Fiction Reviews

German literary wunderkind Kehlmann follows up Measuring the World (2006) with this curious and lesser novel. Self-conscious and yet completely un–self-aware, journalist Sebastian Zollner attempts to outdo his art critic rival by writing the biography of reclusive painter Manuel Kaminski. Sebastian is amusingly sad, if one-note: he lives in denial that his live-in girlfriend broke up with him months ago; after an offhand comment by a transit worker, he becomes obsessed with his receding hairline; and he detests in others everything he so blithely ignores about himself. He weasels himself into Kaminski's household, snoops through the artist's private files, discovers a series of unfinished paintings and attempts to up the drama by reuniting Kaminski with his ex-wife, long thought dead. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Kaminski is manipulating pathetic Sebastian, and Sebastian's plans are thwarted in favor of the master's own. There are entertaining and lightly satirical moments, but for the most part the story feels rushed, with everyone except Sebastian getting short shrift. (Nov.)

Garlock's newest (after On Tall Pine Lake) feels old, and not just because it's set in 1890. Schoolteacher Hallie Wolcott flees Whiskey Bend, Colo., with her friends Pearl and Mary after Mary is beaten by Chester, one of the town's many brutes. Pearl, the eldest, has been through this before, and she won't rest until they find a place that feels safe. Fortunately, a powerful storm leaves them washed up at tumbledown ranch owned by Eli Morgan. Eli's cantankerous and cruel mother wants no part of the women, but she begrudgingly changes her mind when an accident lands her in bed. Meanwhile, Chester's been tracking the ladies; will he find them at the ranch, the place where each woman feels she can finally find true happiness? The answer to this and other “cliffhangers” are apparent to the reader long before the resolutions are played out on the page. The prose is lifeless, the dialogue wooden and the whole thing reads like a poorly strung-together mishmash of western romance tropes. (Nov.)

Bostwick makes a seamless transition from historical fiction to the contemporary scene in this buoyant novel about the value of friendship among women. When Evelyn Dixon's marriage ends, she leaves Texas and drives north until New Bern, Conn., captures her heart. There she pursues a dream of opening a quilt shop, and with little money and a lot of determination, she turns a derelict building into a haven for the crafty set. But three women who show up for quilting class end up learning about more than stitching and batting. Chilly, wealthy Abigail Burgess; her angry 19-year-old niece, Liza; and recently laid-off Margot Matthews all have different reasons for being there, but when Evelyn, having just learned she has breast cancer, breaks down, the trio unites to support her. Evelyn's illness and recovery are the catalysts that force the others to re-examine their own lives, while hints of a possible romance for Evelyn add a complementary thread to the friendship, community and illness story lines. Bostwick's polished style and command of plot make this story of bonding and sisterhood a tantalizing book club contender. (Nov.)

Novelist O'Neill (Digging the Vein), a recovered heroin addict and lapsed rocker, draws on his experiences for this fast-paced, compulsively readable (if occasionally self-indulgent) portrait of a young would-be rocker junkie. After most of his belongings are repossessed (or sold for drug money) and his wife Susan admits to embezzling thousands of dollars from her company to support their habit, the unnamed narrator and his wife flee Los Angeles for his former home in England. There, he tries frantically to plug back into the London drug and music scenes and struggles to get clean. Fighting violent withdrawal symptoms, living in squalor on London's infamous Clapton Road (aka “Murder Mile”) and grappling with a sadistic and controlling rehab doctor, O'Neill's antihero paints a grim, bloody picture of compulsive self-destruction. As veteran of half a dozen bands (including the Brian Jonestown Massacre), O'Neill gives himself too much space to voice his professional grievances, and there's a tendency to name-drop. Still, the novel's consistent tone of urgency and desperation creates a gritty world of its own that compels despite its flaws. (Nov.)

Bestseller Connelly delivers one of his most intricate plots to date in his 20th book, a beautifully executed crime thriller. When L.A. lawyer Mickey Haller, last seen in The Lincoln Lawyer (2005), inherits the practice and caseload of a fellow defense attorney, Jerry Vincent, who's been murdered, the high-profile double-homicide case against famed Hollywood producer Walter Elliot, accused of shooting his wife and her alleged lover, takes top priority. As Haller scrambles to build a defense, he butts heads with LAPD Det. Harry Bosch, the stalwart hero of Connelly's long-running series (The Black Echo, etc.), who's working Vincent's murder. When Haller realizes that the Elliot affair is bigger than simply a jealous husband killing his cheating wife, he and Bosch grudgingly agree to work together to solve what could be the biggest case in both their careers. Bosch might have met his match in the wily Haller, and readers will delight in their sparring. 10-city author tour. (Oct.)

In this stripped-down dark thrill ride from Edgar-finalist Bruen (The Guards), a psychotic Irish cop, Matthew Patrick O'Shea (“everybody called me Shea”), blackmails his way into a green card and a police exchange program that takes him from Galway to New York City for a one-year stint with the NYPD. Partnered with the brutal Kurt “Kebar” Browski (“he looked like a pit bull in uniform”), the clever sociopath, who has a hidden predilection for serial rape and strangulation, brazenly advances his ambitions despite intense attention from Internal Affairs and a mobster named Morronni. An acknowledged master of contemporary noir, Bruen touches all his usual themes in his trademark clipped postmodern style, a deft shorthand that enables him to romp at will through genre clichés to quickly reach deeper and more dangerous depths. No one is safe as this shocker spins wildly toward a violent finish. (Oct.)

Those looking for a new crime series starring an author's fictional alter ego to fill the void left by Kinky Friedman's series that ended with Ten Little New Yorkers shouldn't expect too much from the fiction debut of actor and standup comic Belzer, best known for his role as Det. John Munch in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. When an old friend of Belzer's, New York City assistant medical examiner Rudy Markovich, disappears under suspicious circumstances, Belzer decides to investigate. After the actor finds a clue referring to four recent deaths, he and Kalisha Carter, the attractive woman his producer assigns to keep an eye on him, dig into those cases with mostly predictable results. Action sequences alternate with the detection, allowing Belzer to show off his martial-arts skills. Hopefully, Belzer's acerbic screen persona will be more on display in any sequel. (Oct.)

Diaspora, myth and a fascinating language mashup propel the Rubik's cube of plots in Ghosh's picaresque epic of the voyage of the Ibis, a ship transporting Indian “girmitiyas” (coolies) to Mauritius in 1838. The first two-thirds of the book chronicles how the crew and the human cargo come to the vessel, now owned by rising opium merchant Benjamin Burnham. Mulatto second mate Zachary Reid, a 20-year-old of Lord Jim–like innocence, is passing for white and doesn't realize his secret is known to the “gomusta” (overseer) of the coolies, Baboo Nob Kissin, an educated Falstaffian figure who believes Zachary is the key to realizing his lifelong mission. Among the human cargo, there are three fugitives in disguise, two on the run from a vengeful family and one hoping to escape from Benjamin. Also on board is a formerly high caste raj who was brought down by Benjamin and is now on his way to a penal colony. The cast is marvelous and the plot majestically serpentine, but the real hero is the English language, which has rarely felt so alive and vibrant. (Oct.)

Fans of bestseller DeMille will welcome this sequel to The Gold Coast (1990), in which Susan Sutter, then the wife of tax attorney John Sutter, had a torrid affair with Frank Bellarosa, a powerful Mafia boss and the Sutters' neighbor on Long Island's tony Gold Coast, with fatal results for Bellarosa. After divorcing Susan, John sailed the world for three years, then built himself a new life in London. Now John has returned to the small gatehouse that was once part of his ex-wife's family estate, only to find Bellarosa's thuggish son, Anthony, living next door. In another coincidence, Susan has just reacquired the six-bedroom “guest cottage” where she and John lived as a married couple on her family's former property. Susan and John soon begin to explore an improbable reconciliation, even as they suspect she may be in Anthony's gun sights. The plot more than takes its time getting to its violent and predictable resolution, but DeMille devotees should have plenty of fun along the way. (Oct.)

In Reese's scrupulously imagined thriller, told largely through entries from a lost journal kept by the author of Dracula in 1888, Bram Stoker attends an indoctrination ceremony of the Order of the Golden Dawn, at the behest of Oscar Wilde's mum and a young William Butler Yeats. The ceremony goes horribly awry, resulting in one participant—Francis Tumblety, a patent medicine salesman newly arrived from America—becoming a vessel for the evil Egyptian god Set and applying his surgical skills to the slaughter of Whitechapel prostitutes in order to draw Stoker out for a supernatural showdown. Bestseller Reese (The Witchery) so perfectly pastiches the journal format that initially his story reads as dry and boringly as most private diaries. With Tumblety's malignant conversion, though, the novel turns into a rip-roaring penny dreadful that compels reading to the end. Dracula fans will appreciate the nods to well-known works that Stoker wrote supposedly following this confrontation. (Oct.)

Set in 1876, Cox's gripping second gothic thriller (after The Meaning of Night) follows the fortunes of 19-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst, whose guardian charges her to go undercover as a lady's maid. Without knowing precisely why she's doing so, Gorst insinuates herself into the inner circle of Baroness Tansor, the fiancée of the preceding volume's villain, Phoebus Daunt. The fake maid soon learns that her mistress has many secrets, and may, in fact, have been complicit in the death of a former servant. Cox excels at conveying his heroine's conflict over deceiving her employer, especially after learning the role the lady played in her own difficult personal history. While readers unfamiliar with the first book will find themselves deeply engaged by the elegant descriptive prose, those with the benefit of the full context and nuances of The Meaning of Night will better appreciate this sequel. (Oct.)

Straitlaced Spanish painter Elvira De Poulain confronts massive debt—and mortal danger—in freewheeling 1920s Shanghai in her efforts to sort out her murdered husband's messy affairs in this fast-paced if farfetched thriller from Asensi (The Last Cato). The only hope for Elvira and her sulky teenage niece, Fernanda, is to decipher the clues in an antique chest the killers failed to find, and to beat them to the mythic lost treasure buried 2,000 years earlier with China's first emperor. The desperate quest takes these improbable Indiana Janes on a cross-country race that showcases both the Spanish author's meticulous historical research and her skill at interweaving it into her suspenseful narrative. While the ladies' traveling companions, including an aristocratic Chinese antiquarian and a genius servant boy, lend interest, some readers may find the two protagonists, despite the personal growth gained as they rise to various challenges, less than fully engaging. (Oct.)

New York concert pianist Madeleine Shaye has it all: a thriving career as a television correspondent, a beautiful adopted daughter in college and a longtime love, wealthy Nick Ashcroft. Violet Ashcroft, Nick's sister, first brought Maddy to their crumbling Hamptons mansion during their 1960s college days, when the girls were trying to avoid marriage and follow their artistic passions to Paris. More than three decades later, Violet has long since disappeared in a void of scandal, but Maddy hopes to resuscitate their dream of establishing an artists' colony. Unfortunately, Nick has been acting distant and dropping hints about wanting a child, even though Maddy is pushing middle age. Before long, daughter Laila announces she's leaving Brown to work in a Guatemalan village, a new producer shoves Maddy aside in favor of a younger competitor, and Nick leaves her for another woman. Maddy soon discovers that these upheavals camouflage a crueler betrayal, one that launches her into a winding journey of revenge and renewal. Abeel's middling fifth novel recasts familiar characters and situations on a new stage, but with the exception of vibrant (but underused) Violet offers little that's fresh. (Oct.)

Austrian author and playwright Jonke addresses a host of existential questions through a cast of vaudevillian compatriots in this slim, beautifully written volume. When narrator Fritz, a self-loathing, depressive alcoholic composer, arrives early to help set up the annual garden party thrown by his friends, photographer Anton and his sister, Johanna, everything looks eerily familiar. As Fritz busies himself, Johanna reveals Anton's farcical if slightly malevolent plan to create an exact replica of last year's party. The plan is a success, allowing Jonke to wryly send up Austrian society and muse provocatively on the nature of memory. In the latter section of the book, Fritz and his brother go to the conservatory they attended in their youth to visit their old piano teacher. They end up trapped in an attic with dozens of neglected and decaying pianos. They're rescued, but not before Fritz's sanity is called into question. As intricately structured as a musical composition, with recurring conversational motifs, the narrative—powered by Snook's magnificent translation—moves smoothly and evocatively through fraught emotional terrain. (Oct.)

What crime fiction fan can resist a guy who isn't afraid to knock a few slime-bag heads when no one is watching? In Swain's fine second suspense novel to feature South Florida PI Jack Carpenter (after Midnight Rambler), imprisoned serial killer Abb Grimes hires the tough, unrelenting ex-cop to find his kidnapped grandson, Sampson Grimes. The chief suspect is the child's father, Jed Grimes, but Jack thinks Jed is innocent, even though the evidence suggests otherwise. There's plenty of action and intelligent sleuthing, but it's Jack's uncompromising character and Swain's equally uncompromising writing that will keep readers turning pages and eager for the next installment: “I'd visited many prisons, and the smell was always the same: a choking mixture of piss, shit, fear, and desperation, wiped down by harsh antiseptics.” The winner of France's Prix Calibre 38, Swain is also the author of Deadman's Bluff and six other books in his Tony Valentine gambling series. (Oct.)

Larsen (The Perfect Assassin) links the torpedoing of the USS Indianapolis shortly after the ship delivers an atomic bomb to the island of Tinian in the South Pacific to a Nazi plot in his second thriller, set in the waning days of WWII. Maj. Michael Thatcher, a tenacious British officer whose job is to hunt down Nazi spies, is intrigued when the words “Manhattan Project” come up in one of his interrogations. Meanwhile, in Germany, Col. Hans Gruber knows that a sleeper spy, Die Wespe, who's been working on the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos, must be smuggled out of the U.S. with his stolen plans so that those Nazis who survive the war can rearm and continue their goal of world domination. Charged with this mission is Capt. Alexander Braun, an American fighting in the German army. Braun is clever and ruthless, but once Thatcher catches his scent, he won't rest until Braun is captured or killed. An innovative, original plot marks Larsen as an author to watch. (Oct.)

In this insightful, laugh-out-loud follow-up to his debut novella, Junior Ray, Pritchard again indulges the profanely backwoods, occasionally backwards, voice of Mississippi “good ol' boy” Junior Ray Loveblood. Formerly deputy sheriff of a Mississippi delta town, Junior Ray is now an aging parking lot guard at the floating Lucky Pair-O-Dice Casino, and an amateur historian. His account of a failed Union naval expedition at Yazoo Pass on the Mississippi River also includes the story of his research expedition, with his friend Mad Owens, to the Magic Pussy Cabaret & Club “up in Meffis.” Among other theories, Junior Ray speculates that peyote ruined Union Lt. Cmdr. Watson Smith's life, that love undermined Mad Owens's and that the strip club saved his own. Each interwoven story is as surprising and strong as Junior Ray himself, who conjures a surreal scene of ironclads logjammed in a bayou as colorfully as he recounts a backroom lap dance from his best friend's granddaughter Petunia. Between expletives and misanthropic digressions, Junior Ray reveals a lifetime of deep, unlikely friendships, even getting at an occasional truth in a humble manner that's—as Junior Ray might put it—“as soft as a quail's fart.” (Oct.)

Striking the right tone in a comedy-thriller can be tough, as Corin's disappointing debut shows. Adam Weiss, a University of Michigan fraternity boy, is driving home to New Jersey with his twin sister, Anna, when a stop at a rest area turns the trip into a disaster as an elderly man who calls himself Ebbets kidnaps Anna. Adam later encounters a state cop who ignores the tale of Anna's abduction, a female Spanish clown and an old drunk. Soon the cop is dead and Adam, the old drunk and the clown are on the run. Adam contacts Ebbets, who tells Adam he's hidden 12 atomic bombs and intends to blow them up on Christmas eve. Adam spends the rest of the novel chasing Ebbets in an attempt to save the world and free his sister. While readers don't expect absolute realism in their thrillers, they do demand that the plot makes sense and follows at least elementary rules of logic. In his relentless search for humor, Corin misses both of these targets. (Oct.)

The discovery more than 60 years later of the wreckage of a British bomber that crashed in Germany in 1944 triggers a hunt for connections to Christ's crucifixion, the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition in this middling religious thriller from Slade (Kamikaze). Wyatt Rook, an American writer who specializes in books and TV documentaries that dig up dirt about recent history, agrees to help a sexy young British researcher, Liz Hannah, look into the case of the crashed plane (of which her grandfather was a crew member). The complicated trail takes the pair from England to Germany, where a plot involving Churchill and a Nazi traitor called Judas began, and then to Golgotha. Meanwhile, the Vatican's “Art Historian” is worried (“If the resurrected bomber yields a map to the Judas package, Christendom might be rocked to its two-thousand-year-old foundations”). Those with an insatiable appetite for Da Vinci Code knockoffs will be most rewarded. (Oct.)

Novelist (Pulling Taffy) and nonfiction anthologist (Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity) Sycamore is back with an ambitious but less-than-compelling satire of drug-fueled, gender-bending San Francisco subculture. The narrator, who may or may not be genetically female, fills days and many late nights with relentless sexual encounters and vivid ruminations concerning random sex, hustling, cocaine and other party drugs; occasionally, she takes time out for a rare healthy habit, vikram yoga, and to worry about her apartment's roach-and-rodent infestation. Obviously inspired by the stream-of-consciousness and day-in-the-life classics of Joyce, Woolf and Beckett, here the pointed commentary falls flat; the problem isn't San Francisco's eccentric denizens, but Sycamore's profane meanderings, too much of which isn't especially insightful or funny. The narrator takes far too long to move beyond the bitchy play-by-play, making sure that, by the time Sycamore introduces genuine stakes, readers will already feel too bored and browbeaten to care. (Oct.)

The stories in Selgin's often masterful debut collection (winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction) focus on faulty passions and dysfunctional romances. The most wickedly satisfying is “My Search for Red and Gray Wide-Striped Pajamas,” describing the affair between Steven, a poor second-generation Greek immigrant, and his “pudgy” first cousin Marcia. Steven squirrels away the cash his wily Uncle Nick provides in exchange for wooing Marcia but instead of the requisite wining and dining, Steven takes her virginity, followed by repeated dates on the Staten Island Ferry. In another vein, Selgin explores the idea of woman as woeful mirage. In “Color of the Sea,” Karina, an enticing Brazilian tourist, goes on a road trip through Crete with the narrator. But Karina, like a glammed up Helen of Troy, leaves our increasingly disillusioned protagonist with nothing but frustration and a bruised heart. Less original, and far less engrossing, are Selgin's depictions of brotherly relations and male camaraderie (“The Wolf House,” “Boy B”). Here, his voice is whiny and sophomoric, starkly at odds with the poignant, evocative prose of the other stories. (Oct. 15)

Two mothers. Two children. One tragedy. One miracle. Snelling, whose novels have sold more than two million copies, is sure to grab readers from the start of this holiday melodrama. Nora Peterson wants to create the perfect Christmas for what may be the last year her twins are home before leaving for college. Her husband's long business trip threatens her plans, but her world is about to turn upside down from far worse. As she faces tragedy, emergency room nurse Jenna Montgomery faces a miracle: her dying daughter, Heather, is getting a new heart. Snelling moves from one mother's viewpoint to the other's with ease, keeping readers riveted to Nora's emotional and spiritual healing and Jenna's understanding of her daughter's new life, as well as her own. Subplots—Nora's relationship with her daughter, Christi, and Jenna's surprise romance—add layers to this spiritually challenging and emotionally taut story. Fans of Christian women's fiction will enjoy this winning novel. (Oct. 22)

With a large cast whose lives weave together throughout the book, the Christy Award–winning Moser (Time Lottery) turns the mere act of holding up a sign at a football game into a transforming catalyst for her many characters. Tragedy in a football-crazed Midwestern town leaves grave doubts in Roman Paulson's mind about God's existence. Bitterness, greed and ambition for his son to play football have driven him to push others, and God, away. The tragedy also upsets the lives of several college students, whose decisions are openly discussed with believable dialogue and strong action. Moser uses sensitive and vivid descriptions of how characters might experience grief and lays out the plot's dilemmas expertly. College-age students will enjoy the book for the recognizable binds the characters get into, and cheer when they find ways to redeem poor decisions. The football setting is only window dressing: readers expecting strong riffs on football culture only get a shined-up plasticized coach and a few players saying nice things. However, plenty of plot twists and just that touch of sport setting make this a fitting read for autumn. (Oct.)

Christy Award–winner for Oxygen, Olson, a biochemist-turned-novelist, keeps pace with a page-turning thriller that will please fans of paranormal spiritual battle tales. In a goth-vampire–infused mind-bending race through the streets and underworld of San Francisco, Hailey Maniates discovers a deeper diagnosis than paranoid schizophrenia for her hallucinations. One man wants her as bait in a cosmic duel, and another—Melchi, the “child of prophecy”—wants to save her life. With the help of her graduate school friends and Melchi, Hailey turns from victim to fellow soldier with Melchi in the battle against the evil Mulo, the spirits of the dead who act like vampires. With breathless pacing, a sharp sense of suspense, memorable descriptions and a churning plot, this novel is a must-read for those who enjoy such authors as Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti. Readers will appreciate carefully woven themes from Dracula, science, faith, conspiracy theory and divine battle. Christian themes surface in the supernatural warfare, and a Christian character, Susan Boggs, helps Hailey see beyond the physical world to a deeper reality. (Oct.)

Clint Bunsen of Keillor's Lake Wobegon is planning his sixth Fourth of July celebration, but by the time it rolls around he's been booted from the planning committee; his wife, Irene, is chillier than ever; and his 60-something hormones have him lusting after the much-younger Angelica Pflame, whose “commando” performance as the Statue of Liberty in last year's parade is still a hot topic in the sleepy burg. In other words, everything's as you'd expect in a Keillor novel. There are quite a few subplots bubbling along quietly until everything erupts in a madcap denouement that combines elements of the Keystone Kops, I Love Lucy and Monty Python. Keillor's pacing and command of smalltown plot is impeccable; just at the moment when Clint's obsession with a genealogical discovery has become unbearable, the rug gets pulled out from under him. It's a Keillor novel that does what Keillor novels do: entertain and color nicely within the lines. (Sept.)

Avilova's novel demonstrates an impressive grasp of Russian literature and history, but fails to fully bring to life its world of ancient texts. Bert Renes, a Slavonic scholar, is doing research in Moscow in the early 1980s when he discovers that an intriguing 16th-century manuscript is missing from the state archives. The manuscript, Revelation of Fire, contains the teachings of Eularious, one of the Cenergites line of monks who for centuries remained untouched by the antiheresy movements. As Bert and archivist Nadya Demyanova begin to uncover the secrets of Revelation, their fascination with the manuscript's past grows, and Avilova weaves in historical accounts of the manuscript's past owners, including the self-proclaimed “first female Cenergite” and a pair of orphan twins who mysteriously disappeared. The depictions of Cold War–era Moscow are convincingly dreary and wonderfully paranoia-inducing, though Avilova has less luck with the historical set pieces, which feel airless. Brainy historical Russian mysticism deployed at a page-turning pace isn't for everyone, but a chunk of devotees will dig it. (Sept.)

More self-assured and powerful than her first two, this third book of verse from Bialosky (The End of Desire) modulates between restrained happiness and unpredictable sorrow, beginning by observing her grade-school–aged son, proceeding through troubles in a longstanding marriage and returning time and again to her sense of poetic mission. A dead friend, remembered in “Snow in April,” shows Bialosky “the torment one sees in those who have the need// to understand, to discover, to know, to transcend// the landlocked self.” Her lines suggest persistent debts to Louise Glück, whose cadences echo perhaps too strongly throughout these poems. Bialosky is also a novelist and an editor at Norton; these poems show both a storyteller's gift for implicit narrative and a sophisticate's sense of the other arts, with a sequence of short poems based on paintings by Eric Fischl, along with unrhymed sonnets, a skillful sestina and a handful of titles beginning “The Poet...” (for example, “The Poet Discovers the Significance of the Old Manuscripts”). Bialosky's book ends up undeniably personal, confirming her in the most serious of all her vocations: the setting down of a tumultuous inner life into clear, shared words. (Oct.)

Compact, careful, thoughtful and even wary, the second book of verse from Laird (who grew up in Northern Ireland and lives in London) gives the U.S. a fine representative of what younger mainstream British poets are doing right now. Like his peers, Laird writes shapely stanzas organized by description and sometimes by half-rhymes; he owes much to Glyn Maxwell or Paul Muldoon, though less so compared to his debut To a Fault. Here the tone is sadder, more civil, more often weighted by historical subjects. Also a novelist, Laird does best with historical personae: medieval actors in a morality play, for example, or soldiers who liberate a concentration camp, describing mass murder's aftermath with uncanny reserve. Even at his most personal, Laird feels the shadow of current events: he concludes with a set of short poems called “The Art of War,” in which the blisses and troubles of two adults remind him all too much of the public world. In “Terrain,” the “snow” on TV reminds him of the cloud of electronic data through which the government (like a malevolent boyfriend) may watch us as we sleep: “you'd been watching a property show and had dozed,/ and now the screen was frantic, driving home through snow, alone.” (Oct.)

Sublime visionary, great religious poet attracted to pagan myth and German poet of world-historical importance, Hölderlin (1770–1843) at the turn of the 19th century made his mark with Greek-inspired odes, intensely heterodox (and often never completed) hymns to imagined gods and real European places, and elegies on love. All these great works came about before 1807, when the tormented writer suffered a mental breakdown. Despite his importance to subsequent German poets (Rilke) and philosophers (Heidegger), and despite careful translations, Hölderlin has never enjoyed the U.S. following attracted by (for example) the author of The Duino Elegies. That may change with this ample yet sensitive facing-page version. Husband and wife team Chernoff and Hoover—both are experimental poets, fiction writers and editors—do best with the strangest (most clearly “modern”) stanzas and pieces of unfinished hymns, but also give fine attention to the earlier, more elegant works and to the naïve rhyming poetry of Hölderlin's last years. Here is the Hölderlin who praised “The Poet's Courage,” asking, “Isn't everything alive already in your blood?” Here too is the poet for whom modern life is at once opportunity and abyss: “I approached to see the gods,” he wrote, “[a]nd they themselves threw me down beneath the living.” (Sept.)

This much-needed retrospective of the 30-year career of this beloved, if too little known, poet selects from all of Gregg's published books—from her 1981 debut Too Bright to See to 2006's In the Middle Distance—including a group of new poems that show her ongoing investigations into the inner intensities of everyday brutality and grace. Gregg's poems oscillate between hushed reminiscence and savage whispers, always seeming to originate deep within a closely studied self: “You walk... with your life inside you.” The poems travel the globe, set in New England, California, Mexico, Greece and beyond, though wherever her poems go, Gregg never forgets that “if paradise is to be here/ it will have to include her.” Gregg offers up poems of love lost and won, and of an average life lived with extraordinary force, as high art, honing in on little tragedies that lead inexorably to the big one, Death, which more often than not arrives personified: “When death comes, we take off our clothes.” The poems always rejoice, however dark their subjects, in a powerful sense of simply being alive, and at times beauty and happiness break through in moments of stillness and solitude: “It is summer and I am in the middle/ of my life. Alone and happy.” (Sept.)

Famous for decades in Britain and in his native Australia as an essayist, critic and television presenter, James has latterly gained attention in both those countries for his poems, long a sidelight, but now moving toward center stage. James's most memorable works include jokes (“The book of my enemy has been remaindered/ And I am pleased”), and he shows the ease and comic timing of a born performer in free verse and in easily rhymed stanzas. Yet he is not only a comedian: Philip Larkin, he says in an elegy for that poet, “didn't sound like poetry one bit,/ Except for being absolutely it,” and James sets himself a similar goal. James evokes long-ago student days in Sydney or 21st-century scenes in London, along with male lusts, both absurd (“Bring me the sweat of Gabriela Sabatini”) and touching (a May-December romance glimpsed in a train station). James's high profile may help win reviews, but his selection (not scanty or overlong) will win hearts and minds only if readers find in it what James finds in his favorite paintings: “Proofs that the incandescent present tense/ Is made eternal by our transience.” (Sept.)

Isles's second collection is marked by a gentler, more lilting musicality than his taut, muscular debut, Ark. These new poems show him more inclined to stroll, drifting from one site or insight to the next, like a Bay Area “Flâneur”: “To succumb to the fleshly stream of the crowd/ trafficking in the equivocal light of this sea-girt place.// To keep oneself a stranger and a pilgrim.” An apartness—part scientific distance, part cloudy-headedness—characterizes much of the book: “This life is a mist, a cloud in the making.” Readers may conclude the world's lightness isn't what keeps Isles's speaker withdrawn so much as a sense of powerlessness in the face of its destruction. Of particular concern is the sacrifice of the natural world to “the absolute crap people buy” and how we cope with the loss by ignoring it: “Redundancy sparkles in the marketplace/ And we in purest indifference look miles deep/ Pinkish flowers and ants we stepped on along the way/ The tiny lights—.” If Isles's outlook is sometimes more enervated than activated this time out, a number of take-charge poems like “Evangelical Economics” prove that he is a dazzling and incisive lyricist of cultural critique. (Sept.)

Known for garrulously comic moments and dead-on versions of modern Americans' colloquial speech, Halliday (Jab) begins his fifth book of verse with purposely flat and intensely serious poems reacting to the death of his father, who lived “not without some gladness till he was eighty-nine,/ nourished as well as ravaged by irresistible wishing.” That personal sadness inspires reflections on mortality more generally, at the start as at the end of this striking collection. In between, though, Halliday flaunts his gift for informal humor, poking fun at contemporary ephemera while finding the element of memento mori in each. “Google Me Soon,” one poem invites: “You and I, we could have a connection.” “I'm the little cup of overcooked beans,” another poem decides, “somebody covered with plastic wrap and pushed to the back of/ the fridge.” It can be hard to know when Halliday is kidding—but that difficulty is part of his point: in a world full of people whose stories we may never know, who may or may not have urgent messages for us, Halliday seeks a style sad enough to describe those missed connections, and surprising enough to let us have fun with them, too. (Sept.)

Cole (The Dream of the Poem) must be one of very few writers to achieve enduring fame as a translator. He lives in Jerusalem and writes his own poems in English, and this first book of his verse in 10 years looks at the long, international history of Jewish literature, the modern enterprise of translation, the troubled contexts of his Middle East, as well as marital love and “the making of miracles such as forgiveness,/ friendship souring inside aloneness,// delight which leaves one exalted.” His self-scrutiny is identified with Jewish tradition: “Where are you, calls the Lord, from beyond/ language.” He is outraged at what the state of Israel has become, a state whose army says to Palestinians, in the words of one poem, “You'll now need a permit just to stay home.” Cole's grave intellection gives this book its best moments and—when his abstractions fail to catch fire—its weakest. Though it utilizes a number of poetic forms, the collection truly shines when Cole chooses the short-lined, sometimes fragmentlike free verse that links him to another poet of terse moral seriousness, George Oppen; admirers of Oppen—and anyone with any interest in Cole's topics—will cherish much of this admirable book. (Sept.)

Truitt's quietly ambitious three-part book moves confidently through three distinctive modes. The first section, “The Song of Rasputin,” inspired in part by a biography of that “Satanic, alcoholic, messianic, neurotic, erotic, mad, dissolute, Siberian love-machine cleric,” employs a full range of Ashberyan devices—non sequiturs, surrealist absurdity and bathos, slippery personae, references to the poem's own unfolding: “I want my life back. Father, infused with feeling that is a portion/ of color, sense, swathes of the vibrational band like the ribbons of the maypole./ How bare it had looked all winter standing on the parade ground topped by snow.” “Raton Rex,” a sequence in 40 40-line poems written one per day, is a free-associative conglomeration of ephemeral impressions arrayed as two columns of clipped phrases. “Falltime” is a free-wheeling collage of the poet's notebooks during his many trips to France. The disorder of a traveler's impressions is expressed by the typesetting itself; paragraphs are printed right atop one another, making some sections totally illegible. By turns obscene and elegant, meandering and fragmented, Truitt's work is both highly attentive to words themselves and to the things and people they signify. Decidedly experimental, this book may not be for everyone, but there is much for those willing to give it the patience it demands. (Sept.)

Emily Dickinson's phrase “I pay—in Satin Cash/ You did not state—your price—” serves as both epigraph and title source for Spaar's third book, though Spaar also includes poems inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne, Hart Crane and Robert Frost, a combination that captures the collection's fervent compressions, devotions and raptures. The natural world in these poems is sensual and seductive, as in “Vineyard in Spring,” in which she writes: “The world is prevalent, strained/ with the old work of beginning again,// smalt, sexual, congested with blossom.” Birds flock throughout as apparitions and manifestations, paramours and confessors—mourning doves moan, a trapped wren chirs, cardinals shuttle in the hedge. In an address to the wood thrush, Spaar writes: “Blackamoor of hedges, achromatic:/ teach me your harmonics,// daedal, damson: ghosts/ of two notes, one throat.” Spaar (Blue Venus) has created an entrancing world of lush language and passionate imaginings, where a womb is a “chivalric piñata,/ quixotic hourglass,” and a turtle appears “emerging from its stone/ velvet, vulnerable,” poems as beautiful and fragile as the creatures and gardens they contain. (Aug.)

This mammoth new volume from Australia's Kinsella (Doppler Effect) takes its template and three-line stanza from the three books of Dante's epic, out of order: first Purgatorio, then Paradiso, then Inferno. Each of the three works, made from dozens of separate poems, joins allusions to Dante with sights, events and memories from Kinsella's Australia, especially the farming region outside Perth, where he grew up and sometimes lives. The poet's wife, Tracy (his Beatrice, he says), and their toddler, Tim, play roles throughout. Mostly, though, the poems concern places, not people; their ground note is ecological, with nature taking many forms (“locust wings... at sunrise” over “shallow farm-dams steaming already”) set against the “ballast/ of cars and infrastructures” that endangers it all. That motif of eco-protest dominates the Inferno (“last blocks of bushland// cleared away to placate the hunger/ for the Australian Dream”), but it turns up in all three of these (perhaps too similar, and surely too long) sequences. Like his compatriot Les Murray, Kinsella can sound uncontrolled, even sloppy. Yet he can turn a phrase (“Who describes where we are without thinking/ of when we'll leave it?”). Moreover, he means all he says and never exhausts his ideas or ambition. (Sept.)

In this strong first in a new series from Burcell (Cold Case), San Francisco FBI forensic artist Sydney Fitzpatrick races to unravel the 20-year-old mystery of her father's murder before the upcoming execution of his convicted killer, Johnnie Wheeler. When Sydney interviews Wheeler in San Quentin against her mother's and stepfather's wishes, Wheeler's claims of innocence have a ring of truth. As Sydney begins to investigate her father's past, she uncovers unsavory secrets linking him and some old army buddies, including one who's now a high-powered U.S. senator, to a bank engaged in illegal activities. Sydney's dogged persistence and willingness to bend FBI rules endangers her family, but an 11th-hour meeting with Wheeler for a new forensic sketch points to the answers she's been seeking. Burcell, herself a former FBI-trained forensic artist, keeps her appealing heroine hopping just a step ahead of mortal peril in this intricately plotted page-turner. (Nov.)

A crime offering delicate soupçons of passionate desires and outrageous sex lures former Superintendent Laviolette out of retirement in Magnan's stylish second Provence mystery (after 2007's Death in the Truffle Wood). When avaricious spinster Véronique Champourcieux is found with 30 centimeters of rusty 1871 bayonet in her belly, Laviolette's old acquaintance Judge Chabrand enlists his help in the murder investigation. As one grisly killing after another ensues, the pair delve into long-repressed secrets of the poor, harsh Provençal countryside. Magnan blends elegant clue laying and deft characterizations that strike to the core of human frailties, all within a detective tale with a theme as old as Cain and Abel, as new as tomorrow's headlines and as eternal as the Greek myths that inspire Magnan's fiction. (Oct.)

At the start of Allan's lively third antiques mystery (after 2007's Antiques Maul), divorcée Brandy Borne and her eternally glamorous if somewhat annoying mother, Vivian, are busy preparing for the Christmas rush in the small Midwestern town of Serenity. Then Walter Yeager, a fellow antiques dealer, dies of cyanide poisoning soon after it becomes public knowledge that the WWII veteran owned a valuable first edition of Tarzan of the Apes, which disappears from the crime scene. Walter's 20-year-old British goth granddaughter, Chaz, becomes the top suspect due to her prison record, but Brandy and Vivian believe she's innocent. Told primarily from Brandy's viewpoint with Vivian sneaking in quips for extra pizzazz, this bubbly tongue-in-cheek cozy also includes flea market shopping tips and a recipe. Allan is the pseudonym of the husband-wife writing team of Barbara and Max Allan Collins. (Sept.)

Billed as the first winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize for best debut mystery set in the Southwest, Barber's first novel is full of exquisite New Mexico scenery, but it's not enough to buoy a routine plot. Santa Fe newspaper editor Lucy Newroe usually ignores the calls from an old woman known as Scanner Lady with police scanner tidbits, but soon after Scanner Lady tells Lucy she overheard two cops discussing a dead body, Melissa Baca is found dead in a gorge outside the city. Det. Sgt. Gil Montoya strives to reconcile conflicting statements about Melissa's family and alleged drug use. Responding to an emergency call, Lucy, who also volunteers as a medic, finds the body of an elderly woman near a police scanner and fears her source has been murdered. Reluctantly joining forces, Lucy and Gil discover that the links between the two murders run deeper than they imagined. Like Lucy, Barber is a journalist and volunteer EMT; hopefully, she'll use this background to flesh out her heroine in a sequel. (Oct.)

In Carl's winning eighth chocoholic mystery (after 2007's The Chocolate Jewel Case), Lee McKinney Woodyard, the business manager of TenHuis Chocolade, has agreed to serve as the treasurer for the annual Warner Pier, Mich., WinterFest. After a juror for the festival's art show cancels, Lee goes to the airport to pick up the replacement, Fletcher Mendenhall, who arrives obnoxiously drunk. When Mendenhall turns up the next morning in his motel with his head bashed in, incriminating clues point to both Lee and her husband, Joe, as suspects. While Lee has a tiresome habit of tangling words when she's nervous (“I guess we're not hiring a juror to be a dipsomaniac... I mean diplomat”), when confronted with a shovel-wielding “snowman,” the spunky, near six-foot amateur sleuth can throw 20 pounds of chocolates at her attacker with deadly accuracy. Dollops of chocolate lore add to the cozy fun. (Oct.)

Linda Van Wyk, who left South Africa 19 years earlier to build a new life in Australia, returns in 2005 to her homeland to attend her father's funeral at the outset of Zawatzky's so-so debut, a family saga with a whodunit at its heart. In a letter he wrote the year before his death, Pa charges his daughter to look into the murder of her youngest brother, Hannes, who was savagely stabbed 40 years earlier as a teen. Though three black men confessed to the crime, Pa's revelation that they did so under duress leads her to question their guilt. As Linda attempts to honor her father's last request, she must also come to terms with the changes in South Africa since the end of apartheid. Predictable revelations, such as another sibling's affair, provide possible motives for the murder, but the amateur sleuthing won't impress many mystery fans. Readers may be more interested in the author's view of the altered roles of whites in the country they once dominated. (Oct.)

In Heley's sprightly second cozy to feature London detective Bea Abbot (after 2007's False Charity), Bea insists her domestic agency doesn't do murder, but murder sneaks into her latest missing person case—the disappearance of her best friend Velma Weston's stepson, Philip, a wastrel who might have stolen a pre-Raphaelite painting by John Everett Millais either before or after Lady Lucinda Farne, his elderly godmother, was killed by a thief. The thief, who calls himself Rafael, plots to smuggle the loot he took from the victim, a collection of portrait miniatures and gold snuff boxes, out of the country. Meanwhile, Maggie, Bea's feisty assistant, goes undercover, taking a vacancy at the flat where Philip was living with several roommates. After Velma's husband has a heart attack, the action escalates for Heley's intrepid sleuth, who relies on “arrow prayers” rather than conventional weapons and knows just how to handle knife-wielding art thieves and missing bad boys. (Oct.)

Judicial advocate Sister Fidelma takes on her most sensitive assignment yet in Tremayne's excellent 16th mystery set in seventh-century Ireland (after 2007's A Prayer for the Damned). When Sechnussach, “High King of the five kingdoms of Éireann,” is assassinated, the killer appears to be a kinsman, Dubh Duin, found in the king's bed chamber, dying by his own hand and still bearing the knife that apparently struck the fatal blow. Since the powers-that-be are concerned that Sechnussach's heir, Cenn Faelad, not fall under suspicion, they appoint Fidelma, as an outsider, to uncover the motive for the crime. She soon finds that a person, possibly someone close to the throne, had arranged for Duin to get past the king's guards and enter Sechnussach's chamber unchallenged. Tremayne does his usual masterful job of depicting the strain between Christianity and the Old Faith, and provides a logical, if surprising, twist toward the end. (Oct.)

Damion Madrid, the godson of Denver bail bondsman CJ Floyd, takes center stage in Greer's solid eighth CJ Floyd novel (after 2007's The Mongoose Deception). Best friends Madrid and Shandell Bird led Colorado State's basketball team to the NCAA finals, where they lost to UCLA. When Bird, the NBA's second overall draft choice, is gunned down along with a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, Madrid determines to find out who and why. With advice from CJ's partner, Flora Jean Benson, and protection (at CJ's request) from hit man Pinkie Niedemeyer and old mobster Mario Satoni, Madrid discovers much he never knew about Bird. Bird's incipient wealth attracted plenty of hangers-on, including a noted sports psychologist, bookies, fixers and pushers. Madrid stumbles a bit, but acquits himself well after entering a dangerous world where sportsmanship plays no part and you better be able to trust the person who's covering your back. Author tour. (Oct.)

First published in 1865, this story collection featuring New York City private detective James Brampton will intrigue Sherlock Holmes fans, given the number of eerie parallels between the two characters. For example, Brampton remarks, “It is the observation of small things that makes a good detective, for it is often the most trivial circumstance which supplies the first link in the chain,” a comment quite similar to one of Holmes's. In the volume's introduction, Dr. John B. Williams encounters Brampton in a Georgia bar, where the sleuth bets him that a young man who has just entered is guilty of theft. While Williams assumes the Watsonian task of arranging for the publication of the investigator's cases, Brampton himself tells his exploits in the first person. Though many of the tales rely on a chance discovery by the detective, enough involve careful observation and analysis to satisfy 21st-century mystery readers. (Oct.)

This hard-bitten follow-up to Hammond's 2007 science fiction noir debut KOP, set in the 28th century on the technologically backward world of Lagarto, offers further evidence of his considerable talents. A former member of the Koba Office of Police, Juno Mozambe has been forced into retirement by corrupt detective Diego Banks, who murdered Koba's previous police chief. Now a sleazy, broke PI, “nothing but a drunken old has-been,” Mozambe reluctantly lets his ex-partner Maggie Orzo hire him to exonerate Adela Juarez, a young woman about to be executed for murdering her parents. Orzo suspects her current partner and rival, Ian Davies, of framing Juarez. Mozambe struggles through a mire of corruption and violence to get the answers and protect his own loved ones. Koba is a tough town full of desperate people, and Hammond makes full use of this richly imagined society. (Oct.)

The many fans of Butcher's Chicago-based Dresden Files series (most recently Small Favor) will enjoy this spin-off novella featuring Thomas Raith, Harry Dresden's incubus half-brother. After reluctantly attending a rendezvous arranged by his untrustworthy older sister, Lara, Raith learns that Dresden is being set up by the evil Stygian Sisterhood, but he can't go directly to Dresden's aid without revealing his part in the secret Oblivion War. Raith's resulting plan has something of a slapstick air, and the high cosmic stakes are generally played for laughs. Given Dresden's limited appearance and the significant backstory underlying the series, this is an unlikely entry point for newcomers, but Butcher clearly demonstrates that Raith, usually seen more as Dresden's sidekick, is more than capable of sustaining a story on his own. (Oct.)

This toothsome anthology of 21 funny-scary stories from members of the Horror Writers Association arrives just in time for Halloween. On the humorous end, Matt Venne's “Elvis Presley and the Bloodsucker Blues” recreates Presley's voice with pitch perfect swagger and sets the record straight on how he really died, while Charlaine Harris's “An Evening with Al Gore” depicts a novel way to deal with environmental criminals; both tales are truly outstanding. In a creepier vein, Steven Savile's “Dear Prudence” finds a conflicted man repeatedly revising a note where he details gory plans for his significant other, and Nancy Holder's “I Know Who You Ate Last Summer” features stomach-churning “rock star cannibals.” Big names like Jim Butcher and Sherrilyn Kenyon will have comic horror fans grabbing this anthology off the shelves. (Oct.)

An energetic, gory prequel to Asher's “Polity” novels (Gridlinked, etc.), this far-future novel alternates the youthful memories of Ian Cormac, Asher's complex soldier-hero, with Cormac's brutal adult efforts to master lethal-force training as an undercover agent in Earth Central Security's conflict with the terroristic Jovian Separatists. Amistad, an anthropoid war drone Cormac had glimpsed as a boy, resurfaces periodically throughout the novel, a relic of the half-century-old war between humanity's galactic Polity and the vicious alien Prador. Gradually, Cormac's recollections merge with his ECS missions, until finally Amistad reveals what Cormac most needs and fears to know: his father's fate in an earlier battle. This blasting indictment of war forces readers to ponder whether winning can be worth the struggle if it turns the “good guys” into something worse than their enemies. (Oct.)

Packed with the lore McKiernan has developed in 24 years of writing about the world of Mithgar, this dense novel is set largely between Silver Wolf, Black Falcon (2000) and the collection Red Slippers (2004). The main plot deals with a voyage of the fabulous Elvenship, the Eroean, in search of wonder and adventure. Before the ship can set sail with a crew of fighting men and dwarfs, there's the obligatory tour through the countryside so that characters can reminisce about events in earlier volumes while picking up additional crew members, like a tiny, fox-riding Pysk and two gratingly cute, pointy-eared buccans. Meanwhile, the necromancer Nunde is lurking offstage, feverishly plotting. Appreciating the nuances depends on understanding earlier events; newcomers will find no footholds here. (Oct.)

An overly predictable plot, a deficit of character development and a deus ex machina conclusion distract from the dreamy prose and intricate world-building of this fairy tale novella from Hugo-winner Card (Keeper of Dreams). Runnel, a friendless peasant from a village so humble that money is a new concept, stumbles into a centuries-old feud when he travels to Mitherhome, the city of the wetwizards, seeking his fortune. He accepts a servant's position in the household of the sole stonemage permitted within the city walls, where his untapped magical talents and his fascination with his master's abilities are a predictably dangerous combination. Card's obvious familiarity with his world and its enthralling history, due to be expanded in the forthcoming Mithermages series, makes for a pleasant, if shallow, interlude. (Oct.)

Stover's third Caine novel (after 2001's Blade of Tyshalle) mixes a twisty plot with intense violence and a strong narrative voice. Caine—an otherworld warrior played by professional actor Hari Michaelson in a far-future reality show beamed home to entertain fans on Earth—returns to the Boedecken, the site of the battle that made his career. As he makes his way through the city, encountering spies, warrior-priests and assassins, he also wades through memories of the fight. The political machinations of the present-day story tend to detract from the tight, well-choreographed flashbacks. Stover has a gift for brutal, detailed action sequences, and Caine is at his most enthralling when he's fighting or discussing tactics, but the high levels of (occasionally creative) profanity and the cliffhanger ending may put off some readers. (Oct.)

This adventure brings the Mistborn epic fantasy trilogy (after 2007's The Well of Ascension) to a dramatic and surprising climax. Tricked into releasing the evil spirit Ruin while attempting to close the Well of Ascension, new emperor Elend Venture and his wife, the assassin Vin, are now hard-pressed to save the world from Ruin's deadly Inquisitors, the insidious lethal mists called the Deepness and the increasingly heavy falls of black ash that threaten to bury the land and starve its inhabitants. As the duo search for the last of the former emperor's cache of atium, source of the strongest Mistborn energies, they battle Ruin's forces as well as monsters and prophetic powers. Sanderson's saga of consequences offers complex characters and a compelling plot, asking hard questions about loyalty, faith and responsibility. (Oct.)

Criminal defense attorney Teller fills this captivating first installment of the Jaywalker series with sympathetic, nuanced characters and elegantly simplified legalese. The court sentences disgraced Manhattan criminal defense attorney Harrison J. Walker, “Jaywalker,” to three years of suspension from practice, ordering him to complete 10 of his current cases and hand the rest over to other attorneys. Forced to choose among his clients, Jaywalker focuses on the defense of Samara Tannenbaum, a beautiful young ex-prostitute accused of murdering her aging billionaire husband. Throughout the difficult and lengthy trial, Jaywalker provides Samara with superior legal counsel even as he fights his tremendous attraction to her and his doubts of her innocence. Teller's richly suspenseful story will leave the reader eagerly anticipating the denouement and Jaywalker's next adventure. (Oct.)

Orphaned Elena Whitney, in training to be a physician, strikes sensual sparks with her mysterious guardian, Archer, Lord Black, in Lenox's promising but not entirely satisfying debut, a supernatural Victorian romance. Though courted by the gentle Dr. Charles Harcourt, Elena is unable to resist her attraction to Archer, a member of the evil-hunting Order of the Shadow Guards, who has recently returned to London in search of Jack the Ripper. Period detail mixes with delicious humor as Archer's fellow Guards, one-eyed Mr. Leeson and fiery, book-devouring Selene, Countess Pavlenco, must simultaneously advance their hunt and cope with decidedly human and stubbornly unconventional Elena. Lenox displays a real talent for both erotic and suspenseful scenes, but they can't quite carry the story past its disorganized plot and one-dimensional characters. (Oct.)

Bestseller Graham (Kiss of Darkness) spices up a spooky post-Katrina mystery in this solid trilogy opener. PI brothers Aidan, Jeremy and Zachary Flynn have inherited a plantation near New Orleans from Amelia Flynn, a relative they never knew. They consider selling the rundown house, but instead agree to restore it and move in. When Aidan finds human bones on the plantation's grounds, further sleuthing reveals some local missing persons cold cases that might be connected to the house, already haunted by two Flynn cousins who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. Meanwhile, romance slowly ignites between cynical widower Aidan and Kendall Montgomery, psychic and Amelia's friend and former caregiver. Dream messages and premonitions, ghostly sightings, capable detective work and fascinating characters blend to make a satisfying chiller. (Oct.)

Mystery, fantasy and science fiction create a backdrop for this far-flung story with an uneasy conclusion. Jeff Vaughan, telepath in hiding, uncovers a bizarre shipment being smuggled from colony planet Verkerk's World: a young human girl, apparently an important cult figure, accompanying a mysterious shielded container. The colony is also the source of rhapsody, a potent drug, and when a friend overdoses under odd circumstances, Vaughan suspects a connection. He and cop Jimmy Chandra set off for Verkerk's World and soon uncover a plot around a rhapsody-fueled religion. As the body count rises, Vaughan starts to wonder whether he's battling a lethal alien force or blocking humanity from achieving transcendence. Brown (Kéthani) sketches a complex future world full of bitter idealists, strange aliens and fantastic landscapes where nothing is as it seems. (Oct.)

Writer Hennessey and artist McConnell undertake the imposing task of going through the entire U. S. Constitution, article by article, amendment by amendment, explaining their meaning and implications—in comics format. Avoiding the didactic, the book succeeds in being both consistently entertaining and illuminating. The illustrations are sometimes predictable: as the text describes King George III wrestling with the rebellion, the art shows him arm wrestling a colonist. More often, in the editorial cartoon tradition, McConnell's art ranges inventively through different styles and devices, from realistic depictions of historic personages to symbolic figures (the president as a man with the White House as his head) and even talking birds and parodic superheroes. Hennessey is particularly good at exploring the historical context in which various elements of the Constitution originated, such as the excesses of European monarchies. He also chronicles the dark side of constitutional history, notably how long it allowed slavery to remain legal. While the book depicts the framers of the Constitution as practical men, readers will also be impressed by the framers' vision in devising a system that has endured for two centuries, and it's a fine introduction to U.S. legal history. (Oct.)

Following his multivolume, nonfiction Treasury of Victorian Murder, Geary moves into the 20th century with a study of the 1932 kidnap-killing of celebrity aviator Charles A. Lindbergh's infant son. Not knowing their son was already dead, the little boy's parents negotiated for months with the kidnapper, while a swarm of quirky characters in search of money or glory rushed to “help.” This macabre carnival could give a writer excuses for burlesque or melodrama, but Geary prefers to hold his subject at arm's length to examine it carefully. He delineates the large cast clearly while also exploring the case's presumably reliable physical evidence, and his crisp pen and ink style cleverly emphasizes the period snapshot appearance of places and people, especially the enigmatic Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was convicted and eventually executed for the crime. There are reasons to doubt at least whether Hauptmann was the only criminal, but Geary refuses to conjecture beyond the evidence, despite his bemused understanding of how many of the people involved in the case lost their self-control. This thoughtful retelling of one of the century's most notorious crimes deserves several readings. (Sept.)

Set in an odd world that blends feudal Japan with some modern technological accents, this source manga for the hit animated series follows the title character's quest for vengeance against the Empty Brothers, a cadre of warrior monks who killed his father in order to have one of their own claim the title and powers of the “strongest man in the world.” The unnamed hero—who is referred to either as “Afro” or “No. 2”—wades his way through violent and episodic sword fights and mayhem common to the wandering samurai genre and as such it's entertaining enough, but few answers and little character development are in this inaugural installment. That's not to say Okazaki's graffiti-influenced art style and scripting are not entertaining, but there's not much more here than clashing steel and macho posturing occasionally interrupted by bits of dialogue heralding what a badass Afro is. Presumably the story will gather more narrative meat as it progresses. (Sept.)

Like an urban Life in Hell, rapper/cartoonist Knight's ink-heavy strip is big on sight gags, inventive panel layouts and exaggerated gestures—and this omnibus volume shows a revealing arc in the strip's tone. The first part of the book, which begins in the early 1990s, sees Knight riffing on food, family, music and the life of a comic book artist in a scratchy, expressive style. As the strips progress and move into the 21st century, real-world events start to intrude, and the topic veers toward the political more often than not. Knight is at his best when he's in more lighthearted territory, and the second half of the book is more preachy than it ought to be. On the whole, though, it's time well spent with a very intelligent and percpetive writer, and also serves as an insightful historical document of the movement of the American zeitgeist over the past decade. (Aug.)

According to this book, the four most romantic things a Japanese high school girl can hope for are walking home from school with her boyfriend, baking for said boyfriend, sharing an umbrella and going to the aquarium. All four are central to the stories of Short-Tempered Melancholic, a collection of short early works by Tanemura (Gentlemen's Alliance, Full Moon). The title story follows Kaijika, a ninja girl. Her love interest, Fujisaki, wants Kaijika to be more ladylike (and less ninjalike) while childhood friend Tanimoto is fine with Kaijika as is. In “This Love Is Non-Fiction,” a pair of pen pals exchange false pictures of themselves and then agree to meet on a date at the aquarium, employing their best friends' help. In “Rainy Afternoons Are for Romantic Heroines,” a girl realizes that by turning down her current crush the previous year, turning him bitter toward all girls. “The Style of Second Love” is Tanemura's inventive debut work about a girl in love with her best friend's boyfriend. Tanemura's work never lacks energy in pacing and layouts, but she occasionally reuses character designs across books. Despite the ninja on the cover, the bulk of the book is straightup romance, which is too bad, as Kaijika is an appealing protagonist. (Aug.)

The first half of a projected two-volume set, this major book, the first collection from Library of America by a living poet, offers a view of Ashbery's artistic development over many decades. Ashbery, now 80, is celebrated for his varied, often elliptical style, which, though verging on the incomprehensible at times, has consistently delighted readers and critics. This volume contains all of Ashbery's books up through 1987's April Galleons; it begins with the Yale Younger Poets Prize–winning Some Trees (1956), chosen by Auden, and includes Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975), which won all three major American book awards. Other notable inclusions are the complete text of The Vermont Notebook, with illustrations by Joe Brainard, and an ample group of uncollected poems. Watching Ashbery's art grow from the slippery romanticism and verbal hijinks of the early poems through the philosophical, if sideways, inquiry of the '70s, to the chattier, colloquial period inaugurated in the early '80s, is arresting. Though Ashbery has confounded and inspired in seemingly equal measure, he is, according to both his admirers and critics, the towering figure in contemporary American poetry. This volume follows on the heels of this past April's Notes from the Air: Collected Later Poems. (Oct).

This year's bounty of yuletide fiction is a mixed bag—some big-name authors, a few duds and a couple of keepers.

Taylor's delightful holiday update to the Irish Country series returns to Ballybucklebo, where Dr. Fingal O'Reilly and junior partner Barry Laverty are still practicing their humorous brand of country medicine. As Christmas draws closer, the two men contend with a variety of comical village ailments and the usual array of Ballybucklebo characters, as well as romantic troubles. O'Reilly is trying to decide if he will allow himself to love again with the vivacious Kitty O'Halloran, and Laverty is distraught because his girlfriend can't seem to make it home for the holidays. Then a new doctor comes to town and causes a ruckus by poaching their patients and prescribing ludicrous cures. This has all the charm of Taylor's previous books and adds Christmas warmth without sacrificing credibility. (Nov.)

Miller's perfunctory McKettrick franchise Christmas spinoff begins with Lizzie McKettrick's trip home with beau Whitley Carson getting derailed by an avalanche that stops their train. Lizzie and handsome doctor Morgan Shane care for the injured and scared passengers, and soon Lizzie develops feelings for the doc while realizing her affection for Whitley is not as serious as she first thought. As passenger fears mount and Lizzie waits for her family to rescue them, the stranded passengers appreciate Christmas in small moments shared with strangers. This seasonal romance will be best appreciated by Miller's fans; romance enthusiasts not familiar with the McKettrick clan will be underwhelmed. (Nov.)

American cad Rafe Bowman goes bride shopping in London and must choose between love and money in Kleypas's coy Christmas romance. Rafe is wealthy in his own right, but his grossly wealthy father demands he marry the uninteresting Lady Natalie. Rafe, naturally, falls in love with someone else: Natalie's commoner cousin, Hannah. As his courtship of Natalie progresses, Rafe keeps returning to Hannah, who rejects his courtship because she thinks he is destined to marry her cousin. As Christmas draws closer, Rafe must choose between the woman he is falling in love with and his father's fortune. Throughout, veteran romancier Kleypas gracefully balances Regency mores, light humor and a dash of Christmas magic, and even if Rafe and Hannah hew too closely to genre archetypes, the book passes muster as a holiday bonbon. (Oct.)

Mary Jo Wyse, the protagonist of this trite little throwaway, is extremely pregnant. She sets out for Cedar Cove on Christmas Eve to hunt down her child's delinquent dad, David. Hot on her trail are her three overprotective brothers (the three Wyse men—get it?), determined to make David do the right thing. Mary Jo can't find a hotel room or her man, so she takes shelter at Grace Harding's ranch, in an apartment above a barn. She delivers her child that night with Grace, an EMT, and several farm animals as onlookers, and everyone is reminded of the true spirit of Christmas. Clearly, subtlety is not the order of the day. Sadly, neither is quality storytelling. There's more life in a lump of coal. (Oct.)

A group of travelers get to know one another under unlikely circumstances in Saperstein and Samerjan's slightly supernatural and hokey holiday tale. After a flight is canceled, the stranded passengers get a lift from a Good Samaritan, but when the van breaks down during a snowstorm, the group searches out shelter and happens upon a remote cabin, where they meet Joshua, who knows far too much about their private pasts. In coming together to create a Christmas Eve they all will remember, they put their ghosts to rest and learn to trust and love their fellow man once again. Saperstein and Samerjan, unfortunately, have a clumsy touch, and their too deliberate handling of characters' traumas really curdles the eggnog. (Oct.)

Just in time for Christmas, Landvik gets into the head of a Paris Hilton–like celebuditz in this lively “novel” propelled by e-mails, tabloid gossip and letters primarily written by, about or to young celebrity bad girl Caroline “Caro” Dixon. The gorgeous heiress's boozy rampages have made her notorious, but now she's considering a 12-step program, hence the bitter apology letter she writes to “everyone I have supposedly hurt.” She tosses it out, and, in true Hollywood fashion, the catty missive turns up in a trashy tabloid. The ensuing firestorm of negative publicity and hate mail convinces Caro to give sobriety a shot. Caro's effort to dispel her image as “Little Miss Hangover” has its moments, but the choppy epistolary structure leaves much to be desired. Still, readers who love snark—it's doled out here by the shovelful—will dig this. (Oct.)

In this affable yuletide yarn, brothers Aaron and Molar are understandably preoccupied with the material side of Christmas, until they meet Dr. Ringle, a shopping mall Santa who is also a doctor at a local children's cancer ward. Dr. Ringle encourages them to volunteer at the ward from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and especially encourages their friendship with two children: recalcitrant and angry Katrina, whose postsurgical scarring leaves her afraid to be seen without a paper bag on her head, and effusively optimistic Madhu, who does not understand the story of Christmas. The story is unexpectedly heartwarming, and Milne mostly avoids sap while delivering his warm fuzzies and dashes of Christmas hope and magic. (Oct.)

A dog named Meteor narrates O'Rourke's inert Christmas clunker. Meteor's owner, Robert, is a war veteran with a missing leg and a wounded soul that's patched up after Robert and Meteor rescue a woman, Laura, from drowning, and Robert and Laura get married. They have a son, Nicholas, and everything's ducky until an illness threatens to claim Laura. They fight through it as a family and learn that faith and perseverance can help them accomplish anything. Dogs have triumphed as narrators this year, but Meteor is the runt of the litter; his language is only surpassed in stiltedness by the humans' dialogue, and it doesn't help the pup's case that the narrative is preachy and bland. (Oct.)