,” and yet “a poem is the world.” (Nov.)

A friend and inspiration to Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, the Oregon-born California Beat poet Whalen (1923–2002) also played a serious role in the history of American Buddhism, traveling to Japan, then becoming a Zen monk in 1974. Whalen’s copious pre-1967 writings make up the bulk of this volume: often they reflect a first-thought best-thought aesthetic, with scenes from West Coast nature and San Francisco bohemia, ecstatic and disillusioned jottings and quips about love, sex, drugs, literature and America, along with holographs and drawings. The work Whalen did in Japan tells a different story. The last and best of his long sequences, the 60-page “Scenes from the Capital” (1969), combines a Ginsberg-like flow with more considered reflections on travel, alienation and the poet’s own mind: “If you want something hold out an empty hand,” Whalen advises; “If you want a poem find a blank page.” His move into more dedicated Zen practice slowed downhis verse: “How to explain that everything is unimaginably splendid/ And horrible?” an ode from 1979 inquires. Beat compleatists, seekers of Buddhist poetry and anyone else drawn to the history of countercultural writing should find much in this big book to like, though its sheer bulk (and price) may be a deterrent.(Nov.)

Denounced and suppressed in 1970s Stalinist Albania, Zeqo’s poems explode socialist realism with exuberant bursts of imagination. Though Zeqo says, “I don’t want to overwhelm you with metaphors” it’s just one of the many playful ruses put on by this surrealist dreamer stuck in a land of repressive bureaucrats. Throughout this collection—which culls 67 poems from Zeqo’s Meduza—he does nothing if not overwhelm with shimmering imagery: “Ten dolphins jump/ in the April sea./ Ten living hearts/ in the sea of my blood.” Reminiscent of other rabble-rousing poets born mid-20th century in the Soviet Union’s shadow (such as Slovenia’s Tomaz Salamun and Poland’s Piotr Sommer), these poems reflect a particularly Albanian point of view: “And now, unpredictably:/ in this beauty parlor in an alpine town,/ girls sit fearlessly in the dryers,/ helmeted against this history.” At times Zeqo’s language (or Miller’s translations of it) becomes almost comically indulgent—“I want to kick the planet like a soccer ball/ into the open goal of the future”—but every poem crackles with life. This is poetry set free from the bonds of enforced “realism,” and if it’s at times overzealous, it remains a pleasure throughout. (Nov.)

One doesn’t go to Koch to experience the opening of the poet’s mind to the world (Ashbery’s stated desire), but for urbane, often vaudevillian, entertainments. This volume—a companion to 2005’s Collected Poems (also Knopf), which gathers all of Koch’s shorter poetry—shows Koch stretching out in his six extended works. The early Dada epic “When the Sun Tries to Go On” is a 60-plus page list of syntactical detritus, punctuated by bizarre apostrophes: “O tuxedo/ May conceited lobster!” “Ko, or a Season on Earth” is Koch’s masterpiece, a mock epic in Byronic stanzas about a Japanese baseball player who hits it big, punctuated this time by impossible synchronicities: “Meanwhile the entire continent of Asia/ Was moving sideways unpredictably/.../ Hawaii, meanwhile, feeling simply great/ Was speeding toward acceptance as a state.” “Impressions of Africa” shows Koch opening up a more personal space: the poem is a journal of his long journey to Africa. At last, there is a psychological element (of sorts), as Koch finds himself silenced: “I look at nothing for a while.” This book may change some opinions on Koch; readers may ask whether his prodigious formal inventiveness thrives given more room, or if the poems remain surface-oriented, like a body of wate that never moves but looks lively wherever you are watching. (Oct.)

Blue-collar heartbreak and terse, hard-won wisdom dominate this vivid fourth outing, in which crowds of men and women try to do “the basic human thing”: Dischell’s quiet protagonists traipse riverbanks, promise to “attend/ The weddings and burials,” and mull the connections between mourning and rejoicing, hope and memory, lust and love. The clever title poem declares the poet’s affections in terms drawn from a kindergarten ritual; a surprising pantoum tells a story about “a blind girl in Paris.” Some of his best works are compressed narratives: “Tale of the Garret,” for example, updates a familiar fable in order to ask how the airy concerns of the imagination might blind us to the concrete causes for other people’s pain. Dischell (Dig Safe) takes his metaphors from all over (anthropologists’ “first contact” with primitive tribes, for example) and his sometimes dysphemistic cadences from such gritty inventors as Charles Simic: his figures of speech may shock (“I went to kiss/ The cat-tongue rough/ Of her each bent knee”), but his core concerns are down-to-earth. Dischell’s sometimes gruff (and always brief) poems ask where dejection and affection can manage to keep each other in good company—if not for a lifetime, at least for a page or two. (Oct.)

The poems of Merritt’s second collection take on big ideas: “I’ve seen the world without us, and it lacked/ Nothing, but burned on fierce and beautiful.” Merritt (A Protocol for Touch) grounds her generalities in powerful, gorgeous lyrical moments, and there is little of the irony that marks the work of many of her contemporaries. Merritt’s speakers plainly search for something to hold onto, and it’s not meaning: she notes that “sense does not make birdsong beautiful.” She uses “the ear, that outward/ heart” as her guide—many of these poems rhyme, both subtly and obviously, and all show a careful attention to shape and rhythm. Even the collection as a whole is carefully sculpted, with five sequences creating an arc that begins and ends with speakers searching for “comfort” and “tenderness” amid a world “where/ daily the tongues of men murder even/ the sturdiest hearts.” There are moment when Merritt’s love of rhyme leads to either antiquated (“Lest sober elders hear and come to chide”) or worn-out phrases (“the fabric of a life”), and some readers may be put off by her tendency to lean on the Greek myths at times. Still, the heights achieved in the best of these poems are undeniable. (Oct.)

Field is among the first American poets to write proudly and clearly about urban gay life.This new-and-selected (Field’s 10th book of verse overall) shows that his virtues—and limits—have remained consistent throughout. At his best Field is direct, likable, modest, charming, a storyteller : he writes purposefully and directly of bathhouse life in the 1970s, Jewish-American heritage, Middle Eastern travels in “a world where, unlike ours, men like each other”; and allegorically of the Pacific octopus, “who needs love,/ who is a mess when you meet,/ but who can open up like a flower with petal arms.” At less than his best, Field’s unadorned style can make him sound predictable: his poems are only as interesting as their stories and ideas. “Nowadays there’s nothing radical left, certainly not/ in the Village,” he complains in a poem from the 1990s. A recent 9/11 poem objects to “a gang of psychopaths taking over the government.” Irreplaceable in the history of gay American writing, Field helped invent some of the attitudes and the subgenres that are now in common use. If many of Field’s own poems now seem flat and dated, enough still seem fresh to give serious strength to this book. (Oct.)

Often exhilarating but at times exasperatingly abstruse, Wright’s second book this year (Music’s Mask and Measure appeared earlier) exhibits a free-flowing, semi-improvisational energy focused and intensified by carefully constructed lines and stanzas. Whether scaling to Parnassian heights (“I am one of those who feels/ an unsuspected subversion, and go/ caroling my rude ambition/ among the stars”) or plunging inward to insight (“I know strife as the foundation of becoming,/ and melancholy as the soul’s creative impulse”), the poems’ impeccable musicality and craftsmanship will win the trust and admiration of many. When Wright ventures deepest into his cosmological lather, however, even the most intrepid hermeneut will be left head-scratching: “We have found/ the dark nebula; we will speak/ the Jewel Box,/ or the Almond.” Like much of Wright’s work, these poems draw heavily on the creation myths of the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa, but in their great commodiousness they find room for passages of French, Italian and Spanish, as well as references to figures as diverse as Parmenides, Egyptian-Jewish writer Edmond Jabès, and jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Richly celebrated by the academy, Wright still deserves a broader readership.

Agatha Christie meets Desperate Housewives in Morgenroth’s smashing, Stepfordesque mystery. At the heart of the novel is Manhattan bookshop clerk Sofie, whose father’s death has left her wealthy and in need of a change of pace. Her husband suggests moving to posh Greenwich, Conn., where she falls in with a group of bored, bitchy and smart housewives who gossip, drink too much and occasionally cat around with each other’s husbands. When young trophy wife Julia is found swinging from a tree in her front yard, the obvious conclusion is suicide—but both cops and neighbors suspect murder, and mystery addict Sofie sets out to do a little sleuthing. Morgenroth (Saved) places Sofie precisely in her contrasting urban and suburban settings with elegant prose, from “a tangle of dark grey branches” in Central Park to maple leaves that “drifted down—a bright autumn red—leaving a carpet on the ground like a huge pool of blood.” The character development and local color are so strong that this would be a hit even without the dazzling surprise ending. (Jan.)

In this short, intense roman dur (or “serious novel”), Mosley probes the human condition through Ben Dibbuk, a black man whose name evokes the dybbuk of Jewish folklore. A 47-year-old computer programmer for a New York City bank, Dibbuk is married to Mona, the editor of a new cutting-edge magazine, Diablerie, which “can mean either mischievous or evil.” He has a daughter at NYU and a 21-year-old Russian mistress whose apartment and graduate school tuition he pays for. Then a woman he doesn’t remember threatens to shatter the shell Dibbuk has built to protect himself from his troubled, alcoholic past. When Dibbuk discovers Mona is having him investigated, he realizes he risks being charged for a murder he can’t remember but may have committed. As Dibbuk struggles to escape the emotional vacuum of his life, he may not be free to enjoy his reawakening. This is Mosley at his deepest and best, scratching away the faces we wear to reveal the person behind the masks. (Jan.)

Returning to the mean streets of South Boston, Marinick’s taut, hard-hitting second novel (after 2004’s Boyos) is the literary equivalent of getting assaulted by a gang of psychotic street thugs. Delray McCauley, a former Massachusetts state trooper, has just finished a three-year prison stint after being wrongly convicted of beating up an undercover DEA agent. Now working as a bartender in the area where he was born and raised, McCauley is equally hated by his former law enforcement comrades and by the local Southie boyos. So when he decides to help out an old friend in the Boston police department with a highly sensitive case involving a stolen safe from a prominent lawyer’s office, he unwittingly makes himself the prime target for a chilling assemblage of sadistic hit men and cop-hating gangsters. While the gritty authenticity of South Boston’s criminal underworld is an obvious highlight, it’s the spot-on characterization and dialogue as well as the subtle existentialist theme that distinguish this bloody neo-noir thriller. Fans of authors like Ken Bruen, Jason Starr and Charlie Huston are in for a treat . (Dec.)

George’s solid third Pittsburgh thriller (after 2004’s Fallen) introduces rookie detective Colleen Greer to the homicide squad. Cmdr. Richard Christie is unsure of inexperienced, overeager Greer, but they hit the ground running after a woman is brutally murdered. Greer recognizes the victim as Laura McCall, the wife of David Hoffman, who ran a counseling center where Greer had been employed. McCall was separated from Hoffman and dating another man, making Hoffman the detectives’ prime suspect. When Hoffman reaches out to Greer, her cop instincts take precedence over their past friendship, but she still isn’t sure of his guilt. When a second body turns up, again with ties to Hoffman’s clinic, Greer tries to tap into her intuition and unexpectedly finds herself attracted to her very married boss. George leaves enough balls in the air that fans will eagerly await Christie and Greer’s next case. (Dec.)

At the start of Balzo’s lukewarm second Maggy Thorsen mystery (after 2004’s Uncommon Grounds), Maggy, a 40-something divorcée who owns a coffee shop in suburban Brookhills, Wis., discovers the corpse of Marvin LaRoche, proprietor of the HotWired coffeehouse chain and Maggy’s biggest competitor, under a banquet table at a coffee convention. Though Maggy was no great fan of LaRoche, she didn’t kill him, and she wants to find out who did before she becomes a suspect. LaRoche’s wife is a little too cheery for a new widow, and an angry activist who thought LaRoche exploited Third World coffee growers might have wanted to make a bloody statement. Some clumsy character development and awkwardly placed commentary on the art of coffeemaking will make fans of Uncommon Grounds, which was an Anthony Award finalist, hope for a return to form in Maggy’s third cozy. (Dec.)

New Zealand historian Druett’s uneven fourth Wiki Coffin whodunit (after 2006’s Run Afoul) finds half-Maori navigator and “linguister” Wiki investigating theft and murder in Patagonia. It’s January 1839, and Wiki, as sheriff’s representative aboard the U.S. Exploring Expedition ship Swallow, agrees to help outraged whaler Captain Stackpole, who claims to have been roundly cheated. Trader Caleb Adams took Stackpole’s money and vanished, along with the schooner Stackpole was buying. When Wiki goes looking for Adams, he finds only his corpse. The bill of sale has been stolen from Adams’s store and a clerk murdered as well. Gauchos, Indians, revolutionaries and adventurers flock across the beautifully rendered landscape. Druett’s meticulous research shows in the vivid characters (including historical figures), but irrelevant passages of lush detail smother the plot, letting it resurface only in a late and hurried blurt of exposition. A better balance between detail and story would have made for smoother sailing. (Dec.)

Prohibition-era violence and mayhem dominate Thompson’s predictable debut. Andy Larson, a maverick North Dakota police officer who has no problem ripping off criminals, enlists four friends to hijack a truckload of bootleg alcohol coming in from Canada. The caper turns ugly when a shootout leaves all four bootleggers and one of Larson’s friends dead. The remaining hijackers quickly discover that their haul includes thousands of dollars of gold coins belonging to Al Capone. Hiding his extracurricular activities from his colleagues on the force, Larson scrambles to stay ahead of Capone’s enforcers and avoid scrutiny from his own department. There’s no real period flavor or mystery, merely a standard plot of good guys who bend the rules vs. bad guys, peppered by shootouts. (Dec.)

Despite stories from an impressive international roster of both established and up-and-coming crime novelists, this woman-themed anthology is disappointingly hit-and-miss. Abbott, herself a 2006 Edgar nominee for her noir debut, Die a Little, attempts to organize the volume by grouping pieces under catchy but not very meaningful headings such as “Hellcats, Madwomen and Outlaws” and “Minxes, Shapeshifters and Hothouse Flowers.” The few standouts include Zoë Sharp’s “Served Cold,” a revenge tale featuring British femme fatale–cum–bodyguard Charlie Fox, and Ken Bruen’s moody “Nora B.,” chronicling a cop’s disastrous relationship with a scheming Irish barmaid. Notably absent is a story from Val McDermid, whose introduction only whets the reader’s appetite for a taste of her signature “tartan noir.” Fans of the other authors included are better off waiting for the next installments of their respective series. (Dec.)

While some authors could pull off delaying their mystery’s first murder two-thirds of the way into the story, English musicologist Southey isn’t up to that challenge in her first novel, an offbeat whodunit set in 18th-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Southey’s not fully sympathetic hero, Charles Patterson, who’s a versatile musician, struggles to make ends meet, while his rival, Henri Le Sac, enjoys professional prominence. Patterson’s faith in his sanity totters when he thinks he sees spirits, and the strain on his system is compounded when local authorities accuse him of stealing a rare book and a violin—and murdering the apprentice he inherited from Le Sac. Patterson turns amateur sleuth to clear his name. While an unexpected supernatural element distracts from the action more than it supports it, Southey’s sure-handed use of period detail leaves hope she’ll do better in her next historical. (Dec.)

Replete with magic-powered machinations, secret societies and doomsday divinations, the emotionally intense second volume of Berg’s intrigue-laden Lighthouse Duet (after 2007’s Flesh and Spirit) concludes the story of Valen, a sorcerer who finds himself at the center of a looming conflict that could cast the realms of both humankind and the feylike Danae into a nightmarish dark age. Caught between the maneuverings of the enigmatic Osriel, bastard prince of Evanore, and apocalypse priestess Sila Diaglou, Valen must determine which perceived villain is less evil. Although billed as an epic fantasy, this duology is more accurately an intimate, character-driven journey of redemption and self-discovery. Valen’s heroic quest to unlock the secrets of his heritage and save a world from destruction suffers from languorous pacing throughout and may discourage readers who like their fantasy fast and furious, but fans of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Avalon sequence and Sharon Shinn will be rewarded. (Jan.)

Datlow (The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror) makes a solid claim to being the premiere horror editor of her generation with this state-of-the-art anthology of 20 new stories by some of horror fiction’s best and brightest. Several outstanding selections feature imperiled children and explore the horrific potential of childhood fears, among them Glen Hirshberg’s “The Janus Tree,” which gives a creepy supernatural spin to a poignant memoir of adolescent angst and alienation, and Stephen Gallagher’s “Misadventure,” in which a young man’s near-death experience as a child endows him as an adult with consoling insight into the afterlife. The compilation’s variety of approaches and moods is exemplary, ranging from the natural supernaturalism of Laird Barron’s cosmic horror tale “The Forest,” to the unsettling psychological horror of Lucius Shepard’s “The Ease with Which We Freed the Beast”; the metaphysical terrors of Conrad Williams’s “Perhaps the Last”; and the slapstick grotesquerie of K.W. Jeter’s black comedy “Riding Bitch.” If this book can be taken as a gauge of the vitality of imagination in contemporary horror fiction, then the genre is very healthy indeed. (Dec.)

As a terrible plague sweeps Pern, a brave Harper apprentice emerges as a true hero in this satisfying third collaboration between McCaffrey mère and fils (after 2006’s Dragon’s Fire). The danger this time is not the deadly Thread but a virulent disease, similar to our world’s 1918 influenza epidemic or the more recent outbreaks of SARS. Kindan, a young apprentice of the Harpers’ Guild who’s dedicated to music, education and healing, had hoped to become a dragonrider, but failed to bond with a dragon at the last hatching. Then his education and budding romance with a lord’s daughter are disrupted by the epidemic, which poses a particular threat to the dragons and dragonriders who will be needed to fight the approaching Thread. The McCaffreys depict the crisis vividly, with enough detail to make the tragedy all too real and with enough hope to keep fantasy fans happy. (Dec.)

Bestseller Anderson’s super-size mosaic of intergalactic, Darwinian conflict has been compared to some of the genre’s grandest epics with good reason, but the breakneck sixth book (after 2006’s Of Fire and Night) of this shelf-bending space opera fails to satisfy on its own merits. The quickly deteriorating Terran Hanseatic League (Hansa), the formidable Ildiran Empire and the newly created Confederation of Hansa’s ex-colonies and rivals are in a fight for their very existence, battling not only each other but rogue robots, sentient fire entities and an ancient insectoid race, thought long extinct, which plans to eradicate all life on the planets it claims to own. Although Anderson brings all of his considerable skill to bear, much of the action-packed conflict remains relatively predictable, perhaps due to the unwieldy cast of characters, tapestry of intertwining subplots and eon-spanning backstory. A sparse conclusion leaves readers hanging in anticipation of book seven. (Dec.)

Sharp tactical plotting, hazardous cross-country travel and a dash of sardonic humor mark Butcher’s fourth Codex Alera novel (after 2006’s Cursor’s Fury). Two years into a difficult campaign against the wolflike Canim invaders, Calderon legion captain Tavi is saddled with an unqualified but politically powerful superior whose plans threaten disaster and force Tavi into potential treason. Meanwhile, aging ruler Gaius Sextus plans a final strike against the rebellious lord of Kalare, but to get close enough to act, he must set aside his power to control the elements and make a painful overland slog that neatly challenges genre conventions. Butcher deftly deploys intrigue, conflicted loyalties and hairbreadth action to excellent effect. Few writers balance military realism and cinematic swashbuckling with so much skill or wit. Series fans will welcome the revelation of Tavi’s long-secret heritage and the strong climaxes resolving most of the immediate conflicts, while newcomers will have no trouble navigating the well-developed landscape. (Dec.)

Kelso (Everran’s Bane) paints a hypnotic but prose-drowned portrait of a complex matriarchal society powered by “qherrique,” a semisentient stone that can control minds and power machinery. When a male Outlander is found on the streets of Amberlight, robbed, raped and left for dead by a girl gang, the qherrique informs Tellurith, the powerful head of Telluir House, that he must be kept alive. As Tellurith’s household nurses the stranger back to health, he reveals the terrible truth about the nearby rulers who purchase qherrique statuettes from Amberlight and use them to enslave people and wage war. As Tellurith comes to see and question the rampant poverty and bias in Amberlight, she opens a furious debate over the Houses’ responsibility to make sure qherrique is used wisely at home and abroad. Kelso’s self-consciously overwrought verbiage (“Crafters’ coats and cloaks festoon the pearl-grime”) distracts from an otherwise intriguing exploration of sexual politics and the difficult calculus of leadership. (Nov.)

Though demon possession is bad enough for the average Joe, Black’s new heroine, native Philadelphian Morgan Kingsley, is a professional exorcist—making her possession by a powerful demon all the more infuriating (and embarrassing). Worse, the demon inside her, Lugh, is next in line to become king of the demon realm, and factions are hard at work to off him before he takes the throne. As neither of the standard options for demon killing appeal to Morgan (exorcism, which usually leaves the human host a mindless wreck, or burning at the stake, with predictable results), Morgan and Lugh (who communicate in dreams) must race against time to discover how he was implanted into her and, while keeping the rival demons at bay, how to get him out without killing her in the process. Although Black doesn’t break any new ground, she’s got a winning heroine, a well-crafted contemporary world where demonic possession is just a part of life and a nice balance of mystery, action and sex, making this light but engaging novel an urban fantasy series kickoff full of promise. (Dec.)

Barton gives her fans what they want in her latest romantic suspense (following The Dying Game), featuring Lexie Murrough, who had a promising career in broadcast journalism until she was caught in the crossfire during the assassination of a newly inaugurated African dictator. If it hadn’t been for the quick reaction of the gunman, Deke Brosnan, part of a special binational assassination team, her spinal wound would have been fatal; though she never knew who rescued her, Lexie has a memory of a man with “smoky-gray eyes.” Ten years later, she’s the high-powered cofounder and CEO of a worldwide charitable organization, and she’s in danger. Bombs and telephone threats make it clear someone has a personal vendetta against her; coincidentally, Brosnan now works for the security agency hired to protect Lexie, and the assignment offers him the chance to salve his chronically guilty conscience. The romance that develops during the ensuing scramble won’t disappoint Barton’s devotees, who will be happy to find her usual blend of passion and peril—heavy on the passion. (Dec.)

In her second Beyond romance (after Beyond Control), York follows treasure hunter Zachary Robinson and magician-psychic Anna Ridgeway, two loners who meet on a Caribbean island and find that they have an indelible, unexplainable mental connection. Soon enough, Anna and Zach’s romance is off with a bang, and the two lovers find they can’t get enough of each other. Unbeknownst to them, another man is keeping tabs on their movements, a shop owner named Raoul San Donato, who’s using his own black magic to watch Anna, who he covets for his own. When Zach gets too close, San Donato plots a vile kidnapping scheme, but the couple have a few more tricks (both in the bedroom and out) they can dispatch against the crafty foe. Though it’s little more than a shameless sexual romp with touches of magic, York’s magnetic characters make this novel a sexy good time. (Dec.)

This disappointing contemporary from Jump (Pretty Bad) tells the story of a young woman returning to her despised hometown, where she endured years of emotional torture as an overweight teenager. Now thin and passingly glamorous, Allie Dean (formerly Allison Gray) is an aspiring screenwriter working on low-budget horror flicks when her condescending boss offers her the opportunity to make a movie in Tempest, Ind., the one place she’s desperate not to go. Resolving to get the last laugh, Allie accepts the job and returns to Tempest incognito, begging her family to keep her true identity secret—especially from Duncan Henry, the boy who broke her heart. After an engaging first half featuring Allie and Duncan’s steamy, burgeoning romance, the plot begins to spin out of control, as unbelievable scenarios with even more unlikely resolutions—Allie succeeds, for example, in changing the entire outlook of Duncan’s despondent, paralyzed sister in a matter of days—start piling up. Though it provides some fun diversion, Jump’s latest will strain all but the most generous reader’s suspension of disbelief. (Dec.)

Attention to detail makes the horror of this psychological detective series creepier. It’s not just that we see a prisoner hanged; it’s that a panel is devoted to him soiling himself at the moment of death. That’s prelude to finding out that a group of criminals, as well as the title detective, are all marked by barcodes on the whites of their eyes and all are being investigated by an execution-happy justice minister. The case this time around involves a supposedly dead mass murderer playing deadly pranks (in a style reminiscent of Batman’s Joker). As the number of crimes mount, the detective attempts to rescue his partner from a tanker-truck bombing. The varied personalities and plots can be confusing, but those who’ve been carefully following the series since the start will find their attention rewarded. The book has the fast-paced action of a movie thriller, exploring the boundaries of the human mind through extreme actions. Panels are light on text and designed so skillfully that the reader can take in events as quickly as they can turn the page. Adult comics readers looking for a manga they can sink their teeth into will find it here. (Dec.)

Readers with an interest in comics history will value this book. Though not part of Fantagraphics’s deluxe set of the collected Dennis the Menace, this little paperback gives a fascinating look at Ketcham’s career before he created that franchise, when he was a commercial artist and a popular contributor to magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and sometimes even the New Yorker. He wasn’t an especially fluent writer, relying on others for punch lines, but the hundreds of pieces gathered here show what a prolific artist he was. They also show his development as a cartoonist, as his lines start to swirl and ricochet, becoming looser and loopier, dancing in casual-looking brush strokes of fluctuating thickness—even without the gags, Ketcham’s best work is extremely fun to look at. Ketchum has assembled a cast of bemused housewives, frazzled businessmen, and bratty kids even before discovering his unifying concept. It’s especially interesting to see how several early cartoons were reworked into Dennis panels; in every case, the later pieces are superior, with tighter layout, sharper choice of details and livelier art. (Nov.)

Little seen but apparently much loved by those who did, Storeyville first appeared in 1995 in San Francisco as a 40-page tabloid-size newsprint comic with a three-color palate of black, ochre and dust brown. This hardbound facsimile edition, with an introduction by Chris Ware and a brief history of Santoro’s work, reveals a missing piece of the evolution of the graphic novel. Set sometime in the early 20th century, the story follows Will, a young vagrant who travels from Pittsburgh to Montreal in search of someone called Reverend Rudy. As Will vainly searches for Rudy, their relationship is told in flashback, and the story gently becomes about the search for one’s own sense of self. Languid scenes of landscape are given as much attention as panels that propel the laid-back plot. As unconventional in its form as in its subject, the easygoing, sketchy artwork pays scant attention to details such as facial characteristics, but remains bound by a strict 15-panel grid until the last page, an emotional catharsis that could only be depicted in comics. Though no longer as unique as it first was, Storeyville clearly shows an influence on such cartoonists as Seth and Chris Ware. (Nov.)

Potentially one of the most significant mangas in years, this engrossing book is certainly one of the most unusual: a long, realistically drawn narrative about a young couple coping with the discovery that their infant son is autistic. Masato and Saachiko Azuma need time to realize that their beautiful little boy, Hikaru, is unable to communicate personally. The official diagnosis of autism confuses and devastates the parents. Masato dives headlong into his career to avoid home; Sachiko is angry at Hikaru’s behavior, but also tormented by guilt that she’s somehow to blame. As they learn and experience more, they become closer to Hikaru and each other. They meet helpful allies, collide with ignorant hostility and savor glimpses through cracks in Hikaru’s shell. They become a family. As this volume ends, the three of them are adjusting to a new family member—Hikaru’s normal little sister. The story works as a comic. too; fluid layout keeps the action moving through pages of talking-head conversations, and the childish innocence of manga characters has never been more appropriate. Just as Tom Batiuk used breast cancer as a basis for his outstanding Lisa’s Story, so With the Light also offers a moving, artistically successful experience. (Sept.)