Fiction Reviews: Week of 6/16/2008

In the solid latest from veteran novelist Doig (The Whistling Season), 11 starters of a close-knit Montana college championship football team enlist as the U.S. hits the thick of WWII and are capriciously flung around the globe in various branches of the service. Ben Reinking, initially slated for pilot training, is jerked from his plane and more or less forced to become a war correspondent for the semisecret Threshold Press War Project, a propaganda arm of the combined armed forces. His orders: to travel the world, visiting and writing profiles on each of his heroic teammates. The fetching Women's Airforce Service Pilot who flies him around, Cass Standish, is married to a soldier fighting in the South Pacific, which leads to anguish for them both (think Alan Ladd and Loretta Young). Meanwhile, Ben's former teammates are being killed one by one, often, it seems, being deliberately put into harm's way. Doig adroitly keeps Ben on track, offering an old-fashioned greatest generation story, well told. (Oct.)

This 1996 novel predates Pettersen's acclaimed Out Stealing Horses (first published in 2003), and has all of Pettersen's haunted charms. As an unnamed young girl and her big brother, Jesper (who calls her “Sistermine”), grow up in rural WWII-era Denmark, the two cope with distant parents, an eccentric extended family and the cold wind. Jesper longs to go south to Morocco; Sistermine yearns for the plains of Siberia, foreshadowing lives that will diverge. Their grandfather's suicide, the arrival of puberty and most tragically, the German invasion change their idyllic childhood relationship; as each sibling fights back against the occupation in his or her own way, their inevitable separation looms. The second half of the novel, in which Sistermine struggles to make sense of her life in various Scandinavian cities and towns, awaiting a hoped-for reunion with Jesper, is less breathtaking and mesmerizing than the first, but the contrast makes her numb loneliness and inability to connect all the more poignant. The book builds up slowly, casting a spell of beauty and devastation that matches the bleak but dazzling climate that enshrouds Sistermine's young life. (Oct.)

The latest sexy, overblown saga from Vincenzi's British backlist tracks Lady Caroline Hunterton over 30 years, from the thick of WWII to the height of the counterculture. Her story is framed by an about-to-be-published tell-all from elusive yellow journalist Magnus Phillips, whose book unearths Caroline's tragic and scandalous past, threatening everything she holds dear, especially the memory of Brendan FitzPatrick, her first love, and their daughter, Fleur. Brendan, given custody of Fleur, is lured to Hollywood and his doom, while Caroline marries Lord Hunterton and raises three other children, including Chloe, who has no idea of her mother's past until she discovers the long-buried secret. When scandal-author Phillips is increasingly threatened, Caroline understands, perhaps too late, that the story he's writing is more than a tawdry airing of family laundry and could quite literally be a matter of life and death. Vincenzi provides plenty of heat and intrigue, but the story bogs down in episodes from Fleur's work life and excerpts from Phillips's unpublished book. A significant number of the multiple twists are exasperatingly expected, but Vincenzi gives the sprawling whole enough oomph to carry one all the way through. (Oct.)

The second novel (following 1991's Playing the Game) from nonfiction specialist Buruma (Behind the Mask, etc.) is based with biographical diligence on the life of the Japanese actress known variously as Ri Koran, Yoshiko Yamaguchi and (in American films) Shirley Yamaguchi. Narrated by gay cinephile Sidney Vanoven, part one is driven by his cultural and sexual fascination with Japan, fired from the moment he arrives during America's postwar occupation. Buruma's colorful evocation of young Sidney's obsessions, which include Ri Koran, is further enlivened by Sidney's fanciful encounters with clueless visiting Americans (including a libidinous Truman Capote). Part two, set before WWII, is narrated by Sato Daisuke, whose shadowy connection to the film industry intersects over the years with Ri Koran's rise to stardom, but their story gets overwhelmed by Buruma's meticulous attention to Japan's invasion of China. Part three, set in more contemporary times, is narrated by a Japanese scriptwriter caught up in the Palestinian struggle—a story reported by an elderly Yoshiko, now host of a Japanese TV talk show. Less would have been more in this competent but overstuffed story. (Sept.)

When Lord Byron married Annabella Milbanke in 1815, neither anticipated the epic scandal that would ensue, one that novelist Markovits (Fathers and Daughters, etc.) captures beautifully in this elegant reconstruction, focused entirely on Annabella. Divided into three sections (“Courtship,” “Marriage” and “Separation”) the book opens as 19-year-old Annabella acknowledges her own desire for fame and power, or what her mother, Judy, calls “scope.” In the marriage section, Annabella's vision of Byron, whom she knew more through his poetry and his two-year epistolary pursuit of her than in person, shatters on living with the real personality—a compound of debts, moodiness and one big guilty secret. Markovits makes her discoveries suspenseful, and the secret's revelation gothic. The wrenching “adjustment” that follows in the marriage finds Annabella, ever observant, using Byron's secret to craft his ultimate punishment. Markovits's choice of an ornate Jamesian style captures every nuance of Annabella's shift from the victimized wife to the sinister deliberateness of the vengeful ex-spouse. As she remarks at the end about her husband, “I feel like I have been reaching towards him all my life, without the warmth of his affection, the cold hand of love.” Markovits plumbs the very depths of this passionate chill. (Sept.)

Known for Vows, his memoir of growing up the son of a former priest and nun, Manseau uses an alter ego to tell the story of fictional Yiddish poet Itsik Malpesh, born in the Moldovan city of Kishinev in 1903. Itsik's story is told through his Yiddish memoirs, which he helps a young American Catholic (working, like Manseau once did, as a Yiddish archivist) translate. Inspired by the image of Sasha, the brave butcher's daughter who was present at his birth, Itsik reaches America in young adulthood through haphazard luck, a taste for troublemaking and the inventiveness of a printer. Sasha continually inspires and confounds Itsik throughout his life, becoming an apt symbol for Yiddish humor, sorrow and idealism. As Itsik's darkly picaresque immigrant narrative unfolds, it competes with the translator's modern romance and with insights into the art of translation and the history of Yiddish. Occasional narrative missteps are not enough to undercut this rich, often ironic homage to Yiddish culture and language. (Sept.)

In 1864 London, after a separation of seven years, Helen, now the wife of Vice-Admiral Codrington, bumps into her old friend Emily Faithful, now a well-known feminist and independent printer. As Donoghue (Slammerkin) deliciously unspools the twisted roots of their intimacy, Emily soon finds herself party to Helen's clandestine affair and snared in the sensational divorce proceedings that ensue (and which are based on an actual case from the period). Donoghue's elegantly styled, richly woven tale absorbs the everyday lives of Victorian women (rich, poor, working, home-bound, feminist, adulteress) and men (officer, lawyer, minister, adulterer, even an amateur detective) in a colorful tapestry of spiraling intrigue, innuendo, speculation and mystery. Characters indulge in pleasures at which Victorian novels could only hint, and which Donoghue renders with aplomb. Period details—etiquette, typesetting, dress, medical treatments, public amusements, shipping and jurisprudence—are rendered with a spare exactitude organic to the story. Donoghue's latest has style and scandal to burn. (Sept.)

Santiago, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Elian González in the Miami Herald, makes her fiction debut with this flat immigrants' saga. Marisol, a 30-something historian for the Miami Museum of History, recounts in jumbled retrospect the tale of her sometimes idealized, sometimes difficult childhood in Cuba. After her father's early death and her mother's subsequent unbalance, Marisol is raised by her loving abuela (“grandma”), and the two emigrate to the Cuban Miami of the Vietnam era. Santiago focuses on Marisol's love life, from her first crush as a little girl to a succession of Miami émigrés, including a political refugee who despises the bourgeois life to which Marisol aspires, and a cardiologist who shares Marisol's nostalgic yearnings for the Cuba of old, but will not leave his wife for her. Different perfumes delineate various phases of Marisol's life (with Wind Song, White Linen and others serving as section headings). Santiago brings together the expected elements of an immigrant's tale of self-discovery and redemption, but there's little drive behind Marisol's diaristic narration. Along with the perfume conceit, the Parisian connection, made explicit by the end, feels contrived. (Sept.)

In the winning latest from chick lit–ster Graff (Looking for Mr. Goodfrog), Manhattan publicist Aimee Albert, who is Jewish and whose first love, Sam, died during 9/11, has just split with her goy boyfriend Peter McKnight. Desperate for a Jewish husband and children reared in the faith, Aimee, relying on an imagined Jewish male penchant for non-Jewish women (shiksas), loses mega poundage on a “Depression Diet,” straightens and dyes her dark hair red, pops in green contacts and becomes a Shiksa Barbie. Gentile co-worker Krista Dowd drags the new Aimee to a Jewish mixer, where Krista hooks up with Matt Goldman, a Jewish CPA, and Aimee meets GQ-cute Josh Hirsch, who runs LoveLoaves, a lucrative family business, and who only dates shiksas. For her part, Aimee soon discovers how lies can escalate into self-destruction and self-enlightenment. Graff's prose crackles with winning wit, making her potentially annoying conceit go down like a chocolate-covered macaroon. (Sept.)

Serrano's vivid debut urban noir followsEddie Santiago, a Puerto Rican gangbanger just off a 10-year bit in Joliet for murder. Now in his 30s, Eddie hooks up with friend Tony Pacheco, who has returned to peddling dope and collecting protection money on Chicago's mean streets and who lobbies Eddie to help the old gang heist a casino riverboat flush with cash. Eddie, carrying 40G in a money belt, has a different plan: to go to Miami to join Chiva, his old cellmate from Joliet, and open a salsa recording label. But two bent Chicago narcs, Coltrane and Johnson, strong-arm Eddie and confiscate his cash. Broke and stuck in Chicago, Eddie decides to recover his money even while he tries to go straight. Whether he has enough decency and perseverance to do all of that while hanging with the crazy, bloody-minded Tony is just one of the questions Serrano expertly sets up. A dose of unsentimental romance helps Eddie along and puts Serrano in the same class as young noir-meisters Charlie Huston and Jason Starr. (Sept.)

At the start of Davidson's powerful debut, the unnamed narrator, “a coke-addled pornographer,” drives his car off a mountain road in a part of the country that's never specified. During his painful recovery from horrific burns suffered in the crash, the narrator plots to end his life after his release from the hospital. When a schizophrenic fellow patient, Marianne Engel, begins to visit him and describe her memories of their love affair in medieval Germany, the narrator is at first skeptical, but grows less so. Eventually, he abandons his elaborate suicide plan and envisions a life with Engel, a sculptress specializing in gargoyles. Davidson, in addition to making his flawed protagonist fully sympathetic, blends convincing historical detail with deeply felt emotion in both Engel's recollections of her past life with the narrator and her moving accounts of tragic love. Once launched into this intense tale of unconventional romance, few readers will want to put it down. (Aug.)

In this explosive first in a new suspense series from Edgar-finalist Buchanan, Michael Venturi, a deputy U.S. marshal involved in running the Federal Witness Protection Program, realizes a mobster he's in charge of, Gino Salvi, has been sexually assaulting and killing young girls in Flemington, N.H., where Salvi is hiding out. Fired by the Feds after Salvi takes part in an armored car robbery, Venturi and an old dog he's adopted head for Florida, where he and some trusted allies set upa private agency for staging fake deaths and fashioning new identities. While some of Venturi's clients appear to need a good lawyer rather than a faked death and new identity, Buchanan constructs some ingeniously clever scenarios for rendering these people “legally dead.” An expert at ratcheting up suspense and creating believable, flawed characters, Buchanan (Love Kills andeight other Britt Montero novels) gets thisnew series off to a powerhouse start. (Aug.)

Sheriff Joanna Brady and her staff face a host of challenges while her husband, Butch, tends their infant son in bestseller Jance's solid 13th novel to feature the Cochise County, Ariz., cop (after Dead Wrong). A woman shoots a home intruder, an elderly couple drive their car off a cliff and a mysterious fire kills an older man and leaves three homeless. Were these accidents or something more sinister? When Det. Jaime Carbajal's nephew discovers a body in the desert, the investigation leads to a shady organization that operates halfway houses for troubled and disabled persons. Meanwhile, Joanna must deal with her interfering mother, who exhibits a sudden personality change, and the discovery of family secrets about her late father and late first husband. As usual, Jance beautifully evokes the desert and towns of her belovedsouthwest as well as the strong individuals who live there. 10-city author tour. (Aug.)

What would you do if, like Chicagoans Tom and Anna Reed, you stumbled on $400,000 that seemed heaven sent? After reading Sakey's masterful third crime thriller, you'd probably leave it untouched. In increasing debt from failed attempts to produce a child, Tom and Anna can't resist taking the money they discover hidden in their deceased tenant's apartment. After the initial euphoria, the Reeds find themselves dealing with a deadly drug dealer who wants something they don't have, a vengeful robber looking for the money they do have and a suspicious cop who knows they're holding out on him. Sakey, who excels at taking ordinary “good people” and forcing them to meet terrible challenges, ratchets up the stakes, creating ever more diabolical traps and ever more desperate escapes until the final shattering conclusion. Having topped his previous two novels (At the City's Edge and The Blade Itself), Sakey may have trouble equaling this stellar performance. (Aug.)

Novelist and psychologist Vickers (The Other Side of You) brings Sigmund Freud together with a vivid, loquacious Tiresias for an intriguing retelling of the Oedipus myth. Trained as a priest at Delphi, but blinded after a run-in with a nude Goddess,Tiresias narrates his part in the world's mostfamous family tragedy to Freud, the myth's most ardent modern popularizer, as Freud recovers from oral surgery. Vickers's Freud is congenial and gregarious, eager to hear the stories told by his sporadic (and possible imagined) visitor, most importantly the story of the place where three roads came together, and Oedipus and his father had their fateful meeting. Vickers's spare chronicle draws suspense and even new meaning from a foundational Western myth. (Aug.)

In this intriguing, disconcerting novel of unrequited love from Berlin writer Krausser (The Great Bagarozy), Alexander von Brücken, a cloistered and ailing millionaire, narrates his life to an unnamed novelist. Young Alex comes of age under Hitler and Allied air raids. His parents die tragically; he narrowly escapes death himself, eventually taking over the family armament business, which continues to thrive after the war. Throughout his life, von Brücken (as he's called as an adult) pines for Sofie Kurtz, the daughter of workers at the family factory, who was his first kiss at 14. For Sophie, Alex is a blip on her childhood radar, but Alex uses his influence to track and even shape the course of Sophie's life as she moves from kindergarten teacher to Red Army Front revolutionary to demoralized exile in the German Democratic Republic. As Alex and the novelist reconstruct, imagine and otherwise intrude upon Sofie's life, the line between truth and fiction disappears—and along with it, the illusion of free will. Mitchell's able translation showcases Krausser's keen investigation of memory and the motivations for loving and telling tales. (Aug.)

In telling a story of the fictional A'atsika, a Native people of the American West Coast who find their mythical origins in the whale and the octopus, Hogan (Mean Spirit) employs just the right touch of spiritualism in this engrossing tale. When Thomas Witka Just succumbs to peer pressure and joins the army, then is sent to Vietnam, Ruth Small is pregnant with his child. In an attempt to prevent an atrocity, Thomas kills fellow soldiers and deserts, ultimately blending into the Vietnamese culture and fathering a child, Lin, by Ma, a village girl. In the meantime, Ruth gives birth to their son, Marco Polo, who is said to have the same mystical whaling powers of Thomas's grandfather. Years later, following Thomas's return, Dwight, a ne'er-do-well friend of Thomas's, arranges for the tribe to kill a whale and to sell the meat to the Japanese, a plan that will draw in Marco Polo and set up a confrontation between the whole ensemble. Despite the plot's multiple strands, the story flows smoothly, and Hogan comes up with a powerful, romantic crescendo. (Aug.)

In this rollicking, rambling road novel of the post-WWII South, Preston Clearwater, a dead ringer for Clark Gable, steals cars and passes himself off as an undercover FBI agent. His mark is naïve 20-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier, whom Preston convinces to drive the cars to various paint shops (telling Henry that they have infiltrated a car-theft ring), while Preston follows in his own legally registered Chrysler. Preston undertakes more audacious forms of crime, while earnest Henry has a reunion with his fundamentalist family, listens to his cousin's scheme to market a new ad gimmick (called “the bumper sticker”), falls in love with roadside fruit-stand proprietor Marlene Greene and even manages to sell a few Bibles along the way. The hitch is his involvement with Preston: Henry will have to get wise to preserve all he has gained. Too many flashbacks to Henry's Baptist roots slow him down on the way to the novel's suspenseful climax and moving epilogue, but the result is one of the better takes on Southern Bible salesman buddy stories since Moses Pray and Addie Pray of Paper Moon. (Aug.)

Shamus-finalist Rhoades (The Devil's Right Hand) delivers a gripping stand-alone thriller. Undercover FBI agent Tony Wolf had infiltrated a meth-dealing biker gang until his cover was blown; since then, he's been living under an assumed name outside Pine Lake, N.C. Not even his wife or his employers know where he is. One day while out for a drive, Wolf spots the face of one of two kidnapped young brothers in a van's rear window. Wolf follows the van to a trailer, where he makes short work of the boys' kidnapper. By so doing, Wolf reveals his location to those who have been watching and waiting for him to reappear—drug-crazed bikers thirsty for vengeance, FBI agents hoping to either rescue or silence him and an aggressive local reporter. Wolf proves to be the sort who, once cornered, is far more deadly than his pursuers could have imagined. The action escalates to a powerfully violent, powerfully satisfying conclusion. (Aug.)

MacKinnon's debut offers an authentic view of an undertaker's job, but the passivity of her emotionally wounded heroinemay exasperate some readers. In Brockton,Mass., lonely Clara Marsh tends to the dead at Bartholomew Funeral Home, whose kindly owner reminds Clara of the undertaker she met as a child at her mother's funeral. When Trecie, a neglected little girl, begins hanging around the funeral parlor, Clara thinks nothing of it until a routine body pickup uncovers a stash of child pornography and Clara recognizes Trecie in a video. The ensuing investigation also points to Precious Doe, an unidentified child murdered three years earlier and whose grave Clara often visits in secret. Aided by a sensitive Irish cop, Det. Mike Sullivan, to whom she's attracted, Clara tries to unravel the mystery, even if that means confronting her own unpleasant past. Some affecting, understated prose only partially redeems the flat story line. (Aug.)

Ludwig's nicely observed debut, a coming-of-age tale, often shies away from the powerful themes it raises. Born in 1952 to a close-knit Jewish-Canadian family in Winnipeg, Beth Levy dreams of becoming an astronaut, an ambition partly inspired by stories of her late uncle, who died before Beth was born but left behind his fascination with the stars. On Beth's first day in elementary school, her widowed grandmother dies, and Beth's mother, Goldie, assumes responsibility for Goldie's younger siblings, who become like older sisters to Beth. Teenage Sarah is beautiful and restless, and yearns to be an actress or a singer. Carrie, a withdrawn seamstress overwhelmed by private tragedy, encourages Beth to follow her passions, although Beth's parents expect her to live out a quiet middle-class life in Winnipeg. The drama is understated throughout; crises occur, but have little influence on the steady pace of the narrative. Issues such as anti-Semitism and adolescent cruelty surface briefly and are quickly dropped. The result is a charming, if less than courageous, performance. (Aug.)

In Baugh's evocative debut, an unnamed American woman studying at the American University in Cairo bears witness to the lives of several Cairene women, finding their lives at once heartbreaking, fascinating and inspiring. The American student's Arabic professor, Afkar, who teaches her the delights of a “precise” cup of Turkish coffee, was forced into marriage with a weak, abusive man after an indiscreet crush as a girl. Huda, now perilously in her early 20s, loves penniless Sharif, but marries a financially stable man she finds physically repulsive, and learns to live with this decision. Huda's mother, Karima, a childhood victim of female genital mutilation, marries the grocer and faces a horrific birth control situation. And the American learns the stories of Selwa, who has borne 12 children and had three survive, and of Samira, who has spent most of her adult life in love with her best friend's husband. Baugh overwrites (“Qasr al-'Ayni Street seethes with faces and bodies, and I walk it in a daze that despises the density while thriving on the sudden, forced intimacy of it all”), but her observations and empathy are often spot on. (Aug.)

Faced with the imminent death of her charming, cheating and estranged husband Artie, Lucy Shoreman decides to call the names in his little black book and invite the ladies to his Philadelphia home to say a final farewell. For her part, 30-ish Lucy, who's 18 years Artie's junior, can't decide whether she loves or hates the man, while her much-married mother insists he deserves forgiveness. As a broad spectrum of his ex-lovers arrives, including a surprised mother-and-daughter duo and a troubled young woman Lucy takes under her wing, Artie's previously undisclosed and estranged grown son, John, shows up and seems as wickedly appealing as Dad. Asher, a pen name of prolific author Julianna Baggott, takes the edge off her sharply drawn characters with a succession of familiar sentiments. But flashes of wit and a parade of memorable women keep pages turning as Lucy grows increasingly and endearingly confused about her feelings toward Artie, John and the rest. (Aug.)

Conwell's 25th western (after Atascocita Gold) is a fast-paced hayburner loaded with gunplay, powder smoke and a wagonload of perforated corpses. Cleve Bollinger is a wanted man now living straight as Clint Bowles. He and his saddle pal, Speck Adams, head to New Mexico after learning that an old friend, Sam Cooper, who Clint thought was dead, is alive and in trouble. On arrival at the small pueblo town of El Jardin, Clint and Speck side with Cooper in a vicious land war with land baron John Rawlings, his small army of hired guns and his paid-for sheriff and judge. Once the baddies realize Cooper has help and Clint's true identity is discovered, the lead starts to fly, and Clint's six-guns don't have time to cool off. The bad guys soak up most of the lead in this oater, and Conwell cleverly helps Clint ride off into the sunset in a satisfying, concluding plot twist. This may be pure western formula, but it sure is fun. (Aug.)

In Kessler's newest, Daunuan, master seducer and incubus, returns badder than ever. Pan, the new king of lust, wants to appoint Daunuan his second in command, but Daunuan must first prove himself by seducing a woman destined for heaven, claiming her soul for hell. Daunuan thinks this will be an easy assignment, but he doesn't expect to fall in love with Virginia, his target, and be willing to give up hell to ensure that she doesn't get damned for all eternity. Complicating his mission is that someone in hell has it in for him and has sicced a crew of demons on him. Daunuan also cannot come to terms with his feelings for Jezebel, a succubus. The plot is sexy and bold, and the atypical ending—a happily ever after pairing is not in the cards—is satisfying, even if the unconventional conclusion may rub some readers the wrong way. (Aug.)

The current U. S. poet laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Simic is famous for his short, cryptic poems that draw on his eventful early life, which he describes in dramatic detail here, in notebooks he has kept for decades but never published in book form. The young Simic and his family lived in Serbia, as bombs fell on it, during World War II; later, they fled to difficult lives in Chicago, where the poet's high-spirited father was often penniless. The first of the notebooks' four sections collect compelling autobiographical reminiscences, of Serbia, of Chicago, and of the young adult poet's time in New York. The second collects the sort of images and juxtapositions that Simic might well have wanted to use in a poem—the best are, in effect, prose poems: “Snow arriving this morning at my door like a mail-order bride.” The last three of five sections do not always preserve the force of first: their statements about poetry in general, and their reactions to (and against) the academy, bear little surprise. Yet Simic's stature as a maker of poems still makes all of his prose worth reading, and the autobiographical sections make this book a keeper. (Sept.)

Heralded throughout Great Britain, the Scottish poet Paterson has long deserved a broader American audience, and this collection of aphorisms may be the book to secure it. “The aphorism is a brief waste of time,” Paterson asserts in his foreword (adding that the poem and the novel are, respectively, “complete” and “monumental” wastes of time), and while he never quite attains the preternatural pithiness of such masters aphorists as La Rochefoucauld or Oscar Wilde, it is remarkable how often he manages to approach it. Many of the collection's most succinct entries—“We turn from the light to see”; “Fate's book, but my italics”—prove, unsurprisingly, its most unforgettable; when Paterson relaxes into longer discursive and anecdotal modes, the results may be less acutely rewarding, but they are reliably punchy and trenchant nonetheless. As in his poetry, Paterson vacillates throughout between winking self-aggrandizement and what appears to be sincere despond. Often bold and a touch arch, Paterson turns unexpectedly poignant at times, sometimes political—as in the brilliant mini-essay explaining why “most arguments to preserve [cultural diversity] are wholly paternalistic”—presenting something to return to on every page. (Aug.)

Godfrey's jumpy, sometimes disjointed poems belong to an exciting recent tradition: they describe day-to-day, block-to-block, moment-to-moment life in the downtown Bohemia of New York, as Ted Berrigan (among others) did in the 1960s and 1970s. In short lines and disconnected phrases, Godfrey considers the ups and downs of sexual attraction (“Wind tunnels as sun lowers/ Hard nipples in B cups”) and the ever-changing cityscapes he sees (“Drop you at the A train/ Droplets baffle headlights/ World shares lightlessness with me”). Godfrey (who works as a nurse for homebound AIDS patients) puts together poems that seem more lyrical and unified with repeated readings, though still close to unpremeditated speech: “Restlessness,” he says, “is a sort of payment/ for all the moments that fail to transport,” and restlessness seems to Godfrey (Private Lemonade) desirable in itself, even the basis of his art. He sounds best when authentically ecstatic, or when giving terse advice: “Suggest rather than decide/ Don't trust depictions of life.” This eighth book should please readers who yearn to see the newest results of Berrigan's downtown aesthetic, or who simply enjoy Godfrey's earnest, distractable, willingly unpolished approach. (Aug.)

The availability in English of this seminal, startling, volatile, founding work of Arabic-language modernism is a welcome literary event. Adonis, born in Syria in 1930, is likely the most original Arabic poet of his generation; “Mihar” is Adonis's sometimes ecstatic, often despairing alter ego, named for an 11th-century Persian poet, but reminiscent (to Western ears) of Arthur Rimbaud or Cesar Vallejo. Adonis excels both in stately free verse and in the prose poems he calls “Psalms”: “I find refuge in night's childhood,” he writes, “leaving my head on the morning's knees.” Exile and displacement (Adonis fled Syria for political reasons), and awareness of death and disappointment pervade the book's seven groups of lyric works: “Dear Grave: you mark where I end/ and spring begins”; “Falling is my natural condition, paradise my contrary... I announce the attraction of death.” Adonis also commemorates individuals, attacks evil (“It is for my land that I bleed”) and begs heavenly help (“I call on you, green thunderbolt”). Despite occasional snags, translators Haydar and Beard have brought into English Adonis's paradox-laden, confidently defiant voice, which has already taken its place in the strong currents of world verse. (July)

Warn's third collection is organized around the Hebrew alphabet: each of its 22 sections corresponds to a Hebrew letter and consists of one short poem, one longer poem, one prose poem and a trio of quotations (from Rabbinical writers, Asian religious texts or secular literature). Warn's clear, inviting lines draw on the shapes of the letters, the Hebrew words that contain them, their significance in Jewish mysticism, and the connections Warn finds in Jewish history, from the Bible to the present day. The resulting poems are occasionally too clear for their own good, but they often find inspiration in “the primordial living Torah, circulating in the letters/ as trees circulate light.” Examining the letter Yud—which sounds like a Y and looks like a hovering comma, and whose name means “hand,” as in “hand of God”—Warn imagines “a prayer book and a clock/ which wait with you until dawn// to help you wrestle the dark/ back into God's other hand.” Mostly, Warn has created a serious meditation on Jewish prayer and cosmogony, in lyrical prose and in accessible verse, a book that belongs not only on poetry shelves, but amid other Judaica and books of prose and verse on religious themes. (June)

This Slope Editions prize-winning debut contemplates the nuances of 21st-century homosexuality with continuous candor and winking humor. The three sections showcase a range of poetic forms and styles: sonnet, ghazal, dialogue-driven narrative, lyrics and prose poems, all rendered in a wordplay-obsessed voice that is by turns darkly clever (“Black. Black letters. Blackhead. Black Island. Around the black.”), weirdly sexy (“bus runs to sub-Boston porn moor, horny homo zoo”) and beautifully grim (his moldy eyes / roll to the sky // nervy thing / his larded wings // leave my hands / dark as newsprint”). Schmidt references Beckett, Hitchcock, Kafka, Callas, YouTube, Priapus, campy slang, mementos of gay culture and techno-jargon in considerations of love, familial dynamics, and relationships between strangers, students and teachers. In a few pieces, the stop-starting language and punning can be so amped up as to be off-putting, but most of these 38 poems display a powerful and appealing energy: “Too young to drive. High time to bale. Then damp harvest and how to pay. The problem begetting lever, machine. Give me a log tong, I'm good.” (June)

“[T]he neon dawn-screech/ of skunk cabbage” or the sun's “calligraphy of angle-spines/ and snag arms”: the facts here are filtered through the senses of someone word-drunk who's raised himself on Hopkins and Celan, Stevens and Shakespeare, as well as his immediate Irish forbearer, Seamus Heaney. The matter is the world—flowers, airplanes, traffic, birds, violence, language—and the sound and sense Grennan (The Quick of It) can make of it in this his seventh collection: “I find myself sounding such things out/ by skin-instinct or some sort of soul-braille,” trying to swim across “the tidal turbulence of the senses.” Whether in neat stanzas or bits of prose, Grennan's lines and sentences are thick with sound, but his syntax often pushes the reader rapidly. Central to the book's final section is a brief suite of poems that artfully walks a perimeter around 9/11: a speaker safely riding a plane, flashes of smoke and names, the struggle to imagine “That we might go on,” and snow finding “the only ground left to stand on.” Later, a thrush becomes a symbol for living through trouble, its “songs raised over wreckage when the dust has settled.” (June)

Sassy Jersey Barnes, Ocean's Southern-styled answer to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, believes her work for “an antiterrorism tentacle of the government” is over in her uneven second outing (after 2007's Southern Fatality). Then her former military handler shows up at the bar she owns in Wilmington, N.C., and informs her of one more assignment. Jersey agrees to go undercover at a mobile meal truck outside the nation's largest ammunition port, nearby army-owned Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, and gather intel. Soon Jersey is tangling with John Mason, a fanatic who's planning a terrorist act to punish the U.S. for his twin brother's death. In the meantime, the daughter of Jersey's hunky love interest, Duke “Ox” Oxendine, becomes the face for a hot new teen product, Derma-Zing (faux tattoos). While the terrorist business comes off as a little stale, the subplot involving tainted cosmetics is fresh. Jersey's relationship with Ox adds some heat. (Sept.)

Set in Mongolia, Walters's riveting first novel opens with a slew of murders investigated by a local policeman, Nergui, and a visiting British police inspector, Drew McLeish. The bloody nature of the murders makes them suspect a serial killer, but when a member of Nergui's staff joins the list of victims, the case becomes more complex. Traveling to a tourist camp during the investigation into the dead cop's background, the two detectives are confronted with a double murder. Suddenly, political or business motivations for the carnage come to the fore. A kidnapping starts the clock ticking toward a thrilling conclusion in a spooky abandoned factory. Throughout, the mysterious Nergui, who has a possible spy background, and the stoic McLeish make for a potent and exciting team. The evocative descriptions of modern Mongolia create a unique backdrop for a suspenseful mystery full of misdirection and terror. (Aug.)

In Hill's delightful second mystery to feature the Rev. Francis Oughterard, the Surrey vicar is still reeling from having gotten away with the murder of one of his parishioners in 2007's A Load of Old Bones. Oughterard feels he has no choice but to agree to storing stolen artwork at the vicarage at the insistence of an old theology college classmate, Nicholas Ingaza, because Ingaza provided him with an alibi for the parishioner's murder. The plot thickens when a visiting author with plans to write a mystery about the murder insists on a thorough search of the church and belfry where the clergyman has hidden the paintings. With his usual propensity for getting involved in crime, Oughterard soon finds himself in the midst of another tangled web of deception that even his cat, Maurice, and his dog, Bouncer, can't untangle, as revealed in chapters from their points-of-view. This dry, funny British gem, with its eccentric cast of characters, will leave readers laughing and eagerly awaiting the next episode. (Aug.)

British author Gardner (1926–2007) offers an authentic view of London in peril from V-1 rockets in his fifth and presumably final Suzie Mountford WWII mystery (after 2006's Troubled Midnight). During the summer of 1944, policewoman Suzie Mountford of the Reserve Squad and her boss (and lover) Tommy Livermore go into action after a V-1 lands on a convent, killing several nuns—one of whom turns out to have been murdered beforehand, another of whom proves to be a man. As Mountford and Livermore try to identify the victims, they realize that what first appeared to be an unusual murder case is actually part of a larger and potentially deadly conspiracy. Despite stock characters out of a 1940s film and period Britishisms that may puzzle the average U.S. reader, those with a taste for old-school tales of war-time intrigue should be satisfied. (Aug.)

Izzy Chambers gives up her life as a lawyer in Boston in order to open the Seaside Knitting Studio in Sea Harbor, Mass., where she spent her childhood, in Goldenbaum's charming debut. An informal knitting group of eccentric characters forms around the shop, including Birdie Favazza, the oldest member at nearly 80, and Cass Halloran, the owner of 200 lobster traps who's devastated by a midnight theft. Cass's younger brother, Pete, pines for the gorgeous Angelina Archer, who's recently come to the Cape to research a local history project and rents the apartment above Izzy's store. When Angelina's body washes up in the cove, Izzy and her knitting group vow to discover who hated Angelina enough to want the woman dead. A knitting pattern for a scarf rounds out a cozy many will find an ideal beach read. (Aug.)

The strong, fresh narrative voice pulls the reader in and doesn't let go in Wall's stunning debut. Someone is killing wolves on Olivia Harker's Kentucky property for sport, and Olivia aims to find the culprit. Meanwhile, Olivia recounts her childhood with an adored father and a mad mother in the brutally segregated Depression-era South. In quick succession, Olivia finds and loses love, gives birth, marries an unloved suitor and becomes a widow. Olivia's daughter, wild and ambitious, hands Olivia her own out-of-wedlock baby to raise, a boy named Will'm. When the probable persecutor of Olivia's wolves sets his sights on her beloved Will'm, Olivia clarifies a decades-old mystery, unwittingly bringing danger to the impoverished local community of blacks who've been her guardian angels. As the action moves inexorably to its explosive conclusion, Olivia must come to grips with past betrayals, thereby earning a second chance at love, redemption and long overdue justice. (Aug.)

Amateur sleuth Anne Cartier and her husband, Col. Paul de Saint-Martin, must discover the identity of the person who's been inciting riots that provoke the brutal assassination of two of Paris's highest functionaries—and the power behind the inciter—in O'Brien's gripping seventh mystery set in revolutionary France (after 2007's Cruel Choices). Might the killings be connected to a miniature portrait of a pretty young woman salvaged from the rubble of the recently stormed Bastille prison? The mob lynching of a troublemaking baker raises the stakes. This entry is more rooted in actual historical events than previous books in the series, and readers familiar with the period will appreciate the skill with which the author blends his heroes' fictional investigation with fact. Some, though, may stumble over words like “syndic” whose meanings are less than obvious. As usual, O'Brien portrays major characters as complex people and sketches minor ones with a sure hand. (Aug.)

Dark fantasy writer Engstrom (Black Leather) starts on familiar ground, but rapidly turns this “novel in stories” into a genre-blending exploration of love, aging, grief and sacrifice. In Vargas County, children under 12 occasionally vanish, but the locals have long viewed this as a tithe taken by the town in exchange for the happiness of the other residents. This theme is explored directly in stories like “House Odds,” in which real estate agent Julia has to decide if her grandchildren would be in greater danger in town or away with their drunken father. Other tales merely use the disappearances as a backdrop, such as “Skytouch Fever,” in which aging Sadie Katherine is forced to choose between her steadfast beau and a rakish visitor, and the wittily ironic thriller “One Quiet Evening in the Wax Museum.” Fast-paced, melancholy and beautiful, the overarching narrative binds a collection of good stories into a superb if unconventional novel. (Aug.)

Themed along the grayer areas of superhero fiction, this anthology of 18 original stories nonetheless covers a wide spectrum. One standout is “Switchback,” by Ann Nocenti (Daredevil), in which teenage Mimi must try to cope with both her strange mind-control powers and the shards of familial ties that still bind her to her broken family. In “Tat Master,” Edgar award–winner Naomi Hirahara (Snakeskin Shamisen) introduces tattoo artist Eye, who discovers the ability to bring her designs to life while on the run from her abusive boyfriend. Shamus winner Peter Spiegelman (Black Maps) pulls off a classic tale of superheroics meeting reality with “In Vino, Veritas,” delving into a simple tale of ethics and love through the viewpoint of lie-detecting Veritas. Deceptively simple and entertaining while never skimping on serious topics, this tight anthology will satisfy any superhero enthusiast. (Aug.)

This thought-provoking anthology of nine original stories posits near-future paradigm shifts in everything from race relations (in Ted Kosmatka's vivid and moving “N-Words,” where cloned Neanderthals encounter violent hatred from Homo sapiens) to the morality of uploaded consciousness (in Blake Charlton's clumsy but charming “Endosymbiont”), with varying success. The hero of Jay Lake's “The Future by Degrees” invents an energy-saving thermal superconductor only to be pursued by corporations protecting their business, with predictable results. Pepper, the mercenary hero of Tobias S. Buckell's Crystal Rain, refuses to assassinate a dictator in the morally contrived “Resistance.” Considerably more powerful is Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's “Spider the Artist,” which combines African folk tales and advanced robotics in a chilling story about a rising social conscience in the Nigerian oil fields. Despite weak spots, this anthology accurately reflects many of today's most pressing political and social issues, and will give readers plenty to think about and argue over. (Aug.)

Thirteen stories, all originally published between 2002 and 2007, examine the struggle for human survival and identity in strange places. In the title story, humans transmitted across space end up in a quasi-reality that may permit transcendence. The last man on earth in “The Best Christmas Ever,” a sorrowful abandoned house in “Bernardo's House” and a PI in a world without men in “Men Are Trouble” all plumb the depths of loneliness. In “The Dark Side of Town,” an estranged married couple find each other again in a drug-induced shared virtual reality, while in the Nebula-winning novella “Burn,” a man from an isolationist colony struggles to save it despite terrible revelations. Kelly frequently evokes a twisted, nostalgic America, and his characters seem contemporary and casual even in the prehistoric fairy tale “Luck.” Though this lends his stories a certain sameness, it also gives readers a way to connect with his surreal visions. (Aug.)

In Camp's delightful latest regency Matchmakers novel, the unmatched is beautiful 23-year-old Lady Calandra, whose overprotective brother and guardian, the formidable duke of Rochford, has intimidated all comers. When Callie is rescued, at a masked ball, from a drunken partygoer's unwanted advances, her hero turns out to be the mysterious earl of Bromwell, an enemy of Callie's brother. Although Rochford orders Bromwell and Callie to stay away from each other, Callie grabs the reins and enlists the help of matchmaker Lady Francesca Houghston. Francesca is torn, however, because she knows the source of enmity between the two men, which neither will speak of. Meanwhile, Bromwell's twice-married older sister, the Lady Daphne, returns to society and plots to destroy Callie's reputation (because Rochford had refused to marry Daphne years earlier). Camp is firmly at home here, enlivening the romantic quest between her engaging lovers with a set of believable and colorful secondaries. (Sept.)

Private investigator Rick Carson has been hired to find out who murdered Georgia Sen. Dan Price and finds himself falling for Price's trophy widow, Jordan, even though she's his prime suspect. Gorgeous, steely Jordan stands to inherit a substantial estate and has a history of losing husbands and boyfriends to questionable fatalities, and Price was killed with Jordan's gun. But a sizable cast of quirky hangers-on who rely upon Jordan for room and board complicate matters: any one of them could be responsible for not just the senator's death but also the string of corpses that litter Jordan's past. The more Rick investigates, the more certain he is that the woman he's in love with could be a coldhearted killer. His two minds drive some refreshing twists that leave readers guessing to the end and making the latest from suspense artist Barton a satisfying read. (Sept.)

A Cinderella story with a compelling culinary twist, Thomas's scrumptious Victorian confection (after Private Arrangements) proves impossible to resist. Madame Verity Durant works for Bertram “Bertie” Somerset at his estate, Fairleigh Park—after serving as the mistress he failed to marry (due to a questionable background that includes an illegitimate child). When Bertie dies unexpectedly at 38, Verity worries as Bertie's “bastard-born” brother, Stuart—now London's foremost barrister —takes over the estate. Verity had shared a secret, mouthwatering affair with Stuart 10 years earlier, and she doesn't expect him to keep her on, especially since he's affianced to the very proper Miss Lizzy Bessler. What ensues, however, is “happiness on a plate,” as Thomas shows that hunger for passion, and madeleines, never dies. (Aug.)

Bourne's latest espionage-based series historical (following The Spymaster's Lady) entices with subtle subterfuge and heated romance. Jess Whitby, daughter of suspected spy Josiah Whitby, is doing everything in her power to exonerate her imprisoned father. In order to free him, she must prove that someone other than her father is the Cinq, a notorious mole. But Jess has met her match in Capt. Sebastian Kennett, wealthy bastard son of an English nobleman, equally as clever at keeping tabs on Jess as she is at tracking him. Sebastian is responsible for Josiah's arrest; Jess believes that Sebastian may be the Cinq; their mutual attraction proves a lovely foil for their suspicious minds. Glimpses of the leads' sordid pasts add depth, and Bourne's consummate way with a story line and an explosive denouement do the rest. (July)

Two new books of poetry show us Katrina-devastated New Orleans from the inside.

Simultaneously accessible and daring, these short, fiery verses describe with sorrow and passion the Crescent City just before, during and immediately after Katrina. They describe it from startling points of view—one series of poems takes the vantage point of “Luther B,” a hardy abandoned dog. Another set speaks for the hurricane itself: “every woman begins as weather,” Katrina warns, “sips slow thunder, knows her hips.” Other speakers include the spirit of Voodoo, a nursing home patient, a rapist, George W. Bush and a drag queen whose good humor helps her survive: “This damned trod spells ruin for her party pumps.” Known now as a poet of both the page and stage, Smith (Teahouse of the Almighty) was present at the creation of the poetry slam, in 1980s Chicago. Her command of the spoken voice gives her work both speed and pathos. She benefits, too, from her range of forms: rhymed sonnet, sestina, alphabet poem, long- and short-lined, and fragmentary free verse. This book will stand out among literary records of Katrina's devastation. (Sept.)

Named for the great amphitheatre in Rome, Ford's second collection of poetry reckons with the themes that iconic structure brings to mind: achievements of architecture and engineering, spectacles of violence, lost empires and forgotten gods. Opening with the author's birth amidst the fall of Saigon and civil war in Beirut, the book travels backward and forward through historical destructions, biblical floods and Ford's own firsthand account of the devastation of New Orleans by Katrina. Faced with the unstoppable storm and the rising waters, she writes: “We will be overcome by waters/ where I stand with my lanterns and cans,/ my useless preparations and provisions,/ with the God I loved, I hated, and you.” Considering the sum of all these ruins—the human achievement of which they are the shadow—the author continually reckons with meaning and interrogates her own faith; she pleads: “Something please tell me I'm wrong/ about impermanence,/ wrong there is no unbroken believable thing/ on this earth.” Moving through the Colosseum in Rome, to the Duomo in Florence, to the Louisiana Superdome, Ford shows impressive restraint in reconciling the vast accomplishments and devastations of history, creating an enduring collection of quiet and powerful elegies. (June)

As the Phoenix spacecraft begins examining Mars for conditions favorable to life, two renowned science fiction authors create very different stories of Martian cultures.

Hugo and Nebula–winner Haldeman infuses this yarn with his teen narrator's intelligent curiosity. Carmen Dula, part of the first human colony on Mars, looks like a typical young adult heroine: distanced from her parents, irritated by her bratty younger sibling and beset by tyrannical colony administrator Dargo Solingen. Then she accidentally discovers real Martians living in an underground city and has to convince Solingen that her story is true. When the Martians reveal a terrible threat to life on Earth, it's up to Carmen and her friends to save the day. Recalling Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet and Podkayne of Mars, Haldeman updates the Martian setting while keeping faith in his characters' ability to respond to unexpected challenges. (Aug.)

Multiple Hugo–winner Bova pens a gripping and convincing conclusion to the story begun in Mars (1992) and Return to Mars (1999). Jamie Waterman, who discovered cliff dwellings during his first trip to Mars, is struggling to acquire funding for continued research on the long-dead Martians, but his efforts are severely compromised by the increasing influence of religious fundamentalists. Their rise coincides with a global environmental crisis, giving the U.S. government another rationale for shifting resources away from Waterman's work. Even the discovery of a Martian fossil can't ensure the project's viability, and Waterman and his wife return to the red planet in a last-ditch effort to keep the exploration going. Bova deftly captures the excitement of scientific discovery and planetary exploration. This compelling story, balancing action and plausible political intrigue, will easily be enjoyed by both fans and newcomers. (Aug.)