Fiction Reviews: Week of 4/14/2008

The lives of a London couple about to have their first child unravel in Perkins’s haunting third novel. In the wake of surviving a train derailment, pregnant Ann Wells tells her husband, struggling screenwriter Tom Stone, that a man has been following her. With only Ann’s vague description, the police can do little and Tom attempts to reassure his wife about her safety. As her due date approaches, Ann turns her attention to scouring the house and molding clay “guardian” figures, while Tom searches for work. Finally, Tom agrees to approach a popular television writer and fellow train accident survivor, Simon Wright, for work. After the birth of their son, Arlo, Ann’s behavior grows more disturbing, and Tom realizes too late the truth behind her fears. Perkins’s gamble to reveal Ann’s fate in the early pages pays off; the suspense mounts with each added detail, until everything falls into place in an unsettling climax. Throughout, both Tom and the reader struggle to find a moment when everything could have been prevented. (Aug.)

The third novel from Davies (Goodbye Lemon; The Frog King) is a hilarious caper narrated by down-on-his-luck good guy Otto Starks. Having worked his entire life to become a top-notch “pulse” (highly specialized security guard), Otto falls from grace when several of the works of art under his watch are stolen by the Rat Burglar. Otto, who pops toxic pills in an effort to build immunity to paralyzing and lethal substances, starts to look like an accomplice when he repeatedly fails to apprehend the thief. Also grinding at Otto is his torment at keeping his job a secret from Charlie Izzo, the woman he loves but is too afraid to propose to. Charlie is as smart as she is beautiful, but to Otto’s dismay, she praises the Rat Burglar, whose m.o. is to steal back plundered masterpieces and return them to their original owners. After the Rat Burglar steals a secret map to a massive plundered treasure, Otto’s compartmentalized worlds collide. Otto’s narration is biting and bitter, but also charming. Parts are laugh-out-loud funny, and there’s enough suspense to keep readers riveted throughout this svelte page-turner. (Aug.)

Unhappy cutting hair, Guillaume, the barber of the tiny, declining French town of Amour-sur-Belle, renames his shop Heart’s Desire and tries his hand at matchmaking, even though he lost his first love, Emilie, years ago. Guillaume soon proves hopeless: he can’t even help his best friend, Yves Leveque, whose heartaches have actually caused him indigestion. When Emilie returns to Amour-sur-Belle a rich divorcée, and sets about restoring a dilapidated old chateau that once brought tourists to the city, she enlivens the slumping town’s eligible suitors and the town wags who watch their every move. Debut novelist Stuart infects Amour-sur-Belle’s byzantine lore with whimsy (a mini-tornado that made the town pharmacist disappear), the usual beefs (an age-old feud, which began with Guillaume’s mother) and sensual detail. It’s all done well enough, but a reliance on magical-realist elements to resolve the town’s spiraling affairs makes for an unsatisfying resolution. (Aug.)

The 1492 conquest of Granada makes for high adventure and royal intrigue in this second sparkling historical from Gortner (The Secret Lion). Spanish Princess Juana, 13, watches as her parents, King Fernando and Queen Isabel, unite Spain, vanquish Moors and marry their children off to foreign kingdoms for favorable alliances: Princess Catalina becomes first wife to Henry VIII; Princess Juana, who narrates, is shipped off to marry Philip of Flanders, heir to the Hapsburg Empire. Although Juana balks at leaving Spain for the north and a husband she has never met, their instant chemistry soon turns to love. Years and children later, Juana unexpectedly becomes next in line to the Spanish crown and must carefully navigate every step of the journey from Flanders to Spain, fearful of alienating husband or parents or both. Emotional and political tensions soar as Juana’s loyalties are tested to their limits. Disturbing royal secrets and court manipulations wickedly twist this enthralling story, brilliantly told. (July)

The two narratives in Winfield’s whimsical debut are unified by their shared irreverence, humor and literary gusto. The first tale is of Willie Shakespeare Greenberg, a grad student trying to prove in his hastily conceived thesis that Shakespeare was a closeted Catholic. Short on cash, stoner Willie agrees to mule a superpsychedelic mushroom and a pound of weed to a couple of Renaissance Faire enthusiasts, all the while nursing his infatuation with Dashka Demitra, his sexy thesis adviser. Willie’s journey is interspersed with accounts of the other Shakespeare as he, in the months leading up to his wedding, has run-ins with hallucinatory substances and comely women while delivering a secret package to a Catholic dissident. Willie’s a lovable schlemiel whose clumsy strides toward attaining a genuine understanding of Shakespeare’s work mirror in many ways the Bard’s quest to become the great playwright we now study. Winfield uses his deep understanding of Shakespeare’s work and times (he is a founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company) to great effect, and his affection for the material shines throughout. (July)

Al-Azzawi left Iraq in 1977 for exile in Germany. This 1992 novel about 1950s Kirkuk was banned in Iraq: it covers a series of hilarious, surreal and sometimes horrifying adventures in a neighborhood of Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds during the fall of the monarchy and the rise of the Ba’ath Party. Hameed Nylon—a nickname born of rumors that he lost his job with the Iraq Petroleum Company after offering his English boss’s wife a pair of stockings in exchange for sex—becomes an unlikely leader of a people’s revolution. Khidir Musa, a butcher suffering midlife crisis, has a vision that starts him on a quest to find his two brothers, missing in the Soviet Union since WWI. A barber killed by an errant bullet during a demonstration becomes a saint whose mausoleum attracts worshippers from afar. Young Burhan Abdallah comes upon three angels who promise to bring rebirth to Kirkuk: he waits for them to keep their word through the rise and fall of one cruel tyrant after another. With comic coincidence as a major plot device, Al-Azzawi explores politics, religion, culture and self-interest with very little inhibition (except where it comes to women, who are mostly absent) in this rollicking, bittersweet satire. (July)

Klass (Treatment Kind and Fair) again explores the dramas, large and small, of parenting and medicine in an enjoyable if nearly plotless novel. A former foster child who was adopted by her sixth-grade teacher, Lucy Weiss is a pediatrician at a clinic specializing in foster kids. Lucy’s deep (and occasionally unprofessional) devotion to her work brings her into contact and conflict with mothers like charismatic Delia, who eventually abandons her three kids—each named after one of the Von Trapp children. In Lucy’s own family, her somewhat absent professor husband begs off of birthday party and soccer duties, leaving her as primary parent to precocious 10-year-old Isabel and possibly autistic six-year-old Freddy. Freddy’s difficulties (an obsession with statistics and numbers, and stunted social abilities among them) are a recurring but unresolved thread, while an ethically questionable decision Lucy makes regarding Delia’s kids lacks punch. The characters are wonderfully drawn—Lucy’s angst is palpable throughout—and though there isn’t much of a story arc, the heartfelt portrayal of contemporary parenting is involving, particularly so for readers who work with children. (July)

After initiating a separation from her husband—whose repellently named invention, the splotch-catching “hot dog diaper,” has bankrupted them—Ellen Flanagan, faced with supporting two young daughters, makes the levelheaded decision to sell the family home in the suburbs of Portland, Ore., to pay off debts and keep her business (a smalltown coffee shop) afloat. One daughter takes the change in stride, another plots to disrupt the sale, and Ellen soon finds herself struggling with her own deep feelings for the house. Obnoxious buyers make things worse, and lurking behind all her preparations to move is the possibility—alternately tempting and unsettling—of reconciling with husband Sam, who seems blindsided and bewildered. HGTV.com columnist McCleary’s tale of real estate woe (plus a little entrepreneurship gone wrong) will resonate with unhappy homeowners, as will her portrait of a regular woman pushed to extremes trying to do the right thing for her family. (July)

Josephine Vann, a devoted wife, doting mother and former bank exec, starts a catering company in Connors’s wholesomely humorous debut. After hiring Daisy, an eccentric pastry chef who lives by the rules Dolly Parton doles out in her songs, and Cate, an interior designer in a “quarter-life crisis,” Josephine meets her match in Ellie Howell-Routledge, the Cordon Bleu–trained daughter of a powerful Atlanta family who uses her deep pockets to push her way into partnership with the reluctant Josephine—never knowing that Josephine is harboring a secret that involves Ellie and her husband. On the way to becoming innovative businesswomen, they tangle with a health inspector, face financial ruin, unwittingly shock the sensibilities of delicate clients, worry about their children and bemoan lost loves. Most importantly, they bond, giving the girlfriends the opportunity to show off their feistiness and strength. Think: Steel Magnolias meets the Food Network. (July)

After sexual reassignment surgery turns Charles into Celess (last seen in Miasha’s Secret Society), she’s discovered by Brad, a New York–based photographer working for Bazaar. In a breathlessly improbable, and often X-rated, series of events, Celess quickly becomes a model, parlays her abundant charms into major gigs, signs with a top modeling agency and moves to the West Coast. There, outrageous Celess reconnects with some old benefactors in trying to break into the entertainment business, and befriends Si-Si, a Beverly Center clerk and wannabe star. Si-Si harbors a dark secret that will rock Celess’s world. O, an ex-lover Celess thought was murdered, comes back to rock her in a very different way. Miasha scores again with another steamy, scandalous dispatch about one crazy hot trannie. (July)

In film producer Niederhoffer’s wan second novel (following A Taxonomy of Barnacles), a love triangle takes center stage among an amorous group of nine Yale friends known to each other as “The Romantics.” As the group reunites for the marriage of Lila Hayes and Tom McDevon at a Maine estate six years after graduation, Niederhoffer omnisciently narrates the rivalry between wealthy blonde Lila and raven-haired Laura, her maid of honor and former roommate—“the Nick to Lila’s Gatsby.” Laura and Tom dated early on in college, and their continuing relationship haunts Tom and Lila’s over the ensuing years, which naturally causes friction. After the rehearsal dinner, the entire wedding party, minus Lila, embarks on a raucous evening of drinking and reminiscing. Neither the characters nor the story convince as Niederhoffer repeats thin stereotypes in a vain attempt to strengthen the plot: Laura the ethnic outsider; Tom the complex man yearning for an uncomplicated relationship; Lila the uncomplicated beauty with all of the necessary social accoutrements. The rest of the cast serves as background noise in this forgettable postcollegiate exercise. (July)

Furst (The Foreign Correspondent) solidifies his status as a master of historical spy fiction with this compelling thriller set in 1937 Poland. Col. Jean-François Mercier, a military attaché at the French embassy in Warsaw who runs a network of spies, plays a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with his German adversaries. When one of Mercier’s main agents, Edvard Uhl, an engineer at a large Düsseldorf arms manufacturer who’s been a valuable source on the Nazis’ new weapons, becomes concerned that the Gestapo is on to him, Mercier initially dismisses Uhl’s fears. Mercier soon realizes that the risk to his spy is genuine, and he’s forced to scramble to save Uhl’s life. The colonel himself later takes to the field when he hears reports that the German army is conducting maneuvers in forested terrain. Even readers familiar with the Germans’ attack through the Ardennes in 1940 will find the plot suspenseful. As ever, Furst excels at creating plausible characters and in conveying the mostly tedious routines of real espionage. Author tour. (June)

At the start of bestseller Child’s solid 12th Jack Reacher novel (after Bad Luck and Trouble), the ex-military policeman hitchhikes into Colorado, where he finds himself crossing the metaphorical and physical line that divides the small towns of Hope and Despair. Despair lives up to its name; all Reacher wants is a cup of coffee, but what he gets is attacked by four thugs and thrown in jail on a vagrancy charge. After he’s kicked out of town, Reacher reacts in his usual manner—he goes back and whips everybody’s butt and busts up the town’s police force. In the process, he discovers, with the help of a good-looking lady cop from Hope, that a nearby metal processing plant is part of a plan that involves the war in Iraq and an apocalyptic sect bent on ushering in the end-time. With his powerful sense of justice, dogged determination and the physical and mental skills to overcome what to most would be overwhelming odds, Jack Reacher makes an irresistible modern knight-errant. (June)

In bestseller Deaver’s entertaining eighth Lincoln Rhyme novel (after The Cold Moon), Rhyme, a forensic consultant for the NYPD, and his detective partner, Amelia Sachs, take on a psychotic mastermind who uses data mining—“the business of the twenty-first century”—not only to select and hunt down his victims but also to frame the crimes on complete innocents. Rhyme is reluctantly drawn into a case involving his estranged cousin, Arthur, who’s been charged with first-degree murder. But when Rhyme and his crew look into the strange set of circumstances surrounding his cousin’s alleged crime, they discover tangential connections to a company that specializes in collecting and analyzing consumer data. Further investigation leads them to some startlingly Orwellian revelations: Big Brother is watching your every move and could be a homicidal maniac. The topical subject matter makes the story line particularly compelling, while longtime fans will relish Deaver’s intimate exploration of a tragedy from Rhyme’s adolescence. (June)

Nigerian-born Jesuit priest Akpan transports the reader into gritty scenes of chaos and fear in his rich debut collection of five long stories set in war-torn Africa. “An Ex-mas Feast” tells the heartbreaking story of eight-year-old Jigana, a Kenyan boy whose 12-year-old sister, Maisha, works as a prostitute to support her family. Jigana’s mother quells the children’s hunger by having them sniff glue while they wait for Maisha to earn enough to bring home a holiday meal. In “Luxurious Hearses,” Jubril, a teenage Muslim, flees the violence in northern Nigeria. Attacked by his own Muslim neighbors, his only way out is on a bus transporting Christians to the south. In “Fattening for Gabon,” 10-year-old Kotchikpa and his younger sister are sent by their sick parents to live with their uncle, Fofo Kpee, who in turn explains to the children that they are going to live with their prosperous “godparents,” who, as Kotchikpa pieces together, are actually human traffickers. Akpan’s prose is beautiful and his stories are insightful and revealing, made even more harrowing because all the horror—and there is much—is seen through the eyes of children. (June) Read a web-exclusive q&a with Uwem Akpan at www.publishersweekly.com/akpan.

Volumes by Borges, Cervantes, Sebald and others serve as clues and almost as characters in Bajo’s intriguing debut, a love story wrapped in a bibliomaniacal whodunit with a hall-of-mirrors bow on top. The books belonged to Irma Arcuri, a bookbinder, writer and the lifelong object of preternatural math whiz Philip Masryk’s desire. After Philip learns that Irma has supposedly killed herself and bequeathed her library to him, he quits his job to explore Irma’s books and discover any messages that might be left in them for him. With the help of Lucia, a beautiful woman uncannily familiar to Philip, he discovers that Irma has not only rebound the books but also changed their texts; a new story is added to Borges’s Ficciones and buried in Don Quixote are notes from Irma. As he follows Irma’s long-cold trail from Philadelphia to Barcelona and Seville, Philip finds traces of Irma everywhere, but few clues that point to a resolution. Though Bajo’s plotting can be elliptical and the denouement doesn’t quite sing, the narrative’s intelligence and passion transcend its metafictional ambiguities. (June)

In the dependably entertaining if less than top-notch fifth Oregon Files thriller from bestseller Cussler and Du Brul (after Skeleton Crew), Capt. Juan Cabrillo, who heads the Corporation, a covert military company for hire, and the multifaceted crew of the Oregon, a high-tech ship disguised to look like a tramp steamer, take on a group known as the Responsivists. The Responsivists publicly espouse a program of global population control, but are secretly planning a devastating attack on the human race utilizing a virulent virus found aboard an ancient ship that may be Noah’s Ark. The authors are up to their usual high standards when in fighting mode, though the chief villain, the doctor who heads the Responsivists, falls short of Juan’s billing as “the single-most-evil human being I have ever met.” Readers may wish that next time out the bad guys put up more of a struggle. (June)

Like Lone Creek, McMahon’s first novel to boast a Montana setting, this fine crime novel fairly glows with the big skies, rough country and outsize characters of his home state. Ex-journalist Hugh Davoren, working in Helena as a carpenter with his buddy Madbird, a Blackfoot Indian, is contacted by an old friend, Renee Callister, back in town to bury her father, John Callister, after a 20-year absence. John had lived the latter part of his life in disgrace as the chief suspect in the murder of his second wife, Astrid, and her lover. Renee finds old photographs of a nude Astrid and decides they are clues that will exonerate her late father. She asks Hugh to help her, and, smitten by her beauty and plight, he readily agrees. McMahon ties up several subplots—in particular, Madbird’s troubles with his niece, Darcy, who’s having an affair with a state representative—in a rather unwieldy knot by the end, but it’s the compelling prose, sense of place and sympathetic characters that make the book a joy to read. (June)

Berenice McFadden’s latest erotic melodrama written as Holliday (following Heat) opens on Tony Landry’s taking a woman named Valerie back to his borrowed pad, with his lies coming on quicker than her sighs of pleasure. The novel’s focus, however, is ugly duckling Mildred Johnson, a lonely investment banking secretary living in a tiny Crown Heights, Brooklyn, studio. When handsome Tony, $60,000 in debt and looking for a big score, joins the company, she secretly falls for him; when he starts paying attention to her, she can scarcely believe her luck. Holliday, meanwhile, playfully lets readers in on Tony’s money laundering scam that depends on his seduction of Mildred, who is a caricature of innocence and suppressed longing. When she catches on, the novel morphs into a makeover-revenge fantasy, one that Holliday writes with barely suppressed glee. The more wild and outlandish things get, the more readers will smile. (June)

This breathless, violent first in a new thriller series from Land (The Last Prophecy) introduces Michael “The Tyrant” Tiranno, who’s modeled on real-life Italian entrepreneur Fabrizio Boccardi. Raised by one of the last Sicilian Mafia dons after the murder of the immediate members of his family, Michael grows up to become a real estate mogul, who builds the Seven Sins, a Las Vegas casino catering to its customers’ wildest fantasies. When suicide bombers explode their cars at the Seven Sins and three other Las Vegas casinos, people blame Islamic terrorists, but Michael suspects he’s been personally targeted. With the help of Naomi Burns, his lawyer and confidante, Michael pursues the diabolical mastermind who threatens future attacks. During his investigation, Michael discovers the secret of his father’s treasured antique gold medallion. Nonstop action and a dizzying array of exotic locales make this great fun to read, despite lack of subtlety, cartoonish characters, preposterous plot twists and coincidences. (June)

Edgar-winner Cook (Red Leaves) examines the slow collapse of a prominent Southern family in this magnificent tale of suspense set in 1954. Jack Branch, who’s returned to his hometown of Lakeland, Miss., and taken a job at the same high school where his father once taught, is dismayed to learn that one of his students in his class on historical evil is the son of the town’s infamous Coed Killer. Eddie Miller’s father confessed to torturing and killing a local girl when Eddie was five, but died in jail before he could stand trial. Hoping to help Eddie step out of his father’s shadow, Jack proposes that the boy write a research paper on the Coed Killer. Eddie is soon immersed in the project, which grows in scope until it encompasses the entire town’s sordid past. When Jack’s own father’s history is brought into question, Jack realizes that he’s started a fire he may be unable to control. Excerpts from transcripts of an old trial that slowly unfolds alongside Jack and Eddie’s story heighten the drama. (June)

Lonely Long Island divorcée Barbara, aka the titular Grandma, is not especially put together, despite a post-divorce facelift. She also has herpes and a serious martini problem. While in a drunken stupor, she picks up a French waiter, Jacques, a wannabe painter with terrible body odor. She goes home with him to his Bowery apartment and experiences “smelly sex” (and his “enormous hooked penis”). The encounter eventually sets her off on a Manhattan odyssey of debauchery that worries her already disapproving daughter. Shakin writes in a jazzy, ’60s-ish style that sustains his unpleasant visions of an aging woman’s hopeless life. He substitutes barbed slapstick for plot, but Barbara does find her way in a manner that turns out to be oddly heartwarming. (June)

Zumas gives socially awkward, mysteriously gifted and self-destructive outcasts spellbinding, unflinching voice in her debut collection. The heroes in this collection are trapped; some are resigned to years of caregiving, many are institutionalized and nearly all haunt the fringes of normalcy (or disregard the normal altogether). Each story begins with a lightning strike into a new consciousness: the first flashes of a romance over the lunch line in a psych ward in “Waste No Time if This Method Fails”; a teenager in the title story dreaming of abandoning his blind parents; the young woman of “The Everything Hater” living in sustained dread after her brother’s repeated suicide attempts. There are triumphs, too: a patient in treatment for an eating disorder exacts revenge on a bully, and an underage groupie liberates herself from her punk lover’s fabricated fairy tale world. Zumas captures halfway-house heartbreak as well as moments of thoughtful, scab-picking solitude. It’s a powerful, irresistible collection. (June)

This mildly suspenseful first novel about a middle-aged man’s shocking discovery of his tragic tie to a street kid he befriends aims for earnestness but stumbles into melodrama. Bighearted Reed Waters, who’s content to work in a Washington, D.C., soup kitchen, likes to help out those less fortunate than himself, so when 16-year-old runaway Mauri Dyson turns up on his doorstep, it’s only natural that Reed takes her under his wing. But Mauri’s intrusion into his life isn’t as random as Reed supposes. Mauri has a scheme worked out for Reed that’s far from kind and planned in retribution for a traumatic incident that adversely affected both their lives. Conlon (Thundershowers at Dusk) carefully stokes reader anticipation for the discovery of Mauri’s secret bond with Reed, but it leads to a finale built on unlikely coincidences and improbable behavior. (June)

Klomparens’s novel about 28-year-old San Francisco career girl Jessica Zorich dips into the familiar worlds—corporate, dating, sex, family, art—found in many coming-of-age stories, and ups the ante with a few jolts of terrorism. Jessica is professionally and romantically lost: she has a faux-lationship with her upstairs neighbor Patrick, and a job as a copy writer that doesn’t quite do it for her. So after a terrorist attack hits San Francisco and Patrick reveals he has a girlfriend, Jessica revamps her life and cozies up with Josh, a lithographer mysterious in every way except his good looks. The relationship develops fast, and while Jessica becomes the subject of his latest art project, terrorists strike again and Patrick is relegated to the past until another bomb goes off. The story moves swiftly, even if Jessica tends to micromanage the narrative. It’s an unexpected move to drop suicide bombers into what is basically chick lit, but Klomparens’s gamble mostly pays off. (June)

Late in this raw, blistering coming-of-age novel set in an unnamed Ohio city, Mikal Fanon observes that most 16- to 17-year-olds try lots of roles, discard most and move on, but “I happened to have worn a costume with consequences.” The “costume” that the rootless teen tries on is a violently right-wing group, the Fifth Reich, led by the charismatic Richard Lovecraft. Mikal learns to spout the slogans, gets the de rigueur “tats” (i.e., tattoos) and stomps whatever poor victims the group despises. Singer (Chasing the Wolf) evokes with rare passion the tumultuous confusions and conflicts as teens seek to work out their racial and sexual identities. Though other major characters, like a beautiful black girl, Niani Shange, who alternately attracts and repels Mikal, aren’t sufficiently fleshed out, readers will find Mikal’s erratic passage through a rough adolescence both vivid and compelling. (June)

In his third novel, Hawley (Other People’s Weddings) traces the path of Scott and David Henry as they prepare for their father’s memorial service. Younger brother Scott—stuck in a dead-end job, failing in love and a frequenter of San Francisco strip clubs—is saddled with his alcoholic, self-destructing mother, Doris, on their trip to New York. Scott’s successful sales executive and closeted bigamist brother, David, shares Doris duty while navigating memorial service preparations and secretly juggling marriages on both coasts. Along the way, a family secret is revealed, two hotels are nearly blown up and the trio explores what it means to be a family. Unfortunately, Hawley’s asides on physics, religion and the nature of time distract from the plot without adding to it, and the occasional dud sentence pops up (“Now they circle their wagons and eye each other warily from the high towers of their castles”). However, the characters—especially Doris—and humorously handled uncomfortable situations (as when David’s two wives meet) somewhat mitigate these shortcomings, and the memorial service at the legendary White Horse Tavern provides a rollicking climax. (June)

In surgeon-cum-novelist Kraus’s cloudy medical thriller, protagonist Wendi Stratford is a self-described “professional Christian”: she has the perfect house, haircut and church (where Daddy is the pastor). Her husband also seems perfect, a man so meticulous that he carries three pens in his white physician’s coat and knots his silk ties so that the longer tail hangs exactly two centimeters below the shorter one. Wendi is tired of hiding her real self behind a plastic facade, but when she lays aside her mask, tragedies begin to occur all around her. This raises one of the novel’s more provocative questions: does God punish people for their sins? Kraus clearly knows his way around an OR, and intimate medical details give the story’s less plausible plot twists some heft. Kraus also presents thoughtful ruminations on sin, guilt and forgiveness with some finesse. However, as suspense, this novel falls far short. The first half is devoted to character development for Wendi and her immediate family, but none of those nuances extend to the characters who become central in the more plot-driven second half, especially the stock villain. (June)

This novel from former music critic Trott tells the tale of fictional mid-1970s California rockers the Killjoys, who travel to a rundown hotel in Washington State to chase their dreams of musical superstardom. High school dropout Daniel Travers is a self-confessed Pete Townshend junkie, daydreaming about rock stardom, when he gets a call from a promoter who wants his band to follow in the footsteps of musical legends Jimi Hendrix and Heart by playing the Mai Tai Hotel. Travers’s band mates, including lead singer Mick (no coincidence there) and henpecked bassist Rob, warily agree to the gig. However, they arrive to find the hotel is a Hell’s Angels hangout and an incubator for plenty of alcohol- and drug-related trouble. When the group’s week-long run comes to an end, they are offered an even better gig, but at what cost? Though there are a few funny lines (“I was higher than a Bee Gee on helium”), Trott missteps by creating a band out of stereotypes—the dropout who dreams of hitting it big, the party animal front man—and deploying too-familiar rock scene obstacles—drugs, competing egos, girlfriends. (June)

This intriguing if somewhat bland first in a new romantic suspense series from bestseller Stewart (Last Breath) introduces two cool crime solvers, PI Mallory Russo, a former Conroy, Pa., cop, and Charlie Wanamaker, a former Philly detective who’s returned to Conroy to help his alcoholic mother and his disabled sister. Despite bad experiences employing PIs, billionaire Robert Magellan, who’s haunted by the disappearance of his wife and young son, hires Mallory to locate two missing teens, Courtney Bauer and Ryan Corcoran. The high school students vanished after a playground shooting that left two of their friends dead. The Conroy police suspect the pair were involved, but Mary Corcoran, Ryan’s grandmother, and Linda Bauer, Courtney’s mom, are sure of their innocence. Some readers may wish that the author had given more time on stage to a bad girl suspect, but all will cheer the appealing romance that develops between Mallory and Charlie. (May)

In Marciano’s brisk third novel (after Rules of the Wild and Casa Rossa), an unlikely pair of women are dispatched to war-torn Afghanistan circa 2004 to report a story about young Afghan women attempting suicide rather than entering into arranged marriages. Imo Glass is a flamboyant magazine writer who wants the story no matter what societal taboos she tramples. Maria Galante, an award-winning but emotionally withdrawn photojournalist, has forsaken dangerous assignments to take pictures of fancy food for fancy magazines, until her agent persuades her to take this job. With a fluid mix of gritty irony and palpable fear, Marciano’s evocation of landscape and environment brilliantly captures a devastated Kabul, a messy war and the soulless arms dealers and cold-blooded mercenaries drawn to the fractured nation by the lure of money. Equally intense is her compassionate depiction of a culture where taking photos of women is forbidden and religious doctrine dictates the way of life in “a world of a far greater insanity” than Maria, for one, had envisioned. This work of fiction, rooted in harsh reality, tackles moral complexities with powerful self-assurance. (May)

Gumshoe Award–winner Fossum (When the Devil Holds the Candle) once again wraps a blanket of methodical police work and infectious psychological tension around a relatively quiet crime in her fifth Inspector Sejer mystery to be made available in the U.S. When nine-year-old Ida Joner takes off for town (never named) on her new bike one afternoon and is never seen again, suspicion falls on Emil Johannes Mork, a silent, simple man. Emil, however, doesn’t appear to have the heart of a killer. The narrative shifts smoothly among those affected by the tragedy: Emil’s beleaguered mother, a good woman with little life of her own; a male cousin of the missing girl who may suffer some secret guilt; and, of course, Insp. Konrad Sejer and his younger colleague, Jacob Skarre. Sejer is a beautifully created character, a thoughtful, lonely man with great empathy. As he investigates Ida’s disappearance, it’s not so much the facts of the case as the impact of it on the people who surrounded the girl that fuel the story. (July)

Lose all thought of New Year’s diets, you who enter Australian author Greenwood’s delectable second Corinna Chapman cozy (after 2007’s Earthly Delights). Corinna, formerly an XL-sized accountant in power suit and kitten heels, runs a downtown Melbourne artisan bakery, attached to a tantalizing Roman-themed apartment building housing a rich assortment of eccentrics. These include leather queen Mistress Dread; Corinna’s omnivorous reforming junkie apprentice, Jason; Meroe, a Wiccan witch; Corinna’s private zooful of arrogant cats; and Daniel, her gorgeous trout-pool–eyed ex-Israeli soldier lover, who providentially for Corinna adores ’em supersized—and he cooks, too. When someone starts injecting a neighboring shop’s lavishly described Belgian chocolates with chili sauce, Corinna leaves kneading for detecting, while Daniel struggles to unmask a slithering, slavering self-proclaimed boy messiah. Greenwood’s yeasty soufflé of unlikely but satisfying elements quickly thickens over the top, but who cares—it all just leads to Corinna’s recipe for Chocolate Orgasm Muffins. (June)

Frank Cole, now a freelance fact-checker for insurance companies and law firms in the small panhandle town of Exile, Fla., has local police chief Denny Dannon to thank for what at first appears to be a mundane assignment at the outset of O’Neil’s enjoyable third mystery (after 2007’s Reduced Circumstances). Cole agrees to look into a complaint concerning the safe-deposit procedures at Exile’s lone bank as well as locate several safe-deposit box holders the bank has lost track of. Of course, things don’t turn out to be that simple. When a box owner, Dorothea Freehoffer, takes a fatal tumble down the stairs of her home, Cole suspects foul play. Given the somewhat predictable resolution and dearth of plot twists, some readers may wish the author would provide his engaging protagonist with a more challenging puzzle leading to a better payoff next time. (June)

Lyrical prose and Technicolor characters lift Kelby’s amusing, unconventional mystery set at a gated Florida beach community plagued by murder and mayhem. The main responsibility of Brian Wilson, a security guard at Laguna Key who was kicked out of FBI training, is to protect the ethereal Sophie, blind daughter of his boss, Mr. Whit. Mr. Whit, who’s buying up property to expand his small empire, is frustrated by the last holdout, ex–horror-film actress Danni Keene, owner of the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, which has been repeatedly vandalized. Brian finds the first body, that of a homeless activist whose estranged brother, Sòlas Mackay, arrives with his traveling puppet circus and sets up camp in the Bad Girl’s parking lot. Danni discovers the next, a Barry Manilow “tribute artist” and hit man she had hired to entertain customers. Sòlas, Danni, Brian and Sophie must battle marauding vultures, fierce weather, a devious ex-husband and the stun-gun–happy Mr. Whit. Along the way, Kelby (Whale Season) offers some unexpected wisdom. (June)

Once again Pronzini, soon to be designated an MWA Grand Master, captures the quiet despair of his characters’ lives in the 33rd entry in his noirish whodunit series featuring the Nameless Detective (after 2007’s Savages). Mitchell Krochek, who’s worried about the gambling addiction of his wife, Janice, hires Nameless to trace Janice, who’s disappeared for the fourth time in four years. When Jake Runyon, Nameless’s associate, traces Janice to an apartment hotel near their San Francisco office, Nameless and Jake decide to honor Janice’s request not to reveal her location to her husband. Later, a battered Janice shows up at the detective agency’s office, where she agrees to go home, only to vanish again amid circumstances strongly indicating foul play. In an affecting subplot, Jake investigates the mysterious beating of a devoted churchgoer’s son. This insightful novel will appeal to those who like the mean streets portrayed with understatement and subtlety rather than gory violence. (June)

Chicago PI Anni Koskinen investigates a case ranging from the Vietnam era to a current FBI manhunt in Fister’s explosive follow-up to 2002’s On Edge. As a favor, Koskinen agrees to take Rosa Saenz, one of her friend Father Sikora’s community center volunteers, to Bemidji, Minn. That innocent errand sets the ex-cop on a path that will bring her into conflict with FBI agents, her former Chicago police colleagues and even her mentor, FBI Agent Jim Tilquist. In 1972, Tilquist’s FBI father, Agent Arne Tilquist, was murdered, and the bureau is still tracking his killer. Fister expertly brings the turbulent past into focus with emphasis on Ishkode, a militant splinter group of AIM (the American Indian Movement), and the FBI’s questionable responses to such movements. The Windy City already has plenty of fictional PIs, but they’ll have to make room for the gutsy and appealing Anni Koskinen. (June)

This lackluster sequel to Into the Shadows (2007), Wells’s first contemporary procedural to feature Lancashire DCI Max Trentham and forensic psychologist Jill Kennedy, finds Kennedy retired from police work and reinventing herself as an author of self-help books. Trentham, who was Kennedy’s lover as well as her colleague, drags her back into profiling after teenager Martin Hayden vanishes, only to be found in a canal with his skull fractured. The pair’s probe leads to the victim’s mother, Josie, revealing a shameful secret. When Josie is murdered and another teenager turns up dead, the police shift their focus from the Hayden family to a possible serial killer. Formulaic dead ends and suspects with guilty consciences unconnected to the killings interweave with Kennedy’s ambivalence about resuming a relationship with Trentham. An underdeveloped murder motive and a solution to the crimes telegraphed well in advance don’t help the predictable plot. (June)

Death and chocolate in Beverly Hills sounds like a delicious way to die, but it’s an unfortunate combo for Lupe Ortiz, a Latina cleaning lady, in Smiley’s appealing fourth Tucker Sinclair sleuthfest (after 2007’s Short Change). Tucker, a marketing expert, finds Lupe’s body in the bathroom of Nectar, a new gourmet chocolate shop owned by a client of Tucker’s. A quetzal feather left by the corpse, a signature of the MayaBoyz, points to Lupe’s son Roberto, who belongs to the East L.A. gang, as the prime suspect. Doubtful of Roberto’s guilt, Tucker asks her PI friend, Charley Tate, to investigate. Her overeager assistant, Eugene Barstok, also gets involved, but causes dismay when he disappears while undercover. Smiley fills this chocolate-enriched puzzler with touristy L.A. intel, while Tucker’s no-nonsense first-person narration keeps the pages turning despite a predictable ending. (June)

In Jeffries’s superior 32nd Inspector Alvarez mystery (after 2007’s Murder Needs Imagination), the Mallorcan policeman investigates the murder of a well-to-do woman, Señora Heron, whose husband finds her lying on their bedroom floor with a gunshot wound to her temple. A second wound to the victim’s thigh rules out suicide. The unfaithful Señor Heron, who stands to inherit a tidy sum from his late wife, appears to be the killer, but Alvarez’s instincts tell him otherwise. A burglar may have been involved, and the husband’s grief strikes him as too genuine to be counterfeit. Fans will relish renewing their acquaintance with the resilient inspector, his cousin Dolores of the fiery tongue and culinary expertise, and Alvarez’s unbearable boss, Superior Chief Salas. The understated descriptions of the Mallorcan milieu form as great an attraction as the crime solving. (June)

Set in Hogan’s Glen, Md., this witty cozy from Toussaint (No Second Chance) introduces Cleopatra Jones, accountant, avid golfer and single mother of two. Still reeling from her divorce from her cheating ex-husband, Charlie, Cleo is stunned to discover Charlie’s best friend from childhood, Donny Davis (aka “Dudley Doright”), lying on the golf course, a bullet hole between his eyes. When the police suspect Cleo’s own childhood friend, Jonette Moore, of the crime, Cleo goes into action to flush out the real murderer. A handsome golf pro’s offer of romance gives Cleo a boost as she deals with her mother, her children and the Saint Bernard dumped on her by her ex-husband. While filled with clichéd prose and stereotypical characters, the story takes some unexpected and dangerous turns as it builds to a satisfying conclusion. (June)

Two teenage orphans in an anemic fantasy analogue of Victorian London are baffled to find themselves on the run in this overeager effort from British author and blogger Hunt (For the Crown and the Dragon). Molly, pursued by determined assassins with mysterious masters, hides underground, while Oliver, framed for his uncle’s death, takes to the air to escape the fey-hunting Special Guard. They also draw the attention of the Court of the Air, a shadowy black-ops organization, and “communityist” revolutionaries seeking to resurrect ancient subterranean gods. An entire steampunk menagerie is pressed into lackluster service, but the pace leaves no time to focus on any single element. Only the “steammen” and their refreshingly tender machine culture are affecting and original. The historical and geographical parallels are overly frequent and mostly trite. Hunt has packed the story full of intriguing gimmicks, but the end result is more overload than wonder. (June)

This lighthearted second installment (after 2007’s The Man with the Golden Torc) in the adventures of “very secret agent” Eddie Drood follows the former rogue and reluctant patriarch as he struggles against enemies within and without his temporally extended family. Fighting against the Droods’ stiff-necked traditionalists and their previous deals with various devils, Eddie finds ways to combine the magic of his girlfriend, woods witch Molly Metcalf, and cousin Harry’s “hellspawn” half-brother and lover, Roger Morningstar, with the high-tech gadgets of the family Armourer to save the world from an intrusion of the Hungry Gods. Other than some page-long character-developing digressions, the pace is fast and energetic, which keeps attention off the occasional giant plot hole. Green loves the wide-screen splash of cinematic battles against zombie hordes, and genuine traces of tragedy and nobility underlie the nonstop punning banter and pop culture references, lending surprising nuance to this merry metaphysical romp. (June)

A hefty and welcome glossary of characters connects this sophomoric second installment of the DarkGlass Mountain trilogy to its predecessor, 2007’s The Serpent Bride. Maximilian, king of Escator, and his former queen, Ishbel, struggle to decide whether to repair or fully end their romance, while Isaiah, Maximilian’s military leader, and Axis SunSoar, a heroic winged Icarii enchanter, debate how to combat the demonic god Kanubai, who has been absorbed into the DarkGlass Mountain and now poses an even greater threat. Those familiar with Douglass’s earlier Axis Trilogy may savor the intricate interplay between humans, Icarii and their mysterious Lealfast cousins, and the Gollum-like Skraelings, but grisly scenes frequently disrupt the flow of the story, and Douglass’s chatty abandonment of epic tone (“You are in a pickle, Maximilian”) often snaps the necessary suspension of disbelief. Maximilian’s weariness over endless wandering that gets him nowhere proves an apt metaphor for the story. (June)

Lisle’s unengaging second novel set in the fantasy realm of Korre (after 2005’s Talyn) revolves around the mystical bond between Aaran, “a veteran tracker of slaves” on a quest to find his long-lost sister, and a nameless female slave whose unlikely ascension to oracle has made her all too aware of a plot that could wipe out an entire race. The young slave’s transformation into Hawkspar, a demigoddess who can “rearrange the flow of Time’s river,” requires replacing her eyes with magical stones, but her newfound abilities let her see a way to avert the deaths of thousands, although that path also means her certain death. Lisle’s return to Korre is plagued by a glut of two-dimensional characters and a decidedly uninspired story line. Despite plenty of action—battles with sea beasts, cannibals, wizards, etc.—the lack of substantive characters and complex plot makes for a flat and predictable read. (June)

The inaugural Skye Kellerman novel from Novak (Dead Right, etc.) generates genuine thrills. Attacked four years ago at home by rapist and murderer Oliver Burke, Skye defended herself and put him behind bars. Inspired by her own struggle, Skye began the Last Stand—an organization focused on helping survivors and teaching self-defense. She is also wrestling with an attraction to the detective from her case, David Willis. When Burke cuts a deal, the fiend is out on the street, eager for revenge on Skye—who has been the focus of his continued obsession. Novak changes the pace by focusing on the families—of the victim, of Willis, of Burke—showing different sides of protective love. Skye’s fellow members of the Last Stand get short shrift, but readers will look forward to books in the series devoted to each woman. (June)

A holistic approach to the art of cooking and love marks Esdaile’s latest heart-warmer (after No Trust) and soul charmer. Deborah Lee Jackson is 25, half-black and half-Cherokee, recently divorced and newly arrived in Philly. Eager for something more than her depressing water department job, Deborah embarks on a “complete self-help overhaul” by taking courses at the University Arts Center near her apartment. She meets Jason Hastings while buying supplies for her naturopathic cooking class, unaware he’s also a substitute art teacher at the Center. Jason, who is black, asks Deborah to pose for him because he’s determined to immortalize her in oil. Their mutual attraction blossoms into something very passionate and deeply fulfilling, but thorny conflicts rooted in their individual family histories soon arise. Esdaile explores the challenges the couple must face with sparkling sensitivity, interweaving spiritual issues with earthy, practical ones. (June)

In the third novel from Miles (Into Thin Air), top mystery novelist Abigail Landry is suffering from writer’s block. Seeking inspiration, she heads to a 14th-century castle in Scotland and soon finds that it’s haunted by Ethan Munro and his five relatives: not ghosts, but 14th-century Scotsmen trapped between their time and the present who corporealize for one hour a day. Ethan needs Abigail’s help to solve the mystery surrounding his situation and clear him of the murder of his wife in the past. As Abigail and Ethan fall for each other, they must avoid a vengeful spirit bent on killing Abigail out of jealousy, and the threat of losing each other if the mystery is finally solved. Spunky Abigail and typically gruff but warmhearted Ethan (and his rough and tumble kin) are sweetly entertaining. (June)

Orphaned at 10—his mother murdered, his father a suicide—Chase was raised by his grandfather Jonah, a grifter who has used Chase as a getaway driver. After Jonah shoots one of his crew during a poker game, Chase, at 21, realizing that the icy old man could easily turn on his own grandson, strikes off on his own. He works his way around the country stealing cars and driving for petty thieves until one night in Mississippi he runs up against deputy sheriff Lila Bodeen, who sees something in this brash young outlaw that she likes. Tragedy puts Chase back on the road, where he faces not only the killer but the truth—about himself and his shattered family. Piccirilli (The Midnight Road, etc.) tells the gritty, violent and dark tale in an appealingly noirish narrative style, highly economical yet bracingly intimate. (May)

Basketball-obsessed manga superstar Inoue (Vagabond; Slam Dunk) returns with a series about wheelchair basketball. Nomiya is a young thug recently kicked out of high school who yearns to play basketball. When he meets the wheelchair-bound basketball prodigy Kiyoharu Tagawa, the two begin hustling pickup games at local outdoor courts. In the meantime, Takahashi, the newly appointed captain of Nomiya’s former school basketball team, is hit by a car and paralyzed from the waist down. This first volume feels less dynamic than Inoue’s previous manga series, and it would have been a better idea for Viz to follow Del Rey’s example and simultaneously release volumes one and two for readers to get a better foundation for the story. Inoue’s illustrations are consistently gorgeous—volume one features ink watercolor paintings of his characters. His sense of action and drama is solid, but this opening book feels as though Inoue is figuring out how to get the different parts of his story to fit together fluidly—something to be remedied by volume two. Those who enjoyed Inoue’s other famed basketball manga, Slam Dunk, and anyone moved by triumph over great obstacles are encouraged to give it a read. (July)

Sievert’s first graphic novel is a small, understated fable about Hugh, a fisherman who learns that his mother has drowned. Deciding that the sea has become his enemy, he sets out to teach it a lesson. Of course, the sea is more powerful than Hugh imagined, and his journey involves a torrential storm, a whale, a giant squid and a series of emotional revelations. The story’s sentimental twists aren’t exactly subtle; its dialogue is mostly undiluted melodrama, and its conclusion is a predictable heartstring-tugger. But the metaphors for grief and depression are given life by Sievert’s deliberate, accomplished pacing. Almost every page is partly or entirely wordless, and he lets long, elegantly composed sequences of people and animals quietly interacting with their environments, or images of the land and sea and sky, establish the mood and tone of each scene. The book’s also full of subtle formalist tricks, like a house window whose frame cuts off the edges of a speech balloon. There’s certainly room for growth in Sievert’s cartooning—his facility with light and shade, as well as the deliciously blobby lines he uses for sea creatures in the nature scenes, give way to hurried, Craig Thompson–lite caricature when he draws human characters—but he’s a talent to watch. (Apr.)

It’s surprising that a book that more than lives up to its trivial title could also be satisfying to read, but the prosaic events of the acclaimed French comic artist’s life are so universal that one is left feeling comforted by the shared absurdities of life in the 21st century. These one- and two-page autobiographical vignettes culled from Trondheim’s blog form a very loose travel narrative, covering such clichéd topics as airport security, sightseeing in the fog and using bug spray to avoid mosquito-borne illnesses. Yet Trondheim is a playful character—he draws himself as a bird and the rest of the characters as other animals—making ordinary encounters entertaining. He is silly enough to pretend to find money on the street just to kid his friend, the ruse backfiring when a passerby insists the money is his, or to procrastinate by furiously swinging a toy light saber around the house. The soft yet vibrant watercolor images impart a unique tone, and the small details of country and city landscapes are artfully executed. Touching lightly upon marriage, fatherhood, work and success, all with a neurotic’s off-kilter sensibilities, the book is a charmingly lighthearted stroll through the life of an artist. (Apr.)

Signature

Reviewed by Sara Nelson

When James Frey imploded as a memoirist in 2006, many said his A Million Little Pieces should have been—and perhaps initially was—presented as a novel, and that Frey—a sometimes screenwriter—was, both by nature and design, a fiction writer. Bright Shiny Morning is his first official book of fiction. If it’s not quite a novel, less believable in its way than his “augmented” memoir ever was, there’s no doubt it’s a work of Frey’s imagination. Ironic, isn’t it?

Set in contemporary Los Angeles, Bright Shiny Morning is not a cohesive narrative but a compilation of vignettes of several characters (if this were a memoir, we’d call them “composites”) who have come to the city to fulfill their dreams. Some examples: Dylan and Maddie, madly-in-love Midwestern runaways who survive through the kindness of near strangers; Esperanza, a Mexican-American maid tortured by a body that could have been drawn by R. Crumb; a group of drunks and junkies who create a community behind the shacks on Venice Beach; Amberton Parker, a hugely famous married movie star who is secretly—you guessed it—gay. Interspersed with these rotating portraits are random historical and statistical factoids (which better have been fact-checked, even if there is a nudge-nudge, wink-wink disclaimer up front: “Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable”) about L.A.: that, for example, “approximately 2.7 million people live without health insurance” and “there are more than 12,000 people who describe their job as bill collector in the City of Los Angeles.” Frey’s intention, it seems, is to create an onomatopoetic jumble, a cacophony of facts and fiction, stats and stories, that replicate the contradictory nature of the place they describe.

I expect, given the sharpness of the knives that some critics have out for Frey, that many will say the book flat out doesn’t work. First off, there’s that voice, the hyperbolic, breathless, run-on, word-repeating voice that was much better suited to a memoir (or even a novel) in which the hero was a hyperbolic, breathless alcoholic and drug addict. And then there’s the frat-boy swagger that angered some readers of AMLP turning up here, too, so faux-cynical as to be naïve: the gang father’s attaboy about his five-year-old son’s desire to be a cold-blooded killer, and the prurient, adolescent take on sex. (And couldn’t someone have stopped him from exclaiming “woohoo” after some of his “fun” and “not fun” factoids?)

Yet the guy has something: an energy, a drive, a relentlessness, maybe, that can pull readers along, past the voice, past the stock characters, past the clichés. Bright Shiny Morning is a train wreck of a novel, but it’s un-put-downable, a real page-turner—in what may come to be known as the Frey tradition.

Sara Nelson is the editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly.

These June titles had previous lives before being picked up by a mainstream publisher.

A quirky charm takes the place of easy answers in this midlife tear-up, originally self-published by debut author McFadden. A neglected corporate wife for 25 years, Joanna Harrison rebels when husband Paul receives yet another move-necessitating promotion. Before they go, with her children grown, Joanna gets in her car and leaves their upscale Jersey digs. Ending up at Pawley’s Island, S.C., Joanna meets Grace, an elderly artist who has a house on the ocean and needs a live-in companion. A floundering Paul heads to Pawley Island to try to woo Joanna back, but soon has further crises to face. Skillful plotting keeps pages turning, and McFadden quickly has readers rooting for intriguing Joanna, on the cusp of change. (June)

In this treacly reprint of a novel first published in 2000 (by a now-defunct indie press), Edith and Earl McRae have lived on their Oregon farm for 60 years, but know their time is coming to an end. After a withdrawn Earl discovers a lump in his neck, he struggles to reconnect with his wife and his alienated grandson, Daniel. Into this family tragedy strolls Mara, a chaotic figure who sees auras and appears in other characters’ dreams—in other words, she’s the stereotypical freethinking outsider who opens stoics to the redemptive powers of love. The result is an ersatz inspirational novel that mistakes the characters’ tendencies to natter on about God and ethics and spout goofy New Age-isms for plot or character development. (June)