Fiction Reviews

Walbert—2004 National Book Award nominee for Our Kind—offers a beautiful and kaleidoscopic view of the 20th century through the eyes of several generations of women in the Townsend family. The story begins with Dorothy Townsend, a turn-of-the-century British suffragist who dies in a hunger strike. From Dorothy's death, Walbert travels back and forth across time and continents to chronicle other acts of self-assertion by Dorothy's female descendants. Dorothy's daughter, Evelyn, travels to America after WWI to make her name in the world of science—and escape from her mother's infamy. Decades later, her niece, also named Dorothy, has a late-life crisis and gets arrested in 2003 for taking photos of an off-limits military base in Delaware. Dorothy's daughters, meanwhile, struggle to find meaning in their modern bourgeois urban existences. The novel takes in historical events from the social upheaval of pre-WWI Britain to VJ day in New York City, a feminist conscious-raising in the '70s and the Internet age. The lives of these women reveal that although oppression of women has grown more subtle, Dorothy's self-sacrifice reverberates through generations. Walbert's look at the 20th century and the Townsend family is perfectly calibrated, intricately structured and gripping from page one. (June)

Eldridge's first novel (after the collection Unkempt) grinds its sparse plot into the ground by revisiting the same incidents over and over again from the points of view of six women. Joyce, “one of New York's most successful and controversial art dealers,” and Bobbie, a gynecologist who sometimes performs abortions, have been friends since college. But their friendship is sorely tested by the events of one long weekend when Bobbie's adopted daughter, Adela, arrives in New York to meet Paul, her mother's new boyfriend, and to reveal some secrets of her own. At the same time, new mother Lisa, one of Joyce's former assistants, helps her older sister, Lynne, after Lynne's teenage daughter, Jordan, goes to Bobbie for an abortion. The rotating first-person narration underscores the characters' profound narcissism, but the gaggle of voices becomes tiresome as it moves among the women's self-centered ruminations and justifications of their questionable behavior. The way Eldridge obscures the story's critical details until the waning pages feels manipulative, while how she repeatedly explores the periphery of a few key events is, at best, tedious. (June)

Fans of Wes Anderson will find much to love in the offbeat characters and small (and sometimes not so small) touches of magic thrown into the mix during the cross-country, train-hopping adventure of a 12-year-old mapmaking prodigy, T.S. Spivet. After the death of T.S.'s brother, Layton, T.S. receives a call from the Smithsonian informing him that he has won the prestigious Baird award, prompting him to hop a freight train to Washington, D.C., to accept the prize. Along the way, he meets a possibly sentient Winnebago, a homicidal preacher, a racist trucker and members of the secretive Megatherium Club, among many others. All this is interwoven with the journals of his mother and her effort to come to grips with the matriarchal line of scientists in the family. Dense notes, many dozens of illustrations and narrative elaborations connected to the main text via dotted lines are on nearly every page. For the most part, they work well, though sometimes the extra material confuses more than clarifies. Larsen is undeniably talented, though his unique vision and style make for a love-it or hate-it proposition. (May)

Macomber adds a tear-jerking installment to the Blossom Street series with this account of lives intersecting at the series-hinging yarn store, A Good Yarn. Upbeat cancer survivor Lydia and her pragmatic sister, Margaret, start a “Knit to Quit” group in their Blossom Street yarn store, hoping to bring in customers for weekly self-help sessions. Casey, the 12-year-old girl Lydia takes in while waiting for an infant of her own to adopt, helps out in the shop when she's not sulking in her room or causing trouble for Lydia's family. Local baker Alix wants a baby as much as Lydia does, but she and her husband agree she needs to quit smoking first. Then there's super-stressed chocolate magnate, Hutch, who takes the knitting class after his doctor suggests it. Hutch hits it off with Phoebe, who is trying to quit obsessing about a broken engagement. Rounding out the crowd, bookstore owner Ann Marie must deal with her adopted daughter Ellen's biological father, a recovering addict, re-entering their lives. Macomber deftly handles the multiple story lines and emotional terrain of families, while the predictably happy ending is very genuine. (May)

A divorced gay man's vanquished paternalism returns when he reconnects with his long-lost stepdaughter in Lipman's hilarious and moving 10th novel. Set in New York, the book opens with Henry Archer phoning his ex-wife, Denise, to offer condolences over the death of her husband, the man Denise divorced then-closeted Henry for. Upon visiting Denise, Henry notices photos of now grown stepdaughter Thalia, a charming wannabe actress he recognizes from the hair salon in his neighborhood, and determines to reenter her life. What ensues is a heartwarming reconnection as Henry and Thalia relearn what it means to be a father and daughter, respectively. When Thalia is hired by a PR firm to play the role of real-life girlfriend to a struggling actor, Henry's fatherly instinct and legal background compel him to ask Thalia to move in with him and to serve as her attorney. During the process of managing Thalia's career, Henry also grows closer to Denise, meets a handsome man and rediscovers the joy of family. The plot alone will suck in readers, but Lipman's knack for creating lovable and multifaceted characters is the real draw. (May)

Washed-up rock star Sophie Lee has coasted along as a B-level TV celebrity since the breakup of her indie rock band, Sky, and her divorce from Ari Klein, the alluring but drug-abusing lead guitarist and fellow Harvard classmate. But when the band reunites for a one-night charity event, she realizes her dreams of stardom might not be over. Her new producer and lover, Leo Masters, pushes her into recording and touring again, throwing Sophie in over her head, as she is torn between her old love and her new one in the pressure cooker of fame. NPR radio host Chideya captures the New York music scene at the turn of the millennium in her debut novel, but fails to generate much sympathy for Sophie as she struggles through a quagmire of problems, mostly resulting from her own inability to take control of her life. Sophie's many neuroses aren't organic, a new one seeming to appear any time the reader's interest may be waning. Despite a memorable cast of side characters, the plot flounders along as ineffectually as the heroine. (May)

Myron Bolitar takes on international terrorists in bestseller Coben's fast-paced ninth thriller to feature the sports and entertainment agent (after Promise Me). With his romantic relationship with 9/11 widow Ali Wilder on the rocks, Myron is free at a moment's notice to accept the invitation of his former lover, Terese Collins, a TV newswoman who dropped out of his life years earlier, to join her in Paris. There Terese tells Myron her investigative reporter ex-husband, Rick, whom Myron never knew about, recently got back in touch with her and hinted at an earthshaking revelation. Rick's murder plunges Bolitar into a frenzied, often violent chase across Europe in an effort to learn Rick's secret. Aided by his upper-class sidekick and bodyguard, Win, Bolitar builds up an impressive body count as he attempts to prove he didn't kill Rick—and foil a terrorist plot that's as imaginative as it is preposterous. Bolitar fans will cheer their hero every step of the way. (Apr.)

Spanning 24 hours during the Cannes Film Festival, this scintillating parable about shallowness, greed and celebrity worship from international bestseller Coelho (The Alchemist) unsparingly examines the Superclass, the elite's elite, whose members' dependence on luxury corrupts. Wealthy Russian businessman Igor Malev, who's obsessed with his ex-wife, Ewa, now married to a fashion designer turned producer, morphs into a serial killer to get Ewa's attention. No one is immune as Igor targets a comely street vendor, an influential movie distributor and a big-name actor. The power plays among the various directors, movie stars, starlets and producers make Igor's antics appear almost banal in comparison. Coelho's trademark mysticism and spiritual messages provide an extra boost to the thriller plot. (Apr.)

The 1921 rape/manslaughter trial of silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle provides the gritty backdrop for Atkins's outstanding crime novel, in which Dashiell Hammett, then a Pinkerton operative living in San Francisco, plays a significant role. A wild party Arbuckle throws at San Francisco's posh St. Francis Hotel results in tragedy after an actress, Virginia Rappe, is mysteriously injured and later dies. As the author explains in a “behind the story” introduction, the future creator of Sam Spade was actually assigned to help the defense on the Arbuckle case. With enviable ease, Atkins (Wicked City) brings to life Hammett, Arbuckle, William Randolph Hearst and other real figures of the period. Those familiar with the historical case will be impressed by how well the book meshes fact and fiction. Genre fans who enjoy the grim realism of James Ellroy's post-WWII Los Angeles will find a lot to like in Atkins's Prohibition-era San Francisco. (Apr.)

A vengeful ex-wife appears to have returned from the dead to stalk her ex-husband in this gripping thriller from bestseller Jackson (Absolute Fear). Former LAPD detective Rick Bentz has rebuilt his life with a happy marriage and new career with the New Orleans police 12 years after divorcing his unfaithful first wife, Jennifer, who subsequently died in a car crash. After “a freak accident in a lightning storm” that left his temporarily paralyzed, Rick starts seeing Jennifer's ghost. When Rick receives an anonymous package mailed from Culver City, Calif., containing recent photos of a woman resembling Jennifer, he goes to California to investigate. In L.A., the Twenty-one killer, who strangles identical twins on their 21st birthday, resurfaces. Rick's last unsolved L.A. case involved victims of this serial killer. Jackson heightens the creep factor by including the viewpoint of a character whose hatred for Rick for past wrongs inspires another extreme killing spree. (Apr.)

A Proust-worshipping narrator falls into the dangerous world of the Russian mob in this novel run amok by the author of Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire. In Spain's fashionable Costa del Sol, the narrator takes on the tutorship of young Petya, the son of wealthy Vasily and Nelly. Petya's education amounts to lessons derived entirely from Proust, considered by his tutor to be the ultimate source for all wisdom. Meanwhile, the tutor is exposed to the staggering wealth and suspicious circumstances of the household: Nelly parades around wearing enormous diamond necklaces, Vasily reels his new employee into his shady dealings, and sinister servant Batyk lurks in the background. Before long, it becomes apparent that Vasily and Nelly are involved in the manufacture and sale of fake jewels and are on the run from the violent Russian gangsters they've swindled. The narrator is a perfect Proustian naïf, steeped, as is the book itself, in the rich and allusive depth of world literature and language, but also deeply innocent and foolish. It's painfully intelligent if overwhelming. A cunning Proust scholar could tease a thesis out of this. (Apr.)

Ward's powerful first collection (after three novels) travels from Montana to Saudi Arabia, tackling love, terrorism and grave matters of the heart. In “The Stars Are Bright in Texas,” Kimmy and Greg, days after losing a child, fly to Houston and tool around with a realtor, looking for a new home. In “The Way the Sky Changed,” Casey, a literary agent and 9/11 widow, gets set up with Kent, who lost his wife on 9/11. They go antiquing and eat cheeseburgers, considering loss and filling another's shoes. The second half of the book includes six stories following a young woman named Lola's frantic search for herself. In one, her boyfriend leaves her for Miss Montana, and she finds solace with a bartender. In another, Lola becomes an “oil wife” in Saudi Arabia, where her growing fears of terrorism are leavened by thoughts of motherhood. We meet Lola's mother, Nan, a fading beauty now dependent on her hairdresser for companionship, and Lola's thrice-divorced father, Fred, with his “cigars and cheese-only diet” and ongoing search for true love. The way Ward balances ruefulness and hope is singularly impressive. (Apr.)

Glass's debut, an anxiety-inducing thriller about global warming, effectively taps a hot topic and handles it with flair. In 2032, vast regions of America's coast—Florida, Texas, California—are underwater. Catastrophic hurricanes regularly sweep through the South. Much of the West has been without rainfall for years, as wildfires rage. More than 25 million people face relocation to higher ground, where new cities must be created. The newly elected U.S. president, Joe Benton, frustrated with the failed Kyoto Treaty process, proposes radical solutions worldwide, with devastating economic consequences. When the earth's greatest polluter, China, won't go along with the deal and escalates the argument to the nuclear level, the narrative shifts into overdrive. A contrived conclusion and passages belaboring the machinations of government and its various bureaucrats are the only weaknesses in what is otherwise a compelling tale of environmental doom. (Apr.)

James Ellroy meets David Lynch in this addictive mix of noir and supernatural horror from Saknussemm (Zanesville). Det. Birch Ritter investigates the suspected suicide of California real estate magnate Deems Whitney, who apparently doused his Mercedes with gasoline and died in the resultant explosion a day after changing his will to benefit his trophy wife and disinherit his grown children. Before the cop can interview Whitney's widow, Ritter receives a cryptic message from his ex-partner that steers him to the enigmatic Genevieve Wyvern. Wyvern, who disconcerts Ritter with how well she knows his past, plunges him into a surreal world of bondage, domination and mind games. Despite being humiliated by Wyvern, Ritter finds himself unable to stay away from her lair. An unexpected and bizarre twist well into the novel jolts the fairly standard plot off the rails, but the powerful narrative voice will compel most readers to follow. (Apr.)

Dreary, winter-bound Buffalo, N.Y., is as much a character as any of the slackers populating Ames's darkly humorous debut about a young man with a copy of Suicide for Dummies in his car and a 56-year-old mother with Alzheimer's who he believes wants to die. James, 28, fled hometown stasis in the mid-'90s for Manhattan, where he writes greeting card verse for Kwality Kards. Back home at Thanksgiving to visit his mother in a nursing home, he reconnects awkwardly with old friends who hail his supposed big-city success. His family isn't as awestruck. Father Rodney, a solid citizen rooted in country club bonhomie, laments his son's lack of discipline, and his lesbian sister, Kate, a physical therapist visiting with her girlfriend from Oregon, mocks her brother's career path. Both evade his oblique references to euthanasia—the real reason for his return. Ames's depiction of James's bedside concern for his mother straddles the line between caustically comic and wrenchingly emotional, while the wry riffs on family tension and the sad state of Buffalo that appear throughout this fine first novel don't undercut the serious consideration of murder or mercy for terminal patients. (Apr.)

Henry Reeve, a Brooklynite who rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Cuban revolutionary army in the 1870s, is the real-life subject of Clio's underwhelming novel. Disappointingly, Reeve's little-known story is presented as a pared-down rendering of skirmishes and war wounds, with little to say about Reeve's early life, inner life or the larger world around him. What portrait there is of Reeve is contradictory without being skillfully woven enough to be complex: painfully earnest one moment, Reeve is a blood-soaked killing machine the next. Surviving an attempted execution by firing squad after arriving with an American expeditionary force in 1869, Reeve joins the revolutionary army, gains a reputation for bravery and rises through the ranks. Along the way, Reeve receives his sexual initiation from the lusty Ramona and engages in chaperoned hand-holding with Anunciación, but neither woman rises above caricature. The strengths of the book are the descriptions of close combat and some early descriptions of Cuba. But overall, this threadbare narrative is less a novel than a cataloguing of battles. (Apr.)

Knox's well-paced debut offers some new wrinkles on the theme of the archeological discovery that will change the course of human history. British reporter Rob Luttrell, who barely survived a suicide bomber's attack in Iraq, is hoping to take things easy, but his new assignment, to cover a dig in Turkish Kurdistan, proves anything but routine. German archeologist Franz Breitner has found evidence of buildings at the site known as Gobekli Tepe that appear to be 10,000 to 11,000 years old, 5,000 years earlier than any similar structure. The excavation has aroused the ire of the locals, who place an ancient Aramaic curse on those working there. It may be no accident when Breitner is impaled on a pole. Luttrell teams with an attractive biological anthropologist, Christine Meyer, to solve the mystery of the site, which may be where the Garden of Eden was located. Readers will hope to see more such offbeat thrillers from Knox, the pseudonym of London journalist Sean Thomas. (Apr.)

Bova's cautionary medical thriller, the uncut version of his 1996 novel Brothers, explores the political, social and religious ramifications of what could be humankind's greatest medical breakthrough—organ regeneration. When biotech lab director Arthur Marshak discovers a way to grow replacement organs and limbs within a patient's own body, the uproar from religious extremists, conservative politicians and sensationalized media coverage threatens to derail the project. When Marshak decides to let a “science court” in Washington, D.C., rule on the validity of human organ regeneration, the subsequent travesty of a tribunal not only imperils his career but also his tempestuous relationship with his estranged brother, who happens to be married to Arthur's ex-fiancée. Even an implausible love triangle and a cast of two-dimensional characters can't dim the forcefulness of Bova's message: the singular significance of science in modern-day society. (Apr.)

In this frightfully funny series launcher, Lockwood introduces “minor prophet” and cafe owner Constance Plyd of Dogwood County, Tex., whose soon-to-be-ex-husband, Jimmy, gets whacked by Yaman, a demon in a black baseball cap assigned to jump-start Constance's second sight. Things, of course, get complicated: as Yaman tries to complete his mission and organize the Antichrist's return (via a young pop starlet), Constance becomes the prime suspect in her husband's murder, paving the way for hunky sheriff (and former one-night-stand artist who'd loved and left Constance) Nathan Garrett to get involved. An expansive and quirky cast (including a talking French bulldog angel) lends plenty of supernatural support to Lockwood's chicken-fried chick lit paranormal. (Apr.)

In a prelude to her problematic novel, David describes how important the prophet Elijah was for the Bene Israel Jews of India, and introduces Elijah as the novel's fun-loving protagonist. Unfortunately, both Elijah and the merriment disappear after the first chapter. After rioting in Ahmedabad in 2002, a small community of Jews whose ancestors had lived peacefully in India move into an apartment building to avoid the crossfire. Despite the intriguing setting and character sketches rich with possibility, the result is unpolished and unsatisfying. Vignettes are shaped around weighty themes of religion, love, infertility, death and prophesy, but the actors never become more than puppets manipulated with an obvious hand, undermining the sometimes powerful imagery and infrequently addressed topics—such as living as a secret Jew in Pakistan. David, who grew up in Ahmedabad and has written previously about the Bene Israeli, knows her subject well, but has not done it justice. (Apr.)

Scottish crime writer Lindsay (The Endings Man) makes his U.S. debut with a quirky tale that works best as a character study. When 18-year-old Harry Glass is fired after a week at his new Glasgow factory job, he impulsively jumps in his boss's car and drives away, even though the boss's wife is in the front seat. So begins the unorthodox love affair between Harry and Eileen Morton, a woman 20 years his senior whom he'll eventually marry. The pair travel to Edinburgh and Aberdeen, chased by violent men convinced that something in the car is worth killing for. Stuck for a time with a mysterious couple in the Highlands who are less than forthright about their pasts, Harry and Eileen try to stay one step ahead of their pursuers while navigating their own burgeoning relationship. Since Harry, the book's narrator, reveals at the start that Eileen dies in old age, thriller fans should be prepared for a low level of suspense. (Apr.)

Inspired by a true story, Chessex's crime novella offers a sobering appraisal of human superstition and prejudice. In 1903, the ghoulish desecration of several women's graves in the rural Swiss village of Ropraz leads locals to intuit a vampire's handiwork. Suspicion falls on Charles-Augustin Favez, a brutish farmhand with a history of alcoholism and lewd behavior. Though no accusations hold up against him in court, Favez is imprisoned: he makes the perfect defenseless scapegoat onto whom citizens in the backward community project their own “shameful secrets.” In measured prose that studiously sidesteps sensationalism, Chessex (L'Ogre) recounts the alternating repulsion and fascination that Favez stimulates in the many persons involved with his case, all of whom vampirically exploit him to satisfy their own needs. The book concludes with a wonderfully mordant speculation on Favez's fate after he escapes prison and joins the French army during WWI. (Apr.)

Abidi's second novel, set in the mid-1980s in his homeland of Pakistan and his adopted home of Australia, focuses on past traditions and familial expectations. Bilqis Ara Begum, widow and head of the imposing Khan clan in Karachi, Pakistan, struggles to comprehend why her son, Samad, defies her wishes of an arranged marriage and marries Kate, an Australian lawyer. Shunning the importance of his family name in Karachi, Samad and Kate opt to live in Australia, leading Bilqis to believe “traditions and etiquette that had flourished for generations would come to an end with her. It was akin to slow and gradual extinction.” Although Bilqis remains ensconced in her beloved mausoleum of a family home, where everything is carefully preserved, Samad's decision sends ripples through her life, including her servant girl Mumtaz's unexpected future plans and Pakistan's own political and social turmoil. Abidi (Passarola Rising) evocatively depicts Pakistan's descent into brutality with protagonists who struggle to determine what is most sacred. (Apr.)

Bestseller Dekker (Chosen) introduces a serial killer with an unusual MO—he breaks all the bones in his female victims' bodies while leaving the skin perfectly intact. Two years after Austin, Tex., authorities catch the person they think is the BoneMan, they begin to realize they've got the wrong guy. The real murderer, Alvin Finch, who hasn't killed anyone during those two years, is getting restless and decides to take up his old trade. Meanwhile, Cmdr. Ryan Evans, an intelligence officer in Iraq, is captured by insurgents who torture him; they replicate the BoneMan's crimes using young children and make him watch. Ryan escapes and returns to Texas, where his teenage daughter is abducted. Accused of being the BoneMan, he's captured by police, escapes and eventually, as all readers know he must, joins in battle against Finch. Those with an insatiable appetite for thrillers about creepy, sadistic killers of young women should be satisfied. (Apr.)

Historical novelist Kirkpatrick (A Tendering in the Storm) is exceptionally authentic in her use of early 20th-century history. Virtually all the characters are real figures; protagonist Jessie Ann Gaebele is inspired in this “biographical fiction” by the writer's own grandmother. Jessie Ann loves photography, and when she is hired as an assistant to photographer F.J. Bauer, she learns about the field of her dreams and also about herself, as she finds herself attracted to her married boss, who battles his own feelings in return. Kirkpatrick renders the war among desire, duty and restraint with exquisite nuance. There are no unsympathetic characters in this tangle of relationships. Bauer's wife—also named Jessie—may be difficult to live with, but she has her reasons. The period detail—dangerous chemicals used in photography, debilitating and frequent illnesses, the routine constraints on women's choices—offers a compelling portrait of the time. Kirkpatrick deserves a wide audience for this coming-of-age tale that is aching and hopeful. (Apr.)

The gang that couldn't shoot straight accidentally kidnaps a mismatched tangle of family members in this over-the-top romantic comedy. Maneuvering for a date with his ex-wife, Derek O'Reilly invites his five-year-old nephew on a fishing trip and persuades his ex, Connie, to come, along with the 14-month-old twins she's babysitting. Aware that a bumbling gang of three crooks is on the loose, Derek and Co. are dismayed when they stumble onto the baddies in a farmhouse. The kids and the couple find themselves more or less held hostage, though mentally challenged robber Petey has more fun playing with the kids than guarding them, while his partners are grateful that one of their captives can actually cook. O'Keefe does a nice job of keeping up both the pace and the romantic repartee between Derek and Connie. Still, readers will need to check some massive disbelief to buy the gang's ill-conceived mission of justice and the wildly implausible climax. (Apr.)

A wealthy investment banker “with a swagger like Denzel Washington” learns that money can't buy love in a muted novelization of Johnson's stage play of the same name. Caleb Peterson has no trouble getting “fly-ass” ladies, but things never seem to work out: Kendra's after his wallet, Asia's just too sweet, and as for Miss Bud Light—well, Caleb doesn't even know her name until after they're in the buff (though he learns her 42 double-Ds are named Water and Melon). When beautiful former model Paisley Terrell enters the picture, things start to look up for Caleb, and soon enough he's giving his heart away yet again. His friends warn him not to give his cash away as well, so when Caleb makes an impromptu marriage proposal, talk of a prenup soon follows. Paisley protests, and complications, both romantic and economic, ensue. Johnson is a force in contemporary African-American theater, but without actors adding life to his words, the dialogue is stiff and the characters two-dimensional. (Apr.)

Gina Tait, half of this offbeat novel's opposites-attract duo, is a busy woman whose overbooked life takes a 90-minute break when she gets stuck in an elevator with relaxed widower Brad Harding. While the two share an intense physical attraction, their lifestyles are far too different to contemplate a relationship. Still, after they escape the stalled elevator, they can't stop thinking about each other, and when they try to be friends, Brad's daughters decide that Gina is the perfect candidate for motherhood. The transformation of total opposites to plausible lovers happens slowly but organically (despite the absurd setup), and the cast is charismatic and easily lovable. Romance readers looking for a low-key time-burner will have a ball. (Apr.)

Freeman's pleasantly wicked fourth novel (after Go with Me), set in smalltown rural Vermont, explores the moral choices of a good-hearted, meek sheriff. The laconic and gently self-deprecating sheriff, Lucian Wing, a middle-aged ex-navyman married to a prominent lawyer's daughter, has to decide whether to arrest a young ne'er do well who has broken into an opulent home owned by mysterious Russians and stolen a safe. The problem is that Wing feels for the young criminal, Sean Duke, who works as a laborer, has a winning way with the ladies and is known for his wild behavior. The childless sheriff regards the kid as a kind of bad-boy substitute son and knows that if he doesn't spirit Duke out of town, the Russians will get him first. Meanwhile, Sean makes inroads into the sheriff's chilly marriage, bringing Wing to a crisis of conscience. Freeman sets an intertwined network of provincial egos on a collision course and pulls it off through the wonderfully satisfying point of view of his deadpan sheriff. (Mar.)

Popular novelist and Amish specialist Lewis (The Brethren) launches a new series with this volume. Two young women, Amish Grace Byler and graduate student Heather Nelson, stand as counterpoints in parallel plots involving two secrets. Grace's mother is troubled; Heather, whose mother has died of cancer, tells no one in her circle of her own diagnosis of terminal illness, which drives her to Pennsylvania Amish country in search of healing. Grace's mother makes a decision that painfully complicates the action and drives it forward. Grace, her family and friends and the Amish milieu are drawn with characteristically ample detail, right down to jars of preserves set out on the tables at many bountiful Amish meals. Lots of powerful emotions go characteristically unspoken in this reticent culture, though the reader won't miss them. By comparison, the emotional high-stakes Heather plot is less detailed and consequently less engrossing. Lewis lays out—and knots—many plot threads to pursue and resolve in subsequent installments in the series, ensuring readers' return. (Mar.)

Hayes's quirky fifth Mad Dog and Englishman mystery (after 2007's Broken Heartland) alternates between Sheriff English's rural Benteen County, Kans., threatened by an incipient ethanol plant, and half-Cheyenne shaman Mad Dog's madcap tour of the grungier neighborhoods of Tucson, Ariz. At a Yaqui Easter rite, Mad Dog finds himself framed for a policeman's murder, then chased by both the police and a cerebral contract killer. English's plucky daughter, Heather, and Mad Dog's wolf-hybrid companion, Hailey, try to save him from both parties. Meanwhile, the sheriff investigates the bombing of Mad Dog's Kansas home. The crimes, connected by the hypnotic War of Worldcraft computer game, ensure headlong pace and wrenching plot twists, but the book's real strength is the way it depicts computer gaming's destruction of the player's ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, with such actual consequences as election fixing and police corruption. (May)

Edgar-finalist Haddam's excellent 24th Gregor Demarkian novel (after 2008's Cheating at Solitaire) takes a nuanced look at the debate over teaching evolution in public schools. Demarkian, who's about to marry his longtime significant other, Bennis Hannaford, gains a welcome distraction from the last-minute preparations. In Snow Hill, Pa., someone bludgeons 91-year-old Ann-Victoria Hadley, leaving her in a coma. The detective soon learns that Hadley, a recent addition to the school board, was the focus of a heated local controversy for her role in a lawsuit aimed at preventing intelligent design from being taught at the town's schools. While the victim remains unconscious, her assailant strikes again, killing two women who were also plaintiffs in the civil action. Haddam makes characters on both sides of the issue sympathetic, explores the inner life of her detective hero without cluttering up the plot—and offers an ingenious fair-play puzzle. (Apr.)

An unplanned pregnancy, a destructive break-in and a nasty gazpacho incident are just a few of the problems facing Julia Murdoch in Ross's diverting 10th cozy to feature the North Carolina matron (after 2008's Miss Julia Paints the Town). When naïve Hazel Marie, the former mistress of Miss Julia's first husband, learns that her flulike symptoms have another cause, it's up to the enterprising Miss Julia to patch things up between Hazel Marie and her estranged PI boyfriend, J.D. Pickens. Meanwhile, a burglary at the house of lawyer Sam Murdoch, Miss Julia's second husband, means trouble. The disappearance of Sam's meticulous files on local court cases suggests there are parties who don't want information on Abbot County's philandering judge and corrupt sheriff to see the light of day. Those who prefer a leisurely pace, a touch of screwball comedy and gentle puzzles in their mysteries will enjoy this paean to smalltown nosiness and steadfast loyalties. 6-city author tour. (Apr.)

At the start of Cannell's droll if draggy 13th Ellie Haskell mystery (after 2008's Goodbye, Ms. Chips), Ellie; her chef husband, Ben; and their housekeeper, Mrs. Roxie Malloy, take a wrong turn one foggy night on the Yorkshire moors. They wind up at Muckelsfeld Manor, where Georges LeBois, a French director, is producing Here Comes the Bride, a reality TV program aimed at finding a wife for Lord Aubrey Belfrey, whose estate could benefit from the publicity. When one of the contestants dies in a car accident in the fog, single Roxie takes her place, and Ben becomes chef for the shoot. Besides becoming enamored of a homeless black Lab, Ellie gets drawn into the mystery surrounding Aubrey's older brother's wife, who's rumored to have absconded with some family jewels before her husband died. While the eccentric supporting cast, notably Muckelsfeld's scary housekeeper, lends interest, Cannell doesn't fully exploit the juicy reality show premise. (Apr.)

Mallorcan Insp. Enrique Alvarez has his priorities, and pursuing criminals is far down a list headed by good food, good liquor (preferably cognac) and plenty of rest and relaxation, as shown in his latest outing in Jeffries's long-running series (Murder Needs Imagination, etc.). British authorities ask the Cuerpo (the civil police) to determine if wealthy Englishman Cyril Tyler, a suspected hit-and-run driver in the deaths of two people, is on the island. Alvarez finds Tyler and the car, but then the investigation takes a more serious turn. Lengthy phone sallies between Salas, the inspector's difficult boss, and Alvarez will delight Jeffries fans, Salas criticizing every aspect of Alvarez's reports. Alvarez, of course, placidly carries out Salas's orders in his own peculiar way. The foibles of the island's foreign residents and tourists add to the fun. In the end, Alvarez demonstrates the superiority of his easygoing lifestyle as he manages to find not only truth but justice. (Apr.)

In Meier's fizzy 15th holiday-themed cozy (after 2008's St. Patrick's Day Murder), reporter Lucy Stone, of Tinker's Cove, Maine, knows that the victim of a shooting murder, Tina Nowak, was feuding with Barbara “Bar” Hume over the popularity of their respective 16-year-old daughters, Heather and Ashley. Tinker's Cove is still reeling from the disappearance 10 months earlier of a teen youth counselor, and Bar's arrest is almost as shocking. In digging for answers regarding the alleged “killer mom,” Lucy uncovers some icky revelations about Bart Hume, Bar's philandering cardiac surgeon husband. Meier's mix of family concerns and mystery turns darker than usual after Bart's mistress is killed in a suspicious car accident, and Lucy and Sara, Lucy's high school freshman daughter, are caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Along the way, Lucy must also deal with fears about Sara's first prom date and the sleepless nights all moms must face. (Apr.)

When Michelle “Mike” Morgan turns up shot in the back near her woodland cabin, Rosemary Mendes takes in Mike's dog and determines to uncover the dead woman's past in LaPierre's well-plotted stand-alone, which vividly paints life at its simplest—and ugliest. Rosemary has moved to Northern California's sparsely populated Trinity County to shake the threats of her deceased husband's money-grubbing relatives and for the peaceful, slower-paced lifestyle. In fact, between her worrisome neighbors and vandalism problems, her life has hardly been uneventful—and Sheriff Gus Angstrom, a widower, is clearly interested in more than her case-related information. Murder and kidnapping drive the action to a heart-slamming conclusion. Fans of LaPierre's cozy series set in Port Silva, Calif. (Family Business, etc.), will find virtually no gore, but they should be prepared for the kind of language typical of a gritty police procedural. (Apr.)

Swashbuckling hotelier Trevor Lambert watched the last place he managed burn to the ground in Craig's Murder at Hotel Cinema (2008). Now, in his entertaining third outing, Lambert's back in Vancouver, Canada, near his family but jobless and depressed until he discovers Graverly Manor, an inn, for sale near picturesque Lost Lagoon. He decides his own B&B might be just what the doctor ordered, even if it's haunted by its former owner, Lord Andrew Graverly, and Graverly's chambermaid lover. Andrew's eccentric octogenarian widow, Elinor, hires Lambert to manage on a trial basis to see if he's serious. Clarissa, a pretty guest looking into the inn's past, distracts Lambert briefly as he deals with strange sounds, awful smells, a semidemonic cat and murder. Craig's lively mix of the macabre with his ever-urbane humor keeps this neo-Victorian melodrama from collapsing from its familiar haunted house theme. (Apr.)

Fans of Sherlock Holmes pastiches will welcome the 14 new stories, all set in the U.S., in this solid anthology from Greenberg, Lellenberg and Stashower (Murder, My Dear Watson). Newcomer Lyndsay Faye, author of Dust and Shadow (Reviews, Jan. 12), offers one of the volume's highlights, “The Case of Colonel Warburton's Madness.” In this version of one of Watson's legendary untold tales, Holmes cleverly solves the case in an armchair after the doctor describes a mystery he encountered in San Francisco. Robert Pohle makes good use of some ambiguities in A Study in Scarlet to craft a fitting sequel to Doyle's first Holmes story in “The Flowers of Utah,” while Gillian Linscott has the detective ascertain which violin belonged to Davy Crockett in “The Case of Colonel Crockett's Violin.” Other contributors include Steve Hockensmith, Loren D. Estleman and Bill Crider. (Mar.)

An amusing, at times strident narrative voice drives Pollero's third Palm Beach puzzler (after 2008's Knock 'em Dead). Pert paralegal Finley Anderson Tanner is stunned when her divalicious mother, Cassidy Johnstone, sells her the beach-front house once owned by Finley's late beloved stepdad, Jonathan Tanner, for $25,000. Discouraged by the renovations needed on the property, Finley finds support from such friends as interior designer Sam and annoying if hunky PI Liam McGarrity. Nothing prepares her, however, for the literal skeleton in the closet—the remains of a girl clutching a medallion Finley gave Jonathan when she was a child. Finley's frantic efforts to stay romantic and fashion forward while seeking to identify a homicide victim and catch a nefarious killer make for a jittery mix that doesn't always jell. (Mar.)

Hugo and Nebula Award–winner Beagle showcases his narrative breadth in this eclectic new collection with nine powerful fantasy tales and a short set of poems based on the famous Unicorn Tapestries. In the title story, one benevolent sibling must somehow stop another from becoming the Angel of Death. “The Last and Only, or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French” explores the significance of identity as a mild-mannered American librarian irrevocably transforms into the last true Frenchman, while the profoundly moving “King Pelles the Sure” denounces the insanity of war. The most memorable selection is “The Stickball Witch,” in which a group of Bronx boys playing stickball come face to face with the suspected witch of their neighborhood. Impressively diverse themes, styles and subject matter make this collection addictive. (Apr.)

In Jessup's supernova-bright novella, his first stand-alone publication, pregnant space voyager Ekhi is rescued from her ailing vessel by the crew of a scavenger ship. Their captain, mysterious, doll-like cyborg Itsasu, mourns her husband's death, and has been yearning to bring him back to life with the “Ortzadar engine” her ship is secretly carrying. She reluctantly allows Ekhi to join her crew, but keeps her under strict supervision. The other crew members struggle with various personal issues brought sharply into perspective by a sudden alien invasion and the discovery that the ship's AI is playing a deadly game of its own. Jessup describes his surrealistic space opera vision with bleak, elegant prose and a dash of black humor. (Apr.)

Bledsoe's dark tale of vampires in 1970s Memphis is marred by racial stereotypes and grim perversions. Baron Rudolfo Vladimir Zginski, stabbed with a crucifix in 1915, reanimates 60 years later when pathologist Patricia Johnson withdraws the cross from his mummified corpse. The racist and self-absorbed Zginski kills his African-American resurrector and heads out into the world. He joins up with a gaggle of young vampires, including lecherous black teens Olive and Leonardo, who speak almost entirely in clichéd blaxploitation patois (“Don't be a jive turkey, sweetheart”) and use telepathy to seduce and kill unsuspecting humans. Coroner Danielle Roseberry almost becomes the pair's latest prey until Zginski realizes they all need her help to trace the origin of a mysterious vampire-killing dust. Bledsoe (The Sword-Edged Blonde) employs a suave, creepy style that suits the story but can't mitigate his appalling treatment of female and minority characters. (Apr.)

Fans of SF as a vehicle for ideas will devour this intriguing debut. Brilliant 21st-century tycoon Justin Cord is brought from cryogenic storage into a 24th-century society where people own stock in one another, safeguarding each other's welfare only out of economic self-interest. This is anathema to the defiantly individualistic Cord, who soon becomes a danger to the corporations that control the world and a symbol of freedom to the downtrodden penny-stock people. Cord's conversations with friends and enemies fill most of the book, alongside lectures on the mechanisms of the incorporated culture. The Kollin brothers keep the plot moving briskly despite the high proportion of talk to action. Their cerebral style will especially appeal to readers nostalgic for science fiction's early years. (Apr.)

Enge competently blends a compelling plot and unrelentingly grim prose in this somber fantasy debut. The heir to the Empire of Ontil is 12-year-old Lathmar, a terrified child recently orphaned by his own Protector and uncle, Lord Urdhven. His ancient and powerful relatives, controlling Ambrosia and morosely forbidding Morlock, offer their magical aid to reclaim his throne and defeat the Protector. Slowly growing to manhood, Lathmar struggles to assert himself as the emperor-to-be while craving his guardians' parental approval and longing to become more of a participant than an observer. Though the characters are more fascinating than lovable, Enge's precise and elegant language and some darkly harrowing scenes are sure to tug on readers' heartstrings. Legends frequently have predictable conclusions, but even with an unsurprising destination, this coming-of-age narrative makes for an engaging journey. (Apr.)

Hysterical laughs are the hallmark of this enchanting paranormal debut. Unceremoniously fired from her job as Half Moon Hollow's children's librarian, Jane Jameson drowns her sorrows with a handsome stranger, vampire Gabriel Nightengale. When Jane is accidentally shot, Gabriel saves her life by turning her undead. As Jane starts to get used to chatting with her dead aunt, finding creative ways to dodge her mother's nosy questions and enjoying the chemistry with Gabriel, she's brought up short by being named a suspect in a recent vampire murder. Jane's snarky first-person narrative is as charming as it is hilarious, retaining enough humanity to connect instantly with readers. Harper keeps the quips coming without overdoing the sarcasm, and her take on vampire lore will intrigue and entertain even the most jaded paranormal fan. (Apr.)

A beautiful working-class girl finds true love with a licentious rake in the promising opening of a new Regency romance series. Orphaned heroine Fallon O'Rourke is one of a trio of resourceful young women who have moved from the Penwich School for Virtuous Girls into household service to the ton. Fallon dodges several lecherous employers and finally finds safety in male disguise as a footman, working for the notoriously decadent Dominic Hale. As Fallon fights her growing desire for her new boss and Dominic puzzles over his unusual interest in his young employee, their growing closeness endangers both Fallon's secret and her virtue. Jordan (Surrender to Me) only sketches the Regency setting, keeping a tight focus on Dominic's household, but sizzling sexual tension between the leads makes for a thoroughly satisfying romantic romp. (Apr.)

Launching the Chesapeake Shores series, Woods (Welcome to Serenity) creates an engrossing but overly neat family drama. Divorced financial whiz Abby O' Brien Winters takes a short trip to her hometown of Chesapeake Bay at the behest of her youngest sister, Jess. When Abby realizes the extent of Jess's money troubles, she agrees to prolong her visit, even if it means seeing Trace, an ex-boyfriend who still carries a torch for her. As Abby attempts to help Jess salvage her finances and open an inn, she struggles with her quarreling family, Trace's irresistible attentions and a nasty ex-husband who suddenly wants full custody of their twins. Abby's relationship with Trace is full of chemistry, but it lacks conviction and depth, and Woods relies too heavily on contrivances to keep the story moving forward. (Apr.)

Scarrow debuts with an intense what-if that ties a present-day freelance photographer to an ill-fated WWII German assault on Manhattan. Photojournalist Chris Roland heads to Rhode Island to investigate reports of an American B-17 bomber wrecked just off the coast. When he crawls into the submerged cockpit, he finds what appear to be the skeletal remains of a Luftwaffe pilot. His curiosity piqued, Roland investigates, but his interest and his photographs put him in the crosshairs of James Wallace, an aging spy charged by Truman to keep the B-17 and its mission top secret. The prose is unsteady in places, but Scarrow has a real talent for pacing, and he keeps the tension escalating as the action flips between Wallace's pursuit of Roland and the final days of WWII. (Apr.)

For decades, Mazzucchelli has been a master without a masterpiece. Now he has one. His long-awaited graphic novel is a huge, knotty marvel, the comics equivalent of a Pynchon or Gaddis novel, and radically different from anything he's done before. Asterios Polyp, its arrogant, prickly protagonist, is an award-winning architect who's never built an actual building, and a pedant in the midst of a spiritual crisis. After the structure of his own life falls apart, he runs away to try to rebuild it into something new. There are fascinating digressions on aesthetic philosophy, as well as some very broad satire, but the core of the book is Mazzucchelli's odyssey of style—every major character in the book is associated with a specific drawing style and visual motifs, and the design, color scheme and formal techniques of every page change to reinforce whatever's happening in the story. Although Mazzucchelli stacks the deck—few characters besides Polyp and his inamorata, the impossibly good-hearted sculptor Hana, are more than caricatures—the book's bravado and mastery make it riveting even when it's frustrating, and provide a powerful example of how comics use visual information to illustrate complex, interconnected topics. Easily one of the best books of 2009 already. (June)

This intriguingly weird new series from Cairo creators Wilson and Perker throws in enough bizarro surprises to keep readers on the hook. More than anything, this first volume feels like an extended dream sequence. Wilson's flight attendant heroine, Blythe, keeps meeting strangers from different secret organizations who all have plans for her, though the plans they have for the world at large are (at this point in the story) still shrouded in mystery. There's the occasional lazy explanation, but the sheer inventiveness gives the story momentum, even if Blythe is still a bit of a cypher for a lead character. Perker's work is rough but endlessly promising. His faces are distinct, his shading is natural, and he renders detailed backgrounds, and the adept coloring gives the art a depth that the story occasionally lacks. With the quirky story as a hook, Air stands a good chance of staying aloft. (Mar.)

While it must have been no easy task for Israeli filmmaker Folman and chief illustrator Polonsky to turn their groundbreaking, Golden Globe–winning 2008 animated documentary into a graphic novel, the transition from film to page is flawless. Folman's story is the account of how he came to grips with the repressed memories of the time he was a soldier in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. As much a study of the fungible nature of memory as a dissection of the ease with which war zones can dehumanize ordinary soldiers, Waltz with Bashir uses the same journalistic technique for self-examination as David Carr did with Night of the Gun. Folman goes from one fellow veteran to the next, trying to get somebody to tell him what he can't remember. Bit by bit the holes are filled in—though never completely; the narrative is never cheapened by turning it into a simple mystery to be solved—as Folman sidles closer to the war's central horror: the massacre of Palestinians by Christian militias at two refugee camps. Utilizing frames that seem cut straight from the film, the book threads together Polonsky's darkly gleaming nightmare drawings into a seamless whole. (Feb.)

Based on a real diary that the author found in a Vegas bathroom in 1995, this episodic collection is an alternately hilarious and exhausting trip through the inner monologue and outer turmoil of overweight high school sophomore Tammy Pierce. Tammy struggles with body image (and body odor), pines for the cute boys who torment her, steals money from her mother's purse and spends way too much time chasing her next fix of French fries from Sonic. Given the source material, it's not surprising that much of the book is self-absorbed, repetitive and insufferable; it is also genuinely poignant. The highlights of the collection are the stretches where Tammy's situation is too excruciatingly painful not to be funny: practicing kissing with her pillow, not shaving her legs sufficiently for prom, dealing with a surprise hair on her chin at school. The art style is jagged in the extreme—sometimes it doesn't look like ink was placed on the page so much as thrown—but it's a perfect fit for conveying the chaos Tammy is so desperately trying to put down in words. (Feb.)

Aragones's dimwitted barbarian, Groo, has been comically messing up for nearly 30 years, and he hasn't learned a thing in all that time. This new adventure finds Groo and his loyal dog, Rufferto, facing war, global warming and the general ineptness of politicians. Aragones molds these serious themes into a sardonic commentary. The setting is an undefined time resembling the Middle Ages, and pollution from weapons' factories leads to the threat of climate change as well as imminent war. Groo falls through a factory ceiling, creating a makeshift chimney that releases the pollution, which eventually drifts to the neighboring kingdom, alerting them to the increase in weapons production, setting off an even larger war. The story switches between Groo, haphazardly commanding an army in search of the enemy, and the Sage, Groo's intellectual friend, traversing the world to persuade people of the dangers of climate change. Similar setups lead to some repetitiveness and a flagging story, but Aragones's distorted, comical character designs and signature background details keep the tale engaging. (Feb.)

The future is either scary as hell or funny (and still scary as hell), depending on who you're reading.

Set in a not-so-distant future, when the United States has declared war on Australia as a result of a mysterious explosion known as “The Horribleness,” Knipfel's mordant and funny latest charts a year in the life of Wally Philco, a New York City insurance company employee who, fed up with a nosy neighbor, the “Stroller Brigade” of militant mothers, the advertisements beamed into his brain and government snoops, begins disabling the many devices that monitor him. His unplugging results in his being recruited by the Unpluggers, a group of revolutionaries camped out in an abandoned section of the subway system. As he learns more about the group and its plans to strike back at the totalitarian state, he becomes the group's unwitting figurehead. Though the novel sometimes falls victim to less than refined humor (citizens must carry, for instance, SUCKIE identity cards), the twisty plot (including a surprising turn at the end) combined with Knipfel's sharp wit and dark vision add much satirical sparkle to this dystopian romp. (Apr.)

Anax, the dedicated student historian at the center of Beckett's brutal dystopian novel, lives far in the future—the distant past events of the 21st century are taught in classrooms. The world of that era, we learn, was ravaged by plague and decay, the legacy of the Last War. Only the island Republic, situated near the bottom of the globe, remained stable and ordered, but at the cost of personal freedom. Anax, hoping her scholarly achievements will gain her entrance to the Academy, which rules her society, has extensively studied Adam Forde, a brilliant and rebellious citizen of the Republic who fought for human dignity in the midst of a regimented, sterile society. To join the Academy's ranks, Anax undergoes a test before three examiners, and as the examination progresses, it becomes clear that her interpretations of Adam's life defy conventional thought and there may be more to Adam—and the Academy—than she had imagined. Though the trappings of Beckett's dystopian society feel perhaps too Brave New World, the rigorous narrative and crushing final twist bring a welcome freshness to a familiar setup. (Apr.)