Fiction Reviews

From the iconic Barth come nine darkly comic stories set in a gated community on Maryland's Eastern Shore. In his trademark style—multiple endings, metaphysical musings, breaking the fourth wall—Barth presents a searing indictment of a certain sociological class in the later stages of life, when the worries of advancing age beset characters who are dealing with or anticipating infirmities, burdensome caregiving and wrenching losses. Barth's antic eye for character is undiminished; he fleshes out a spectrum of men and women who run the gamut of professions, political beliefs and financial status, and whose relationships include unwavering marital love, random flirting and adultery. The current(ish) events simmering in the background (the Bush administration's follies, Uganda and Darfur, and several hurricanes) ground the narrative and put the stories into a broader context outside the community's gates. Urbane, discursive and humorous, often bawdy and never sentimental, these stories would be an accessible way for new readers to discover Barth, and his fans, of course, will eat this up. (Oct.)

A newly married couple abandon the comfort of upper-class Connecticut and stake their claim in 1960s Fife, Idaho, in Pulitzer-finalist Barnes's exquisite novel. Thomas and Helen Deracotte—he a young, poor doctor, she a stifled, monied rebel—buy an isolated farm sight unseen and arrive to find it a shambles. Upon arriving in the inhospitable wilderness, Thomas realizes that he would rather live off the land for their daily sustenance than open his own medical practice, and he hires Manny, a handsome teenage vagabond, to help around the farm. When Helen has baby girl Elise, Manny ingratiates himself further with the Deracottes and becomes a loving caretaker. But when the new mother begins to feel suffocated and overwhelmed, she returns to her rebellious ways and finds herself powerfully attracted to Manny. Their relationship has dire consequences for all involved—particularly for Helen and Elise, but nobody gets off easy. Barnes's descriptions of the rugged landscape are vivid, and the characters' sadness and desires are revealed with wrenching detail. (Oct.)

Historical maven Erickson (The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette) delivers a top-notch narrative featuring beautiful and courageous Tatiana Romanov, daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, during the final years of their reign. As life becomes increasingly bleak in prerevolution Russia, Tatiana sneaks out of the palace and sees firsthand the poverty and violence pervading her country. With Communist rebels shouting for equality and enemy countries invading, Tatiana befriends a young and destitute pregnant woman whose fiancé has just been murdered by Cossacks, opening up her conscience in unexpected ways. But as the czar falters and the czarina takes refuge from her afflictions in the company of Father Gregory (better known as Rasputin), Tatiana finds solace in the arms of a fierce patriot. Erickson creates an entirely convincing historical backdrop, and her tale of a family's fall from power and a country in transition is both romantic and gripping. (Oct.)

In the air-kiss light latest from Adams (Ex-Girlfriends), the launch of New York daily TV talk show The Beehive sets its two female hosts—50-year-old veteran Sutton Lancaster and vibrant young Emma Ronson—on a collision course. A snide gossip column pinpoints their on- and off-set hostility, along with the missteps of their fellow regulars: Simone Williams, a black former model with maxed-out credit cards and a stalker problem, and witty, gay trust-fund baby Finn Robards, who's got the hots for straight pal Dean Paul Lockhart, for whom Emma, too, nurses an unrequited passion. (For now, Emma's sleeping with Sutton's aging ex-boyfriend.) Soon Sutton takes up with a gold-digging bartender half her age, while shopaholic Simone stoops to an in-person appearance at Target in a futile attempt to stave off her creditors. The stew of romantic and financial cross-purposes bubbles along merrily, spiced by the producers' fixation on ever-changing approval numbers and up-to-the-minute pop culture references. Although the characters' obsessions stretch thin toward the end, and their transformations occur too abruptly to be truly satisfying, there's little to spoil the deliciously bitchy fun. (Oct.)

Estleman (Billy Gashade) turns in a sharp, funny and exciting western centering on Isaac C. Parker (1838–1896), the notorious federal “Hanging Judge” for Arkansas and the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) from 1875 until his death. Aided by his malevolent and ruthlessly efficient executioner, George Maledon, and a small army of deputy marshals, Estleman's Parker crusades to rid his jurisdiction of murderers, rapists, thieves and other unfragrant owlhoots. Without using fictional characters, Estleman loads his entertaining yarn with colorful anecdotes of notorious criminals like Belle Starr, Ned Christie, Rufus Buck and Bill Doolin, as well as tenacious and famous lawmen like the legendary Three Guardsmen—Heck Thomas, Chris Madsen and Bill Tilghman. Parker's liberal application of the gallows took a terrible toll on his health and family life, and earned him many enemies: while outlaws feared and respected him, lawyers and politicians hated him. (“I'd as soon hang a Republican as a Democrat,” Parker once said.) There is no mystery or surprise; Estleman sticks to fictionalized history throughout. This is a vivid, fast-paced western adventure brilliantly presented by a masterful storyteller. (Oct.)

A passionate ode to the Big Easy's “cracked bowl,” the latest from Piazza (Why New Orleans Matters) offers two alternating perspectives on Katrina and its aftermath. For Craig Donaldson—a white Michigan transplant who edits local culture organ Gumbo, who has a tidy house near Tulane University and whose two-child marriage appears “headed for divorce”—Katrina becomes a pressure valve for his own stifled emotions, as Craig rants about the “despicable” lies of George Bush, the “man-made” nature of the Katrina disaster, and his own marriage. Much more effective are sections that focus on SJ, a black Vietnam vet and widower from the Lower Ninth Ward, who is taking care of his invalid sister, Lucy, as the hurricane strikes. Craig's and SJ's approaches to evacuation couldn't differ more, and while their competing narratives occasionally illustrate the city's race and class divide a little too schematically, the point that thousands were left to rot is brought home with kinetic intensity. In stark contrast to Craig's bluster—and to some of the stereotypes handed to Lucy's character—SJ's methodical approach to the disaster and his ability to rebound from devastating loss speak volumes. (Sept.)

The question in Monroe's steamy but seedy shocker is who should suffer the most: the unreliable narrator or her BFF who commits murder on the night of their senior prom? Dolores Reese, a foster child, and her best friend, Valerie Proctor, get caught in a web of deadly secrets after “LoReese” witnesses Valerie killing her stepfather, Zeke Proctor, to protect her mother. The friends drift apart but stay in sporadic touch, and 16 years later, Lo, now married, confides her own secret: she's jailhouse married to her first love, Floyd Watson, who's been locked up for years on a bogus rape/murder charge. When Floyd is belatedly cleared of the charges, Lo's determined to stay married to both men, and Valerie agrees to help her. Monroe draws a bleak picture of how secrets can wreck friendships, but she fails to create much sympathy for either the sometimes sarcastic and conceited Lo or Valerie. Readers might find Lo's bigamy lifestyle a little too unbelievable and a late-breaking affair too out-of-left-field, but those who can sit back and go along with the chain of double-crosses and deception should enjoy the ride. (Sept.)

While best known for his engaging personal essay collections (Being with Children, etc.), Lopate is also the author of two novels (including The Rug Merchant); here he turns in a pair of lively novellas. Taking the form of a self-conscious diary, “The Stoic's Marriage” opens as Gordon, a pretentious intellectual, records the perfection of his marriage to Rita, a former home aide from the Philippines. When her relatives arrive unexpectedly, his postures of generosity toward his wife's family make his farcical unreliability as a narrator abundantly clear. “Eleanor, or, The Second Marriage” offers a bird's-eye view of a middle-aged couple's bourgeois complacency as they host a party, complete with gourmet food, a Charlie Chaplin screening (from real film, natch) and urbane banter. The characters seem pulled from a lifestyle issue of New York magazine, and a shattering secret, when revealed, doesn't have much to push against—but that's Lopate's point. The novella form tends to work against these tales, which feel like underdeveloped novels, but Lopate gets in some good jabs at the chattering classes. (Sept.)

Parkhurst, former blogger and media gossip staple turned Web-and-TV culinary personality, brings considerable Southern charm and sass (plus some mouth-watering recipes) to her chick lit debut, but there's no mistaking the revenge fantasy at the heart of this tale of struggle and success. The former Fox News Channel correspondent plunks her Mobile, Ala., debutante narrator, Belle Lee, at a smarmy news network, where she begins her rise to the media heap from the very bottom. Determined not to be trampled, Belle turns supersleuth and discovers the sticky political web woven by her American News Channel bosses and uses the goods as leverage to get her own pieces on air. “Even if I had to work for horn dogs and thieves... I would produce a piece that would get me a job as a 'real' journalist,” Belle vows in a “never go hungry again” moment. Predictably, Belle breaks out from under the bad guys and shifts her professional focus to something more heartfelt. There aren't any surprises, but the tartly told story is a genuine guilty pleasure. (Sept.)

In this uneven debut novel from poet and memoirist Mura (Turning Japanese), third-generation Japanese-American Ben Ohara is haunted by the legacy of the WWII internment camps. Both of his parents were detained, and his father, Takeshi, was a “No-No Boy” whose refusal to join the armed forces planted the seed of his miserable demise by suicide. Now a 40-something “itinerant historian,” Ben receives a postcard sent 10 years earlier from his troubled younger brother, Tommy, shortly before he disappeared in the Mojave Desert. The long-delayed message revives Ben's interest in his unfinished book, a project that “betray[s] my lifelong fascination with the origins of my family's grief and madness.” Ben delves into his family's past in an attempt to understand what happened to his father and brother, and while the novel's first half vividly recounts Ben's childhood in Chicago's rough Uptown neighborhood, the second half sees the narrative losing energy as it becomes more contemplative and big family secrets are blandly revealed. Mura writes beautiful sentences, but the story becomes more slack just as it should be intensifying. (Sept.)

Part literary genesis, part historical thriller, the latest from Rush (A Twelvemonth and a Day, etc.) brims with bawdy luridness and graphic violence as he channels the first-person voice of the world's greatest writer. As a bedridden Will Shakespeare dictates his will to a gluttonous lawyer, he recounts barbarous Renaissance times, from the plague-ridden streets of “sweltering Stratford” to gory slaughterhouse days before landing his first job at the Rose Theatre, through to the “Bloody Mary burnings” and tortures of the Counter-Reformation (“the nipples crisped and torn off with white-hot pincers... tender tongue, sensitive as a snail, quivering in the vice, while long needles go savagely to work”) and beyond. Rush takes on contentious areas of the Bard's life, including his anticlericalism, the connection to assassinated rival Christopher Marlowe, the mystery of his son and the why of a master dramatist's turn to sonneteering. Some moments are decidedly didactic, as when Will dissects his own Twelfth Night. Nevertheless, this ravenous soliloquy fairly bursts with life. (Sept.)

The solid 15th entry in Higgins's Sean Dillon thriller series (after The Killing Ground) finds aging, arthritic ex-gangster Harry Salter retired from active operations, leaving Dillon, once the IRA's most feared enforcer, as the real leader of the loose gang of stalwart lads who covertly battle the foes of Western civilization. A newcomer to the team, Maj. Harry Miller, on the surface a mild-mannered MP who's in reality the British prime minister's secret hit man, hooks up with series regular Blake Johnson in Kosovo, where the Russians, intent on reclaiming old glory, are stirring up trouble. Meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalists are intent on bringing Britain to its knees. The action moves swiftly amid a variety of foreign locales, including Moscow, London and Beirut, to a climax that will leave readers asking themselves, evidence to the contrary, whether the great game is really over. (Aug.)

In Swedish author Larsson's superb, gut-wrenching police procedural, Insp. Anna-Maria Mella and her longtime partner, Sven-Erik Stålnacke, investigate the brutal torture-murder of Inna Wattrang, head of information for Kallis Mining, whose body is found in an ark, a small cabin on runners, on a frozen lake. The paucity of clues leads the inspector to take the unconventional step of recruiting a new prosecutor, Rebecka Martinsson, to the team. Martinsson's single-minded devotion to her work is of great benefit to Mella, whose inquiries into the self-made founder of Kallis as well as the victim's brother lead her to believe that the motive for the brutal crime stems from Kallis Mining's unscrupulous business practices. While the plot offers little mystery, this intelligent thriller carries tremendous emotional heft and makes Swedish society easily comprehensible to an American reader. Larsson's debut, Sunstorm (2003), was named Sweden's Best First Crime Novel of the Year. (Aug.)

At the start of this offbeat crime thriller from Schneider (Secret Love), concert violinist Elizabeth Odegard hires eccentric Twin Cities PI Augie Boyer, who enjoys poetry and smoking pot, to investigate her husband, Perry, a dealer in rare musical instruments. Elizabeth has become suspicious of Perry's unusual business practices, especially after discovering a gun inside a violin case. When Boyer visits the Odegards' apartment, he finds a cache of German Lugers and a slim book cataloguing valuable violins seized by the Nazis. The trail leads Boyer to a possible link with a major antiabortion rally at the 2008 Republican National Convention, where a fictional Minnesota governor is angling to become John McCain's running mate. While some readers will enjoy the name-dropping (from Garrison Keillor and Al Franken to Geraldo and Anderson Cooper), others may feel the predictable story line undercuts the suspense. (Aug.)

In this promising first novel, screenwriter/director Miller (The Ballad of Jack and Rose) probes the life of housewife Pippa Lee. Fifty-year-old Pippa lives a contented life with her older husband, Herb. However, everything changes when Herb announces that they are leaving Manhattan for a retirement community. Unsettled in her new home, Pippa begins sleepwalking through life—literally. She catches herself on a security camera cooking and eating while unconscious, then finds evidence that her somnambulist self has taken up smoking. In light of her erratic behavior, Pippa reconsiders the life she has built for herself and the example she is setting for her two grown children: raised by a pill-addicted mother, Pippa ran away from home at 17 and struggled with drugs, abusive relationships and her own feelings of guilt before looking for redemption in the family that she now worries is falling apart. Pippa's struggle to break the “chain of misunderstandings and adjustments” that passes from parent to child is moving. Despite a few moments of overwrought melodrama, the story's held together by Miller's sincere and intelligent protagonist. (Aug.)

In Winger's touching and emotionally turbulent debut, the fantasy of new beginnings gives way to a persistent sense of haunted—but oddly comforting—history. Set in Berlin in the late fall of 2001, the novel focuses on the overlapping stories of grieving American expat Hope and has-been minor German celebrity Walter, who's dreaming of a new career in Hollywood. Hope recently suffered a late-term miscarriage and has reluctantly joined her economist husband in Berlin despite a widening gulf between them and her crippling depression. Walter's teenage heartthrob status has withered with age, and now he dubs American films into German. The friendship that blooms between them raises issues about personal and national identity, though their coming together is a bit too neat, as are the many oversimplifications of Americans and Germans that pepper the narrative. The real drama arises between the cities of New York and Berlin; both cities, like Hope and Walter, bear a profound survivor's guilt: the war, the wall and the towers overwhelm individual sorrows. There are a few clunky moments, but the elegant ending and confident storytelling are redeeming. (Aug.)

When Jesus Christ turns up in West Zenith, Mass., Catholics, Jews and atheists unite to help him realize his plan of becoming America's next president in this hilarious novel from Merullo (Breakfast with Buddha). Chief adviser to the “Jesus for America” campaign is Russ Thomas, a cynical TV journalist who sets out to convince the American public that Jesus is the real deal. Jesus' chances of being elected seem slim as he faces skepticism from both ends of the political spectrum over his platform of “kindness and goodness” and the fact that he names his mother as his running mate. But as Jesus hits the campaign trail, Russ and his team begin to have faith in their candidate, themselves and humanity. Most enjoyable are the takedowns of thinly veiled political journalists: there's loud-mouthed, insult-spewing Anne Canter and Bulf Spritzer, “a decent guy [who] can never quite convince the viewer that he isn't ecstatic about being in the limelight.” The result is, for the most part, an uproarious satire, hampered only by Merullo's occasional slips into the preachiness about morality that he so harshly mocks. (Aug.)

In Golemon's so-so third Event Group thriller (after 2007's Legend), the shadowy U.S. government organization specializing in paranormal assignments, led by military maverick Col. Jack Collins, must stop the descendants of 2,000 children who survived the sinking of Atlantis 11,000 years earlier from seizing a key that will enable them to manipulate the tectonic plates of the earth's crust. After Collins's team finds a map of the lost continent during a raid on a mansion in Katonah, N.Y., the Atlanteans retaliate by slaughtering the FBI agent working with Collins as well as Event Group members manning the storage facility where the raid's spoils were being studied. The formulaic fight scenes, betrayals and 11th-hour rescues are on a par with the implausible premise. Even the dramatic conclusion will leave many readers unaffected. (Aug.)

In Melikan's lively, intelligent debut, set in England in 1795, genteel Mary Finch welcomes the chance to escape Mrs. Bunbury's academy, where she teaches young ladies, and visit White Ladies, her wealthy uncle Edward's Suffolk estate. En route, the unconventional Mary, who has a strong interest in the law, meets a dying stranger who in best gothic fashion gives her a mysterious warning. At White Ladies, Mary hopes to resolve some conflict between her father and her uncle, but soon becomes embroiled in smuggling intrigue. The unusual men she encounters include West Indian planter Paul Déprez, who fled to England after the French overran his plantation, and Captain Holland, an impoverished artillery officer. In the end, Mary must use her intuition to assess the motives of the people around her—and her special knowledge to try to upset a French plot. Readers will eagerly look forward to the second and third volumes in this historical trilogy. (Aug.)

In screenwriter Murphy's breezy debut, Henry Sullivan, a single, in-demand L.A. contractor, can pick and choose his high-end home renovation jobs. Henry's self-imposed rules—don't sleep with clients and don't take on too many projects at once—go out a half-finished window when he falls for two clients at once: Sally Stein, a single and successful purse designer, and Rebecca Paulson, an unhappily married mother of twins who is Sally's former best friend. Why the two women he loves are no longer speaking becomes so intriguing to Henry that he begins to dig for answers while simultaneously finishing (or, rather, attempting to finish) both their houses. How Henry finally solves the mystery is neatly wrapped up at the end of this amusing tour through the perils of poking around in others' intimate spaces. (Aug.)

Somewhere between comedy and tragedy lies the second installment to Crandell's Beauty Knows No Pain trilogy (after The Flawless Skin of Ugly People). Brad Orville is stuck in a rut in the middle of Witchfield County, Ga. He lives with his brother, Compton, a former playboy turned mildly brain-damaged dependent after his head was cracked open by a man angry at him for sleeping with his wife. Bald Brad, meanwhile, must look after Compton while coming to terms with a betrayal Compton committed years ago. His days are frequently a blur of booze, bad hairpieces and interactions with strange women he meets online. As forest fires and real estate developers encroach on the brothers' family land, Compton and his pregnant wife, Peaches, spend their summer fixing the family farmhouse in preparation for the new addition. The story is painfully believable—from the characterization of two brothers who can't quite connect to the description of what happens to a man's skin when a toupee is left on too long—and has the perverse charms readers of Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris will recognize. (Aug.)

Setting this haunting, stream-of-consciousness tale in a generic rural Polish village (jeden in German means “every”), Vennemann writes in the first-person voice of an unnamed 16-year-old Jewish girl, who recounts the German army's arrival there at the beginning of WWII. Up to that point, her family of non-practicing Jews has been living among the Polish farmers in an uneasy détente. Beloved elder brother Marek, an apprentice to his father's veterinarian practice, has converted to Catholicism in order to marry Antonina, pregnant with their daughter, Julia. But when the Germans take over the village houses, the Polish villagers turn into a drunken, raging mob, and the family takes refuge in their tree house. Tales of love and adventure recounted countless times by the father and Marek sustain the family as they anxiously await their fate, while a foreboding sense of fried circuitry and doom infuses their telling. Masterly and chilling, Vennemann's work captures a small moment of humanity within a larger machinery of evil and hate. (Aug.)

Winning lead characters and smooth prose more than offset the standard thriller plot, a cat-and-mouse duel between a San Francisco police inspector and a sadistic serial killer, in White's promising debut. Insp. Clemson Yao of the SFPD pursues a killer responsible for such gruesome murders as that of a 32-year-old Chevron gas station manager, whose body is found torn in half at the waist by a system of counter weights in the Salinas Valley. One cop observes that the MO resembles the way some criminals were executed in 18th-century India. Yao is aided in his quest by Angie Strackan, an ex-cop turned realtor, who stumbles on another instance of the killer's handiwork. The inspector comes to believe that the main suspect, who's identified fairly early on, is increasing the pace of his butchery because he's terminally ill. Yao and company have enough quirks and humanity to make the prospect of a series a welcome one. (Aug.)

Billy Jacks, a steely killing machine, must escort a spoiled young arms heiress, Cassandra von Deker, from England to Luxembourg, where she's to assume control of Deker Industries, in this uneven mix of assassin-vs.-assassin thriller and romance from British author Wilson (A Criminal Act). Since al-Qaeda plans to take over the company should Cassandra die, her bodyguard's duty is anything but routine. The terrorists' master hit man, code-named Azrael, targets Jacks because he blames Jacks for the death of one of his most valued allies. Unfortunately, the eventual clash between Jacks and Azrael comes as an anticlimax after the reader has struggled through page after page of the growing infatuation of the Paris Hilton–like von Deker with her protector (“Hope gently blossomed inside Cassandra as she imagined he was going to ask of her something intimate”). (Aug.)

Izzo (1945–2000) returns to Marseille (Total Chaos, etc.) with a bleak, affecting tale about a man on the skids, despairing of love's ability to heal. Rico, the 40-something, hard-drinking transient protagonist, still smarts from the breakup in Rennes from his beautiful, avaricious wife, Sophie. Living on the streets of Paris when his down-and-out friend, Tito, dies curled up on the metro train, Rico, grief-stricken, decides to return to Marseille, where 20 years before as a recently demobilized marine he meet his first love, Léa. The novel becomes a kind of desperate road trip (Tito used to tell Rico about Kerouac's On the Road) as Rico bums his way from Paris to Marseille. Abdou, a 13-year-old Algerian refugee boy in search of a father, takes over the narrative when Rico, increasingly ill, beat up and alcoholic, sinks into a state of delusional regret. Izzo's last novel proves riveting and grim. (Aug.)

Born just as the violent overthrow of the Catholic Church begins in 1527 Tudor England, Honor Larke is alternately pulled and pushed by her conscience: she wants to save heretics from burning, but desires to see her once beloved guardian, Thomas More, punished for his reforming ways. Meanwhile, Erasmus, Catherine of Aragon, Henry Tudor, Anne Boleyn and More himself charm, pummel and sweep their way through history. Fully grown, Honor meets and employs Thomas Thornleigh, a merchant and courtier who she vastly misjudges—at first. Firsthand experience with the horrors of persecution on both sides forces Honor into an unusual decision of where to put her faith. Compelling narrative and characterization make Kyle's debut comparable with the likes of Margaret George and Kathleen Windsor. (Aug.)

A French academic hiding his collaborationist past resurrects himself in America in this misfired novella. Professor of literature at the Yale-like New Harbor, Léopold Sfax, the novella's wily, boorish narrator, has become a celebrity in literary America for espousing his capital-T Theory that “words are far older and fickler and more experienced than the writers who... are 'using' them.” When eager grad student Astrid Hunneker embarks on writing his biography, Sfax nervously pads his backstory, omitting the embarrassing parts that took place during WWII, when as a young man living in occupied Paris he was asked to contribute to a collaborationist magazine. Yet Sfax returns obsessively to this period, revealing that he pseudonymously wrote scores of “Nazi hack work” articles and was denounced in a “traitor's gallery” published by the Resistance in 1943. Adair skillfully constructs his protagonist's elaborate, circuitous justifications, and even introduces a mystery, though too late to keep afloat a narrative weighted down by the narrator's unceasingly haughty academic rhetoric. (Aug.)

The 13th exciting, if long-winded, entry in bestseller Brockmann's Troubleshooters series answers a question posed in 2004's Hot Target—what happened to former Troubleshooter op Vinh Murphy? Seven years earlier, the half-Vietnamese, half–African-American agent went MIA after his wife, Angelina, was killed during a conflict with the neo-Nazi Freedom Network. Now back in California, Vinh has been suffering alcoholic blackouts in between e-mailing death threats to FN's leader, Tim Ebersole. After Ebersole's murdered and Vinh becomes the chief suspect, a sober Vinh turns to an old friend of Angelina's, a deaf former cop, for help in remembering if he did kill Ebersole. A romantic subplot involving Izzy Zannella, a navy SEAL with Team Sixteen, and Eden Gillman, the runaway teen sister of a fellow SEAL, sweetens the mix. Readers unfamiliar with the players might need a scorecard, but Brockmann ignites sufficient sparks to keep the blaze going. A jaw-dropping “conclusion” suggests more fireworks ahead. (July 22)

At the start of Mayor's fine 19th Joe Gunther novel (after 2007's Chat), Vermont deputy sheriff Brian Sleuter gets shot in the temple while making a routine traffic stop near the Canadian border. The video camera on Sleuter's cruiser taped the murder, so it appears to be a simple case, but Mayor never makes things simple. Since the pair that Sleuter stopped have a drug history, Joe Gunther, head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, coordinates with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston. In a smash-bang arrest attempt, one suspect is killed, the other escapes. Joe follows him to Maine, where a drug distributor was recently murdered, drawing Joe and his staff into a fight for control of the New England drug trade and a vengeful family feud. The plot meanders and relies on coincidence more than usual in this superior regional series, but a surprise resolution to the cop killing and an unexpected final “catch,” one of many in the story, will leave fans feeling fully satisfied. 30-city author tour. (Oct.)

Characterization and atmosphere carry Benn's third WWII mystery (after 2007's The First Wave), a convincing blend of fact and fiction. As part of the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Billy Boyle, a freewheeling Boston cop in civilian life now working as special investigator for General Eisenhower, bears a message from the real-life Lucky Luciano to the head of the Sicilian Mafia asking that he order local soldiers to stop fighting American troops. Unfortunately, the chaos of warfare interferes with Billy's mission, as does another mobster out to exploit the situation for money who plots to have Billy killed—while Billy is wounded and suffering from amnesia. The hero's gradual rediscovery of his memories lets him question what kind of person he is, in particular whether he's more than a brutal killer. Benn also does a fine job of depicting a dusty, poverty-stricken Sicily, where warm loyalty is the reverse side of pitiless vendetta. (Sept.)

In Yancey's delightful second mystery to feature lovably inept Teddy Ruzak (after 2006's The Highly Effective Detective), Teddy fails the Tennessee PI licensing exam for the second time and is served notice that he can no longer work as a PI. After shutting down the office, Teddy spots a homeless man on the street and, on impulse, gives him his hat. The next day Teddy finds the man beaten to death in an alley behind his office building. Determined to dig up the truth, Teddy, in his inimitable way, follows the trail. Along the way to a most surprising solution, he finds his life complicated by two unexpected new acquaintances from the dog pound, one four-legged and the other a young woman who finds Teddy very attractive. Yancey has given Teddy a distinctive voice—wry, rambling and self-reflective—that will endear this surprisingly effective bumbler to all kinds of mystery readers. (Aug.)

In Brett's charming ninth Fethering mystery (after 2007's Death Under the Dryer), retiree Carole Seddon must solve a murder at the local betting shop. Jude, Carole's West Sussex neighbor and friend, discovers the body of recent Polish émigré Tadeusz Jankowski at the bookie's office. No one knows why Tadeusz was in Fethering, though his sister, Zofia, guesses he may have been in love. Carole and Jude scope out the local college, where Tadeusz was reportedly seen, and encounter a drama professor lothario who falls for Jude. Help comes from unexpected places, as Carole discovers a new friend in one of the town's habitual gamblers as she and Jude scramble to unmask the killer. Brett continues to flesh out his characters with a subplot about Carole's desire to see her new granddaughter while avoiding her ex-husband. With Brett's usual flair for smalltown snobbery and a dash of college politics, this latest cozy whodunit is sure to please longtime fans of the series. (Aug.)

Granger's engaging second Victorian mystery to feature ladies' companion Lizzie Martin offers a more compelling plot than its predecessor, The Companion (2007). Martin accepts a short-term assignment to attend to young Lucy Craven, who's recently lost her newborn daughter, in Hampshire, where Craven lives with two maiden aunts while her husband is abroad on business. Martin's beau, Insp. Benjamin Ross of Scotland Yard, worries about the situation, and his fears prove well founded when the local rat-catcher, Jed Brennan, is stabbed to death soon after Martin's arrival in Hampshire. Craven's conviction that her baby hasn't died raises concerns about her sanity, and disturbing reports of her early years make Martin suspect she had a role in Brennan's murder. While the lead characters may be less than memorable, fans of Anne Perry's Thomas Pitt series will find much to like. (Aug.)

Three different stories separated by decades propel Doogan's stellar third Alaska police procedural (after 2007's Capitol Offense): PI Nik Kane's poverty-stricken, fatherless youth in Anchorage during the early 1960s; Nik's first murder case at age 36, the unsolved homicide of fellow cop Danny Shirtleff in 1985; and the aftermath of a shooting in 2007 in which Nik's son, Dylan, took a fatal hit from a stray bullet from Nik's own gun. Nik's sister, Cee Cee, a nun, helps his body and soul recuperate in the wake of Dylan's accidental death. The jarring shifts of perspective, fine-tuned to Nik's lifelong search for his father, intensify as the novel crescendos toward its devastating conclusion. All the characters spring from the page as intense as today's violent crime headlines and as convincing as a .38 slug to the belly. Doogan, a former reporter and now Alaska state legislator, doesn't miss a searing beat in this three-movement symphony of loss, guilt and revenge. (Aug.)

When 70-year-old Emma Kost O'Neal dies in her bed in Hartford, Conn., the cause of her demise is far from certain in this insightful and unconventional mystery from Hogan (Man Out of Time). After finding Mrs. O'Neal's body, Matthew Wyman, a troubled young artist who did odd jobs for the wealthy matron, suffers a breakdown and winds up in a mental facility, where he finds a measure of peace. Meanwhile, police detective Mark Moraski, consumed by his inability to unravel the circumstances of the case, continues over the months to re-examine the file, always hopeful that at some point he'll solve it. Various flawed characters try to figure out what one really needs to be happy as they seek some kind of fulfillment while tempted to chase after what society tells us is important. The intricate plot builds to a singular finale that delivers an unexpectedly satisfying balancing of the scales. (Aug.)

Clare's absorbing 11th entry in her Hawkenlye series (The Enchanter's Forest, etc.) highlights the many perils of life in medieval England. One cold November day in 1196, an exhausted stranger arrives at the estate of Sir Josse d'Acquin, a loyal soldier of the king bored with inactivity. Josse gives the man shelter in an outbuilding, suspecting him to be the servant of a crusader recently returned from the Holy Land. After a fortnight, the stranger abruptly vanishes, then a body, brutalized beyond recognition, turns up in the nearby woods. Meanwhile, a prisoner exchange gone wrong has led to a hunt across Europe for a runaway monk carrying unknown treasure. Josse relies on Abbess Helewise of Hawkenlye Abbey for counsel and solace, while the local sheriff, Gervase de Gifford, helps Josse track down a secret with the potential to change warfare forever. A lurid subplot set in the Holy Land adds to the suspense. (Aug.)

In his triumphant return to large-scale SF, Nebula and Hugo–winner Bear (Quantico) links three young drifters in present-day Seattle with an unimaginably distant future. When the drifters answer an odd newspaper advertisement, they soon find themselves caught up in a war between mysterious and powerful forces. Two not-quite-humans, creations of a million-year experiment, have discovered that their ancient fortress/city, perhaps the last refuge of intelligence in a dying universe, is about to fall before the onslaught of chaos. They have been chosen by beings evolved far beyond mere matter to undertake a dangerous mission to preserve the universe's last vestiges of consciousness. Somehow the two groups engage in telepathic communication despite the eons that separate them. Something of an homage to William Hope Hodgson's classic The Night Land, this complex, difficult and beautifully written tale will appeal to sophisticated readers who prefer thorny conundrums to fast-paced action. (Aug.)

Buckell returns to the universe of Crystal Rain (2006) and Ragamuffin (2007) for another action-packed story of human colonists fighting to survive on an alien world with all the odds against them. The story bounces between two protagonists: teenage Timas, one of the few inhabitants of the floating spherical city of Yatapek who can maintain the enormous mining machine that harvests ore from the furnace-hot surface of Venus-like Chilo, and Pepper, aka Juan Smith, an elite Ragamuffin soldier from New Anegada who'd prefer to forget about his violent past. As the only survivor of a ship infected with a virus that turns people into murderous zombie slaves of the alien Swarm, the last thing Pepper wants is another fight, but with the Swarm making inroads on Chilo, he has little choice. Buckell delivers double helpings of action and violence in a plot-driven story worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. (Aug.)

Cultures clash and romance blooms in this tepid series opener set on Harmony, a cult-governed planet. The highest ranks of the Harmonic Empire have rewritten history to hide its origins and maintain the harsh caste-based social order that supports the rich and powerful while keeping the underclasses trapped in slavery. Harmony is also the only source of “Badger Metal,” used to shield spaceships from the vagaries of radiation and hyperspace. The Confederated Star Systems desperately need the material for warships, and they send CSS Maj. Jake Hannigan undercover to Harmony to obtain the secret of making Badger Metal. His task is complicated by the social and political shakeup when Sissy, a pious young Worker caste woman, reveals a gift for prophecy and an amazing ability to quell earthquakes and storms by emotionally bonding with the planet itself. Historian Bentley's blend of mysticism, space opera and social commentary is too scattered and self-conscious to rise above its familiar themes. (Aug.)

Completing the story of Will Shakespeare and Kit Marley (Christopher Marlowe) begun in 2008's Ink and Steel, Campbell-winner Bear proves again that she can fill a stage as well as any Elizabethan playwright, entwining tragedies of betrayal and blood-soaked revenge with country pastoral and domestic comedy. Will, released from Hell, returns to a mortal court where black magic threatens Queen Elizabeth, and his poetry becomes her bulwark. Kit, bound to a trapped angel, likewise works to discover who in Faerie caused the murder of Will's son, Hamnet. Navigating the tangled intrigues of backstabbing courtiers and malicious magicians, the poets strive to thwart a plot to reshape the world through the power of story. Released on the heels of Ink and Steel, this complex and character-driven tale is best read with the other Promethean Age novels close at hand, not least because it lacks the all-important dramatis personae. (Aug.)

In the touching fourth novel set in the Old Man's War universe, Scalzi revisits the events of 2007's The Last Colony from the perspective of Zoë, adopted daughter of previous protagonists Jane Sagan and John Perry. Jane and John are drafted to help found the new human colony of Roanoke, struggling against a manipulative and deceitful homeworld government, native werewolf-like creatures and a league of aliens intent on preventing all space expansion and willing to eradicate the colony if needed. Meanwhile, teenage Zoë focuses more on her poetic boyfriend, Enzo; her sarcastic best friend, Gretchen; and her bodyguards, a pair of aliens from a race called the Obin who worship and protect Zoë because of a scientific breakthrough made by her late biological father. Readers of the previous books will find this mostly a rehash, but engaging character development and Scalzi's sharp ear for dialogue will draw in new readers, particularly young adults. (Aug.)

“Plausible-fabulist” Rosenbaum's debut collection of 17 short stories is inconsistent, but it includes some speculative gems. The thought-provoking “Start the Clock” takes place in a near future where a virus has stopped the human aging process, forcing millions of people to live forever as preadolescents. The title story is an absurdist masterwork about a man in search of a woman who has been turned into yellow gumballs, abducted and hidden away in a lair guarded by a giant roach. Most notable is World Fantasy Award–finalist “A Siege of Cranes,” which blends elements of horror, epic fantasy and religious mythology in the tale of a desperate man seeking a nightmarish enemy that has destroyed his village and killed his wife and child. Featuring outlandish and striking imagery throughout—a woman in love with an elephant, an orange that ruled the world—this collection is a surrealistic wonderland. (Aug.)

In this unusual but important autobiographical graphic novel, author/artist Libicki goes to Israel and joins the army to find herself. Although Orthodox, she had lacked the expected modesty, was one of those girls who was “technically” a virgin and attracted trouble. (A misogynist who tries to sodomize her says that he'd never touch a virgin, but would make an exception in her case.) She's often disliked for her social missteps, and because of mental health problems and limited Hebrew, she's assigned a Jobnik, or noncombat job, as a secretary in a clinic. “She knows seven ways to kill a man,” a friend back home jokes. “Five of them involve a fax machine,” she responds. Appalling news—it may mean friends dead—plays on the radio and the TV as insidious background music, constant and stupefying. But Miriam and her comrades are numb. The scale and the implications of what's going on around them don't register. The artist gives all the characters the startled sense of weight she gives her own character—as if adult bodies were some vast surprise. Their big eyes and chunky limbs don't register the horror taking place around them—part of the deadly innocence of youth is how the young can get inured to awful things, and the story shows this excellently well. (July)

Rapper Method Man's attempt to reinvent his creative horizons has yielded this graphic novel. But instead of a memoir, à la Percy Carey (Sentences), it's a full-on horror adventure. Peerless Paine, a direct descendent of the biblical Cain, finds himself a magnet for supernatural trouble that he and other scions of Cain must eliminate. These avengers operate as the Order of the Sacred Method and wield modern and arcane weaponry in their battles, as well as “the Wrath of Cain,” a berserker fury that grants its possessors enhanced physical prowess and healing capabilities, traits that come in handy when facing Lovecraftian menaces. Once booted from the Order for a romantic transgression, Paine is allowed to rejoin in order to ensure victory over a baleful evil, but while there are monsters and action galore, if the reader has seen even one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or encountered Hellboy, this material will seem familiar. Greene's graffiti-inspired art livens up the proceedings. (July)

Shaw's stunningly conceived and executed comic opus captures one moment of change in a family. Maggie and David Loony have called their three adult children to their childhood home to announce that, after 40 years of marriage, they're getting a divorce. Dennis, the eldest, desperately searches for an answer to why. He believes that if he just finds the right old letters, he'll understand what's happening to his parents, only to find that his answers say a lot more about his own marriage and infant son. Claire, the middle child, has been through her own divorce and is now struggling to raise a teen daughter by herself. The youngest, Peter, who has always felt like a changeling in his family and is drawn with a frog's head, is going through a delayed coming-of-age. Shaw's style deftly combines cartoon drawings with slavish attention to detail. The result feels reminiscent of a photo album, one person's quest to remember everything from the floor plans of the vacation home to the texture of the sand on the lake beach. Masterfully using the comics medium to juggle all the different characters, weaving their stories together seamlessly, Shaw allows the Loonys' emotions to play out naturally without forced resolutions, leaving a wistful hopefulness that feels just as conflicted and confusing as every family is. (June)