Fiction Reviews: Week of 5/12/2008

In Prose's deeply touching and absorbing 15th novel, narrator Nico, 13, comes upon Gerard Manley Hopkins's “Spring and Fall” (which opens “Margaret, are you grieving/ Over Goldengrove unleaving?”) in her father's upstate New York bookstore, also named Goldengrove. It's the summer after her adored older sister, Margaret—possessed of beauty, a lovely singing voice and a poetic nature—casually dove from a rowboat in a nearby lake and drowned. In emotive detail, Nico relates the subsequent events of that summer. Nico was a willing confidant and decoy in Margaret's clandestine romance with a high school classmate, Aaron, and Nico now finds that she and Aaron are drawn to each other in their mutual bereavement. Unhinged by grief, Nico's parents are distracted and careless in their oversight of Nico, and Nico is deep in perilous waters before she realizes that she is out of her depth. Prose eschews her familiar satiric mode. She fluidly maintains Nico's tender insights into the human condition as Nico comes to discover her own way of growing up and moving on. (Sept.)

Boncompagni (who writes for the New York Times Sunday Styles section) wittily describes the rise and fall of “Girl of the Moment” Lily Grace. After relocating to New York from Nashville, Lily becomes a society darling and marries the “handsome, charming, well-educated” and wealthy Robert Bartholomew. But an unplanned pregnancy destroys their nuptial bliss, and Lily becomes “flabby and cellulite-laden” as soon as she's carrying. Robert quits his job at a law firm and spends more and more time with his mother, a manipulative socialite. Lily, meanwhile, begins writing lifestyle pieces, which brings her back to the social-climbing world she inhabited pre-pregnancy. Lily's successes are marred by the constant indignities she suffers at the hands of her peers, forcing Lily to decide what she's willing to pay for her social standing. Boncompagni has an eye for the comedic aspects of this privileged, insular group, and her humor tends toward the absurd rather than the malevolent. The author's familiarity with the world she describes allows her to garnish the narrative with tantalizing details, and her protagonist is likable even at her most dastardly. (Sept.)

In this first novelist's promising foray into metafiction, on-and-off second-person narrator Daniel Fischer has a talent for hearing the sound of a pencil scratching whenever someone is being written about. Otherwise, he's your standard red-haired, freckle-faced nebbish. After a lifetime apparently consigned to being part of the scenery in other characters' stories, a one-night stand with singer Delia Benson puts him in the limelight. As he awkwardly maneuvers himself into Delia's circle of friends—including her boyfriend, Graham, a struggling musician making ends meet as a gay-for-pay hooker—he second-guesses the purpose and extent of his role in the novel of Delia and Graham (passages of which appear throughout). Daniel reads a writing manual to determine what he should be doing and where the book is taking him, and in an attempt to make himself essential to Delia's and Graham's stories, he pulls strings to change their lives, but his plans massively backfire. Conescu's light, swift and nicely structured dark comedy puts to the test a character's ability to outwrite his own author. In the end, the author wins. (Sept.)

The author of Gob's Grief and The Children's Hospital returns with a sublime collection of nine stories whose wide assortment of characters, many of them children, fugue around death, are plagued by remembrance of things past and are possessed by violence. In “Stab,” a young protagonist whose twin died, joins a little girl in a killing spree of neighborhood animals, eventually setting their sights on larger prey. A woman who tries to commit suicide in “The Sum of Our Parts” wanders hospital halls as an astral projection, witnessing the unexpressed desires of her “friends” in pathology. And a Juno-esque teen, a hospital regular with short-gut syndrome, writes an animal book of sublimated child-ward life: bunnies with “high colonic ruin,” cats with “leukemic indecisiveness” and monkeys with “chronic kidney doom.” The story “Why Antichrist?” gives us two teenagers who have each lost parents, one to 9/11 (which looms large in the collection); the devil is soon literally between the teens. With heartbreaking imagination, Adrian illuminates how people act out their grief on their own bodies and the bodies of others, and enter the world of the spirit in the process. (Aug.)

Unfortunately for Nell Plat, the heroine of Erin McGraw's immersive fifth book (after The Good Life), she is a whiz with a needle, but a failure in the kitchen. While she makes a name for herself sewing dresses in early 20th-century Grant Station, Kans., her lack of kitchen prowess is crippling to her marriage, prompting her to leave her husband and two daughters for Hollywood, where with the help of a French grammar book, she becomes Madame Annelle, modiste to the fine ladies of Pasadena. She marries oilman George Curran, and has another daughter, Mary. Just as she realizes her dream, cutting fabric alongside an established and very esteemed seamstress, her past arrives on her doorstep in the form of her two grown daughters, flappers who call themselves Lisette and Aimée in an attempt at the sophistication they hope will land them in the movies. Nell claims them as her sisters, but the lie only delays the unraveling of her California dream. Inspired by her grandmother's story, McGraw captures the lonely rigor of life on the plains and the invigorating lure of reinvention. (Aug.)

Ginsberg's second novel is an entertaining whodunit and an invigorating tale about a damaged young storefront psychic who learns how to live truthfully. Although she has worked as a psychic since childhood, Marina Marks does not believe that psychic abilities exist. Instead, she uses her intuition and observational skills to hoodwink her clients. Arriving in Southern California from Florida, she acquires a new set of clients: Madeleine, the hostess, desperate to maintain her hold on her wealthy husband; Cooper, in love with a psychiatrist who refuses to admit that he is gay; and Eddie, a married womanizer frustrated by his inability to seduce Marina. Ginsberg deftly shows how Marina cultivates her clients' dependency—and her own income—from their desperation, as well as how easily her clients' trust in her deteriorates. Soon, the threat of violence that Marina left Florida to escape flares up anew, and Marina begins to suspect, to her confusion and dismay, that she may actually be psychic. Ginsberg thoroughly exploits her clever premise, and Marina's handling of her troubles—romantic, professional, mystical—ring true through to the redemptive end. (Aug.)

Two generations of ordinary Portuguese villagers share a town with Bosch-like grotesques in this grim, repetitive debut fantasia from Peixoto. In a poor, unnamed town, an unrelenting sun beats down on José, a shepherd, as he's told by the devil that his wife is having an affair with a giant. Meanwhile, one of a pair of twins (joined at the pinky) falls in love with a widowed cook; at the age of 70, she has a child. Years later, José's son falls in love with the wife of his cousin Salomão, and, again it is the devil who smilingly bears the news to the cuckolded man. Several of the townspeople find refuge from stasis and malaise in suicide. Through shifting points of view (the female characters are not named), repeated phrases and the allegorical setting, Peixoto aims to manifest a subtle connection between the townspeople, a kind of superconsciousness. Throughout, plot takes a back seat to the bleak, stultifying atmosphere. The result is a nihilistic look at rural life in particular and human affairs in general. (Aug.)

In this solid ripped-from-the-headlines effort from Galanes (Father's Day), Emma Sutton—once an Oprah-featured interior design queen, now a newly released convicted tax felon—is determined to regain her balance, personally and professionally. Yet she soon resorts to mild fraud at an auction, proving old habits die hard. Confrontations with her ex-husband (who wants to try again) and her adult daughter (a mass of insecurities and vices) lead to guilt and shame. Meanwhile, Emma's weekend assistant, Benjamin Blackman, is not coping very well with his girlfriend or with his day job as an elementary school social worker. There a troubled, overweight third grader, Gracie Santiago, is losing ground fast, despite her mother's efforts. When Emma decides that she has brought her woes upon herself and can get rid of them the same way, the story lines collide neatly. Galanes's thoughtful, placid novel is overpopulated given the scarcity of plot, but the mother-daughter relationships hold it together. (Aug.)

In this fiction follow-up to his well-received memoir, Monster, Shakur produces a visceral and strikingly real portrayal of gang life in Los Angeles, replete with sudden and inexplicable violence, revenge, betrayal, ostentatious living, racism, the strong arm of law enforcement, drugs, love and loyalty indistinguishably blurred. Protagonist Lapeace Shakur, a high-ranking Crip, is forced to live as a fugitive when his longtime archenemy, Anyhow, a high-ranking Blood, is arrested and tortured until he confesses about Lapeace's involvement in a fatal shooting. When the word on the street comes back that there was a videotape of the shooting, it leads to the deaths of several gang bangers and some of the cops on Lapeace's trail. Shakur is better than anyone else in the street lit game at making his characters feel like real people, even if the psychology is sometimes ham-fisted. This gang life novel is the real deal. (Aug.)

Lakhani paints a darkly comic picture of what a five-figure tuition bill really gets you at an elite Manhattan private school. The former Dalton English teacher knows the territory, and it is bleak. Here's Anna, a newbie teacher with Ivy credentials whose passion for the low-paying teaching profession is cause for celebration at the upper-crust Langdon school, where as the exotic-looking newcomer, she is mistakenly identified as a coveted minority hire. With low pay and even lower expectations from teachers and parents, Anna realizes there's no way she can survive—until she learns about lucrative after-school tutoring gigs. And just like that, Anna's ideals go out the window. In a hilarious out-of-control spiral into obsession with all-things designer, expensive and showy, Anna transforms into someone who believes money can buy everything and everyone. There is redemption, of course, in the form of a teacher who bucks the system, and Anna discovers some of her students are pretty wonderful. The realization comes rather abruptly, and the happy ending is a bit pat, but the romp through an unsettling, soulless world of adults and children who'd rather coast through life than live it provides plenty of laughs. (Aug.)

An accomplished midwife, orphan Maggie Duncan leaves 1760 Scotland at 22, in search of opportunities in the New World. She pays for her crossing with four years of indentured servitude. Aboard ship, sadistic viscount Julian Cavendish drunkenly stumbles upon Maggie attempting to grab a few moments of forbidden above deck sleep and tries to rape her. At landfall, kindly Virginia frontiersman Seth Martin, in need of Maggie's medical skills to save his ailing wife, purchases her contract. Seth's best friend, Tom Roberts, a rugged hunter, instantly catches Maggie's eye, but she hasn't seen the last of evil Julian Cavendish. Blevins doesn't soft-peddle the brutal realities of women's lot in the colonies, but she gives strong, skilled Maggie pluck and hope. (Aug.)

With simple grace, 16 stories by Galician-born journalist and author Rivas (The Carpenter's Pencil) transport readers to rural Galicia, in northwest Spain. The 15-year-old carpenter's son of “Saxophone in the Mist” picks up the instrument to please his father. Pressed into an itinerant band, he quickly learns, despite his feelings of inadequacy, that playing for people, and especially an adoring local girl, is like falling in love. “Butterfly's Tongue” (made into a 1999 film), begins as a young boy's loving reflection of his enlightened first teacher, who taught him things his provincial parents couldn't comprehend, then dilates into a harrowing betrayal with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The title story unspools the narrator's poignant memory of his milkmaid mother, whom he recognizes much later in a figure in a Vermeer painting, “as alike as two drops of milk.” Published in Spain in 1995, these evocative tales retain a lyrical freshness. (Aug.)

At the start of bestseller Slaughter's heart-pounding sequel to 2006's Triptych, wealthy housewife Abigail Campano returns home one day to Atlanta's posh Ansley Park neighborhood to find a dead girl in the mansion's upstairs hallway, the apparent killer nearby. Thinking that the girl is her teenage daughter, Emma, the distraught Abby kills the alleged attacker only to realize that the murdered girl is not Emma, but Emma's friend, Kayla Alexander. Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation soon determines that he has a murder and kidnapping on his hands. Paired with Det. Faith Mitchell, Trent scrambles to put the pieces together and find Emma before it's too late. Slaughter brings the same raw energy and brutal violence that distinguishes her Grant County series (Beyond Reach, etc.) to this new series with chilling results, while Trent and Mitchell, a pair of complex and deeply flawed heroes, will leave fans clamoring for the next installment. (July)

An epic fictional romance between Alexander the Great and an Amazon queen drives the latest from Shan Sa (Empress). As a boy, Sa's Alexander is abused by his father, King Philip of Macedonia. Alexander grows into a cruel and narcissistic youth with an unquenchable thirst for revenge. His political ambitions blossom under the tutelage of Aristotle, and after his father's assassination, Alexander sets off to conquer Greece, Persia and Egypt. When he meets Alestria, the young queen of the Amazons (a mythical tribe of nomadic, male-spurning female warriors from the eastern steppes), he has perhaps met his match in love and war. Told in the extravagant voices of Alexander and Alestria, and of Alestria's protector and confidante, Ania, there's little subtlety in this sweeping, heroic romance. But strewn amid the pageantry and clamor are fascinating details about Alexander's world and about the legendary Amazons, who, if they existed at all, might have been his contemporaries—and equals. (July)

In Ghelfi's mesmerizing second Russian thriller (after Volk's Game), Alexei “Volk” Vokovoy, an ex-army colonel with a prosthetic leg who does the dirty work for a paranoid Kremlin official known as “the General,” receives what appears to be a simple assignment: find a missing Fabergé egg. The hunt quickly leads Volk into a raw, uncivilized world in which even the most basic needs of common Russians go unmet. Crime bosses work hand-in-hand with the government. The riches of oil trump all other priorities. Sexual violence surges uncontrollably. While the complicated plot can be hard to follow in places, and the Rambo-like Volk may not engage much reader sympathy, crisp characterization and strong visual prose keep the story moving to its harrowing climax in Chechnya. Those seeking a tour of the dark side of contemporary Russia will be more than satisfied. Author tour. (July)

Edgar-winner Klavan (True Crime) delivers a wickedly satiric thriller with political overtones. Jason Harrow was cynically immoral before he found God and became a conservative Midwestern family man. Now his former lover summons him back to New York City with the news that his teenage daughter (one he never knew about) is in trouble, mixed up with terrorists who are plotting a major atrocity. To save his daughter and thousands of others, Jason must confront the buried fear that he's inherited his mother's insanity and can't control his own dark urges. As Jason's insecurity intensifies, so does the novel's nightmarish mood. Disgusted by the excesses of the liberal media, Jason discovers that he's not just paranoid, he really is a persecuted outsider. The action builds to an explosive climax at the screening of a 3-D movie at a Manhattan theater. (July)

MI5 officer Liz Carlyle tries to make the best of it after she's unwillingly transferred from counterterrorism to counterespionage in Rimington's excellent third novel (after Secret Asset). Assigned to a case involving a rich Moscow oligarch living in London, Liz quickly realizes that there's considerable evidence the oligarch's been targeted for death by someone in Russia—perhaps with the assistance of the Russian government, perhaps not. Matters become more complicated when it becomes evident Liz herself may wind up a target. Rimington's command of espionage and counterespionage history and techniques (derived from long personal experience at the same British agency as Carlyle's) enables her to bring enormous believability to her well-paced narrative. Her dialogue moves as swiftly as the action, and her characters are as believable as the world in which they—and we—live. Fans of intelligent spy thrillers are in for a treat. Author tour. (July)

At the start of bestseller Rollins's rousing fifth Sigma Force novel (after The Judas Strain), the group's leader, Cmdr. Gray Pierce, encounters a homeless man as he's crossing the Mall in Washington, D.C., near Sigma Force's secret lair far beneath the Smithsonian Castle. The man, who's really an MIT neurology professor, collapses in Pierce's arms and dies after passing him a strange coin, thus kicking off a far-flung adventure whose plot threads include the Oracle of Delphi, autistic savant children with strange implants behind their ears, Gypsies, power-mad Russians bent on unleashing enough radioactivity to poison the world, rogue American spy agencies and genetically enhanced wolves and tigers. Lots of absorbing scientific information and tantalizing sentences like “With two rifles strapped to his back and a boy and a chimpanzee in tow, Monk marched down the pitch-black tunnel” keep the pages flying by. 10-city author tour. (July)

A cosmopolitan Indian-Canadian Muslim gets engaged and must deal with complicated feelings for an old friend, in Alam's absorbing debut. After living as a bachelor in New York for several years, Nasr agrees to let his mother arrange a marriage for him, despite concerns raised by childhood friend Jameela. Three years later, an international search leads him to Farah, who he hopes will share his sensibilities about the appropriate balance between tradition and modernity. The attacks of 9/11 disrupt their already complicated harmonizing process. Nasr finds himself having to defend Islam in his financial firm's copy room. Meanwhile, Nasr's relationship with Jameela undergoes changes. The book's epigraph is from Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, and Alam sets up Nasr as Newland Archer and Jameela as the independent-minded Countess Olenska. (The two even attend a party hosted by a Van der Luyden.) Delicately crafted and multilayered, this moving book shows Alam to be a writer of great promise. (July)

A rock-solid if complicated plot distinguishes this stand-alone thriller from Abbott (Panic). In Austin, Tex., a hired assassin fumbles an assignment, leaving several men dead. In the pocket of one of the victims, a Belfast hit man, is the business card of Ben Forsberg, who's been trying to put his life together since his wife was gunned down on their honeymoon two years earlier. After Homeland Security agents pick up the clueless Ben because they think he's the killer, Pilgrim, an agent with yet another secret government agency, the Cellar, rescues Ben from the Homeland Security folk. The appealing Pilgrim and Ben set out to clear Ben's name and rescue Pilgrim's boss, Teach, who's been taken prisoner by the mastermind behind the elaborate plot. Abbott keeps the action zipping along as the body count mounts, and Ben becomes far wiser and far tougher as he learns the harsh realities of kill or be killed. (July)

In Belmond's lilting sequel to A Rather Lovely Inheritance, heroine Penny Nichols exults in being released from her stodgy American life and learns that being newly rich is not all champagne and roses. Her barrister boyfriend, Jeremy Laidley, also an heir to Penny's great-aunt's vast fortune, wants to use their wealth wisely. Penny agrees, planning to pool their resources and eventually create a joint enterprise that will utilize Penny's “natural-born snooping ability” and Jeremy's legal expertise. Taking a summer off to explore their options, Jeremy decides to splurge on a vintage yacht at an auction. But their dreamboat vanishes from its berth and later turns up, damaged, in a nearby harbor. Penny's determined to solve “Le Boat-Jacking,” leading them to the yacht's previous owner, Count Hubert von Norbert, in Lake Como and some seafaring surprises. It's fluffy and fun, even if you don't have your own yacht. (July)

In Hallinan's stellar sequel to A Nail Through the Heart, travel writer and sometime detective Poke Rafferty is researching the dangerous side of Bangkok for a book when he, his ex-prostitute girlfriend, Rose, and their adopted daughter, Miaow, run afoul of a U.S. Secret Service agent who accuses Rose of passing counterfeit money. The Secret Service is concerned, Poke learns, that the North Koreans have been flooding the world with billions of dollars of fake currency. Poke is then abducted by the beautiful Ming Li, who takes him to his despised father, Frank, who abandoned Poke and his mother many years before. When Frank's mortal enemy, Colonel Chu, turns up, it's clear that things are going to hell very quickly, and Poke and his beloved family are not going to escape unscathed. Smooth prose, appealing characters and a twisting action-filled plot make this thriller a standout. (July)

Screenwriter Haas's debut features a darkly compelling narrator. When a young hit man who refers to himself as “Columbus” learns his next job is to assassinate presidential candidate Abe Mann, Columbus is not taken aback so much by Mann's national prominence as he is by the key role Mann once played in Columbus's past. Soon Columbus realizes that those behind the plot appear to be setting somebody else up as well—himself. The suspense builds as Columbus goes about his business, all the while detailing his accomplishments, his acuity, his nerve, his intelligence. Then he does something so unlikely that the reader immediately realizes that whatever the author intended, this is a narrator too unreliable to listen to, much less trust. Still, those looking for a downbeat political fable during the current election season may be satisfied. (July)

Lily Kessler, a former OSS officer, fearlessly treads Hollywood's meanest streets in search of her late fiancé's actress sister, Kitty Hayden, who's gone missing while seeking juicy parts and wealthy lovers, in this evocative stand-alone set in 1949 from Hamilton (Prisoner of Memory and four other Eve Diamond thrillers). Soon after moving into Kitty's grungy boarding house, Lily learns Kitty's been murdered, like the famous “Black Dahlia” not long before, and she puts all her skills—intuition, deduction, inference and logic—into unraveling the crime. Gang wars, police corruption, shady reporters and a passionate new love interest, Det. Stephen Pico, can't stop Lily. Despite some papier-mâché minor characters and some celluloid motivations, this torrid, down-and-dirty exposé of the postwar entertainment industry includes enough special effects to make all that glitter look—temporarily—like 24-carat gold. (July)

Wry, economical and perpetually surprising, these 14 stories from English novelist Gardam (Old Filth) follow the last of the intrepid, stiff upper lip WWII generation of British ladies and gentlemen. In the title story, octogenarian widower Edward Feathers, “cold and old and going out to lunch with a woman called Dulcie he never much liked” arrives at Dulcie's Dorset house, where shared sensibilities go a long way in carrying them through some awkward moments. In “The Latter Days of Mr. Jones,” the aged titular protagonist, “the last of his tribe,” collides with contemporary mores when his daily solitary walks on the Common, frequented by children, arouse suspicions. Set in 1941, “The Flight Path” proves a creepy, hilarious sendup of familial relations when young medical student Jim Smith travels to London for a terrible, memorable night during the blitz. And “The Last Reunion” finds a group of four toughened elderly dames, once college chums, returning unsentimentally to their school on the occasion of its closing. Gardam vividly evokes an age of iron wills. (July)

In his overly cute first novel (after two story collections), Pendarvis channels a hapless giant named Awesome who spends his days constructing robots, discovering a variety of uses for his bodily fluids and looking for those who will accept him. After having no luck with a group of teenagers who beat him to a pulp, and little luck with a Beluga whale he courts at the aquarium, the giant meets new neighbor Glorious Jones. Cut to their wedding a few pages later, where the giant botches his vows and is left at the altar. A madcap trek to prove his love and win back his fiancée ensues. While Pendarvis keeps the conceit furiously spinning, it's not enough to sustain the book, which fails to negotiate the perilous line between faux naïve and overly cute. (July)

In Tearne's beautifully crafted debut, middle-aged novelist Theo Samarajeeva leaves London after the death of his wife and returns to his native Colombo, Sri Lanka, which has been ravaged by the continuing civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority government. In his many novels, Theo, who is Sinhalese, empathizes with the Tamil cause, but he refuses to take any extra precautions for his own safety on returning, despite the danger his books bring. After teenage artist Nulani Mendis, whose father was burnt alive by separatists, continually appears in his garden, where she draws in solitude, Theo commissions her to paint his portrait. As Theo and Nulani's lives become increasingly intertwined, genuine romance begins to unfold, but dangers lurk: a menacing former Tamil child solider, Vikram, has taken a liking to Nulani; meanwhile, Nulani's venomous uncle soon learns of the relationship with Theo. Tearne captures the desperation, fear and hope of love during wartime, showing multiple sides of the human capacity for survival. (July)

In Battles's strong sequel to The Cleaner—which introduced Jonathan Quinn, an ex-CIA agent who cleans up crime scenes for a shadowy U.S. government intelligence agency—Quinn determines to find the murderer of his CIA friend Steven Markoff. Quinn and his team must also locate Steven's missing girlfriend, Jenny Fuentes, to notify her of Steven's death. The search for Jenny hopscotches from Los Angeles to Houston to the Washington, D.C., offices of Jenny's boss, an ambitious politician. Along the way, Quinn and his compatriots contend with villains who appear to be linked to an international conspiracy. The chase ends in Singapore, where Quinn enlists a former underworld contact to help identify the plot's nefarious mastermind. Breakneck pacing, colorful locales and dizzying plot twists make the Quinn series a welcome addition to the political thriller genre. (July)

Bestseller Johansen (Quicksand) and her Edgar-winning son, Roy (Deadly Visions), collaborate on their first thriller with entertaining results. Hannah Bryson, a top-notch submarine designer, and her brother, Conner, must make sure that a Russian nuclear submarine, the Silent Thunder, recently purchased by the U.S. government for use as a maritime museum, is safe for visitors. Working alone on the sub in a Maine harbor, the two make a strange discovery that's swiftly followed by a deadly attack. Others, both Russian and American, want what the Brysons have uncovered and will stop at nothing to obtain it. One Russian, Nicolas Kirov, has a special interest in the submarine as well as a growing interest in the feisty, beautiful Hannah. The constantly bickering Hannah and Kirov are forced to work together for a common goal as they fight various enemies and, of course, fall in love. The romantic subplot threatens to take over the action, but is thankfully reined in at the exciting finale. 12-city author tour. (July)

Dark secrets that can destroy lives propel bestseller Coulter's solid 12th FBI thriller (after Double Take). When a small plane carrying FBI Special Agent Jackson “Jack” Crowne makes a crash landing in mountainous Parlow, Ky., his friends FBI Special Agents Dillon Savitch and Lacey Sherlock fly by helicopter from Washington, D.C., to the scene. Jack survives the crash, aided by Rachael Abbott, a young woman who's returning to Parlow, her childhood home, after escaping an attempt to drown her in a Maryland lake. After Rachael reveals that she's the illegitimate daughter of the late Maryland senator John James Abbott, whose siblings she suspects are trying to kill her, the FBI agents agree to help. As further attempts on Rachael's life occur, the attraction grows between her and Jack. Despite a somewhat predictable plot, master of romantic suspense Coulter exposes the cost of obsessive regard for family honor and family shame with her usual flair. (June)

Set in Philadelphia in 1842, Biddle's second mystery to feature upper-class amateur sleuth Martha Beale (after 2007's The Conjurer) offers fully human characters and a credible plot. When a wealthy young woman goes missing, Martha and Thomas Kelman, the mayor's assistant in charge of solving crimes, investigate. As their hunt takes them into the homes of the rich, a brothel frequented by the well-to-do and the streets of the poor, Martha and Thomas must face their own feelings for each other and resolve their class differences. Meanwhile, Martha's adopted daughter, Ella, embarks on a search for her real mother, and Martha's young adopted son, Cai, worries about ghosts who come down the chimney. Exceptional attention to period detail helps transport the reader to a past very unlike our own and yet so similar. (Aug.)

Howell's winning debut introduces Haley Randolph, a self-described “crazed, obsessive, handbag whore,” whose designer bag addiction has put her into mega–credit card debt. After Haley loses her accounting job with a prestigious Los Angeles law firm because of suspected embezzlement, she takes a part-time job during the Christmas season at Holt's Department Store, where she connects with Ty Cameron, the store's gorgeous young owner. When Haley becomes a murder suspect after finding the corpse of Holt's despised assistant manager, she resolves to find the true killer. Haley's amusing narrative voice energizes the crime solving and canoodling (“Oh my God, what was I thinking? I couldn't have sex with Ty Cameron to keep my job—I could under other circumstances, of course—but not for a job at Holt's”). Reminiscent of Reese Witherspoon's character in the Legally Blonde films, Haley evolves from a total airhead into a semi-airhead without breaking a nail. A cool cliffhanger will leave readers eager for Haley's next adventure. (July)

At the start of DePoy's atmospheric fifth novel to feature folklorist Fever Devilin (after 2007's A Widow's Curse), an intense and nervous young man claiming to be 100 years old arrives at Devilin's home in the Georgia Appalachians. The visitor vividly recounts his time in the brothels in Chicago when the tango was new and his experiences in the trenches of WWI. But when the man starts waving a gun around just before slipping into a narcoleptic sleep, Devilin thinks it best to call in expert assistance. The stranger disappears before the sheriff arrives; several hours later, the body of a drifter turns up nearby wearing the same clothes as Devilin's visitor. Devilin is determined to solve the crime and uncover whether the murder victim and the peculiar storyteller are one and the same. Unsettling and engaging throughout, this solidly enjoyable tale will keep readers guessing until the end. (July)

In Gooden's pallid whodunit, the first in a new series set in British cathedral towns during the Victorian era, London attorney Thomas Ansell travels to Salisbury to take custody of a manuscript belonging to Canon Felix Slater—the racy memoirs of the canon's father, George, who knew writers like Byron and Shelley and sowed “quite a few wild oats in his youth.” Shortly after Ansell arrives in Salisbury and meets Slater, someone murders the canon in his study with one of the flint spearheads he'd dug up in the neighborhood. The police suspect Ansell of the crime after finding him near the body, his hands stained with the victim's blood. To clear his name, Ansell turns amateur sleuth. Unmemorable main figures, coupled with some odd authorial editorializing and a clichéd denouement make this a less than engaging read. Fans of Gooden's Shakespearean mystery series (That Sleep of Death, etc.) will hope for a return to form in the next installment. (July)

Grabien (New-Slain Knight) builds the rocking first of a new series around guitarist John “JP” Kincaid, a member of Blacklight, a legendary British rock group on a par with the Rolling Stones. In New York City, where Blacklight has come to perform, sleazy celebrity journalist Perry Dillon interviews a reluctant JP for an unauthorized tell-all bio of the band. When Perry turns up dead in JP's dressing room, JP's longtime girlfriend, Bree Godwin, becomes the prime suspect. Perry had found some skeletons in JP's past about Bree, not to mention JP's estranged wife, Cilla, and drug-related issues. The investigation by NYPD Lt. Patrick Ormand inspires JP to rethink the last 25 years—a rollercoaster ride of sold-out concerts, drug rehab and enduring love. JP decides it takes more than just “sitting on my bum” to find the real killer. Grabien has created a down-to-earth hero who delivers a brisk upbeat message. (July)

To make ends meet, slightly impoverished but well-connected Lady Georgiana Rannoch takes on house-cleaning jobs in disguise in Agatha-winner Bowen's enchanting second mystery set in 1930s England (after 2007's Her Royal Spyness). A tea invitation from the queen, however, sets her on a new mission. Georgiana must house and chaperone a young Bavarian princess the queen hopes to set up with the prince of Wales, thus diverting his attention from his current American love interest. The princess proves to be quite a handful, naïve and addicted to slang. Invitations to the palace, country house weekends and swinging parties are provided for her amusement. When a series of unfortunate deaths arouses Georgiana's suspicions, she launches an investigation that culminates in a startlingly bloody conclusion. Fans will welcome the return of this spunky heroine, 34th in line to the British throne. (July)

An acrimonious English department faculty meeting at Chicago-area Grover Cleveland High leads to murder in Zubro's intriguing 12th Tom and Scott mystery (after 2006's Everyone's Dead but Us). English teacher Tom Mason's troubles begin after he discovers the corpse of teacher Gracie Eberson, an eraser stuck in her mouth, in a supply room also occupied by two male teachers engaged in a sexual tryst. The guilty pair deny Tom's official report about their illicit activity, and an anonymous tip implicates Tom in Eberson's murder. When the dead body of another teacher turns up behind Tom's car, Tom turns sleuth. Tom's lover, Scott Carpenter, and such friends as Meg Swarthmore, Grover Cleveland's feisty librarian, and police officer Frank Rohde lend support. Zubro, a high school English teacher himself, invests this whodunit with sharp insights into what can happen when prejudice rules as well as timely lessons on educational chicanery. (July)

Mario Conde, Padura's tormented Cuban police detective, is at his anguished best in this sequentially second volume of the so-called Havana Quartet, which constitutes a four-season chronicle of one year (1989) in Conde's life, though it's the last of the four to be available in English translation. The hard-drinking, romantic Conde, who's wanted to become a writer but ended up as a policeman in a corrupt and struggling land, constantly questions his fate as he investigates the murder of young, good-looking school teacher, Lissette Núñez Delgado, who taught at Pre-University High School, the same school Conde attended in his youth. Conde's return to his old school triggers nostalgia and regrets as he interviews the headmaster, students and fellow teachers. The original title, Vientos de Cuaresma (The Winds of Lent), captures the extensive wind imagery that Padura skillfully uses to capture Conde's state of mind. (June 30)

In Harrod-Eagles's elegant 11th Bill Slider mystery (after 2005's Dear Departed), the detective inspector investigates the murder of civil servant Ed Stonax, a former high-profile BBC correspondent, found dead with his skull smashed on the floor of his West London flat. Stonax had been looking into something to do with a building site in Scotland, but no one can break his computer code to find out exactly what. Meanwhile, Slider's ladies' man of an assistant, Jim Atherton, falls for Stonax's grieving daughter, Emily, and Slider and his musician love, Joanna, are trying to marry before their firstborn arrives. To complicate matters further, convicted murderer Trevor Bates (aka “The Needle”) is at large and threatening to get even with Slider. The various plot lines neatly intersect at the highest levels of government by the end of this appealing English whodunit. (June)

“Queen of Gonzo” What (Olympic Games) drags love out of its gooey, schmaltzy rut and takes it for a joyride in this exuberant collection of 17 stories. “Finger Talk” is a poignant take on unwanted pregnancy and cavalier men. “Babies” gives a Kafkaesque touch to a pregnancy that may or may not have been affected by pesticides during the first trimester. “All My Children” asks whether the provider of a sperm sample is legally responsible for the children that come from its use—and if he is, how does he pay for 10,000 college tuition fees? The 1999 Nebula-winning “The Cost of Doing Business” posits possibly the most incredible premise in the book: a love for others that is completely selfless and nonjudgmental. No matter how brief or long, no matter how bizarre, each tale in this collection grabs readers and demands they rethink how they see all the myriad forms of love. (July)

Horror Grand Master Campbell (The Overnight) draws on the eeriness of clowns, silent comedians and wordless struggles to communicate in this unsettling surrealist fable. Disgraced film critic Simon Lester is writing a book on obscure silent film star Tubby Thackeray, whose outrageous shenanigans caused riots and madness in his audiences. Thanks to Thackeray's blacklisted status and nasty habit of paranormally pestering Simon, research on the book is as difficult and tedious as Simon's personal life, which decays as he struggles to demonstrate his competence while wrestling with forces that are swiftly driving him insane. Campbell's impeccable grasp of interpersonal dynamics makes Simon's confusion all the more cringe-worthy, though the narrative tension stumbles over meticulously reproduced, seemingly endless Internet arguments, and when the characters can't communicate with one another, they have trouble reaching the reader, too. The tale sometimes bows under its own weight, but mostly stands as a fine example of good scares delivered with class. (July)

Author and editor Allen (Mythic) has compiled a neatly packaged set of short stories that flow cleverly and seamlessly from one inspiration to another. In “The City of Blind Delight” by Catherynne M. Valente, a man inadvertently ends up on a train that takes him to an inescapable city of extraordinary wonders. In “All the Little Gods We Are,” Hugo winner John Grant takes a mind trip to possible parallel universes. Modern topics make an appearance among the whimsy and strangeness: Ekaterina Sedia delves into the misunderstandings that occur between cultures and languages in “There Is a Monster Under Helen's Bed,” while Tanith Lee gleefully skewers gender politics with “The Woman,” giving the reader a glimpse of what might happen if there was only one fertile woman left in a world of men. Lush descriptions and exotic imagery startle, engross, chill and electrify the reader, and all 19 stories have a strong and delicious taste of weird. (July)

While the character development, world building and thematic depth are mediocre at best, Van Name's flare for witty dialogue, breakneck pacing and nonstop action compensate for the narrative inadequacies and make this high-powered sequel to 2007's One Jump Ahead an undeniable page-turner. When nano-enhanced soldier of fortune Jon Moore and his sentient assault vehicle, Lobo, run into a former acquaintance, a conman and thief named Slanted Jack, Moore's kindheartedness gets him and his sarcastic battlewagon into a deadly predicament. A religious fanatic who moonlights as an arms dealer, an irate gang leader and a powerful government councilor are all ready to wring Jack's neck, and Moore becomes the target of their collective fury when Jack suddenly disappears with an allegedly psychic child and a cache of invaluable artifacts. The flat characters and undemanding plot may discourage more cerebral readers, but those who gravitate toward action-heavy story lines will find Moore's escapades highly entertaining. (July)

Thick as it is, the 15th Recluce novel is actually just the second half of the story that began with Natural Ordermage (2007), in which young Rahl was exiled from Recluce because he couldn't control his passions or considerable magical talents. Now on the much larger island of Hamor, where magicians work for the government, he resentfully receives the protection and training he needs from older mage-guard Taryl, who never seems satisfied even with Rahl's best efforts. More serious tests follow when the emperor's brother leads a revolt and Rahl is sent off with the troops. As he endures a long military campaign—with readers feeling they've slogged along with him through detailed descriptions of crops, architecture and weather—Rahl realizes that order isn't quite the same thing as good, and chaos isn't necessarily evil. Watching him learn to work within this complicated system and decide what's important makes the dolorous trek worthwhile. (July)

Sex oozes from every page of this erotic futuristic thriller. In a far-future class-driven android society, most of the populace are slave-chipped and owned by wealthy “aristos.” When low-caste but unenslaved android Freya offends an aristo and needs to get off-world, she takes a courier position with the mysterious Jeeves Corporation, but the job turns out to have dangers of its own. Designed as a pleasure-module, Freya isn't quite as obsolete as she could be, as androids have sex with each other incessantly. Hugo-winner Stross (Halting State) has a deep message of how android slavery recapitulates humanity's past mistakes, but he struggles to make it heard over the moans and gunshots. Readers nostalgic for the SF of the '60s will find much that's familiar (including Freya's jumpsuit-clad form on the cover), but that doesn't quite compensate for the flaws. (July)

Jones and Bennett vividly convey the testosterone-saturated world of fantasy fighter pilots in this fast-paced debut. When the stereotypically Asian Ke-Han threaten the Volstov empire, graduate student Thom is sent to rehabilitate the Dragon Corps, an ersatz air force of rebellious, violent young men who fly enormous metal dragons animated by magic. As Thom struggles with his task, challenged most by the brutish ace Rook, the Margrave Royston, banished for an illicit homosexual affair, befriends Hal, an innocent but brilliant tutor who eventually becomes Royston's lover. These four join minds and skills to solve the mystery of a devastating plague and defend Volstov from the foreign army. The insular corps culture of combative homoeroticism and masculine archetypes dominates the book, as female characters fade far into the background. Despite few surprises or original flourishes, Jones and Bennett credibly bring the decadent empire and its inhabitants to life. (July)

Pinter's ambitious third Henry Parker novel opens as Daniel Linwood, 11, suddenly reappears on his family's front porch five years after being kidnapped. Parker, a young but seasoned New York Gazette reporter, snags an exclusive interview with Daniel and his overjoyed mother. But Daniel appears to have no recollection of his missing years, and something he absentmindedly says in the interview deeply rattles Parker—convincing him there's a sinister undercurrent to this feel-good story. Working with his ex-girlfriend, Legal Aid Society lawyer Amanda, Parker meets resistance from law enforcement officials, a popular politician and even his own editor. What he gradually uncovers involves seemingly disparate individuals with unexpected motives, desperate to keep their activities a secret. Parker's first-person voice dominates: it lists between Parker as gritty, desensitized journalist and young romantic who wants little more than to spend the rest of his life with one woman. The emotional dichotomy makes Parker a captivating and complex protagonist, one whose pithy observations about New York are dead on. Pinter's chunky plot, rapid pacing and credible dialogue do the rest. (Aug.)

Psychic wanderer Daria Marshall tries to ignore the dead people who follow her around everywhere—and she refuses to settle down anywhere for very long. When she visits her sister in New York City, she ends up in Astoria, where she encounters Ralph Chickalini, a lifelong Astorian and member of a large Italian family. Chickalini is mourning the loss of his father, but not the end of his recent ill-advised engagement. Their immediate attraction is tempered by his sadness and her fear of settling down, yet Daria yearns for family and stability and Ralph needs to strike out and become independent of his support system. The presence of the father's ghost adds a nice touch to the story without being too schmaltzy. The characters are fairly well drawn, and Markham (Bride Needs Groom) captures the smalltown/big city contrast of the Queens neighborhood perfectly, with local touches that really make the atmosphere come alive. (July)

In a series inaugural from Bangs (One Bite Stand), the Gods of the Night are incarnated for the first time in 65 million years, summoned to protect humanity from an all-encompassing evil that is coming in 2012, at the end of the Mayan calendar. While currently incarnated as deadly, handsome men, they have the ability to assume their prior forms—those of gigantic dinosaurs. One of them, Ty Endeka, develops a powerful attraction to his driver, Kelly Maloy. She never expects to be drawn into this world of demons, vampires, werewolves and otherkin, but when she is, she handles it with aplomb, even when the Eleven's mysterious leader, Fin, tells her she has a crucial role to play in the coming fight. Bangs's skillful blend of vampirology, Mayan lore and extinct monoliths lays solid groundwork for the series—and almost makes it possible to wrap one's head around the idea of men with the souls of dinosaurs as sex objects. (July)

In the grim latest from Arnold (Pieces of My Sister's Life), Josh, a Camp Pendleton marine, returns from Iraq with PTSD and takes his own life; widow Natalie and the couple's two children—Anna, 10, and Toby, 5—are plunged into confusion and grief. With the military holding up Josh's benefits (if the suicide wasn't due to PTSD, it's unlawful misconduct), Natalie is forced to move back in with her parents—a mother dying of Alzheimer's and a distant father—in her hometown a day's drive away. Every question she asks of the marines and of returned veterans about what happened in Iraq is met with silence. Arnold expertly alternates between Natalie and Anna's narration, using their engaging and very different voices to reveal the lies they tell, hoping to shield each other from a hurt that can't be prevented. Though Arnold has a beautiful grasp of the characters' heart-stopping pain, the book dwells on Natalie's grief-stricken paralysis, leaving the plot to slowly advance through chance. The finale stumbles as Arnold struggles to give resolution to a family drama that can't be resolved, only survived. (May)

An earlier work from the creator of The Drifting Classroom, this 1967 series is an anthology of horror short stories by the man known as the master of horror manga. The cat-eyed boy narrates some tales as be observes them; in some he's a direct participant. The third and most interesting tale, “The Tsunami Summoners” recounts the events surrounding the cat-eyed boy's birth. The first two puzzling chiller tales feature monster men as well as men who become monsters, but the stories lack any moral message, which might place the book as comeuppance theater. No one gets revenge or learns a lesson, and the monsters' inner lives are just as evil as their outward grotesque appearances. The cat-eyed boy casts no moral judgment on the people who pelt him with rocks even as he tries to save a town from tsunami-summoning monsters. Umezu excels at drawing cute but totally shocked school boys and the grotesque monsters that scare them, but his art is hypnotic in its juxtaposition of the two. Two giant volumes of the series are being released on the same date—a date that fans of classic Japanese horror should have circled in big letters. (Reviewed from a partial galley.) (June)

The collection of Cotter's serial comic book is a meditation on the pains and anxieties of childhood and the way the fantasy lives of kids bleed over into their day-to-day existence, and it's played anything but straight: every image and incident is translated into a set of resonant visual metaphors. Cotter's protagonists are a pair of anthropomorphic cats (as opposed to the real cats who show up partway through the story)—Midwestern kids, bored and frustrated with the humiliations of school, imagining their lives in the language of superheroes, dinosaurs and giant robots, furious about the religious guilt that's been indelibly pounded into them. The early sections owe a major debt to Chris Ware, with their mocking reconstructions of cheery comic-book ads and minutely observed pathetic loathing, but by the end, the book becomes a genuinely insightful observation of the way commercial fantasies can shape young, lonely people's personalities. The squat, puttylike characters and settings that Cotter constructs with wobbly but meticulous cross-hatched textures give his story a lovely sense of gnarled intimacy, and it doesn't take long to start parsing his peculiar visual grammar: the sequences in which one character's migraines are shown as a locust that slowly descends into her head are devastating. (May)

A surprisingly bleak contrast to manga pioneer Tezuka's better known Astro Boy and Phoenix, this first of three volumes relates the horrific origin of Hyakkimaru, a teenage hero whose father sacrifices his newborn son's bodily components to 48 demons in exchange for unstoppable military power. What remained of the child is found by a doctor who fashions him artificial limbs, including prosthetic arms that house hidden swords, and when Hyakkimaru comes of age, he embarks on a mission to kill the demons, thus reclaiming his flesh-and-blood body parts. Early in his journey, Hyakkimaru encounters Dororo, a young thief, and the two becoming traveling companions. Facing and defeating all manner of inhuman threats, the pair is driven away by the very people they've saved, villagers who are either outraged by Dororo's unashamed thievery or terrified by Hyakkimaru's perceived strangeness. But with each supernatural set-to, Hyakkimaru regains another piece of his stolen humanity and moves on to take down the next demon. Marking Tezuka's move into edgier work, this series is riveting and utterly creepy, with Tezuka's signature “cute” style offering a welcome counterpoint to the visceral horrors depicted. (May)

Simmons's eerily bizarre sophomore graphic novel about a teen-aged girl who lives on a farm represents the first installment of an extremely ambitious life-spanning project: Simmons plans to create a singe page per month for the next 50 years. The mammoth story begins simply enough when the titular character wakes up on Christmas morning. She proceeds to talk to her monkey friend, shower with a miniature lounge band performing in her soap dish and get abducted by a foul-mouthed vagrant living under the stairs. And then things get weird: menacing monsters float through the hallways and, more startling, her monkey is savagely knifed to death. Despite a mounting number of mysteries, there's only a hint of a plot line, and the story unfolds as a series of weird encounters. The grainy black and white illustrations lend an additional layer of atmospheric disquiet to the stark narrative that includes full nudity, bloody violence and at least one image of grotesque infant mutilation. Despite the fragmented nature of the tale, the unique story is captivating because it is odd in the fullest sense of the word: there's no sign of the ordinary, usual and expected. (May)

Four coming-of-age novels set in the states and abroad show that no matter where you're from, it's tough to be a kid.

Amid summering tourists on the tiny Swedish island of Hammarsö, a blended multinational family comes together in this arresting and well-observed saga from Ullmann (Grace). Isak, a professor prone to fits of rage, has a loving second wife in Rosa and three daughters by three different women. The eldest, Erika, 13, and the youngest, Molly, five, are flown to Sweden in the summer by their mothers to spend some time with their brilliant, and infuriating father. Middle girl Laura, Rosa's daughter, welcomes them; together, the girls apprehend terror in Isak's irrepressible fits and, tragically, in Ragnar, a local boy Erika's age who doesn't fit in. The narrative moves back and forth in time, as the three daughters converge 25 years later on Hammarsö to visit their aging father, now mourning the loss of Rosa. In adulthood, each woman possesses a profound inner life haunted by buried childhood memory. While the book's tonal coolness won't be for everyone, the observations of teen life are exceptional, and Ullmann (daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann) successfully mines the traumas of youth for powerful adult emotions. (Aug.)

“Home isn't just about place,” Efrat Greenberg scolds her daughter, Osnat, in “Ascent,” the last of the 13 linked stories in Brown's debut collection spanning approximately 20 years. But the struggles and longings of these two Tel Aviv–born women who move to Ann Arbor, Mich., when Osnat is in junior high school echo in all of Brown's characters. Efrat is woefully homesick: she moved for her American husband, Marvin, who accepted a teaching job after 13 years in Israel. Osnat seeks kinship from classmate and fellow immigrant Sanjay. The quest for connection is larger than the Greenbergs: in “Running,” family friend Harriet cements a friendship with an unpopular girl when the two teens concoct—after studying Anne Frank—an escape plan in case Nazis take over America. And then there's Noam, a battle-scarred Israeli soldier who arrives in New York with big dreams, but ends up slinging hummus in a Chicago suburb. He and Osnat wind up together on the night of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. At once openhearted and close-minded, Brown's characters often offend one another when they collide, and their stories capture the awkwardness of both coming to America and coming-of-age. (Aug.)

The absorbing, unsettling debut from Pupek centers on 11-year-old Ellie Sanders, who has already seen a lot of heartache in her short, rural mid-20th-century Virginia childhood. Her beautiful but troubled mother, Julia, who today would probably be diagnosed as bipolar, has frequent outbursts necessitating restraints and horse tranquilizers, administered by Ellie's father, Rupert. When a pregnant Julia suffers a bad fall, Rupert uses the incident to bring home more trouble, in the form of Tess, the teenage “tomato girl” who supplies his general store with home-grown produce. Intended as a caretaker for Julia and Ellie (and a bedmate for himself), Tess, who has troubles of her own, instead initiates a series of increasingly horrific events that leaves the family irreversibly altered. Issues of racial and religious intolerance are touched on lightly, but the real focus of this accomplished debut is the fatalistic accounting of the events engulfing Ellie. Although Ellie's voice is not always consistent with her youth, she's an effective narrator whose storytelling naïveté nicely underscores her innocence. (Aug.)

Evison's debut—of love and loss, growing up, throwing up and moving on—is a stunner. William Miller Jr. is a scrawny loner whose mother dies of cancer when he is seven years old, leaving him an awkward vegetarian with an ominously macho father and idiot twin brothers in mid-1970s Santa Monica. William's father, Big Bill, remarries a grief counselor named Willow, and Will spends the following decades in love with Louisa (Lulu, as she prefers to be called), his new stepsister. They are close throughout adolescence, but after a summer at cheerleading camp, Lulu returns home distant and hostile, leaving Will to pine for her in solitary desperation. Will finally appears to be on the path to normalcy in the early 1990s when he lucks into a radio talk-show hosting gig, but the stroke of good fortune is short-lived, as he discovers things about Lulu he'd rather not know. Evison provides readers a viciously funny and deeply felt portrayal of a blended family and one man's thwarted longing. (July)

To celebrate the publication of Roth's 10,000th book, Houghton is proclaiming September 16 as “Indignation Day.”

Roth's brilliant and disconcerting new novel plumbs the depths of the early Cold War–era male libido, burdened as it is with sexual myths and a consciousness overloaded with vivid images of impending death, either by the bomb or in Korea. At least this is the way things appear to narrator Marcus Messner, the 19-year-old son of a Newark kosher butcher. Perhaps because Marcus's dad saw his two brothers' only sons die in WWII, he becomes an overprotective paranoid when Marcus turns 18, prompting Marcus to flee to Winesburg College in Ohio. Though the distance helps, Marcus, too, is haunted by the idea that flunking out of college means going to Korea. His first date in Winesburg is with doctor's daughter Olivia Hutton, who would appear to embody the beautiful normality Marcus seeks, but, instead, she destroys Marcus's sense of normal by surprising him after dinner with her carnal prowess. Slightly unhinged by this stroke of fortune, he at first shuns her, then pesters her with letters and finally has a brief but nonpenetrative affair with her. Olivia, he discovers, is psychologically fragile and bears scars from a suicide attempt—a mark Marcus's mother zeroes in on when she meets the girl for the first and last time. Between promising his mother to drop her and longing for her, Marcus goes through a common enough existential crisis, exacerbated by run-ins with the school administration over trivial matters that quickly become more serious. All the while, the reader is aware of something awful awaiting Marcus, due to a piece of information casually dropped about a third of the way in: “And even dead, as I am and have been for I don't know how long...” The terrible sadness of Marcus's life is rendered palpable by Roth's fierce grasp on the psychology of this butcher's boy, down to his bought-for-Winesburg wardrobe. It's a melancholy triumph and a cogent reflection on society in a time of war. (Sept.)