Fiction Reviews: Week of 11/5/2007

The lives of a young Jewish man in the 1930s and a young Czech woman in the 1980s echo across generations in Mansbach's (Angry Black White Boy) continuing investigations into ethnic identity. Tristan Brodsky, the son of New York Jewish immigrant parents, is introduced to pre-WWII jazz and African-American culture by a City College professor who mentors him into a mostly successful, though often controversial, career as a novelist. Tristan's grandson and namesake, known as Tris, is a suburban teen in thrall to hip-hop culture who becomes a novelist himself. (Tris's writerly angst provides some of the funniest scenes in the book.) Then there's Nina Hricek, a talented young Czech photographer who is all but adopted by a touring American jazz group passing through Prague: the black band members affectionately dub her “Pigfoot” and insist that she must be part Creole. Nina becomes a sort of apprentice to the group's tour photographer. One night, when covering a gig at New York's Blue Note, she locks eyes with a man working at the club—Tris. Mansbach moves effortlessly between U.S. jazz clubs of different eras and Communist Prague, and his dialogue rings true. Believably eccentric characters and an inventive cross-generational plot make this novel of immigration's vicissitudes a delight. (Mar.)

With a talking iguana, a tree with a heart and an army of clones created from aborted fetuses, Morrow's latest is a treat for readers willing to take an imaginative leap. Philosophy ABD (all but dissertation) Mason Ambrose takes a job tutoring 17-year-old Londa Sabacthani after withdrawing his Ph.D. candidacy during a heated dissertation defense. Londa lost her moral center after a head injury, according to her mother, Edwina, a molecular geneticist with a reputation for being as “smart as God,” and it's Mason's highly compensated duty to help Londa regain her conscience. Soon after arriving on Edwina's remote Florida Keys island home, Mason discovers a separate estate where five-year-old Donya lives with two tutors hired after she lost her “rectitude” in a bicycle accident. Donya claims Edwina as her mother and, like Londa, believes she is an only child. The three tutors, sensing something grossly amiss, begin snooping and uncover a fertility scheme akin to a Dr. Frankenstein experiment. Meanwhile, Londa ventures out into the world and seeks to apply her newfound morality to American capitalism through whatever means necessary. Morrow guides readers through preposterous plot points without sacrificing plausibility. Strong characters, shots of humor and an unpredictable narrative make this a winner. (Mar.)

Cullins's sterile eighth novel is the bleak dirge of Korean War vet Hollis Adams as he revisits the nightmarish past he has spent his life avoiding. The novel opens at Hollis's home in a golfing community in snow-covered Arizona, where Hollis dreams of processions of cattle and nomads wearing gas masks. Despite this surreal start, the book quickly becomes mired in the mundane: Hollis's wife, Debra, is ill with ovarian cancer and asks him to “tell me about us,” occasioning a reluctant retrospective of Hollis's time in Korea, where he served with a charismatic if callous Texan named McCreedy. After Hollis returns wounded from Korea, he tries to erase the memory of the war, mostly by drinking gin-and-DDT cocktails. Hollis quits the heavy drinking when he sees a vision of his ravaged self standing at the end of his bed; after sobering up, he goes to Texas and meets Debra, who provides Hollis with something to live for. Unfortunately, the narrative spends little time exploring Hollis and Debra's lives together or the other self that haunts Hollis, instead focusing largely on Hollis's retiree routines. Flashbacks to Korea provide welcome reprieve, but the reader never connects with Hollis or Debra, so their suffering feels muted, even as the narrative dives into stark tragedy. (Mar.)

Tucker offers a cure for modern readers seeking an enjoyable literary page-turner that also explores serious social issues such as addiction, ethics and genetics. Tucker's fourth and most ambitious novel (following Once Upon a Day) is her first to have a male protagonist. Sardonic and emotionally aloof, Matthew Connelly directs his energies away from romantic entanglements and toward his work as an executive at pharmaceutical giant Astor-Denning. His bitter ex-girlfriend, Amelia, works as a medical ethics watchdog and is poised to take Matthew and his company down. But the appearance of homeless 10-year-old Danny and his toddler sister shakes up the lives of the combustible pair. In crisp, lively prose, Tucker cleverly executes a series of surprising twists that, coupled with the Big Pharma backdrop and cinematic feel, make the novel as fast-paced as a thriller, but with astute and often humorous observations about the shifting morality of 21st-century America. The relationship dilemmas at the center of this story make it an excellent choice for book clubs, but the novel should also increase Tucker's male readership and solidify her position as a gifted writer with a wide range and a profound sense of compassion for the mysteries of the human heart. (Mar. 25)

Russell's enjoyable latest historical is told in the exuberant, posthumous voice (yes, it's narrated from the afterlife) of Agnes Shanklin, a 38-year-old schoolteacher from Cedar Glen, a town near Cleveland, Ohio. After the influenza epidemic of 1919 strikes down Agnes's family, a childless and unmarried Agnes settles the family estate, acquires financial independence and adopts an affable dachshund named Rosie. Accompanied by Rosie, Agnes travels to Cairo during the Cairo Peace Conference, where she befriends Winston Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia among other historical heavy hitters. She also falls in love with the charismatic Karl Weilbacher, a German spy whose interest in Agnes may have less to do with romance than Agnes will allow herself to believe. Agnes's travelogues, while marvelously detailed, distract from the increasingly tense romantic play between Agnes and Karl. When a more worldly-wise Agnes returns home, her life—first as an investor wrecked by the Depression and then a librarian until her death in 1957—remains low-keyed. Though the bizarre, whimsical ending doesn't quite gel, Russell (The Sparrow; A Thread of Grace) has created an instantly likable heroine whose unlikely adventures will keep readers hooked to the end. (Mar.)

This spare, enigmatic novella of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution tells the story of the brief love affair between Wu Dawang, general orderly for a local division commander, and Liu Lian, the commander's bored wife. An ambitious model soldier of peasant origin, eager to move his family to the city, Wu Dawang is repeatedly instructed by his superiors that “to serve the Division Commander and his family is to Serve the People.” While the commander is away in Beijing for a two-month conference, Liu Lian initiates the affair with Wu Dawang through her subversive take on that Maoist slogan: whenever a sign saying “Serve the People” is moved from its accustomed place in the household, Wu Dawang is to attend to her needs immediately. Their delirious sexual liaison culminates in an orgiastic desecration of the images and words of Chairman Mao. Yan's satire brilliantly exposes the emptiness of Maoist ideals and the fraudulent ends for which they were used, but also relates a sorrowful tale of compromised relationships and modest hopes left unfulfilled. It was banned in China in 2005 for slander and for “overflowing” depictions of sex. (Mar.)

Jordan's beautiful debut (winner of the 2006 Bellwether Prize for literature of social responsibility) carries echoes of As I Lay Dying, complete with shifts in narrative voice, a body needing burial, flood and more. In 1946, Laura McAllan, a college-educated Memphis schoolteacher, becomes a reluctant farmer's wife when her husband, Henry, buys a farm on the Mississippi Delta, a farm she aptly nicknames Mudbound. Laura has difficulty adjusting to life without electricity, indoor plumbing, readily accessible medical care for her two children and, worst of all, life with her live-in misogynous, racist, father-in-law. Her days become easier after Florence, the wife of Hap Jackson, one of their black tenants, becomes more important to Laura as companion than as hired help. Catastrophe is inevitable when two young WWII veterans, Henry's brother, Jamie, and the Jacksons' son, Ronsel, arrive, both battling nightmares from horrors they've seen, and both unable to bow to Mississippi rules after eye-opening years in Europe. Jordan convincingly inhabits each of her narrators, though some descriptive passages can be overly florid, and the denouement is a bit maudlin. But these are minor blemishes on a superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism. (Mar.)

The author of the National Book Award–nominated The Feast of Love, Baxter returns with this ninth book, an assay into the limits of character, fictional and otherwise. The first half of the novel follows the brief arc of Nathaniel Mason's graduate career in 1970s Buffalo, N.Y., which centers on his friendship with the sexy but self-dramatizing Teresa (“which she pronounces Teraysa, as if she were French”) and her lover Jerome Coolberg, “a virtuoso of cast-off ideas.” Coolberg, obsessed with Nathaniel, begins taking his shirts and notebooks, and claiming that episodes from Nathaniel's life happened to him. Coolberg drops a hint that something bad will happen to Jamie, Nathaniel's sometime lover; when it actually comes to pass, Nathaniel's world begins to collapse. In the novel's second half, decades after these events have occurred, Coolberg enters Nathaniel's life again for a final, dramatic confrontation. Baxter has a great, registering eye for the real pleasures and attritions of life, but the book gets hung up on metafictional questions of identity (the major one: who is writing this first-person narrative?). The results cheat readers out of identifying with any of the characters, perhaps intentionally. (Feb.)

Rice continues to explore mother-daughter dynamics and themes of religion and destiny in her serviceable latest (after What Matters Most). Anthropologist Susannah Connolly, encouraged by her mentor Professor Helen Oakes, travels to the Camargue region in southern France for research and to fulfill a promise to Susannah's recently deceased mother to visit a statue of Sarah, a religious figure of the Romany people whose power supposedly helped Susannah's parents conceive their only daughter. Filled with guilt that she was far away at work when her mother died, Susannah is taunted and branded as indifferent by her former flame Ian Stewart, an ambitious colleague who creepily follows her to France and tries to persuade her to marry him. But after Grey, a French horse rancher, saves Susannah from big trouble in a marsh, their chemistry sizzles in tired prose (“Susannah was different from anyone he'd ever known”) as Grey, whose wife left him five years earlier, agonizes about bringing a new woman into his family. While the story provides some intrigue (a group of Romany women connected to Grey's wife take Susannah into their confidence), the narrative is maddeningly repetitive and the lovey-dovey passages dull. All of Rice's hallmarks are present, though this time out they don't pop. (Feb.)

After fictionalizing elements of the Patty Hearst kidnapping for her second novel (the 2004 Pulitzer finalist American Woman), Choi combines elements of the Wen Ho Lee accusations and the Unabomber case to create a haunting meditation on the myriad forms of alienation. The suggestively named Lee, as he's called throughout, is a solitary Chinese émigré math professor at the end of an undistinguished Midwestern university career. He remains bitter after two very different failed marriages, despite his love for Esther, his globe-trotting grown daughter from the first marriage. As the book opens, Lee's flamboyant, futurist colleague in the next-door office, Hendley, is gravely wounded when Hendley opens a package that violently explodes. Two pages later, a jealous, resentful Lee “felt himself briefly thinking Oh, good.” As a did-he or didn't-he investigation concerning Lee, the novel's person of interest, unfolds, Lee's carefully ordered existence unravels, and chunks of his painful past are forced into the light. While a cagily sympathetic FBI man named Jim Morrison and Lee's former colleague Fasano (who links the bombings to several other technologists) play well-turned supporting roles, Choi's reflections from Lee's gruffly brittle point of view are as intricate and penetrating as the shifting intrigue surrounding the bomb. The result is a magisterial meditation on appearance and misunderstanding as it plays out for Lee as spouse, colleague, exile and citizen. (Feb.)

In Freeman's chilling, atmospheric latest, Jonathan Stride returns from a Las Vegas stint (in Stripped) to head the major crimes detective bureau of his former Duluth, Minn., department. When the husband of Maggie Bei, Stride's former detective partner, is murdered, Maggie becomes the prime suspect, and Stride determines to clear her. Meanwhile, Dan Erickson, an ambitious Duluth county attorney, hires Stride's lover, PI Serena Dial (who returned with Stride from Vegas), to pay off a blackmailer. Freeman slowly weaves the cases together into a labyrinthine search for a serial killer. Following the anonymous predator as well as the cops, the reader is teased by the fiend's identity and hidden motives. The stalwart, intuitive Stride digs into the case's disparate elements, including the city's sexual underworld, and a terrified Serena runs into serious trouble. A strong narrative crammed with twists and studded with sex and violence; a mysterious, even mystical, sense of place; and a well-crafted set of characters and relationships make this one of Freeman's stronger crime thrillers. (Feb.)

Melissa Romney-Jones, recently returned from New York, where she got engaged in the last installment (Little Lady, Big Apple) to handsome Jonathan Riley, is a proper British fixer for the romantically impaired. Now she's knee-deep in royal slime after she agrees to turn smarmy prince Nicolas von Helsing-Alexandros into a perfect gentleman. In short order, Melissa slides into her alter ego, Honey, a powerhouse goddess in skin-tight pencil skirts and bust-enhancing tops that help keep Nicky, with his wandering eye and womanizing ways, focused on her and her makeover attempts. Meanwhile, as Melissa and Jonathan plan their wedding, Jonathan devolves from wonderboy real estate guru and dreamy hunk to a controlling jerk, leading Melissa to believe her trusty best friend Nelson could be the man of her dreams. Browne is in great form in this page-turning love story, and Melissa is as endearing and empowering as ever—the perfect lead for this contemporary fairy tale. (Feb.)

Southern hospitality and sweetly loose-lipped neighbors ooze from the pages of the sparkling latest from Lippi (Homestead). John Dodge is a traveling man, rescuing small businesses around the country to flip for a profit. When he finds himself in Lamb's Corner, S.C., to take over a stationery store, he is greeted by some kooky Swedes building an automotive plant and an observant young girl who is determined to uncover his past, among others. Dodge, as he calls himself, befriends Julia Darrow, the owner of a fine linens store who is always in her pajamas. Julia is secretive and mysterious, but Dodge cannot ignore his attraction to her. He doesn't plan to stay in Lamb's Corner very long, and it becomes apparent that Julia can't leave. Lippi's characters are heartfelt and pricelessly named (one 10-year-old boy is called “Bean Hurt”). While the novel moves slowly, it's never shy of drama: Lippi makes a great story out of how a hardcore wanderer and an agoraphobic come together. (Feb.)

A wisecracking misfit finds herself—along with a motley assortment of outcasts—on an impromptu road trip across a bleak America in Helnwein's funny, offbeat debut novel. We first meet sarcastic Hester Day at her high school graduation and instantly sense her disconnect from society. Her mother wants her to go to college, but Hester has other ideas and soon marries Fenton Flaherty, an eccentric she barely knows. The marriage, of course, infuriates Hester's parents, so Hester and Fenton embark on a road trip in Fenton's camper, only to discover her weird 10-year-old cousin, Jethro, has stowed away. As their journey becomes more and more aimless, her “kidnapping” hits the national news, and other wanderers—from a “Jesus freak” hitchhiker bearing a cross “big enough to nail a buffalo to,” to Jack, a fellow drifter for whom Hester develops feelings (Hester and Fenton, meanwhile, thrive on bickering, and his one amorous advance isn't consummated)—breeze in and out of the picture. Although Hester might be an exaggerated portrait of disaffected youth, her soul-searching adventure is reliably entertaining and her obligatory final-page epiphany feels just right. (Feb.)

Forensic scientist Evelyn James of the Cleveland Medical Examiner's office returns for this welcome second novel, following Becka's debut, Trace Evidence. Single mother Evelyn must manage her relationship with her sullen teenage daughter, her sputtering romance with homicide detective David Milaski and the demands of a job she loves. As the book opens, a wealthy woman is found murdered in a locked apartment; soon, Evelyn's friend and colleague Marissa Gonzalez, who lives in the same high-security building as the murdered woman, is attacked twice, and another woman is murdered elsewhere. Evelyn works with Milaski and his partner, Bruce Riley, to find the connection among the victims. In addition, claustrophobic Evelyn must collect trace evidence following a salt mine explosion under Lake Erie. Becka, a Cape Coral, Fla., forensic scientist formerly with the Cleveland coroner's office, keeps the details of this gripping procedural vivid all the way up to the harrowing finale. Fans of Patricia Cornwell's prickly Kay Scarpetta will find Evelyn a complementary contrast. (Feb.)

In Brice's accomplished debut, African-American Shay Dixon, a burnt-out grad student, has a “visitation/fantasy/fever dream” featuring Nina Simone, the high priestess of soul, who counsels Shay to “go home.” To do that, she must face Nona, the drunken failure of a mother she's not spoken to in seven years and blames for a harrowing childhood that left her emotionally scarred. Still, she takes Nina's advice, heads home to Denver and discovers that Nona's now an A.A. member with a good job, a lovely home and an adorable three-year-old girl, Sunny, Shay's half-sister. Their reconciliation is complicated by Shay's stubborn anger, Nona's A.A. sponsorship of a troubled young woman and Shay's sexual awakening. Brice's straightforward prose is dead-on in describing the challenges Shay and her mother face as they reconnect. (Feb.)

When Hollywood producer Mandalay Florentino comes to the tiny hamlet of Daily, Tex., she's not at all sure what she will find. She's trying to do damage control because Amber Anderson, a good-girl gospel singer from Daily who is a contestant on Mandalay's American Idol–like reality show, keeps getting herself caught in the tabloids. Mandalay's also trying to keep a lid on the fact that Amber's about to become a finalist, but in a one-stoplight town like Daily, the mere presence of folks from Tinseltown tips off the whole community. Making matters even more complicated, as Mandalay holds off paparazzi, sniffs out the underhanded doings of her conniving boss and begins to suspect her L.A. fiancé of philandering, she loses her heart to a blue-eyed country boy who's got a secret of his own. Wingate (Tending Roses) pens a light and entertaining story of life in a small town with Texas-sized charm. The narration alternates competently between Mandalay and her new ally, Imagene, a widow who discovers new life even as her 70th birthday looms. The novel's Christian themes are incorporated quietly, as characters grow in grace without melodramatic conversions or bedside confessions. Fans of Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt's brand of engaging, contemporary chick lit will enjoy this story. (Feb.)

In this solid western from veteran Dunlap, Deputy U.S. Marshal Piedmont Kelly is suspicious when drifter George Alvord shows up at his Arizona desert campsite; Kelly ties up Alvord for the night, and the next morning finds Alvord stabbed and his saddle bags gone. He sets out to catch the killer, and on the first day comes across Spotted Dog, an elderly Apache crippled by a bullet who claims to have been shot by his own people, who see him as a traitor. Once Kelly brings Spotted Dog into town, however, Sheriff Drago identifies the old man as one of the Apaches who robbed the Overland Stage of $10,000 and killed four people. Kelly suspects Drago knows more about the money than the Apache ever did, and the story moves ahead steadily, with Drago's vile sidekick, Cloyd, providing some squirms. Dunlap delivers few surprises, but a likable hero in Kelly. (Feb.)

The latest collection from Miller (The Nature of Longing) skillfully explores the tension in Midwestern race and class relations. “Getting to Know the World,” for example, follows the bigotry directed toward a black family ensconced for generations within an Ohio farming community: by 1970, they're one of the only black families “brave enough or crazy enough” to still be around. “Hawaii” imagines a fatherless black boy's torment when his mother—rejecting any ties with her former husband, Samson, now living in Hawaii—remarries a white man hostile to the boy's acute sense of loss. The clash between a cautious Midwestern parsimoniousness and fast-paced yuppie recklessness becomes apparent in the opening story, “Ice,” in which a sleek, affluent daughter living in San Francisco visits her Depression-era parents for Christmas: the presents they exchange painfully underscore the emotional gaps between them. Miller can also be playful and self-consciously literary, as in fleshing out the lonely life of a Chekhov character betrayed by her husband in “Dimitry Gurov's Dowdy Wife.” Miller's tales impart a real breadth of experience. (Jan.)

A pretty pioneering suffragette meets a stodgy undertaker in Nowak's charming historical romance debut. Thirtyish spinster and women's rights activist Sarah Donovan moves to 1876 Denver to be a Kansas Pacific telegrapher. After greedy kids shoot the pet dog of two young girls (there's a bounty on strays), Sarah comes to the girls' aid, and meets their father: prim widower Daniel Petterman, an undertaker. While a possible relationship begins between Sarah and Daniel , Sarah's rookie mistake regarding notice of an arriving body—along with Daniel's puritanical attitude—slow things down at work and on the romance front. Then there are Sarah's difficulties with Frank, a jealous male co-worker, and with Lavinia, an equally jealous member of the Colorado Suffrage Association. Nowak captures courtship in the Rocky Mountains outpost with flair, but the resolution doesn't live up to Sarah's pioneering spirit. (Jan.)

Bestselling author Miller (The Good Mother; When I Was Gone) returns with a rich, emotionally urgent novel of two women at opposite stages of life who face parallel dilemmas. Meri, the young, sexy wife of a charismatic professor, occupies one wing of a New England house with her husband. An unexpected pregnancy forces her to reassess her marriage and her childhood of neglect. Delia, her elegant neighbor in the opposite wing, is the long-suffering wife of a notoriously philandering retired senator. The couple have stayed together for his career and still share an occasional, deeply intense tryst. The women's routines continue on either side of the wall that divides their homes, and the two begin to flit back and forth across the porch and into each others physical and psychological spaces. A steady tension builds to a bruising denouement. The clash, predicated on Delia's husband's compulsive behavior and on Meri's lack of boundaries, feels too preordained. But Miller's incisive portrait of the complex inner lives of her characters and her sharp manner of taking them through conflicts make for an intense read. (Jan.)

In this tepid sequel to 2004's The Prince of Beverly Hills, bestseller Woods revisits the late 1940s but fails to realistically evoke the era of the HUAC hearings, Hollywood blacklists and the waning days of big studios and the star system. Demoted L.A. detective Rick Barron recently quit the force to head security for Centurion Studios and has now morphed into the studio's head of production. Using this new power at the studio, Rick is in charge of selecting leading actors and scouting settings for a gritty western written by famous playwright Sidney Brooks. Centurion is a worthy stand-in for the typical studio of the era, but the Hollywood blacklist story and the untimely disappearance of one of the stars is familiar territory, and Woods doesn't break any new ground. Longtime fans of Woods's Stone Barrington series are sure to enjoy certain aspects of the story, but newcomers are likely to be disappointed. (Jan.)

Mockingly irreverent and verging on the fantastical, Grunberg's satirical comedy featuring a contemporary messiah will amuse some readers and offend others. When Swiss teenager Xavier Radek meets Awromele Michalowitz, a rabbi's son, decides it is his life's mission to “comfort the Jews” to atone for their suffering. Idealistic and naïve to the point of foolishness, Xavier is a contemporary version of the Jewish folkloric character Gimpel the Fool. Never mind that his grandfather was a superzealous Nazi, and his mother thinks that “You-Know-Who” had the right idea in exterminating the Jews. Both young men acknowledge the erotic bond between them, first evidenced when Xavier undergoes a botched circumcision. As the action moves from Basel to Amsterdam to Tel Aviv in a series of farcical adventures involving violence, brutality, lust and jealousy, the novel reveals a world made up of bigots and complacent hypocrites. Grunberg's iconoclastic novels are bestsellers in Europe, where they have won numerous literary awards. He has a fine touch for the ridiculous and the macabre, but by the time Xavier becomes the corrupt prime minister of Israel and metamorphoses into a modern Hitler, this abrasive satire becomes an open wound. (Jan.)

As the scientific director of the Department of Defense's central identification laboratory, Holland is responsible for identifying unknown U.S. war dead. In this strong sequel to One Drop of Blood (2006), Kel McKelvey has similar duties, though he's in the professional doldrums thanks to an officious and procedure-bound superior. Then McKelvey gets the chance to leave his Hawaii laboratory to help sort out the mystery surrounding Jimmy Tenkiller, a Native American who went missing shortly before his tour of duty in Vietnam was scheduled to end and whose remains the Vietnamese may have just turned over to present-day American authorities. As McKelvey searches for evidence to establish the dead man's identity, he becomes involved in a cross-country search for a murderer with possible ties to Tenkiller and a corrupt cabal of former South Vietnamese officers. Holland skillfully portrays the complexities of the U.S. relationship with its South Vietnamese allies during the war, while keeping readers guessing the killer's identity to the end. (Jan.)

Shamus-winner Estleman, best known for his hard-boiled Amos Walker series (American Detective, etc.), creates a new, morally complex world in this razor-sharp tale of crime and corruption in a fictional eastern U.S. city. Gas City, once known as Garden Grove, has enjoyed stability as a result of understandings among the politicians, the police and the local gangsters. An enclave known as the Circle serves as the community's vice outlet, while the rest of the metropolis is virtually crime free. Police chief Francis Russell, after his wife's death, begins to question the devil's bargain he'd struck years earlier with mob boss Anthony Zeno. When Russell resumes acting like a lawman, virtually everyone in town feels the repercussions. Estleman masterfully creates a wide and diverse cast of characters, and sympathetically portrays their struggles to survive on the mean streets. A superfluous serial killer subplot doesn't detract from the author's achievement, which will justly be compared with that of James Ellroy's Los Angeles noir mysteries and John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions. Admirers of unsparing crime fiction will hope that Estleman plans to visit Gas City again. (Jan.)

In Swiss novelist Mercier's U.S. debut, Raimund Gregorius is a gifted but dull 57-year-old high school classical languages teacher in Switzerland. After a chance meeting with a Portuguese woman in the rain, he discovers the work of a Portuguese poet and doctor, Amadeu de Prado, persecuted under Salazar's regime. Transfixed by the work, Gregorius boards a train for Lisbon, bent on discovering Prado's fate and on uncovering more of his work. He returns to the sites of Prado's life and interviews the major players—Prado's sisters, lovers, fellow resistors and estranged best friend—and begins to lose himself. The artful unspooling of Prado's fraught life is richly detailed: full of surprises and paradoxes, it incorporates a vivid rendering of the Portuguese resistance to Salazar. The novel, Mercier's third in Europe, was a blockbuster there. Long philosophical interludes in Prado's voice may not play as well in the U.S., but the book comes through on the enigmas of trying to live and write under fascism. (Jan.)

Like its young heroine, Lillian, Freeman's trim powerhouse is “a pistol.” The novelist and Old Farmer's Almanac essayist sets this story of grim purpose in a rural Vermont of logging, lumber mills and “Lost Towns” beyond the reach of the law. Threatened by the locally notorious villain Blackway, who has smashed her car window and killed her cat, Lillian turns to the sheriff. Unable to offer her legal protection, he sends her to a derelict sawmill where the wheelchair-bound Whizzer Boot holds court to a Greek chorus-like circle of beer-drinking locals. When Lillian refuses to leave town in the face of Blackway's threats, Whizzer assigns fearless young Nate and crafty old Lester to go with her to find him. Over the course of a single day, they venture deep into the sparsely inhabited territory and outlaw criminality of the Lost Towns. Knowing that as they get close they “got to be ready to go all the way through,” they meet menace and violence head-on. Nate's brawn, Lester's cunning and Lillian's stolid determination lead them to a late-night confrontation with Blackway that is as startling as it is inevitable. Freeman's beautifully cadenced dialogue is rich with humor, philosophic depth and a near-mythic sensibility. (Jan.)

Jewish jewel trader Abraham, a widower at 28, leaves Venice in 1598 for Pegu, a Burmese kingdom halfway around the world, where he is to settle and acquire high-quality gems for the family business. In his letters home, which comprise much of the novel, Abraham, liberated from the ghetto, delights in the freedom to walk when and where he will, but soon discovers that foreigners are expected to perform a specific service to bring luck to the marriages of young brides, one that is forbidden by Jewish law. His relationship with a young woman, Mya, expands his views, and he develops deep friendships with several other locals. As political unrest grows in the area, however, Abraham is forced to choose between his feelings for Mya and his certainty that the world does not have a place for their love. Making his fiction debut, Hantover intercuts Abraham's letters with short chapters from Mya's point of view with delicacy and grace. He evokes the lush setting and gives clear voice to Abraham's doubts, fears and passions. (Jan.)

Harvard law grad Buxbaum makes an appealing debut with this tale of Yale law graduate Emily Haxby, eager to break through the emotional and professional ties that bind her. “It's like you get pleasure out of breaking your own heart,” best friend Jess tells Emily after her bustup with her doctor boyfriend. But Emily isn't through self-destructing; she also implodes over her fast-failing Grandpa Jack, from whom Emily learned “everything... about life”; chilly relations with her lieutenant governor father, Kirk; and a precarious career as a litigator defending big, evil corporations for a Manhattan law firm. This single-gal-in-the-city finds her white-knuckle hold on life and love slowly slipping as it dawns on her that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's emptiness. Grandpa Jack and his retirement home pal, Ruth, help steer Emily to a soft landing, but the big disappointment is that the resolution is far less interesting than the unraveling that precedes it. (Jan.)

After almost two score books, many of them bestsellers, Higgins (Without Mercy) knows how to fire up a thriller. In the first half-dozen pages, he establishes his London locale; reintroduces recurring lead Sean Dillon, the colorful former IRA man turned British intelligence antiterrorism op; has Sean shoot a smalltime hood's ear off; and intimates there are much bigger fish to fry beyond the hood's Russian employer. The real villain is a Muslim extremist of the al-Qaeda variety: Hussein Rashid, aka the Hammer of God, and one of the most successful assassins alive, with 27 certified kills of American and British soldiers and Iraqi politicians. Hussein has his sights set on Charles Ferguson, head of British intelligence. It's a longstanding grudge, complicated by the recent kidnapping of Hussein's promised bride, his 13-year-old cousin Sara, who was earlier kidnapped by Hussein himself. The proceedings are complicated; it helps if the reader is a veteran of this long-running series. But it's all pure Higgins: almost every shot hits square between the eyes, and all the characters are hard lads indeed. (Jan.)

DuBois, known primarily for his Lewis Cole detective series, offers up a stand-alone thriller built around the threat of a massive anthrax terrorist attack. While the Twin Towers are still smoking, three intelligence officers meet to discuss averting future threats. They form secret units known as Tiger teams, drawing recruits from inside and outside existing government agencies. CIA officer Adrianna Scott, the head of Tiger Team Seven, announces to her crew of military and law enforcement experts that the U.S. will be hit big in approximately four weeks, though no one knows where or how. Points of view shift between the terrorists, who rush to implement their plan, and the good guys, who rush to stop the approaching horror but who have a mole buried deep within their ranks. The basic themes are familiar, but Dubois's execution is inventive, with plot twists good enough to keep readers whipping through the pages. (Jan.)

In the mid-1960s, Ibrahim, a Palestinian-Muslim school teacher with literary ambitions, takes a job in a small Jordanian village and falls in love with Mariam, a Christian raised in Brazil who has returned to her home village. The problem with this love affair, as Ibrahim realizes in the retrospective voice that dominates the novel, is that he has loved his image of Mariam and has never understood her as a real person. Reality intrudes, however, when Mariam becomes pregnant: Ibrahim is paralyzed by the difficulties a Muslim-Christian marriage presents, and jealous of Mariam's prior adoration of a Brazilian priest. His growing commitment to Palestinian liberation after the 1967 war allows him to justify his return. When he returns to Jordan in 2000—a wealthy, twice-divorced and disillusioned secular Arab—he becomes obsessed with finding Mariam and his unknown son. The title's complexities mirror those of this fugue-like novel, which finds Ibrahim cycling among versions of himself and of Mariam. As Ibrahim's realizations pile up, their irreconcilability becomes a delicate and powerful allegory for Middle Eastern conflict. Palestinian novelist Khalifeh (Wild Thorns), who won the 2006 Naguib Mahfouz medal for literature, offers a challenging take on vexing territory. (Jan.)

Even die-hard conspiracy theorists will be dubious about the sinister government-led plots that form the shaky foundation of this political thriller. Alten, best-known for his gory novels featuring giant prehistoric sharks (Meg; The Trench), goes well beyond the already far-fetched idea that the Bush administration let the devastating 9/11 attacks happen to further the neoconservative agenda of reshaping the Middle East. In 2012, with “centrist conservative” David McKuin in the White House, the federal government plots to detonate a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city and blame Iran as a cover to take out that country's radical leadership. Standing in the plotters' way is Ace Futrell, an energy expert whose murdered wife was possibly targeted by U.S. intelligence. An awkward mix of actual and fictional political figures (Hillary Clinton is still in the Senate in 2012, having lost the 2008 election to McKuin) doesn't make this paranoid and superficial book more plausible. (Jan.)

During the Napoleonic Wars, Royal Navy Capt. Alan Lewrie (Sea of Grey) finds that he has been sentenced to death in absentia by a Jamaican kangaroo court for stealing slaves, and is pursued to England by enemies trying to carry out that sentence. As the famously byzantine British legal system grinds on, Lewrie becomes a cause célèbre among William Wilberforce's abolitionists, who hire a hotshot barrister to defend Lewrie. While waiting for his case to come up, Lewrie (released until then because of his social standing) returns to H.M.S. Savage, now on blockade duty off southwest France. He quickly turns a dull assignment on its ears by organizing an amphibious raid against fortifications on the French coast while dealing with an old rival with a grudge and a secret. Lambdin manages to make the Bleak House–like British legal system of the era comprehensible to the layman, while his mastery of period naval warfare gives his battles real punch. (Jan.)

In Edgar-finalist Hockensmith's rollicking third mystery to feature Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer (after 2007's On the Wrong Track), the Sherlock Holmes–loving cowboy brothers do some “detectifying” in 1893 San Francisco, “the world's wickedest city.” After their disastrous tour of duty as railway policemen, the Amlingmeyers join forces with the alluring Diane Corvus, another veteran of the railroad. Together, they investigate the death of Dr. Chan, whose luggage was thrown from the same train that the brothers patrolled and who was possibly done in by Chinese “highbinders,” or hatchet men. Working with local law enforcement and Chinatown's “Napoleon of Crime,” Old Red and Big Red follow a twisted trail that leads from cabbage vendors to whorehouses. Despite a jam-packed plot, Hockensmith takes longer to reach full speed than in previous outings. Still, readers will delight in the hilarious climactic “Mandarin standoff” between Chinatown's underworld and Frisco's hapless police force. (Feb.)

At the start of Sallis's sublime third novel to feature the philosophical John Turner (after 2006's Cripple Creek), Turner, now the sheriff of a nameless rural community near Memphis, still grieves for his lover, Val, who was murdered two years earlier. His opening mantra—“Sometimes you just have to see how much music you can make with what you have left”—relates to not only Turner's melancholy mood but also the economically depressed area and its aging inhabitants. As Turner ponders the abstractions of life on a Main Street bench, a speeding car crashes through the front wall of city hall driven by the former sheriff's troubled son. The ensuing investigation leads Turner to some startling revelations about human nature as well as his own uncertain future. Sallis brilliantly uses flashbacks and tangential anecdotes, but it's the poetic prose (“blackbirds and crows crowded together at water's edge, covens of diminutive priests”) and the richly described rural Southern backdrop that make this slim book such a rewarding read. (Jan.)

Shamus-winner Fulmer (The Dying Crapshooter's Blues) delivers another compelling tale of music and murder. In 1962 Philadelphia, a struggling young boxer's life is changed forever when he comes to the rescue of PI Sal Giambroni during a mugging in a South Philly alley. Giambroni offers welterweight Eddie Cero a job, and after reluctantly accepting, Eddie finds he has a knack for investigative work. He turns his attention to the unsolved disappearance of Johnny Pope, lead singer of the Excels, a once-popular rock group. Eddie finds himself falling for Pope's sister, Valerie, a jazz singer at the Blue Door Club, though she fiercely resists his attempts to uncover the truth about her brother. Fulmer expertly portrays the racial tensions of the era as Eddie, a white man, navigates his relationship with Valerie, a black woman. As in previous works, Fulmer excels at capturing the feel and textures of earlier decades, even as he moves forward in time with each successive novel. Drawn in by the immensely likable characters and rich, realistic story lines, readers will be eager to see where Fulmer goes next. (Jan.)

At the start of Gage's bloody debut, Chief Insp. Mario Silva is asked by his boss, the director of the Brazilian Federal Police, to solve the murder of Bishop Dom Felipe Antunes, who was assassinated at a church consecration in the remote Brazilian town of Cascatas. However, tensions between landowners and the Landless Workers' League embroil Silva in local politics when he must put equal resources into solving the disappearance of a local landowner's son, Orlando Muniz Junior. Priestly pedophilia, kidnappings and more murders punctuate the escalation of the conflict between landowners and reformers, while Silva also grapples with his personal demons, having tracked down and killed both his father's and brother-in-law's murderers. By the end of this brutal novel, it's hard to care who killed whom. It's also a miracle that Silva, who seems increasingly ineffectual, survives the mayhem. This ultraviolent mystery is not for the faint of heart. (Jan.)

First published in 1938, Swiss author Glauser's fourth Jakob Studer novel to be made available in English (after Fever) finds the Bern police sergeant in usual form—too smart to be trusted by his superiors and too superior to be dismissed from his post. When the body of James Farny is found lying atop the grave of the recently deceased wife of the poorhouse warden, the local doctor assumes the death is a suicide. Noticing that the man's clothes are intact despite a shot through the heart, Studer suddenly realizes he met the victim some months before, and Farny predicted his own murder. Dubbing the case the “story of the three locales,” Studer discovers the key suspects are from the poorhouse, a horticultural school and a village inn. Slowly, he puzzles out the relationships and the motives and reveals all in a traditional gathering of the suspects. Glauser's sharp portrayals of local institutions and customs add luster to this somewhat dated classic. (Jan.)

In one of Greenwood's stronger entries in her acclaimed series set in 1920s Australia (Ruddy Gore, etc.), her elegant, larger-than-life amateur sleuth Phryne Fisher travels on holiday from Melbourne to Sydney, where she confronts a pair of pressing mysteries as soon as she washes off the grime of her train trip. Joss Hart and Clarence Ottery, young gentlemen escorts who are students at the University of Sydney, ask Phryne to exonerate a friend accused of stealing exams from a safe in the dean's office. Then Phryne's maid, Dot Williams, discovers her sister, Joan, has disappeared, leaving two young children in the care of Joan's loutish husband. With typical aplomb, Phryne juggles both puzzles, even as she crosses swords with a sinister cult leader who may have at least some of the answers she seeks. The author artfully blends action, humor and deduction. (Jan.)

Family secrets and English country life in the early 1800s intertwine in this stately Austen-inspired tale of etiquette and thwarted love from British author Smith (Tangled Destiny). Charlotte Grayson, her sister and their widowed mother must vacate Westbury Hall, which they've been renting, after the owner, Sir Benjamin Westbury, and his dashing great-nephew, Hugo, demand that the Graysons leave the house earlier than expected. When a violent thunderstorm reveals a skeleton hidden behind the library paneling, Charlotte decides to investigate the identity of the victim and discover how the body got buried in the house. Along the way, she's deeply perplexed to find her initial loathing of the handsome Hugo turning to a kinder emotion. Fans of the era will enjoy the social fetes, marriage obsessions and lush descriptions of food and clothing, but crime buffs may be disappointed by the mystery element's secondary role. (Jan.)

Noreela, the postapocalyptic world that serves as the setting for Lebbon's fantasy-horror hybrids Dusk and Dawn, is the backdrop for the two loosely plotted novellas that make up this collection. In “Vale of Blood Roses,” a former soldier finds himself haunted by the crimes of his past when survivors track him down and threaten his family with a gruesome form of death-in-life if he won't help them find their way home. “The Bajuman” blends high fantasy with hard-boiled detection in its account of a bounty hunter who partners with a warrior mercenary to rescue a kidnapped “fodder,” or member of a race traditionally bred for food. Whereas the first of these tales is indisputably fantastic in terms of its imagery and set pieces, the second reads like a straight crime caper set in an exotic land. In each, Lebbon vividly describes the landscape and local color. Readers who have enjoyed other books in the Noreela series will find these tales a tide-me-over until the next full-length novel. (Feb.)

Martin (Song of Ice and Fire series), Dozois (Strange Days) and Abraham (A Shadow in Summer) revisit classic themes of exploration, exploitation and what it means to be human in this gritty SF adventure. Humanity has finally reached the stars, only to find that all the best spots have been claimed by other races—the Silver Enye, Turu, Cian and others. Human colonists serve as world-building crash-test dummies, dropped onto empty planets deemed too dangerous or inconvenient for other races, “to pave over whatever marvels and threats evolution had put there.” On the misbegotten colony planet of São Paulo, ore prospector Ramon Espejo has no illusions, especially about how the Enye view humanity. Then Ramon murders the wrong man in a drunken fight and takes off into the wastelands to avoid the Enye authorities. Once in the outback, he discovers he's not the only one trying to hide from the Enye—and that the deadly cat-lizards called chupacabras are far from the worst dangers on São Paulo. This tightly written novel, with its memorable protagonist and intriguing extrapolation, delivers on all levels. (Jan.)

At the start of Abé's inventive third novel (after 2006's The Dream Thief) to feature the drákon (creatures who appear to be extraordinarily beautiful humans but can turn into smoke or dragons at will), the English drákon, who believe they are the last of their kind, are delighted to learn of another drákon tribe in the Carpathian mountains, ruled by alpha princess Maricara of the Zaharen through her nonalpha brother. The English drákon, led by their alpha lord, Kimber Langford, earl of Chasen, send emissaries from their stronghold of Darkfrith in York to Transylvania, but the emissaries are murdered en route by a secret organization dedicated to the annihilation of the drákon. Maricara journeys alone to England to warn the English drákon of the danger. Romantic fantasy fans are sure to look forward to further installments in this winning series set in the late 18th century. (Dec.)

In Howard's gripping second volume in her Rune of Unmaking high fantasy series (after The Hidden Stars), Ouriána, the queen of Phaôrax, seeks an heir. Since Ouriána has lost one son and does not trust a second, she sends her high wizard north in search of her niece, a princess who's living as a healer under the name Winloki. Some of the northerners have other plans for Winloki, particularly the wizard Sindérian and her father, Faolein (in the form of an owl). Sindérian and Faolein arrive too late to forestall the high wizard, but set off after him and Winloki on a long and breathless chase by land and by sea. On the way, daughter and father encounter caverns of the dead, kingdoms of dwarves and vicious manticores. Swift pacing, well-crafted characters and vivid battle scenes lift this well above the average Tolkien-inspired fantasy. (Dec.)

Stoker-winner Keene (Ghoul) delivers a lot of gore but little else that's memorable in this horror novel set in central Pennsylvania. Larry Gibson, a package-loader for Globe Package System, becomes fascinated with Sondra Belov, a dancer at the Odessa, a strip joint owned by Zakhar Putin, a mysterious Russian known as “Whitey.” After one visit to the club, Gibson is surprised to find Sondra hiding under his car. When he helps her escape from Whitey, he discovers he's made an enemy of an apparent immortal, who bounces back after being shot, eviscerated and otherwise mortally injured. Sandra explains that Whitey, a descendant of Rasputin, has inherited remarkable regenerative powers. Readers may find Gibson's transformation from an average guy to a master fighter who can hold his own against the monstrous Whitey less than convincing. (Dec.)

Veteran Nolan (Dark Universe) shows the versatility that earned him a 2005 Living Legend Award from the International Horror Guild in this collection of 23 previously uncollected stories. Most are short, sharp horror shockers that end with an O. Henry–type twist, though several range freely into fantasy and science fiction. Among the best are tales with a crime angle. In “Listening to Billy,” a man finds his frustration with his deteriorating marriage stoked to murderous violence by a fellow bar patron who proves to be something weirdly more than he appears. In “Silk and Fire,” a James M. Cain homage, a private detective finds himself unwittingly played by a double-crossing client. “Ripper!”—an effective exercise in supernatural noir—imagines the horror that might happen were the spirit of Jack the Ripper to accompany London Bridge on its transfer from England to Arizona. Whether writing from the perspective of a love-struck werewolf or a serial killer desperately trying to suppress his violent urges, Nolan shows a command of the short story form that's a tribute to his 50 years of perfecting his craft. (Dec.)

Uptight business executive Persephone Pyle tries on a pair of shoes in the Pittsburgh airport and finds herself magically whisked to a ship at sea in 1706, captained by a privateer who bears a startling resemblance to her office crush, Tom Fraser. She becomes even more bewildered when she discovers that the captain, Philip Drummond, is a character from a romance novel she's been thinking about writing. In exchange for her safe passage to Venice, Drummond orders her to help him find some crucial documents that will determine the fate of the English navy. While she's falling for the roguish Philip, she finds it necessary to travel back to the 21st century and recruit Tom's help; among the time traveling, swashbuckling and office politics, Persephone is no longer sure what she wants—or whom. Cready combines her disparate elements with fast-paced dialogue and a charming plot, hanging it all on a smart, sassy lead who's equally believable as a businesswoman and a writer. Tackling both time travel and the concept of authorial intent in fresh ways, this romance debut is a joy and its author worth watching. (Feb.)

Divorcée Kate Livingston leads a sedate life in the suburbs of Chicago, trying with little enthusiasm to get back into the dating game, when a childhood friend offers to set her up with a dashing older man named Michael Waller. The two get married after a whirlwind courtship, but the honeymoon is over quickly when Michael begins acting strangely secretive. What Kate doesn't know is that Michael is part of a secret spy organization called the Trust that works illegally to advance American interests abroad. As Kate gets more suspicious, Michael decides to get out of espionage, agreeing to one last contract killing before he's through forever. Caldwell's taut, enjoyable thriller hits the ground running, crafting a married-to-the-mob scenario that's believable and chilling, then taking the show around the world. Though a ham-handed villain occasionally bogs down the action, Caldwell's plot moves smoothly, juggling a number of perspectives without losing steam. (Jan.)

Shape-shifter Mercy Thompson has a complex life, juggling two werewolf lovers and a job working for a fae mechanic; things get even more hectic when her boss and mentor is arrested for killing a citizen of the fae reservation. As the fae seem content to let him rot, Thompson takes it on herself to clear her friend's name, beginning a lone-wolf investigation that may cost her life. Briggs's third novel featuring Thompson (after Blood Bound) is another top-notch paranormal mystery; her well-balanced contemporary world, where humans live uneasily among werewolves and fae, is still a believably lived-in world; the ever-present threat of government legislation against nonhumans (though familiar to X-Men fans) adds weight to her paranormal elements, and thoughtfully researched mythology adds rich detail. Thompson is a sharp, strong heroine and her lycanthropic love triangle is honest and steamy. Briggs never shies from difficult material, and she moves effortlessly from werewolf pack psychology to human legal proceedings, making this a tense, nimble, crowd-pleasing page-turner. (Jan.)

The latest installment in Guhrke's Girl-Bachelor Chronicles (after And Then He Kissed Her) is a capable Victorian that finds an unlikely heiress and a penniless duke headed for the altar. Prudence Bosworth is working as a lowly seamstress when she discovers that her absentee father has died a wealthy man in America and named her his sole beneficiary. But in order to inherit his vast fortune, the will stipulates that she must marry within the year. Prudence is pleasantly surprised when Rhys De Winter, the duke of St. Cyres, showers her with attention and affection. Naturally, he's hoping to restore his family's coffers, but is caught off guard when a very real attraction builds between them. Though Prudence's reverent, unsuspecting attitude toward St. Cyres might strike readers as unrealistically naïve, they should enjoy the transformation it inspires in selfish St. Cyres, and the distinctive conclusion is satisfying. (Jan.)

The 11 artists who contribute short pieces to this anthology, originally published last year in France, are animators associated with Blue Sky Studios, and their artwork bears stylistic hallmarks of the best contemporary animation. Each piece has an exquisitely realized visual aesthetic and command of color, from Tsutsumi's richly modeled three-dimensional constructs in “Noche y Dia” to Peter de Sève's variation on classic children's book illustration in “The Mermaid”; Benoit le Pennec's whimsical “Floating Holidays” is the only piece drawn with fairly traditional comics line work. What comes alive on a big screen, though, doesn't always sit comfortably on the page, and too many of these pieces are undeveloped germs of ideas (Greg Couch's “Four & Twenty Blackbirds” is a mashup of Mother Goose and “The Maltese Falcon” that never gets past stating its premise). Others are nearly unreconstructed storyboards (like Andrea Blasich's “Yes I Can,” in which a young inventor and a dragon build mechanical wings, then go flying) or simply incoherent (like Daniel López Muñoz's pseudoprofound “Silent Echoes”). Everything comes together in a few stories, especially Michael Knapp's nearly wordless psychological sketch, “Newsbreak,” but most of this volume is better suited to gazing at than to reading. (Dec.)

Four previously published volumes of this charmingly whimsical manga are assembled under one cover, collecting a huge number of four-panel strips and the occasional entry in more traditional comic style. Taken as a whole, the sheer volume of material builds a world that makes up for the slightness of the individual strips as we follow four high school girls to graduation. Each chapter, named for a month, focuses on typical events of the season, and the humor comes through a variety of approaches: physical comedy, contrasting expectations, goofy behavior, exaggerated literalism and the occasional dreamy surrealism. The girls have defining characteristics and hairstyles. The standout is brainy 10-year-old Chiyo, who closely resembles the title character from Azuma's later work Yotsuba&!. Meanwhile, the freedom of action of an incompetent teacher who inappropriately behaves like a student herself is shown as oddly attractive. The story line is very Japanese, with its emphasis on structure and school ritual. Some of the Americanizations, like having an Osaka student speak Brooklynese, are necessary but slightly jarring. The omnibus is an ideal presentation for the series and should bring new readers to the franchise. (Nov.)

Twenty-six New Yorker cartoonists take on aging, retirement, death and “the Great Beyond.” George Booth, Edward Koren, Marisa Acocella Marchetto (creator of Cancer Vixen) and Gahan Wilson are among those confronting the Reaper. Some cartoons in the book have previously appeared in the New Yorker, but most are originals. Contributors range in age from their 30s to the 90-year-old Frank Modell. Various cartoons deal with the shock of baby boomers as their old age looms: Roz Chast depicts the “body with a mind of its own,” aging despite its owner's wishes; J.B. Handelsman draws an executive telling an older worker that the company encourages certain employees to die. But many of the cartoons celebrate the continuing vitality of seniors, such as Lee Lorenz's female astronaut who “will be the first Gray Panther to walk on the moon.” The hooded Grim Reaper is a continuing presence, but many cartoons are set in heaven or hell. In the back of the book, most of the contributors say who they would like to meet in the “Great Beyond.” In this life-affirming collection, even death can't halt the momentum of the human comedy. (Nov.)

There is no other cartoonist like Yokoyama. The two dozen brief, deeply disquieting pieces collected here look like stories, but on examination, they're more like complicated, stylized diagrams of social, technical and ecological systems, dominated by Yokoyama's fascination with textures, costuming, repetition, landscaping and—above all—sound effects. “Engineering 3,” for instance, shows a mountain being built out of boulders, then covered with Astroturf, fake trees and hand-drawn simulations of more rocks. (The Japanese sound effects that appear everywhere in the book are translated at the bottom of each page, which is how Anglophone readers know that “shuru shuru,” for instance, is the “high pitched sound of boulders being dropped from plane.”) Occasionally, blank-faced figures appear on a panel to run around and scream—a couple of pieces, like the opening “Book,” even look like fight scenes—but Yokoyama disregards plot and character altogether in favor of atmosphere and technical details, which he draws with the kind of gusto and dramatic foreshortening other artists reserve for actual human interaction. Some of these pieces are nearly incomprehensible, as the author admits in his explanatory endnotes; he thinks of his work as “serialized paintings,” extending in time from single images. Yet everything is delightful on the level of pure, mad design. (Nov.)

Smith wraps up his bravura lampoon of Los Angeles's ethnic and class stewpot in much the same way that it began—with a procession of singularly entertaining characters ripped from the fabric of multicultural urban life. MBQ is ostensibly the story of Omario, a flat-broke but supremely confident self-proclaimed comic book genius. But Omario's quest to alert the planet to his genius (and get rich) serves as a vehicle to examine the crazy group of supporting characters. There's Dee, a brutal black drug dealer who admires Omario's uncompromising self-confidence; Omario's Korean buddy Brian, who works in a karaoke bar but aspires to rap his way to hip-hop stardom; and Aidan O'Malley, a star rookie cop secretly warped by street beatings suffered when he was a kid. Smith weaves together many interconnected stories in a final crescendo of hilarity, adrenaline-pumping violence and smokin' hot chicks. But his ruthlessly funny, weirdly affectionate portrait of L.A. is really a paean to the life of the serious, and usually poor, artist—you do what you gotta do to get your art done—even it means working the late shift at McBurger Queen. An early star of the original manga movement, Smith is a prodigious talent, and MBQ is his introduction to the comic book world. (Oct.)