Fiction Reviews: Week of 3/3/2008

Greenland's uproarious second novel (after The Bones) follows the manifold ups and downs of Marcus Ripps, an unemployed and ill-fated altruist who inherits from his estranged brother an escort service run out of a Hollywood dry cleaning shop. Burdened by mounting debt and his chilly wife, Jan, and concerned that he won't be able to pay for his son's bar mitzvah, Marcus decides to become a pimp. With assistance from Kostya, his brother's former bodyguard, Marcus not only keeps the business afloat, he improves it and offers the prostitutes health insurance and retirement plans. After a john dies handcuffed to a bed, Marcus enlists Jan's help to dump the body. Eager to work with her husband, Jan joins the company, a move that improves their marriage and business, as the Smart Tarts (as Jan names the service) becomes a Web-based cash cow. (Even Jan's ailing mother gets involved.) Things turn around for the Ripps, but trouble comes when a rival pimp threatens Marcus's life. Despite some predictable plot twists and the requisite Hollywood ending, Greenland's novel is entertaining and intelligent, and packed with enough hooks (and hookers) to keep readers sucked in to the last page. (July)

Feisty Southern sisters Juts and Wheezy, of bestselling author Brown's Six of One trilogy, are back and as irascible as ever. The story unfolds in a single summer day in 1952, when the two make a day-trip to the beach accompanied by Jut's seven-year-old daughter, Nickel, and Wheezie's grandson, eight-year-old Leroy, whose mother has recently died. The day's events are simple: a long drive to the beach, the building of an elaborate sandcastle, a spat between sisters, lunch at a crab shack, a sudden injury and the drive back home. Brown creates palpable tension throughout, largely with tightly constructed dialogue. Nickel's teasing of grieving Leroy foreshadows the small catastrophe to come, and her cruelty contrasts with Juts's awkward attempts to draw her newly religious sister, still mourning the death of her daughter (Leroy's mother), back into the world. When the four return from lunch, Leroy receives a wound that rivals his inner pain. The sisters' collective response and Leroy's eventual release into sadness shape the end of the day, but not of the novel: the final three paragraphs elevate this tale from bittersweet to heartbreaking. (July)

Monroe delivers another novel of strong Southern women, and though this one has its share of weak moments, the author's love for her characters is palpable throughout. Mia Landan, a cancer survivor, returns to Charleston after a fly-fishing retreat and finds her husband in bed with another woman. Shocked, Mia rushes back to the mountains where she'd been fishing and seeks the help of fly fisherman Belle Carson, who offers her the use of a ramshackle cabin for the summer. Upon Mia's first trip into town, she learns why the cabin looks like it hasn't been opened in years—it's where Kate Watkins, Belle's grandmother, allegedly murdered her lover. But after Mia conveniently finds Kate's diary tucked away in the cabin, she becomes determined to get to the bottom of things, despite Belle's warnings not to stir up the mud. Through a series of occasionally contrived diary entries, flashbacks and folksy recollections from locals, the narrative juxtaposes Kate's story with Mia's self-discovery, and while the predictable ending results from implausibly convenient plot twists, Monroe's fans will still enjoy the author's spin on love, mystery and the power of self-determination. (July)

War, love and culture shock take various forms, but the size of the world, in Silber's magnificent fiction, is often no larger than the distance to the person in bed beside you. Like NBA finalist Ideas of Heaven (2005), Silber's sixth work of fiction consists of interlinked stories where minor or passing characters in one piece become the narrators of others, roaming from WWII Sicily to roaring '20s Siam, and from Vietnam-era Mexico to 9/11-era Bloomington, Ind. All six stories turn on the tensions between home, exile and otherness, but to follow any of the threads would be to give away the subtle connections among the characters, from a male Sicilian-American postcolonialist professor from Hoboken to a Florida woman named Kit who can sum up an old boyfriend as “the sort of boy who seemed startled when having sex. At the time his awe and confusion were endearing.” The frankness of Silber's characters is deliciously at odds with the delicacy of their observations as they absorb children, affairs, fractured and repaired families and early death in environments familiar and alien to them. The characters' many lifetimes pass with a page-turning effortlessness that belies their intense, moving depths. (June)

Britain's bestselling Vincenzi (Sheer Abandon, etc.) sets this doggedly optimistic epic at the sunset of Thatcherism, and the bleak economic landscape proves fertile territory for a saga of families whose futures and fortunes become entwined in a court battle with the prestigious London insurer, Lloyds. There's Elizabeth, wife and mother of three with a “Very Big Job” in advertising; her charming husband, Simon, a banker with an eye for the ladies; posh Lucinda, who falls for working-class Blue and then risks everything to save her ex's fortune; Debbie's frustrated by her insensitive husband, Richard, afraid of her formidable mother-in-law and devoted to her three kids; and reporter Joel, who helps bring a Lloyds scandal to light and falls in love with one of its victims. Vincenzi deftly imbues the “Greed Decade” with all the twisty turns of an overheated soap—couples trapped by boredom, wives tortured by infidelity, singles hamstrung by convention, children buffeted by circumstance. The general stiff-upper-lipped attitude may sound tinny to American ears (even the Yankees sound like Brits-in-training), but this chickensian drama delivers all the goods required for a sizzling summer read. (June)

An earnest presidential hopeful's campaign staff invents a sex scandal in Folman's slick debut. After Machiavellian campaign manager Thomas Campman hears a voice telling him that sin will make his struggling candidate, Sen. Ben Phillips, human, Campman convinces Ben and his fellow advisers that having the candidate admit to a made-up, decades-old affair will endear him to the masses. Though the plan energizes the campaign and boosts Ben's image, it also puts a strain on Ben's marriage, and after other women begin claiming in the press to have had affairs with Ben, the ruse threatens to end in ruin. Though the novel takes a while to find its footing, Folman does a great job of constructing a funny, fast-paced story with plenty of texture. Side plots involving a young ambitious reporter and Campman's driver are neatly folded into the main goings-on, and it's especially enjoyable to chart Ben's transformation from flustered novice to confident charmer, even as his new persona begins to take him over the edge. The lackluster early chapters may thwart readers looking for a biting political satire, but those willing to stay the course will be greatly rewarded. (June)

Lord Elgin may be famous for bringing the Parthenon's sculptural masterpieces to England during the Napoleonic wars, but for Essex (Leonardo's Swans), it's Lady Elgin who pays for it, in fortune and in reputation. More about money than sex, and more about art than either, Essex's latest alternates the story of Scottish heiress Mary Hamilton Nisbet Bruce, countess of Elgin, with that of Aspasia, courtesan lover of the great Pericles and the inspiration for the Parthenon's Athena. Essex begins with 21-year-old Mary, newly wed and pregnant, en route to Constantinople with her diplomat husband. She soon discovers his obsession with dismantling the Ottoman-controlled Parthenon and his plan to reconstruct it in his Greek revival home. Over years, Mary endures his neglect and gives him five children before turning to fellow Scot Robert Ferguson, a powerful Englishman who stands by her during a racy divorce trial. That trial, in which English society spurns Mary, is mirrored by Aspasia's run-in with an Athenian court for sexual impropriety. Both of their stories are overshadowed by the marbles themselves; their creation, recovery, transport and restoration provide the most vivid passages of the novel. Essex shines light on the women who inspired and protected some of the greatest art ever created, and the men who exploited them. (June)

Childless, married Lily Spencer, 46, falls for 30-something widower Danny Malloy and his five-year-old son in this would-be Whartonesque marriage tale from former book editor Lustbader (Hidden). Lily's troubled marriage has led her to retreat to the small Catskill town of Stone Creek while husband Paul, 54, a successful Manhattan attorney, remains submerged in work. Paul and Lily have given up hope of having a child: Paul with brisk efficiency, Lily still mournful and yearning. When she and gifted, still-grieving furniture restorer Danny espy each other in the Stone Creek supermarket, sparks fly. As they come together, Lily finds in Danny the companionship Paul doesn't provide, and in Danny's son, Caleb, she finds a boy who needs a mother. As much as Lustbader tries to give Danny equal time, his struggles with a secretive, unforgiving mother-in-law never attain the resonance of Lily's search among an ex-husband, a current husband, a lover and a boy for someone with whom she can share her love and pain. Piercingly personal descriptions of love, loss and desperate attempts to plug life's gaps give Lustbader's second novel its emotional edge, while there's plenty of steam for romance readers. (June)

In Chaviano's first English translation, historical fiction is given a strong if awkward shot of the supernatural. Cecilia, a Cuban-born Miami journalist, investigates reports of a “phantom house” that appears in random areas of the city. As she tries to unlock the mystery, she becomes equally entranced by Amalia, an old woman she meets at a Little Havana bar. With only an eccentric great aunt to call family in her adopted city, Cecilia returns again and again to hear Amalia's chronicle of three bloodlines from across the planet that converge in Cuba. Replete with romance, clashing cultures and bloodshed, Amalia's story also has its share of auras, fairy music and imps (including Martinico, who haunts the women in Amalia's family). A descendant of clairvoyants, Cecilia is enthralled by the old woman, but whether readers will be enthralled is another question. Characters are more quirk than flesh, the dialogue is often stilted and though the supernatural plays a large part, the elements frequently feel uncomfortably inserted (such as the cameo of a goat-hoofed Pan). A stronger grounding—either in reality or the supernatural—might have helped this find its groove. (June)

Lee's debut novel is the heartfelt story of Hua Wu, a young Chinese immigrant who comes to New York City and serendipitously becomes a nanny to an adopted Chinese girl, Lily Templeton-Walker, after meeting her American mother, Jane, in the park. Hua becomes attached to the child and involved in the family, but is disturbed when she uncovers trouble in Jane's marriage. She begins to snoop around her employers' apartment hoping to discover the reason behind the turmoil; the more she finds the more she fears what will happen if Lily's parents separate. This drama takes second stage when Hua meets Evan, the man with whom she wrongly assumed Jane was having an affair. Hua and Evan have an odd one-night stand, during which the author flashes back to Hua's sexual encounter with a teacher in China. Hua's memory of Teacher Zhang leads to a revelation about her past, which prompts Hua to attempt to protect Lily from the pain of her parents' conflict—a rare instance in which Hua takes action. Unfortunately, Lee's impassioned storytelling is unable to make up for prose that is at times overwritten and melodramatic. The passive and often stereotypical characters make this portrait of a Chinese immigrant feel simplistic and uninspired. (June)

As she did for Napoleon's wife (The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.), Gulland skillfully blends fact and fiction to imagine the life of Louise de la Vallière (1644–1710), mistress to Louis XIV, France's Sun King. Louise loses her father early and spends her childhood in a convent run by her aunt, Sister Angelique. When Louise's mother, Françoise, marries a marquis, she takes Louise home, where, by chance, she meets King Louis. As she secures a position at court about 100 pages in, the plot finally begins to bubble with intrigue: the king has married for political reasons, but, as a young and pious man, he has not kept a mistress before Louise. Their secret love eventually comes to light, but not without exacting a price. A supernatural element threaded throughout adds color to Gulland's vivid period imaginings. (June)

In Jenkins's outrageous sports satire (after Slim and None), middle-aged sportswriter Jack Brannon is sick of writing about Tiger Woods and the boring testosterone-charged PGA tour. So the swaggering Texan decides to check out the ladies of the LPGA, specifically hot teen sensation and fellow Texan, Ginger Clayton. She's a “fiery eighteen-year-old blonde” with the potential to become the next golf superstar (or, in pro golf parlance, a real “franchise babe”). Soon, Jack is impressed by Thurlene, Ginger's gorgeous single mom, and enamored of Ginger's talent, beauty and precocious professionalism. He decides to tag along, taking notes and observing the peculiar peccadilloes of professional sports—including crazed stage-golf moms and others who'll stop at nothing to get ahead in the high-stakes game. Jenkins pokes fun at the golf world eccentricities he knows so well and allows Jack major leeway in making smart-mouth commentary as he falls in love and gets a great scoop. (June)

Like her 2006 debut, Fireworks, Winthrop's second novel focuses on the turmoil wrought by the loss of a child. Although Wilson and Ruth Carter's 11-year-old daughter, Isabelle, is very much alive, she hasn't spoken in nine months, an elective muteness brought on by no known trauma. Her silence confounds her parents, a series of psychiatrists and her Manhattan private school, which, by December, is losing patience with her. Ruth, a successful lawyer, pores over Isabelle's past actions and sketchbooks for hidden meanings; Wilson, a well-meaning but often bumbling father who still views his preteen daughter as a little girl, is convinced that action, not analysis, will cure Isabelle. Isabelle herself, whom Winthrop introduces skillfully through a shifting third-person omniscient narrative, is most intriguing: keenly self-aware but unable to help herself, alternating between resentment and adoration for her parents, Isabelle is in many ways simply a preadolescent to the nth degree. Like budding artist Isabelle, Winthrop is a master of observation, and her ability to crystallize themes in particular vignettes (fixing a broken phonograph, buying Christmas presents) brings this affecting family drama vividly to life. (June)

In her light second novel, Clayton chronicles a group of mothers who convene in a Palo Alto park and share their changing lives as the late 1960s counterculture blossoms around them. Linda is a runner who tracks women's progress at the Olympics. Brett has one eye on the moon, where men are living out her astronaut dreams. Southern belle Kath isn't convinced she has dreams outside the confines of her marriage (but she's open to persuasion), while quiet Ally only hopes for what the other women already have: a child. Frankie, a Chicago transplant who has followed her computer genius husband to a nascent Silicon Valley, is the story's narrator and the ladies' ringleader, inspiring them all to follow her dream of becoming a writer. They write in moments snatched from their household chores and share their stories in the park. Though the narration and story lines are so syrupy they verge on hokey, Clayton ably conjures the era's details and captures the women's changing roles in a world that expects little of them. (June)

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) wrote some of the most beautiful and innovative poetry in English of the late 19th century. In Hansen's vivid fiction, Hopkins is a promising Oxford graduate who writes verse throughout college, converts to Roman Catholicism in his early 20s and takes church orders. Those acts ostracize him from his family and silence his poetry. In parallel with Hopkins's story, Hansen explores the event that jolts Hopkins back into writing in 1875: the sinking of the Deutschland—whose victims include five Catholic nuns exiled from Germany by Bismarck—at the mouth of the Thames. Delivering a deft blend of literary biography and disaster tale, Hansen (Mariette in Ecstasy, etc.) wrings a white-knuckled drama out of the lives of the poet/priest and five extraordinary German women, who were headed to St. Louis, Mo., to lead the American branch of their order. As for Hopkins, his poetry is poorly received for its unconventionality, and his Jesuit superiors punish him for his “oddities” (Hansen steers clear of Hopkins's sexuality). Hansen finds in the difficult paths of six remarkable people the pursuit of “a tranquil, soothing God of intimacy and tolerance and unquenchable love.” Fans of Hopkins's verse will cherish the chance to revisit the astonishing 280-line “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” reprinted as a coda. (May)

Hans van den Broek, the Dutch-born narrator of O'Neill's dense, intelligent novel, observes of his friend, Chuck Ramkissoon, a self-mythologizing entrepreneur-gangster, that “he never quite believed that people would sooner not have their understanding of the world blown up, even by Chuck Ramkissoon.” The image of one's understanding of the world being blown up is poignant—this is Hans's fate after 9/11. He and wife Rachel abandon their downtown loft, and, soon, Rachel leaves him behind at their temporary residence, the Chelsea Hotel, taking their son, Jake, back to London. Hans, an equities analyst, is at loose ends without Rachel, and in the two years he remains Rachel-less in New York City, he gets swept up by Chuck, a Trinidadian expatriate Hans meets at a cricket match. Chuck's dream is to build a cricket stadium in Brooklyn; in the meantime, he operates as a factotum for a Russian gangster. The unlikely (and doomed from the novel's outset) friendship rises and falls in tandem with Hans's marriage, which falls and then, gradually, rises again. O'Neill (This Is the Life) offers an outsider's view of New York bursting with wisdom, authenticity and a sobering jolt of realism. (May)

In a compelling fiction debut, Fonseca takes syndicated health columnist Jean Hubbard, an Oxford-trained lawyer, through a dramatic demonstration of the limits of attachment. Jean is filing her columns from the remote Indian Ocean island of St. Jacques, where her advertising-genius husband, Mark, has moved them. Their time there is disrupted when Jean intercepts a salacious letter from Mark's London office, which leads her in turn to an e-mail signed by a lubricious “Giovana” (Jean immediately notices the odd single n). The e-mail features explicit attachments, and without reflecting on the consequences, Jean, writing as Mark, begins an e-mail correspondence with Giovana. Ensuing events occur in a beautifully orchestrated dramatic arc, drawing in Mark's unscrupulous business partner; Jean's stricken father in New York; Mark's first love's daughter; Jean's former beau; and the secret that pushes the 23-year marriage further toward the precipice. Fonseca's nonfiction Bury Me Standing drew a vivid portrait of the international Gypsy community, and she shifts locales and emotional registers with evocative ease here, delving deeply into her ensemble's motivations. She's as unsparing of their flaws as she is frank about their desires. (May)

In Downing's quiet sequel to Zoo Station, set mostly in Berlin in 1939, British journalist John Russell gets involved in multiple intrigues while working as an amateur spy for the intelligence services of assorted major powers. When Miriam Rosenfeld, a young Jewish woman dispatched from provincial Silesia by her Uncle Thomas, who's Russell's ex-brother-in-law, fails to arrive in Berlin, Thomas asks Russell to help find her. Meanwhile, the Nazis blackmail Russell into passing disinformation to the Soviets by arresting his actress girlfriend, Effi Koenen; he agrees to spy for the Americans in order to get a U.S. passport; and he offers to spy for the Russians if they'll help him leave Europe when the time comes. While these various narrative threads, in particular Rosenfeld's disappearance, do generate suspense, thriller fans should be prepared for a dearth of exciting action scenes. Full of period detail, this novel effectively captures life in the police state of Berlin on the brink of war. (May)

Set in the Soviet Union in 1953, this stellar debut from British author Smith offers appealing characters, a strong plot and authentic period detail. When war hero Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a rising star in the MGB, the State Security force, is assigned to look into the death of a child, Leo is annoyed, first because this takes him away from a more important case, but, more importantly, because the parents insist the child was murdered. In Stalinist Russia, there's no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. After attempting to curb the violent excesses of his second-in-command, Leo is forced to investigate his own wife, the beautiful Raisa, who's suspected of being an Anglo-American sympathizer. Demoted and exiled from Moscow, Leo stumbles onto more evidence of the child killer. The evocation of the deadly cloud-cuckoo-land of Russia during Stalin's final days will remind many of Gorky Park and Darkness at Noon, but the novel remains Smith's alone, completely original and absolutely satisfying. Rights sold in more than 20 countries. (May)

Two women in Venice, separated by a century, search for love and identity in the latest from novelist (Still Point) and memoirist (A Joyful Noise) Weisgall. It opens as Marian Evans—aka Mary Ann Evans, aka the novelist George Eliot (1819–1880)—is on her 1880 honeymoon in Venice with Johnnie Cross, who is 20 years her junior. Evans is trying, after a long and scandalous love affair with fellow author George Lewes, to have a normal marriage. One hundred years later, in the same city, Caroline Spingold travels with her husband, Malcolm, on his business trip aimed at revitalizing the Venetian economy. Caroline is a sculptor with a childhood history in Venice, financially supported by Malcolm, who is 20 years her senior. Malcolm does not share many of Caroline's perceptions, and she grows increasingly weary of her stale marriage. Weisgall shares the stories of Marian and Caroline in alternating chapters, sensitively developing their similarities in artistic and sexual ambition. Both face the deaths of men from their pasts, making love to their memories while their current partners struggle to beautify their lives and aid them in their work. Weisgall's well-researched historical fiction is dense, romantic and provocative. (May)

In this robust historical set during the Romanov twilight, Alexander (The Kitchen Boy) chronicles the careers of two emblematic individuals—the real-life Grand Duchess Elisavyeta (“Ella”), sister of Alexandra, the last tsarina, and the fictional Pavel, a young revolutionary. The author's extensive knowledge of Russia allows him to invigorate the narrative with telling details that bring the aristocrat Ella, who eventually became an Orthodox saint, convincingly to life. His depictions of workers' miseries, from the breadlines to sausage made from cat, are especially strong. Pavel takes part in key events affecting Ella—such as the planning for her husband's assassination—as well as in the street violence that metastasizes into the Bolshevik Revolution. Quick-cutting between the two characters' perspectives gives readers the opposing viewpoints of nobility and proletariat, emphasizing the obliviousness of each group to the other. As in Doctor Zhivago, coincidence abounds and some scenes and themes call to mind that classic, but this is a compelling journey through momentous events that wraps up with a fine, deeply moving finale. 6-city author tour. (May)

Macomber returns to Seattle's fictional Blossom Street of A Good Yarn (and others) for a hopeful tale of four widows who meet at 38-year-old Anne Marie Roche's bookstore. Separated from her husband after he refused to have a baby with her, Anne Marie felt certain they would reconcile—until he suddenly died. Lillie Higgins lost her husband in the same plane crash that claimed the husband of their daughter, Barbie Foster. Elise Beaumont entered widowhood after cancer claimed her husband. Together, the four make life-fulfillment wish lists. With Elise's prodding, Anne Marie decides to fulfill one of her wishes—do good for someone else—and becomes a “lunch buddy” to an at-risk third grader. Anne Marie, meanwhile, must deal with the reappearance of her adult stepdaughter, Melissa, who always held her in disdain. Elise mainly serves as a catalyst for Anne Marie's journey, but there is plenty of focus on Lillian and Barbie, who find purpose in unexpected and difficult relationships. Though stilted dialogue can pull readers out of the moment, Macomber's assured storytelling and affirming narrative is as welcoming as your favorite easy chair. (May)

At the start of McMahon's haunting second novel (after Promise Not to Tell), recent college grad Rhonda Farr witnesses a child abduction in front of a convenience store in Pike's Crossing, Vt. Ernestine “Ernie” Florucci willingly leaves her mother's car because her six-foot-tall abductor is wearing a rabbit suit. Rhonda remembers her best friend Lizzy's father entertaining her and Lizzy in a rabbit costume in 1993, and vanishing soon after. Three years later, Lizzy disappeared en route to high school. Guilt over her inability to stop Ernie's abduction spurs Rhonda to join the search for the girl. She recalls the summer that Lizzy's older brother, Peter, had them all perform Peter Pan, which was a great success, but there were dark secrets beneath the makeshift stage. McMahon expertly shifts between pivotal events in the past and present-day action, building tension to a resolution both poignant and shattering. (May)

At the start of this well-written and sophisticated thriller from Tobias (Deva), a strange one-horned animal breaks out of a storage crate being unloaded at the Port of Antwerp and disappears into the city streets. The initial police inquiry reveals that someone may have weakened the container to allow the creature, which could be the legendary unicorn, to escape. Meanwhile, Martin Olivier, a London attorney specializing in liquidating estates, gets a cryptic message from his uncle James requesting they meet at a remote French chateau. There James informs Martin of a family secret connected with the Order of the Golden Fleece, a venerable society whose members may be protecting the location of the actual Garden of Eden, the home of animals long believed extinct. Aided by his wife, a curator and Renaissance expert, Olivier pieces together the clues linking Beethoven, Rousseau and Sir Thomas More, among many others, to find the truth. The novel's central conceit may be hard for some readers to swallow, but those looking for an original twist on the ancient conspiracy theme will be well rewarded. (May)

A former judge and Washington insider, Sullivan fails to make the most of an intriguing premise in his second political thriller (after The Majority Rules). When Chief Justice Simmons of the U.S. Supreme Court tumbles off the bench while hearing a case, witnesses in the courtroom at first fear he's been “shot by a silenced weapon.” Associate justice Oscar Moorman, an African-American and Vietnam War hero, rushes to help Simmons, who turns out to be dead of a brain aneurysm. When the president nominates the associate justice to succeed Simmons, Moorman reluctantly accepts, knowing the process will uncover aspects of his background that will upset his beloved white wife, Debby. Numerous bad guys, including an evil billionaire and a backstabbing fellow Supreme Court justice, scheme to stop Moorman from becoming chief justice. While the promo copy invokes Othello, readers may also be reminded of Romeo and Juliet after a surprising but ill-advised plot twist toward the end of an otherwise predictable story weighed down by pedestrian prose. (May)

Two gruesome homicides preoccupy Det. Sgt. Diane Fry and Det. Constable Ben Cooper in Booth's ambitious seventh police procedural (after The Dead Place). In England's Peak district, Fry looks into a suspicious house fire that killed Lindsay Mullen and two of her young children, while her husband, Brian, escaped with minor injuries. Meanwhile, Cooper investigates the death of Rose Shepherd, a reclusive woman killed by an apparent sniper-shot through her bedroom window. Both cases yield few clues, and Fry and Cooper run into one dead-end after another. While the link that they eventually uncover between the murders of Shepherd and the Mullens and a notorious Bulgarian gang stretches credulity, Booth compensates with his energetic pace and memorable characters. Genre fans may find a subplot involving psychotic hallucinations clichéd, but few will be able to predict Booth's twisted conclusion. (May)

Romance titan Deveraux (Someone to Love, etc.) packs her latest with jagged surprises, but the pieces fail to fall together satisfyingly. At age 12, Cassandra Madden has been in love with also 'tween Jefferson Ames, whom she meets on a business trip with her mother. After college, Cassie moves to Jeff's hometown of Williamsburg, Va., and eventually becomes nanny to widower Jeff's daughter, Elsbeth. Jeff treats Cassie as part of the family, but reserves his romantic feelings for gorgeous Skylar, who despises Cassie and ignores Elsbeth. When she hears gunshots next door and finds aging film star Althea Fairmont lying prone but unharmed, she and the famous Althea become friends. As Cassie begins to archive Althea's Hollywood memorabilia, she uncovers Althea's hidden history and is drawn, with Jeff, into a dangerous web of secrets, lies and murder. The story has moments of humor and romantic chemistry, but they do little to salvage the unruly plot. (May)

German writer and translator Kleeberg probes pockets of early 18th-century power in his smartly droll debut about a larger-than-life poseur. Following the death of his father, an impoverished Theodor von Neuhoff is raised by his doting mother, Amalia. Under her indulgent hand, Neuhoff grows up a dreamer bereft of “willpower and discipline,” and with the help of Amalia's admirer, the young baron secures a position in the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. Neuhoff successfully parlays his connections and his glib charm into a career as an adventurer and secret agent for several European governments. He marries an Irish noblewoman and settles in Germany, but he soon abandons her and flees to Italy, where he sells his services to Austria. When asked to lead a Corsican rebellion against the Genovese republic in return for the promise of a crown, the long-suffering baron hopes that his moment has finally arrived. Imaginative characterization, rich historical detail and expressive language—“[t]he dress... enclosed her body like a metaphor, expressing everything and revealing nothing”—make for an impressive American introduction for Kleeberg. (May)

This combination period bodice-ripper and contemporary medical thriller asks if it is possible for a killer trait to be passed down generations. In 2002, Julia Huntington is a genetic researcher working to isolate the gene that turns a person into a killer. She and her husband, Klaus, are expecting their first child when Julia finds out that Klaus has fallen in love with her best friend, and her life goes into a tailspin. Julia's story alternates with that of her great-grandmother, Lavinia, a young Irishwoman married to an older amateur anthropologist, Col. James Huntington, who has his own secret. When revealed, it makes a shambles of Lavinia's life. Will nature dictate how vengefully these two women treat their erring husbands, or will nurture allow them to rise above their baser instincts? Learner (The Witch of Cologne) details the science behind the question nicely, but underpowers the story's emotion and drama. (May)

As the self-proclaimed “biggest fucker-upper the world has ever brought forth,” Myriam, 43, is an unlikely restaurateur, but her headlong, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink narration soon makes clear that she's got little left to lose in changing her life. With a past that she reveals only slowly and a stint cooking for a circus under her belt, Myriam fakes some cooking and management diplomas, takes out some loans and opens Chez moi, a tiny 25-seat Parisian eatery in which she also sleeps and bathes. With help from Vincent, the halitosis-afflicted owner of the flower shop next door; from Ben, a gangling, knock-kneed lad who shows up with a solid business plan and ideas for marketing and publicity; and from Ali Slimane, an elegant farmer with perfect meats and produce, Myriam's restaurant begins to flourish—which terrifies her. This lovely book is a cassoulet bulging with lush, delectable descriptions of cuisine and straight-shooting observations on life. Myriam's restaurant has as much to do with improvising ways of living, loving and finding one's way home again as with eating well. It's a frothy, complex pleasure to linger there with her. (May)

Usually a sophisticated plotter, bestseller Baldacci (Absolute Power) offers a story line and villain on a par with an average James Bond film in what's billed as his first “international thriller.” Nicholas Creel, the head of the Ares Corporation, a huge defense contractor, hires a “perception management” firm to start a second cold war by planting fake news stories on the Internet about Russian atrocities. The propaganda campaign soon turns violent with the massacre of the members of a London think tank, the Phoenix Group, apparently by a Russian hit team. Creel hopes that the Phoenix Group's links with the Chinese government will lead to war between Russia and China as well as feed a worldwide arms race that will profit his company. A shadowy operative, A Shaw, whose fiancée perished in the London attack, allies himself with a disgraced female journalist in an effort to thwart Creel's evil plot. While some readers may find it a stretch that a resurgent Russia should so easily overshadow all other world crises, Baldacci in an author's note makes an eloquent case for the very real threat of perception management. (Apr. 22)

At the start of Vasquez's promising first novel, which is set in Belize, fading boxer Miles Young is planning to hang up his gloves and dedicate himself to raising his small daughter, Lani. Then he receives an offer too good to pass up—the chance to fight ex-champ Hakeem Wahen in Florida in three weeks if he'll agree to help Isabelle Gilmore, an attractive well-to-do woman, find her missing 17-year-old daughter, Rian. Besides decamping with her undesirable boyfriend, the son of a corrupt former police inspector, Rian has taken a load of cash from her mother. Isabelle claims her interest in locating Rian is purely maternal, but Young suspects she has been less than honest with him. An inexperienced gumshoe, Young winds up paying dearly for his involvement in the case. While the story ends somewhat predictably, Vasquez, who grew up in Belize, does a good job of conveying his native country's underbelly and making Young a credible, if flawed, figure. (June)

Ingenious plotting and witty prose lift Anable's distinctive debut, set mainly on Cape Cod. Soon after Bostonian Mark Winslow and his comedy improv troupe arrive in Provincetown for the summer season to play the club scene, someone leaves a dead dog on a prominent socialite's doorstep, which may be a veiled warning to the resort's gay population. Meanwhile, members of a homophobic religious sect known as Christian Soldiers flood the town during an exhibition of the work of (fictional) painter Thomas Royall, whose 1916 nude portrait, The Fisher Boy, has fascinated Mark since childhood. When Mark's old prep school friend, Ian Drummond, has his throat slashed late one night on a jetty, Mark fears he may be a suspect in the murder because the two had a very public spat at a club shortly before. Mark's search for Ian's killer leads him to a sinister Nordic-style cult at the site of Royall's failed artist colony on the Cape. A profusion of diverting red herrings and a clever twist involving Mark's parentage help keep the suspense high through to the surprising conclusion. (May)

Is it art or murder? In Page's savory 17th Faith Fairchild mystery (after 2006's The Body in the Ivy), the caterer/chef uncovers sinister doings at the Ganley Museum of Art in Aleford, Mass. When Faith's friend Patsy Avery, the president of the museum's board of trustees, asks her to investigate a potential forgery, Faith is reluctant to jump back into the detecting world. She finally agrees to open a cafe in the museum at Patsy's urging, but soon discovers a bald female corpse floating in a tank intended for an art installation. Faith's subsequent investigation reveals that the woman, who called herself “Tess Auchincloss,” had a stolen Degas sketch stashed in her apartment. Joining forces with Det. Lt. John Dunne, Faith scrambles to solve the case even as the list of suspect grows and another murder occurs. Along with fun foodie details, Page provides an entertaining subplot involving Faith's rebellious teenage son, Ben. (May)

In Brophy's appealing if low-key second mystery to feature Insp. Alessandro Cenni (after 2007's The Last Enemy), the murder of Jarvinia Baudler in the Italian village of Paradiso creates a headache for German diplomat Dieter Reimann, who had been having an affair with the woman. Reimann's need to recover important papers muddies the waters for the inspector, who discovers that the victim was a bisexual drunk who used Reimann to falsify passports, lived beyond her means and was the recipient of threatening letters. As Cenni sifts through all this intriguing information about the deceased, he comes across a link to unsolved murders from 1978 and possible blackmail involving Reimann's wife. A brief shift of scene to Venice to investigate leads from Baudler's youth doesn't add much to the plot, which unfortunately builds to a resolution that will strike many readers as a letdown after the elaborate setup. (May)

The movement for Egyptian independence turns increasingly violent at the end of WWI, in 1918, presenting Gareth Owen (aka the Mamur Zapt or head of the secret police) with fresh challenges in the enjoyable 16th entry in Pearce's series set in Egypt in the waning years of British rule (The Camel of Destruction, etc.). After a failed attempt in the streets of Cairo to bomb a government procession led by the khedive, Egypt's ruler, Owen and his team begin a frantic investigation to trace the bombers and head off further attacks. To up the ante, Pearce has his appealing hero placed in charge of security for a British commission of inquiry scheduled to arrive in Cairo. On the personal side, Owen's longtime love and new wife, the fiercely independent Zeinab, struggles to carve out a fulfilling role for herself. The convincing period detail, combined with comic touches, will charm newcomers as well as established fans. (May)

Though billed as a mystery, the broadly satiric eighth entry in PBS news anchor Lehrer's One-Eyed Mack series (Kick the Can, etc.) contains no crimes as such—unless one counts the antics of zany Oklahoma governor Joe Hayman (aka Buffalo Joe or Chip), who announces on radio's popular Sooner Sam Screams at Noon show that he intends to privatize the entire state government. Mack, Oklahoma's lieutenant governor, is prepared to run against Hayman in the next election, but he's sidetracked after undergoing a heart-bypass operation, one intended for another patient, which leads to a juicy malpractice trial in Washington, D.C. While recuperating from surgery, Mack does his best to keep Oklahoma from falling apart. In taking aim at such subjects as the health care system, the courts and talk radio, Lehrer is more likely to evoke wry grins and the occasional chuckle than anger or outrage. (May)

Set in 1929, Randall's uneven debut explores anti-immigrant prejudice in a small rural New England community. When Angus MacKay catches his precocious young cousin, Jackie Sue, getting intimate with teenager Angus DeCosta in the bushes, the MacKay menfolk first beat and strip DeCosta, then throw him off a bridge into a river. DeCosta's father arrives in time to fire some birdshot at the MacKays and rescue his battered son. Various human narrators relate the story of the violent aftermath of this incident, including a corrupt local lawman, Marshal Ichabod Lawe. Late in the action the author adds a jarring fantasy element—the voices of Chief, a dog, and Kaw, a crow. Some readers may wonder why Chief speaks in simple, primitive sentences (“Chief push man-pups, Chief bark”), while Kaw can imagine he'd make a better god than “Bright-Eye,” i.e., the sun. While Randall succeeds in educating the reader about the role of the Ku Klux Klan in the Northeast during this period, the unsophisticated story line and thin characterizations don't do justice to the important history lesson. (May)

A solid plot and a view of some of London's more obscure neighborhoods enhance Chan's third contemporary cozy to feature amateur sleuth Phillip Bethancourt and his best friend, Scotland Yard Det. Sgt. Jack Gibbons (after 2006's Village Affairs). When someone shoots Jack, who's recently been transferred to the Yard's arts theft division, Phillip thinks the crime has something to do with his friend's investigation of an antique jewelry heist. Jack's mentor at the Yard, Detective Chief Inspector Carmichael, provides access to the forensic evidence in the theft case, introduces Phillip to possible suspects and sets up a good dynamic between the official and unofficial investigators involved. While progress in the shooting case is as slow as Jack's recovery from his wounds, Chan pulls off an ending as surprising as it is fitting. (Apr.)

This third of a projected eight volumes of Grand Master Silverberg's short form fiction focuses on his literary output from 1969 to 1972. Many of the 16 stories share what Silverberg describes as the era's “Day-Glo splendor” and take a questioning, cynical tone, often with discontented characters searching for some kind of transcendence. In “The Feast of St. Dionysus,” a despondent astronaut encounters a hedonistic cult in the Mojave Desert and attains unlikely salvation, while “The Reality Trip” finds a marijuana-smoking, sexually uninhibited poet refusing to leave her lover when he reveals he's an alien in disguise. “Push No More” revolves around a horny adolescent boy with telekinetic abilities who contemplates using his powers to seduce his high school crush, and “Caliban” explores the inanity of conformity with a hopelessly superficial future humankind. Longtime fans and new readers alike will cherish this collection. (May)

Pleasant but evasive, this episodic novel posits a future where the alien Kéthani give humanity a sort of immortality. Upon their deaths, people with Kéthani implants are resurrected on the aliens' home world with improved bodies and minds and given the choice of returning home or spreading the Kéthani gospel throughout the galaxy. As religions and governments struggle to adjust, Brown (Helix) focuses on the experiences of neighbors and friends in a small English village, keeping the vibe as low-key as their evenings in the local pub. When a member of another alien race kills one of the Kéthani, the characters begin to wonder who the antagonists are and what they're trying to do, as well as who (or what) the Kéthani themselves are and why they are aiding (or manipulating) humankind. But each section ends just when it should begin, dissolving tension and leaving these questions unanswered. The result is an unsatisfying cop-out. (May)

While not so complexly plotted as to repel new readers, this grim middle volume (after 2006's Scar Night) also does little to attract them. Most strikingly, the novel lacks a protagonist. Virtually every character is a pawn in the ongoing war between a dysfunctional family of desperate gods and King Menoa, the mad ruler of the Mesmerists. Rogue assassin Rachel Hael mostly disappears halfway through; the skyship-towing giant John Anchor is purely a tour guide; and angel Dill only reacts to abrupt shifts in reality. Death is relative, with characters translating unpredictably among Hell, the mortal realm and a bizarre reality called the Maze. Sex and romance are virtually absent, but stylized gore is everywhere, perhaps reflecting Campbell's background in video-game design. Despite the vivid descriptions and genuinely unusual setting, readers who make it through to the cliffhanger ending of this installment may well not care enough to seek out the forthcoming concluding volume. (May)

In this fourth and final volume in the series that began with The Fury (1976), Eden Waring, now recognized as the benevolent Avatar, imprisons Mordaunt, the malignant Deus Inversus, in a flood of molten glass. Though his physical form is ruined, Mordaunt's immortal consciousness is still at large, as is his female side, Delilah, who takes possession of Eden's time-traveling doppelgänger, Gwen, and uses her body to hitchhike back to the present. The stage is set for a showdown between Eden and Gwen on the outskirts of Las Vegas in a flamboyant finale that features earthshaking scenes of the two zapping each other with bolts of “the Dark Energy of the Universe.” A bursting cornucopia of horror, fantasy, suspense and science fiction set pieces, the novel is so relentlessly paced that it's easy to overlook its wobbly logic. Farris's legion of fans will find it an exhilarating end to this enormously entertaining supernatural saga. (May)

Nebula and Hugo–winner Bujold explores culture clashes in this compelling third segment of the Sharing Knife series (after 2007's Legacy). Former Lakewalker captain Dag has been exiled from his family for marrying an outsider, farmer's daughter Fawn. Farmers and riverfolk need the secretive Lakewalkers for their ability to manipulate “ground energy” and battle the deadly blight-causing creatures called malices, but few trust them completely, and the Lakewalkers haven't helped the situation by remaining aloof from the rest of the world. Dag longs to build a bridge of understanding and respect between Lakewalkers and those who depend on their protection. “The old ways have worked for better 'n a thousand years,” another Lakewalker captain warns, but as farmers settle dangerous territory and Dag's own groundsense abilities develop in dangerous directions, big changes are inevitable. Bujold excels at creating interesting and sympathetic characters, and this story will satisfy readers who enjoy romance as much as adventure. (May)

Samuel Hartley, raised in North America's colonial wilderness but now a wealthy Boston businessman, arrives in London seeking the traitor who betrayed the 28th Regiment into massacre by the Indians at Spinner's Falls. One of the men killed was Captain Reynaud, beloved brother of widowed Lady Emeline Gordon. Since this respected society matron also chaperones society's young maidens, Samuel contrives to meet her by asking her help in preparing his sister Rebecca to enter London society. The very model of propriety, and engaged to the titled Lord Vale whom she has known since childhood (and who also fought in the ill-fated battle) Lady Emeline is drawn to Samuel's rough vigor, not realizing the demons possessing him. Hoyt parallels the fast-paced tension in Sam's search with growing romantic tension, occasionally lightened by interludes involving Emeline's young son, Daniel; a tart French aunt; and Samuel's own sister. A nail-biting finale creates a satisfying denouement. Hoyt (The Raven Prince, etc.) is firmly in control of her craft with engaging characters, gripping plot and clever dialogue. (May)

In this invigorating contemporary twist to Michaels's Beckets of Romney Marsh series (Becket's Last Stand, etc.), three successful sisters are determined to prove their father's innocent of the murder of a politician's wife and of his own “suicide.” As the three—PI Jade, movie star Jolie and TV journalist Jessica—gather in Philadelphia to mourn their father, ex-cop-turned PI Teddy Sunshine, Jolie is relieved when her ex-fiancé, the dashing Sam Becket, rescues her from an annoying photographer who is nosing around the late suspect's family. After the Sunshine home office is torched while Jade's inside, the three use Sam's estate as a refuge and home base. Sam's cousin (and Jade's ex-husband) Court Becket flies to her side to help as they track down leads that at first look cold. Old passions reignite, and, for Jessica, a new one begins. As for what happened to the cursed Empress, an uncut emerald lost for centuries? Stay tuned. (May)

The real-life brutal murder of Catherine Woods, a beautiful exotic dancer, in November of 2005, fed tabloid headlines. 48 Hours correspondents La Rosa and Moriarty serve up a true crime account of her story and that of Paul Cortez, who was convicted of the crime the following year. Dubbed the “Stripper Beauty,” Catherine was 18 when she moved to Manhattan from Columbus, Ohio (where her father directs the Ohio State University's marching band). Her dreams of Broadway were tested by a rape. On returning to New York, she soon had an Ohio pal, David Haughn, living with her on the Upper East Side, but began dating others, including Cortez, then 24, an educated band musician and yoga enthusiast who disapproved of Catherine's dancing topless for hefty take-home cash. La Rosa and Moriarty deliver a compelling account of her horrifying murder and the subsequent investigation and trial. Their version of events allows readers to draw their own conclusions as to whether justice was served. (Apr.)

Black magic, mobsters and evil witches hold La La Land hostage, making Masterton's latest batch of chills and chuckles (Prey) scarier than a writers' strike. Along with most of the city, Det. Dan Fisher, West Hollywood Homicide Division, is horrified as international crime czars take over law enforcement in a bloody coup with the spooky aid of “the Quintex” of 350-year-old witch Rebecca Greensmith, who's able to be in five places (and bodies) at one time. She's backed up by a Haitian witch, Michelange DuPriz, who works for the zombie Jean-Christophe Artisson; by Miska Vedma, a Russian witch helping “White Ghost” Vasili Krylov; and by others. Haunted by the death of his wife, Gayle, three years earlier, Dan lives next to good witch Annie Conjure, who pitches in. Rebecca's malevolent forces kill some of L.A.'s A-list, and Dan will stop at nothing to save his fair city and put an old ghost to rest. Masterton, a veteran horror author notable for his dark humor and snazzy plotting, pulls off yet another clever thriller. (Apr.)