Fiction Reviews

Oyeyemi delivers her third passionate and unusual book, a neo-gothic tale revolving around Miranda and Eliot Silver, fraternal twins of Haitian descent raised in a British house haunted by generations of afflicted, displaced family members, including their mother. Miranda suffers from pica, an affliction that causes her to eat nonedible items, which is passed down to her via the specters from her childhood that now punctuate her nightmares. As the novel progresses, the increasingly violent nature of this bizarre, insatiable hunger reveals itself to be the ironclad grip of the dead over the living or of mother over daughter. The book is structured around multiple voices—including that of the house itself—that bleed into one another. Appealing from page one, the story, like the house, becomes extremely foreboding, as the house is “storing its collapse” and “can only be as good as” those who inhabit it. The house’s protective, selfish voice carries a child’s vision of loss: in the absence of a mother, feelings of anger, betrayal and bodily desire replace the sensation of connection. Unconventional, intoxicating and deeply disquieting. (June)

The Zielinskis, the dysfunctional family of Riggle’s delightful debut, have some problems, even if things at Mirabelle and Max’s 35th anniversary party—thrown by their three adult children—at first seem peachy. Soon, though, the cracks appear: daughter Katya’s stuck in a loveless marriage and saddled with three bratty kids. Son Ivan’s a struggling songwriter who falls for all the wrong girls, and the youngest daughter, Irina, is a free-spirited 21-year-old, knocked up by a man twice her age. There’s just no more room in their lives for another problem, but Mirabelle has a secret—she’s dying of breast cancer. With ease and grace, Riggle walks the fine line between sentimentality and comedy, and she has a sure hand in creating fun, quirky characters. Humorous and humane storytelling makes this much better than the standard cancer tear-jerker. (June)

Veteran espionage novelist Littell (Vicious Circle; The Company; etc.) trades cold war spies for interwar Russian poets in his wonderful new novel. In 1934, real-life poet Osip Mandelstam struggles to get published in the totalitarian state. A battered idealist who has witnessed his share of Stalin-orchestrated horrors, Mandelstam feels writers have “an abiding responsibility to be truth tellers in this wasteland of lies.” Much to the despair of his fellow poets, Osip writes an epigram likening Stalin to a ruthless killer, leading to Osip’s arrest, brutal interrogation and exile. The robust narrative employs an array of narrators, including Osip’s devoted wife, Nadezhda; his disloyal lover, actress Zinaida Zaitseva-Antonova; and Stalin’s personal bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik. The most intriguing voice heard is that of Fikrit Shotman, a weightlifter turned circus strongman who shares a cell with Osip and whose journey from Moscow prison to Siberian gold mine perfectly captures the absurdity of life under tyranny. Littell is unflinching in his portrayal of Osip’s tragic arc, bringing a troubled era of Russian history to rich, magnificent life. (May)

Satyal’s lovely coming-of-age debut charts an Indian-American boy’s transformation from mere mortal to Krishnaji, the blue-skinned Hindu deity. Twelve-year-old Kiran Sharma’s a bit of an outcast: he likes ballet and playing with his mother’s makeup. He also reveres his Indian heritage and convinces himself that the reason he’s having trouble fitting in is because he’s actually the 10th reincarnation of Krishnaji. He plans to come out to the world at the 1992 Martin Van Buren Elementary School talent show, and much of the book revels in his comical preparations as he creates his costume, plays the flute and practices his dance moves to a Whitney Houston song. But as the performance approaches, something strange happens: Kiran’s skin begins to turn blue. Satyal writes with a graceful ease, finding new humor in common awkward pre-teen moments and giving readers a delightful and lively young protagonist. (May)

Smith continues the saga of the Courtney family of Africa begun in 1964 with When the Lion Feeds. In this installment, Leon Courtney, ladies’ man and former lieutenant in the King’s African Rifles, becomes a professional big game hunter and safari guide in the years leading up to WWI. Among his clients are Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Teddy Roosevelt, and a spoiled German princess who is fond of the whip. The story really doesn’t kick into gear until halfway through, on the eve of war, when Courtney’s uncle, Brig. Gen. Penrod Ballantyne, commander of the British forces in East Africa, asks him to spy on his newest client, Count Otto von Meerbach, a German industrialist with a secret agenda. Courtney also begins an affair with Otto’s mistress, Eva, who has a secret life of her own. Will Courtney defeat Otto’s dastardly scheme and rescue Eva? Though the outcome is never in doubt, Smith manages to serve up adventure, history and melodrama in one thrilling package that will be eagerly devoured by series fans. (May)

In his seventh novel, Olmstead (Coal Black Horse) delivers another richly characterized, tightly woven story of nature, inevitability and the human condition. In 1916, the aging Napoleon Childs assembles a cavalry to search for the elusive bandit Pancho Villa in Mexico. The ragtag group includes Napoleon’s brother, Xenophon, and “America’s eager export of losers, deadbeats, cutthroats, dilettantes, and murderers.” Riding on horseback for months at a time, Napoleon finds himself and his men always just a few hours behind Villa, whose posse navigates the unforgiving terrain with ease. When a band of marauders descend upon the group, many of Napoleon’s men are brutally slaughtered and Napoleon himself is left beaten and emotionally broken. After the attack, Napoleon proclaims to his brother that the person he was died out there. But this revelation doesn’t last long, and soon Napoleon sets out on yet another date with destiny on the open plains with his followers. Reminiscent of Kent Haruf, Olmstead’s brilliantly expressive, condensed tale of resilience and dusty determination flows with the kind of literary cadence few writers have mastered. (May)

In Caldwell’s fun second installment to his Pig Trilogy (after The Pig Did It), Irish writer Kitty McCloud and husband Kieran Sweeney battle to stave off specters threatening to destroy their newfound nuptial bliss. The beautiful ghosts of Taddy and Brid haunt Castle Kissane, the couple’s new abode, as well as their dreams and desires. Then the very real Lord Shaftoe appears after his family’s two-century-long absence to reclaim the keep. Onto the scene trots the “lesbian” pig, whose ramblings and rootings could destroy the lovely estate—or help save it. Throughout, the whimsical tale is held aloft by a fanciful if sometimes long-winded lyricism that well conveys the spirit of its Irish setting and characters. In this story, humor and sadness, the past and the present, all live side-by-side, and it is all Kitty can do to tell them apart, much less keep the ghosts at bay. (May)

Life in an isolated Hungarian village is turned upside down by an unusual love affair in Fitten’s promising debut. In the small hamlet of Zivatar, 68-year-old Valeria is known by all as a cantankerous woman, quick to criticize everything from the produce at the market to the mayor’s lofty ambitions to lure foreign investors to the town. But a chance encounter one day with the elderly local potter—a man Valeria has known for years but never noticed—changes everything. The widower potter falls just as hard for Valeria, despite his relationship with Ibolya, the owner of the village’s only tavern. Unaccustomed to being smitten, Valeria tries to maintain her normal routine, but the village is in an uproar over this unlikely love triangle. The arrival of a traveling chimney sweep intent on bilking the townspeople sends another ripple through what was once a placid village. Fitten is not always successful in balancing character development with the larger themes of power and progress, but the irascible Valeria makes such a unique heroine that readers may be willing to overlook the story’s less fluid elements. (May)

The psychological effects of invasion and occupation provide the centerpiece for prominent Mexican author Solares’s unusual and uneven historical novel. Aging journalist Abelardo, spurred on by his wife to investigate his lingering bouts of melancholy, begins a memoir chronicling his experiences during the 1847 Mexican-American War 50 years earlier, including his friendship with an intellectual sparring partner, Dr. Urruchúa, and a love triangle with local beauty Isabel and her society mother, also named Isabel. The young Abelardo is drawn to the fragile, love-struck daughter, as well as her independent, fiery mother, a situation that leads to the rupture of the family. Abelardo struggles to find a balance between his duty to fight for Mexico’s independence and Dr. Urruchúa’s theory that the country, led into dire straights by the notorious General Santa Anna, could find economic and political stability under American occupation. Solares’s attempt to weave Abelardo’s emotional dilemmas into Mexico’s political crises leads to an unsatisfying blend of psychology and history; neither the romance nor the chronicle of war catch fire amid the meandering existential pondering. (May)

Bestseller Scottoline (Lady Killer) scores another bull’s-eye with this terrifying thriller about an adoptive parent’s worst fear—the threat of an undisclosed illegality overturning an adoption. The age-progressed picture of an abducted Florida boy, Timothy Braverman, on a “have you seen this child?” flyer looks alarmingly like Philadelphia journalist Ellen Gleeson’s three-year-old son, Will, whom she adopted after working on a feature about a pediatric cardiac care unit. Ellen, who jeopardizes her newspaper job by secretly researching the Braverman case, becomes suspicious when she discovers the lawyer who handled her adoption of Will has committed suicide. Meanwhile, Will’s supposed birth mother, Amy Martin, dies of a heroin overdose, and Amy’s old boyfriend turns out to look like the man who kidnapped Timothy. Scottoline expertly ratchets up the tension as the desperate Ellen flies to Miami to get DNA samples from Timothy’s biological parents. More shocks await her back home. Author tour. (Apr.)

The prolific Rice contemplates class, family and math in this disappointing outing. After her husband dies and her eldest daughter, Carrie, runs away, Maggie Shaw moves her remaining brood—level-headed Travis and troubled Beck—from Ohio to Newport, R.I., where she will teach English at the prestigious Newport Academy, where the kids also enroll. Apathetic Beck strikes up an easy friendship with Lucy, who hopes her mathematical prowess will somehow help her bring back her own dead father. Rice’s simple writing style suits the kids well, but doesn’t work as well with Maggie, who has mixed feelings about reconnecting with her estranged sister. All the while, Maggie continues to search for the missing Carrie, who eventually steps onto the page to deliver her side of the story. Beck warms up as the narrative progresses, but the plot becomes increasingly and pointlessly convoluted, lending a soap opera feel to an initially promising setup. It starts strong, but falters and never recovers. (Apr.)

Family ties, smalltown values and unexpected love in picturesque settings have made Deveraux a longtime bestselling author, so it’s no surprise she again delivers on her tried-and-true formula. Jocelyn “Joce” Minton, daughter of a Williamsburg, Va., debutante and a handyman, is alienated from her family after her widowed father marries a woman who is decidedly not debutante material and has a pair of selfish twins. Joce ends up in the care of an elderly neighbor, Miss Edi, who watches over the girl through college. When Miss Edi dies, she leaves Joce an ancestral manor house and a trove of secrets going back to 1941 that compel Joce to visit Edilean, Va., where she meets the local color, including a sexy lawyer and his sexier gardener cousin—who has a secret or two, himself. Alternating WWII battlefront tragedy with contemporary romance, Deveraux packs in something for every generation, from wicked supermodels to patriotic sacrifice, from planting an herb garden to DNA tests. For all the novel’s coincidences and predictability, readers will find it hard to resist the charm of Edilean, the manor house, the town, the woman of many secrets and, of course, the series to follow. (Apr.)

Set in 1927 Germany, Rabb’s superb sequel to Rosa correlates the advent of talking movies with the rise of Nazism. When Kriminal-Oberkommisar Nikolai Hoffner investigates the apparent suicide of an Ufa film studio executive, the trail leads the Berlin policeman to the sex and drug trade as well as to the National Socialist German Workers Party’s local leader, Joseph Goebbels. Working with Helen Coyle, an attractive American talent agent for MGM, Hoffner learns how cutthroat the picture business is. Rumors of films with sound threaten to change the industry. “Without sound, all you have is shadow and light,” an inventor tells Hoffner. With sound, movies can do a lot more than entertain, as soon to be shown by Nazi propaganda films and newsreels. Rabb’s meticulous research brings to life a corrupt society vulnerable to extremism. Well-conceived cameos by director Fritz Lang and actor Peter Lorre add to the intrigue. Author tour. (Apr.)

De Jonge, a James Patterson coauthor (Beach Road), delivers his first solo effort, a routine crime thriller set in New York City. NYPD Det. Darlene O’Hara, “beautiful and thirty-four, with wavy red hair and the kind of freckles men try to lick off shoulders,” is looking for missing NYU student Francesca Pena, “a very pretty teenage girl with long jet-black hair and bottomless brown eyes,” when she learns that Pena’s brutally beaten body has been found in East River Park. While her professional colleagues soon focus on David McLain, Pena’s hometown friend who initially reported her missing, O’Hara doubts McLain is guilty. As the evidence against McLain mounts, she persists in her search for the real killer, a quest that leads her to cross lines, risk her job and become a wanted person herself. Predictably, O’Hara’s digging reveals Pena had a secret life. Few readers will be surprised that the detective manages to crack the case in the nick of time. (Apr.)

Keeping secrets leads to calamitous consequences in Morris’s disturbing domestic thriller. At age 17, Nora Trimble has a dangerous eight-day summer escapade with psycho boyfriend Eddie Hawkins that ends in a violent incident in a bar. Twenty-six years later, Nora is the happy wife of wealthy Kendall “Ken” Hammond, co-owner of a smalltown Massachusetts newspaper, and the devoted mother of two teens. Her world’s turned upside down by Eddie’s shocking reappearance and Ken’s revelation that he’s been having an adulterous relationship for four years with his childhood sweetheart Robin Gendron, his best friend’s wife. Nora must contend with not only marital woes but the blackmailing serial killer Eddie, who refuses to leave town because of his new obsession—Robin. Morris (The Lost Mother) knocks over a domino chain of events that, while not too surprising, confirm the importance of comprehending past mistakes to avoid future ones. (Apr.)

A granddaughter sifts through her grandmother’s rich and mysterious life in Pulitzer finalist Scott’s latest. As a teenager in 1946, Sally Werner experiences something between rape and seduction at the hands of her cousin, resulting in a baby, family shame and her running away. Each time Sally feels her past catching up with her, she finds a new town and assumes a new identity, eventually graduating from taking the charity—and more—of others to supporting herself. A doomed love affair, a cat and mouse chase with the brutal father of a second child, and a longing for safety and freedom keep Sally moving until she settles down and her daughter, Penelope, inherits her restless energy. As the novel, and Sally’s life, draws to a close, we get a final look at this remarkable woman through the eyes of her granddaughter, also named Sally, and through the younger Sally’s once absent father, Abe. A retelling of the archetypal American journey from a female perspective, this rendering of the perils and triumphs facing women is imbued with a questing spirit. (Apr.)

Fans of Casablanca’s 2008 debut, the urban farce 6 Sick Hipsters, will best appreciate this uneven satire. The high-profile kidnapping of Leigh Tiller, a New York socialite, sets in motion an unusual confluence of events. Tiller’s rich father, far from being eager to pay the hefty ransom, actually wants his daughter killed and employs a doctor turned hit man known as the Serologist to do the deed. Meanwhile, the radical artists known as Strategic Art Defense, whose cultural guerrilla warfare aims to foment a national revolution, frustrate the hit man by rescuing Tiller from her captivity in New Jersey and eventually indoctrinating her into their cause. Readers should be prepared for some erratic characterizations. At one point, for example, the Serologist claims the accident that left him with hideous scars changed him into an evil man only to state a few pages later that he’s always known he wasn’t “a good person.” (Mar.)

Winn’s excellent debut collection centers on Lowell, Mass., as it evolves from a booming mid-century mill town to its scrappy contemporary incarnation. What remains constant are the characters, who cycle through the stories as they age, etched memorably by Winn, who nails a diverse swath of American life over some 60 years. In the title story, Stella Lewis navigates through often dicey situations at Hub Hosiery, a factory where she makes a close friend and learns the power of union allegiances. In “Blue Tango,” lovesick Dr. Charlie Burroughs, a Korean War vet, returns to his wife; in the following story, “Glass Box,” Winn portrays the marriage from Charlie’s wife’s perspective. Later, Winn checks in on the next generation of the Burroughs family, mired in frustration and longing. We also get to know factory workers and families affected by wars—from Korea to Iraq. Though Winn’s prose sometimes gets away from her, her firm command of narrative and her ability to evoke emotion puts this high on the list of must-read story collections. (Apr)

In this gripping legal thriller from Hoffman (Retribution), Julia Vacanti, a 28-year-old Miami assistant state attorney, helps to prosecute David Marquette, a Miami surgeon accused of stabbing his wife and their two older children as well as smothering their baby in Coral Gables, Fla. David’s plea of insanity finds the prosecution team working double time to prove he’s just a clever psychopath faking schizophrenia to avoid Florida’s death penalty. Meanwhile, the conflicted Julia obsesses about her schizophrenic brother, Andrew Citro, who was convicted of the fatal stabbings of their parents when she was 13. When Julia learns Andrew was committed to a center for the criminally insane in New York, she re-establishes contact, which results in some major courtoom drama. Hoffman’s intriguing plot snakes around both cases as Julia questions her own mental health and a future only a nail-biting sequel might fully answer. Author tour. (Apr.)

Wiehl, a Fox News commentator and legal analyst, teams with mystery veteran Henry (Buried Diamonds) on a sizzling political thriller. When 17-year-old Senate page Katie Converse goes missing on her Christmas break near her parents’ white Victorian home in Portland, Ore., law enforcement and media personnel go into overdrive in a search for clues. Three friends at the pinnacle of their respective careers—Allison Pierce, a federal prosecutor; Cassidy Shaw, a crime reporter; and Nicole Hedges, an FBI special agent—soon discover that Katie wasn’t the picture of innocence painted by her parents. It appears Katie was having an affair with a much older man, a senator whose political career could be derailed if the affair was publicized. The seamless plot offers a plethora of twists and turns. A blurb from Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly will help draw attention to Wiehl’s debut. (Apr.)

At the start of bestseller Stone’s formulaic third thriller to feature CIA “cleaner” Micah Dalton (after The Orpheus Deception), Dalton takes revenge late one night outside Venice’s Piazza San Marco on one of the Serbian thugs responsible for the death of his lover, Cora Vasari. Dalton’s actions result in his becoming involved in the search for a high-level traitor in the CIA’s ranks, who’s believed to be behind the brutal murder of elderly Mildred Durant, an unofficial adviser to an NSA decryption team known as the Glass Cutters, in her London home. Durant worked on the Venona Project, the interception of Soviet cable traffic, during the cold war. It appears Stalin “had a source close to Roosevelt who was never exposed.” While no one will mistake Stone for John le Carré, series fans are sure to root for the unstoppable Dalton, compared at one point to “the newly risen Christ, only blond and not quite so loving, with a bullet scar on one cheek and no intention at all of turning the other.” (Apr.)

British author Hogg’s elaborate debut centers on the hunt for self-destructive rock star Billy K, “who vanished into thin air on a Cornish cliff top.” After a year of fruitless searching, Insp. James Dent, a rogue London policeman, isn’t giving up. The last known clue about Billy K is that he was reading Show Me the Sky, the journal of a 19th-century missionary, Nelson Babbage of Whitechapel, London (“formerly Naqarase Baba of Lakemba, Fiji”). Taking a new approach to the case, Dent travels first to Australia, then to Kenya and finally back to London in his quest to find the missing singer. Extracts from Show Me the Sky, which chronicle Babbage/Naqarase’s return to his homeland with a group of English missionaries, stand out as the most compelling of the various narrative strands, some of which are slow to develop. His vivid adventures at sea will remind many of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. (Apr.)

Operatic and beautiful, del Paso’s lush cautionary tale of empire building chronicles the brief and disastrous reign of Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria and Marie Charlotte (Carlota) of Belgium, emperor and empress of Mexico from 1863 to 1867. Seeking to redefine herself, Carlota embraces her new role as empress while Max flounders. They are usurpers, and while Benito Juarez, rightful ruler of the republic, abandons the capital to them, the seat of power stays with him as he watches from the periphery and refuses to acknowledge European rule. Desperate, spiraling into madness and wary of impending disaster, Carlota sails to Europe and begs the European monarchies for help that will never arrive. Outliving everyone, Carlota, elderly and insane, still in love with both her lost husband and her lost empire, is left to lament of Mexico, “I am mother to them all because, Maximilian, I am their history and I am mad.” This moving and engaging epic about the twilight of European monarchy and the struggles of the people they imposed themselves on may be considered a Mexican War and Peace. (Apr.)

Argentinean poet Shua is a master of the bon mot. Each of these concise, lyrical pieces—somewhere between aphorism, anecdote and poem, and rarely longer than a paragraph—contains a fluid, perplexing, and (often) highly amusing thought. Shua creates a fantastically interconnected web with such strands as “Dreams,” “Magic,” “Literature” and “Men and Women,” wherein everyday objects take on a frightening life of their own: “I vigilantly open my bedroom door trying to catch my dolls talking to each other,” begins “Dolls,” while the narrator of “Objects” declares, “The nightstand brings me breakfast in bed.” Relations between men and women assume a primal urgency, such as in “Flattery”: “This isn’t the work of a human being,” says a man staring at the bloody marks left in his flesh. “Come on, what a flatterer,” replies the sharp-clawed narrator. Shua gives some of the well-known myths of literature her own gleeful spin, as in “Wolf,” which finds Little Red Riding Hood wondering, “What does my grandmother have that I don’t?” These dreamlike landscapes will delight and charm readers new to Shua’s work. (Apr.)

At the start of this flawed thriller from Canadian author Kelln (Method of Madness), an autistic boy appears to be able to read the real-life Voynich manuscript, a 500-year-old book written in a language that linguists, historians, religious scholars and even advanced decryption technology can’t decipher. By the time Fr. Benicio Valori, a Vatican investigator, arrives at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, where the mysterious manuscript is housed, the book is missing from its display room and what’s left of a security guard lies nearby. Disregarding orders from his superiors to suspend the mission, Valori uncovers some bombshell revelations concerning the existence of rogue angels, their forsaken offspring and a coverup of biblical proportions. Da Vinci Code fans will enjoy the seamless blend of fact and fiction, pedal-to-the-metal pacing and provocative religious speculation, but the ending comes as a letdown after the exciting build-up. (Apr.)

Despite an impressive biography that includes stints with Britain’s Special Boat Service and private security, Falconer (The Hostage) delivers a stand-alone thriller that conveys little of his expertise. When Bernard Mallory, a royal marine corporal, is separated from his unit during a search-and-rescue operation in the second Iraq War, he stumbles on a cache of millions of dollars, which he buries until he can return and safely retrieve it. After leaving the service, Mallory accepts work as a private security guard in the Green Zone, where his scheme to profit is complicated by his growing attraction to a beautiful local, Tasneen Rahman, whose brother, Abdul, witnessed the abduction of Jeffrey Lamont, an employee of a communications company who turns out to be a Milwaukee beer magnate’s black sheep son. Coincidently, Mallory’s latest client is an American journalist assigned to cover the Lamont story. Readers hoping for a sophisticated view of the dangers of 2004 Iraq will be disappointed. (Apr.)

Its title alone should win this frothy fantasy a following among harried gals juggling craven ambition and goddesslike domesticity. It can’t hurt that Sanders, the pseudonym for Brit writing partners Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders, has been there and done that (Goodbye, Jimmy Choo). Here, the duo take traditional gender roles and turn them upside down with busy sportswear marketer Alex and perennially out-of-work actor Frankie. Alex realizes she needs somebody to cook, clean, run errands and babysit her imperious mom, Bean, and through a series of mishaps she ends up with Frankie—a wacky twist that plays out with all the predictable pratfalls. But a tepid love story gets a shot of adrenaline from strong supporting characters, including diva Bean, who strikes just the right balance between fragile and fierce. Delightfully harebrained, there’s a method to everyone’s madness and an unwavering moral compass: follow your heart, trust your family and friends—and don’t be too quick to judge the hired help. (Apr.)

Quincy Massey, the detective star of Brown’s bland latest, rolls into Huttig, Ark., intending to find out what happened to the missing Ralph Contiello. Quincy’s instantly taken with Ralph’s sister-in-law, Catherine, and while he knows that she and her two sisters aren’t telling the truth, the attraction can’t be denied, even if she doesn’t want to get too close to the man who could put everyone she cares about in prison. While the investigation is the spur to bring Quincy and Catherine together, it quickly takes a backseat to the stereotypical dance of courtship. The setting—a post-WWI factory town—is nicely done, but the anemic plot suffers from weak dialogue (“I’ve seen it all and nothing surprises me”) and sedate archetype leads. (Apr.)

Romance author Lynxwiler (Along Came a Cowboy) tries to set up a city girl/country boy attraction of opposites in this tale of aspiring actress Crystal McCord, who flees New York for her parents’ ranch in Arkansas after her urban cad of a boyfriend sleeps with her roommate. But since the city girl is from the country, there really isn’t much fish-out-of-water tension, nor a lot of any other kind of plot tension. The titular cowgirl isn’t sufficiently reluctant around her handsome rancher neighbor Jeremy Buchanan, and a dark plot complication—a missing child—resolves itself rather quickly. Crystal’s family history provides another wrinkle, and a smidgen of depth. Clever dialogue flows easily and wittily, almost screenplay-like, the best thing about this romance. Those who like their inspirational romance over easy will be happy to meet the McCord family, with enough siblings and backstories to kick off a series. (Apr.)

Djibouti-born Waberi’s brief and concentrated tale—part satire, part fable, part fever-dream—imagines the world turned upside down: a war rages between Quebec and the American Midwest, and all of “Euramerica” is a dark, barbaric hellhole. In the United States of Africa, however—land of Africola and Sarr Mbock coffeehouses—peace and prosperity reign, even if tinged with xenophobia (“White Trash, Back Home!” a headline blares). And it’s there that a dreamy, restless young artist named Maya ponders her history. Adopted as a child by a doctor on a humanitarian mission in Paris, Maya longs to find her birth mother, even as her beloved adoptive one lies dying. She travels to France, “a country moldering at the roots, smelling of urine and need,” to find out, and though there’s no bliss-filled reunion, Waberi manages to convince of the power of art and love to heal very real rifts. (Mar.)

Hofmann, internationally famous translator and editor of the anthology Twentieth-Century German Poetry, deservedly won attention in Britain 20 years ago for his own, unsparing, autobiographical sequences, propelled by sad insights and armored with cold detail. One such poem shows romance gone bad in a tiny apartment, “this boxroom shaped like a loaf of bread,” where “all things tend towards the yellow of unlove” and “Familiarity bred mostly the fear of its loss.” Many other poems concern Hofmann’s (apparently cold and workaholic) father, whose vocation “kept us fed till we were big enough to leave the nest.” Such autobiographical verse—indebted, fruitfully, to Robert Lowell—reached one apex in Acrimony (1986) and another, mellower fruition in the U.K.-only Approximately Nowhere (1999), by which time Hofmann had also perfected disillusioned-yet-observant travel poems, setting them in Mexico and Florida as well as within the U.K.: “The nouveau oil building/ spoils the old water town, spook town, old folks’ town.” This second U.S. Selected reintroduces the poet Hofmann to U.S. readers. (May)

Enticingly strange, and only occasionally incomprehensible, the vertiginous cityscapes, dissonant songs and fractured chronicles in Wheeler’s verse, generously sampled in this selection from her four books, have attracted attention since her 1993 debut Bag o’ Diamonds, whose jumpy verse offered, among other properties, “several years of careful steps across/ lower Manhattan. A looming sail in a nightmare.” Subsequent volumes added songlike refrains and disturbing bits of Southern dialect, to a speaking self pressed and twisted to its limits: “The crux is alive at the fork of me.” Cartoons and caricatures, pleas and imprecations, fall together in Wheeler’s disturbing vortices. Just when her circumlocutions threaten to collapse into a shtick, she expands her range, and changes focus, in the exciting longer poems of Ledger (2005): more explicit in their attentions to history and to political economy, these poems use collage to follow the fates of their characters—the best of them juxtapose the poet’s memories of her teenage shoplifting with scenes from the long-ago birth of the Dutch bourgeoisie. Two new poems cap the volume, Wheeler’s first appearance from a New York trade press. If the selection’s assorted registers, leaps and postmodern disconnections will baffle some readers, it should delight others ready for her smart effects. (Apr.)

Often breathtaking, at times impenetrable, this latest collection from Kocot (Poem for the End of Time) intersperses frantic images with hauntingly simple and loss-laden outcries. Throughout, there is the poet’s thwarted longing for an understanding that cannot come: “all poets and poetry elude me,/ especially myself and my own”; Kocot’s speaker—a voice simultaneously adorable, helpless and deeply brave—is both obsessed with and frustrated by process: “See, in a poem, things actually/ have to be doing things,/ not just floating around.” While poems go by without offering a foothold (“Trapezoidal sleep, spell-check aflame with saints,/ roseate silo, the arrows are dark”), Kocot’s most lucid moments achieve a kind of visionary clarity (“The waters are very simple today./ Hospital blue, in error of twilight”), a beautiful refusal to accept the inevitable (“Listen, I said it before, die/ and come back as fire”) and inklings of the kind of loss that could yield such a powerful, almost overflowing book: “I wait to go to you,/ smoking and breaking curses under/ the Jackson Pollock fuck you moon.” (Apr.)

Often breathtaking in its erudition, at other times imbued with a forceful simplicity, tricky in its sensibility yet clearly driven by affection, this third collection from the prolific Waldrep (Disclamor) might be the best book of prose poems to appear in a long while. The poems’ titles—modeled after the format of old American musical instruction books—mostly inquire into definitions of musical terms: “What Is a Key Signature,” “What Is a Motet.” An archicembalo is a keyboard instrument that plays microtonal music, with more than 12 notes per octave. The fine distinctions and unfamiliar harmonies such music contains reappear in Waldrep’s curious paragraphs, packed as they may be with odd words and non sequiturs: “Sardine of the breath, phoretic flicker. From the bandstand click of a heel like a tooth.” They also pay attention to human action and need. They have jokes (“Bad parties are in evidence everywhere”), anecdotes about children (Waldrep often thinks about names children give things), even embedded anthems: “What is union, time’s whistles and bells, the whole commodious diapason behind which a third nation lingers.” Readers estranged at first might well stick with it. For all the confusing pleasures of Waldrep’s phrases, they contain valuable instruction, too. (Apr.)

Solid, moving and thoughtful, this eighth collection from the Maine poet laureate follows the real lives of real people: stanzaic lyrics, most unrhymed and most in quiet American language, depict the poet, her son, her daughter, her friends, her ailing or deceased parents, her kind stepfather and the locales and vistas that enter their lives, from the Atlantic shoreline to the California coast. Careful poems depict air travel; a fine elegy, “Twentieth Century Limited,” laments the heyday of rail travel while its tracklike couplets mourn a traveling father. Songbirds, migratory birds and bird-watching resonate throughout Sholl’s pages: “a bird/ flying off doesn’t have to mean gone,/ it could mean: look at that bright going.” Sholl also listens to blues and jazz. A lively, long-lined poem imitates scat singing; another, in more typical language, questions the lost giants of Delta blues: “You who were not recorded to be touched up/ and played back later, did you love the raw world more,/ love the shy songbird’s refusal to be seen?” Sholl’s lesser poems grow predictable or dated, with the same consoling epiphanies each time. At her best, though, Sholl (Late Psalm) represents patience, affection and generous attention to whoever she loves and to what she hears and sees. (Apr.)

This debut from the promising Zeavin—who is now an undergrad at Yale and has associations with both the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and Naropa University—is a lush, fantastical and surprisingly mature collection. Playful at times, dark at others, Zeavin references everything from the Holocaust to the X-files in poems that are fascinated with history, both real and imagined, and have the atmosphere of a decaying modern fairy tale. Zeavin is best in her clearest moments, managing to be at once violent, humorous and interesting: “I saw the bird explode overhead/ feathers falling little gnats of blood/ and your shotgun dropped to my foot: you call this dinner.” Each poem inhabits its own space, outside of time and reality, in which characters like the Good Gesture Idiot and Nick DeBoer the Bank Man are free to kiss clocks or spread brownie batter on their knees as they see fit, and in which no hero looks “like the prince from any kind of sane/ province.” At her best, Zeavin is as sure-footed as a new poet 10 years her senior. (Apr.)

Some form of light—sunlight, moonlight, starlight, streetlight— appears in every one of the 18 poems in Dickman’s debut. Slight and spare, the poems’ frequent recurring themes accumulate beneficially, linking all the individual poems into one, more substantial, piece. Nothing grand takes place in these poems, but the quietness of the language and the creeping, sinister subject matter (heroin addiction, abusive fathers) make this highly anticipated book captivating and very readable, “a nice description of something beautiful that doesn’t exist anymore,” as Dickman writes. Elsewhere, he grimly recalls, “No one I loved had died for almost two years // Then Amy bled out / in a bathtub.” As one half of the Dickman twins (both are actors, and the other, Matthew, also recently published his first poetry collection), Michael has received the kind of advance publicity rare for a new poet. Profiles in both Poets and Writers and the New Yorker as well as publication during National Poetry Month should ensure a larger than usual audience. And the attention is not undeserved; Dickman’s book moves with careful intensity as it confidently illuminates buried, contemporary suffering: “My little sister, tied to her trundle bed, crying, forced to eat slices of orange/ she believed were her goldfish.” (Apr.)

This 10th book from the prolific Phillips (Quiver of Arrows) is a quiet yet wounded reflection on Phillips’ signature subjects: relationships, distances, identity, and damage. Phillips’ remarkable ability to be clear yet illusive, as well as his dizzying syntax, are ever- present as the poems coil into places of confusion: “Oh, sometimes it is as if desire had been given form, and/ acreage, and I’d been left for lost there. Amazement grips me,// I grip it back.” Rendering visceral moments with surprising leisure, “like blood with a drawl to it,” Phillips searches slowly but relentlessly for answers to unanswerable questions: “who’s to say what will not be useful?” Critics who find Phillips’ poems overwrought at times are unlikely to change their minds now, but for his many fans, this collection is more evidence that Phillips is making good on his offer to “show you what it looks like/ when surrender, and an instinct not to, run side by side.” (Apr.)

Transformations—from the everyday to the wondrous and/ or haunting—are everywhere in Miller’s elegant second book. The poems are at once dreamlike and fervent in their will to cleave to the material world. “Sleep gives the body back its mouth,” writes Miller in one poem. Elsewhere, the shouts of a beaten man become “flashbulbs/ striking the river,” and a lightning storm becomes a meditation on loss and clarity. In the title poem, everyday objects—a hammer, glasses, a cup, a matchbook—take on mythic significance, as if they had souls of their own, and a lover’s kiss becomes “another object pressed/ between them.” Miller (Only the Senses Sleep) mixes what is with what we perceive and what could be without explanation or commentary. A series of poems labeled “notes for a film in verse” continue Miller’s exploration of the intersection of observation and artifice, this time through whimsical characters—a tightrope walker hiking telephone wires across the country, a pair of distant, angels talking to scarecrows, a girl fascinated by cement trucks, a drawbridge operator in a bar. Miller remains a poet to watch, and one who strives to ”separate/ the seeing from what’s seen.”(Mar.)

This cycle of poems centering on the history of a manuscript of theorems and proofs by Archimedes—also called The Method, and composed in Syracuse around 250 B.C.—raises deep questions, sometimes asked by Archimedes’ book itself, about the forces that act upon a text to change and possibly corrupt its meaning: “The Method had heard some say:/ 'he or she/ took a little part of me/ when they took their leave/ of me.’ ” There’s an elegiac tone throughout, as Steensen confronts the fact that while Archimedes’ manuscript has been recovered, parts have also been destroyed, plagiarized and commodified to the point that the reader, along with the writer, becomes haunted by the notion of an ever-changing text. Steensen guides us through the long journey of this ancient manuscript and artfully demonstrates how a book is a record of power dynamics in this multifaceted exploration of the complicated relationship between an author and her creation, which speaks both for and against its author, contending, “They scheme against you: but I too have My schemes./ Therefore, bear with the unbelievers, and let them be awhile.” (Mar.)

In the midst of financial crisis, Duhamel’s 11th collection opens with prose poems printed on the back of pretend $100,000 bills, whose shape limits the length of the poems, suggesting the ways that money limits art and the world in which art is made. This power is most heartbreaking in the section “one-armed bandits,” which tells of a freak escalator accident in Atlantic City that injured the poet’s parents. With characteristic forthrightness, Duhamel (Two and Two) recollects “blood soaking the silver escalator steps, the casino carpet.// Up and down and round and round. All the bald lemons and cherries spinning.” Duhamel’s blunt, occasionally playful voice is versatile, treating subjects like war, gender, porn, language and also illness: “I sobered up and looked at my plate of pale scrambled eggs,/ what I imagined cancer looked like.” Although long lines and expository prose blocks dominate this collection, the poet’s lyricism emerges in moments when she employs traditional form in surprising ways, such as a sestina in which every line ends with a variant of Sean Penn’s surname: “But honest, I come in peace, Sean Penn,/ writing on my plane ride home. I want no part of your penthouse/ on the snowy slopes of your Aspen.” Duhamel doesn’t break new aesthetic ground, but she has written some of the first poetry to deeply register the current economic crisis. (Feb.)

In Levine’s highly amusing if rather breathless eighth Jaine Austen mystery (after 2008’s Killing Bridezilla), freelance writer Jaine gets a gig conducting a writing course on a seven-day cruise from L.A. to Mexico. The trouble begins when Jaine realizes her sneaky cat, Prozac, has stowed away in her luggage. Jaine bargains with Samoa, her eccentric steward, to keep Prozac’s presence a secret by promising to read and edit Do Not Distub (sic), his 900-page thriller about a “swashbuckling steward.” Levine’s lively wit keeps the familiar Love Boat–esque shenanigans afloat as Emily Pritchard, an elderly wealthy singleton, falls for Graham Palmer III, a botoxed “gentleman escort” and gold digger, who’s engaged to Cookie Esposito, the ship’s lounge singer. Emily’s engagement to Graham throws her family in a tizzy, ditto the spurned Cookie, who’s later suspected of the gigolo’s ice-pick murder. In the delicious denouement, Samoa’s bulky manuscript serves a useful nonliterary purpose. (May)

Political intrigue and ancient superstition loom large in this excellent mystery from Hays (Murder in the Latin Quarter), the first in a new series set in Dark Age Britain, when the Arthurian legend was born. Lord Arthur ap Uther asks Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, a clerk who has lost an arm battling Saxon invaders, to investigate the brutal slaying of Eleonore, a servant girl whose body is found outside the home of Arthur’s former teacher, Merlin, with Merlin’s bloody knife nearby. Malgywn must find the real killer fast, because the lords from all the local tribes have come to Castellum Arturius to choose a new leader, and ambitious contenders could seize on Arthur’s connection to a murderer to discredit him. One of the book’s many strengths is the way Malgywn, whose wife has died at Saxon hands, evolves from a bitter drunkard into a respected and valued adviser. History buffs as well as mystery fans will be amply rewarded. (Apr.)

Near the start of Hall’s fast-paced 10th Puzzle Lady mystery (after 2008’s The Sudoku Puzzle Murders), Dale Harper, the Bakerhaven, Conn., police chief, asks crossword columnist Cora Felton to solve a crossword puzzle found at the death bed of a 92-year-old cancer patient, Herbert Overmeyer. Since Cora’s crosswording cohort and niece, Sherry Carter, and Sherry’s husband, Aaron Grant, are honeymooning, Cora turns for help to portly puzzle maker Harvey Beerbaum. When it turns out Overmeyer died of arsenic poisoning, the authorities have a homicide case on their hands. Meanwhile, Cora and Chief Harper uncover the victim’s connection to a 50-year-old convenience store robbery in Alabama. The suspense rises with the murders of two unlucky souls silenced to protect the killer’s identity. Snappy dialogue and a clever resolution—plus an assortment of crosswords and sudokus—will satisfy series fans. (Apr.)

Chief Insp. Van Veeteren heads a sterling ensemble cast in Nesser’s fine police procedural, his second (after Borkmann’s Point) to win the best novel award from the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy. A nameless young woman, soon after burying her mother and learning what sealed her mother’s fate and her own, embarks on a ruthless course of vengeance. While the woman’s motivation remains vague, her method is crystal clear—killing shots at close range followed by additional shots “below the belt.” There are virtually no clues when the first victim is found, and precious few when the second occurs less than two weeks later. Slow, meticulous police work eventually produces a tenuous connection between the victims—one that suggests a potential pool of almost 30 targets. Nesser keeps readers guessing whether the killer will complete her gruesome task before the police can uncover the fatal link that binds killer and victims. (Apr.)

Fans of old-fashioned gothics will welcome this tale of love, betrayal and death from British author Leroy (The River House). At first glance, Grace, a single mom, and Sylvie, her bright, lovely child, have a simple, happy life. Though Grace struggles to make ends meet, all is well until Sylvie begins to act out at preschool and with playmates. She has tantrums, makes odd remarks and has an extreme fear of water. As Sylvie’s behavior worsens, Grace is at a loss to explain her daughter’s outbursts. She seeks help, only to find herself and their “lifestyle” to blame. When Sylvie recalls what seem to be past-life experiences, Grace looks up a university professor who’s studied the paranormal in the hope he can resolve Sylvie’s increasingly erratic behavior. Heavy with atmosphere and rich in detail, Leroy’s prose lures readers into a disturbing murder mystery. Her characters are as realistic and intriguing as her locales in England and Ireland. (Apr.)

In this assured mystery from British author Herron (Reconstruction), Sarah Tucker, a freelance publisher who also raises ostriches, identifies a body dredged from the River Tyne in Newcastle as her friend Zoë Boehm, an apparent suicide. Tucker, however, doubts Boehm, who worked as a private investigator, took her own life, as the police believe. Instead, Tucker suspects that Boehm’s demise was connected with her probes into Alan Talmadge, a creep who targeted middle-aged women and killed them in a way that looked like accident or suicide. Relying on her wits, Tucker takes over the search for Talmadge. She looks into a number of people of interest who were in Newcastle at the time of Boehm’s death, including a gangster’s son and a prominent businessman. While the climax won’t surprise every reader, Herron does a nice job of planting red herrings and making his heroine’s amateur sleuthing plausible. (Apr.)

A party of plant hunters who are dying off one by one is the intriguing, Agatha Christie–like scenario of Eglin’s less than satisfying fourth English garden mystery (after 2007’s The Water Lily Cross). A colleague dispatches retired botanist Lawrence Kingston after a member of a recent horticultural expedition to China is run off the road while on his motorcycle and lies gravely injured in an Oxford hospital. The patient’s ramblings reveal that disquieting events may have occurred on the journey and raise questions about the man’s identity and the group’s objectives. After the patient’s death, Kingston interviews other members of the party and their relatives, gradually uncovering a conspiracy of greed, blackmail, fraud and murder. In the end, the awkward introduction of plot elements, a propensity to tell instead of show, stilted and unrealistic dialogue, a title that bears only a peripheral relation to the narrative and digressions about Kingston’s personal life bury a promising premise. (Apr.)

In Befeler’s cleverly plotted if somewhat sleepy second cozy (after 2007’s Retirement Homes Are Murder), 85-year-old crime magnet Paul Jacobson, who suffers from short-term memory loss, moves from Hawaii to Boulder, Colo., to live with his middle-aged son, his son’s wife and their 12-year-old daughter. On the plane, Paul sits next to a sales representative for Colorado Mountain Retirement Properties, who’s dead by flight’s end from what’s later determined to be a martial arts body blow delivered while most other passengers were asleep. Once in Boulder, Paul attends a CMRP presentation, where the speaker winds up dead with a broken neck. Suspecting CMRP is involved in fraud, Paul launches an investigation with the help of his aspiring sleuth granddaughter that grows to include other cases. Adding spice is Paul’s old girlfriend from Hawaii, who admires Paul of the “Geezer Enforcement Squad” for not letting age or disability get in the way of his living life to its fullest. (Apr.)

Todd’s second mystery set in ancient Greece (after 2007’s Blind Eye) offers an ingenious premise but only routine prose and characterization. At a time of great political peril, a delegation of Scythians arrives in Sparta to negotiate a trade agreement that would bolster the city-state’s economy. Meanwhile, tensions between citizens and helots (slaves pressed into hard labor or the army) as well as the hovering threat of the Krypteia (the secret police) make daily life difficult. When three people fall victim to an unknown killer, the Krypteia commander recruits Iliona, recently appointed the high priestess of the Temple of Eurotas, to solve the murders, which the rulers of Sparta have concluded are the work of an Athenian agent bent on destabilizing the regime. Readers emotionally invested in the first book in the series will likely find the big reveal at the end shocking, but the motivation for the slaughter may strike others as weak. (Apr.)

Fans of the late Tony Hillerman will embrace Ault’s outstanding third mystery to feature Jamaica Wild, a resource agent for the Bureau of Land Management in Taos, N.M. (after 2008’s Wild Inferno). When Jamaica seeks shelter during a blizzard in Pueblo Peña at the abandoned San Pedro de Arbués Indian School for her injured horse, Rooster, and her wolf companion, Mountain, she stumbles on a terrifying sight—the frozen corpse of Cassie Morgan, a strangled Anglo woman from whose neck hangs a sign in red crayon that reads “I am not an Indian.” Though Jamaica is horrified to learn that Cassie was a former school matron “remembered for depriving, humiliating, and beating the Indian children,” she continues to help the FBI investigation into what is deemed a hate crime. Outraged by Jamaica’s interference, the twisted killer targets both Jamaica and Mountain. Ault’s wildlife expertise and knowledge of Tanoah culture enhance a poignant plot. (Mar.)

Prolific horror author Houarner (The Oz Suite) assembles a disturbing collection of 13 reprints and 12 originals. Most of the tales highlighting his twisted supernatural assassin, Max (featured in 2001’s The Beast That Was Max), are brief, but “Like Smoke Rising from the Burning Ghats” offers detailed descriptions of a young boy in Calcutta becoming something monstrous, and the novella “Dancing with the Skeletons at the Feast of the Dead” is almost symphonic in its depiction of brutality in a small Mexican village. The other stories are no less dark: in “Let Me Tell You a Story,” a babysitter manipulates her charges into committing acts of evil, while “The Shape” is a harsh tale of mental illness and abuse. The bleakness might turn off some readers, but fans of intense, psychology-driven horror and sharp writing will be more than satisfied. (Apr.)

Smalltown politics and big-city newcomers mix badly with a family of rural magicians in this dreary modern fantasy. Bestselling author Holly Lachlan has come home to Pocahontas County, Va., with her adoring husband, Evan (a former U.S. marshal, now the county sheriff). Together they attend a fund-raising party at an antebellum mansion turned into an upscale inn by a strange German investor. Herr Weiss’s hotel is chock-full of sinister secrets, and the assembled guests—including a charming DA and some of Holly’s magically endowed relatives—must combine forces to investigate. The premise has promise, but the mystery elements don’t gain much of a foothold until late in the game, and Rawn (Spellbinder) frequently interrupts them with vast swaths of left-wing political pontification, elaborate matchmaking attempts and cutesy fawning between the protagonists. (Apr.)

In this neat, high-concept thriller, Irvine (The Narrows) introduces us to L.A. in the year 2040, where global warming and high-tech identity theft are daily facts of life. Martin Kindred, a mid-level insurance executive, works for a company pioneering a radical new prison cost-cutting program. Convicts serving life without parole are offered millions of dollars in exchange for immediately “taking the needle,” and Martin is tasked with vetting the prisoners for execution and presenting the awards to their beneficiaries. The controversial program immediately revitalizes the pro-life movement and puts increased strains on Martin’s already fragile marriage. Then Martin’s brother, a cop, is murdered and both the program and his life begin to unravel. This well-written, suspenseful and just slightly absurdist novel will appeal strongly to fans of classic dystopian science fiction with a smooth modern twist. (Apr.)

This slim collection of Bradbury’s classic short works on the subject of substitute people contains little new material: “Wind-Up World” is a vignette of two men complaining about the increasing mechanization of their world, while the screenplay outline “Murder by Facsimile” faithfully reformats the 1950 story “Punishment Without Crime,” in which a man kills a replica of his unfaithful wife. Cherry picking the marionette-themed pieces from Bradbury’s extensive oeuvre does create a nicely unified tone, however. Only in the famous “I Sing the Body Electric” is the electronic substitution for humanity truly satisfactory. In contrast, “Marionettes Inc.” and “Changeling” are traditional tales of replacement gone wrong, with the real horror coming from human love in all its stifling insufficiency. The end result is most appealing to Bradbury completists and those who want a good introduction to his work. (Apr.)

This fantasy of manners, set in the world of 2007’s The Dream Thief, wears a layer of Regency romance like a corset that doesn’t quite fit. The love triangle builds quickly between three drákon, magic-users hiding in plain sight in 1766 England: Zoe, who hides her gifts to keep other drákon from using her as a pawn; Hayden, her fiancé, sent to investigate a rumored group of European magicians; and Lord Rhys, Zoe’s childhood sweetheart turned insufferable womanizer. When Hayden’s letters cease and Rhys is captured, Zoe sets off to the rescue. Since drákon are essentially monogamous and classless, the charming upper-class rake motif falls flat, but having the heroine unapologetically save the hero is a welcome move, and Abé neatly evokes the adolescent frustration of fending off overcautious elders and feeling distant from one’s society. (Apr.)

In this middling sequel to 2007’s An Unexpected Apprentice, “smallfolk” (read: hobbit) heroine Tildi Summerbee now has charge of the Great Book, whose Runes manipulate the Runes borne by every being or object in the world. When a young Knight dies after changing his personal Rune, she begins to understand the power she possesses. Tildi’s protector, Abbess Sharhava, wants the book; so does the powerful and unscrupulous Knemet the Maker. Aided faithfully by the centaur Rin and a group of other friends, Tildi struggles to protect herself and find the honorable path. The story begins slowly as a great deal of background is packed in, but once the captures and chases begin, the pace picks up. Tildi’s fans will find that the second book is more inventive, though dulled by pedestrian prose and cliché. (Apr.)

Regency bestseller Carlyle (Never Romance a Rake) kicks off a new series full of James Bond–style international intrigue and passionate trysts. Lady Phaedra Northampton is in a shop inquiring about her maid’s missing sister, Millie, when a mysterious Russian staggers in and falls dead at her feet, a knife protruding from his back. Handsome rake Tristan Talbot, heir to the marquess of Hauxton, takes on the search for the killer, and Phae insists on helping him investigate, suspecting a link to Millie’s disappearance. The two quickly sense undeniable chemistry that has Phae reconsidering her vow of spinsterhood and Tristan admitting that perhaps women are good for more than quick flings. Though at times the spy craft seems a touch incongruous, Carlyle’s fans will enjoy cheering for her fearless heroine. (Apr.)

Forced to take the shape of a man, a unicorn struggles to survive in late Victorian England in this involving but overwrought paranormal romance. American heiress Mariah Marron weds the earl of Donnington after a brief courtship. Unaware that her heritage is part supernatural, she has no idea the earl selected her for nefarious magical purposes. She soon discovers a half-naked man locked in a small cell on the earl’s estate and befriends him, naming him Ash and helping him learn to speak. Ash falls in love with Mariah, but as he regains his memories of being unicorn king Arion, he decides to betray her in order to return to his magical land. The story unfolds with twist after twist until the convoluted climax descends sharply into absurd melodrama. (Apr.)

Known for cop thrillers, J.A. Konrath (Fuzzy Navel) debuts his Jack Kilborn pseudonym and reveals some serious horror chops in this carnival of carnage. Five government-sponsored “Red-ops” fighters, psychotic torturers with modified brains and extensive training in killing anyone in their way, have been “accidentally” assigned to a mission in small, sleepy Safe Haven, Wis. Gen. Alton Tope sends in a dozen Green Berets, two other Special Forces teams, navy SEALs and some marines, all of whom may be just about enough to stop the killers. The townies also band together to save their little rural paradise, though several get trampled into red goo along the way. Any attempt to make a point about U.S. support of international terrorism gets a bit lost in the gore fest, but fans of gross-out horror will love it. (Apr.)

In a shift from her Jane Kelly mystery series (Candy Apple Red, etc.), Bush pens an eerie suspense novel woven with a compelling romance and a touch of the supernatural. In rural Oregon, Gemma LaPorte wakes up in a hospital with a fragmented memory. Det. Will Tanninger tells Gemma that she’s a prime suspect in a hit and run that critically injured a child molester. As Gemma’s memories start to return and she finds notes she had made about brain function, she wonders whether the concussion is the only reason for her amnesia. Suspense builds as a subplot involving a serial killer who burns his victims slowly merges with Gemma’s story. As Will and Gemma’s relationship becomes increasingly intimate, the plot takes a darker, more sinister turn, and the terrifying denouement will have readers riveted. (Apr.)

Previous books by Brown (Clumsy; Little Things) have explored his romantic life and eventual progression to a steady relationship and fatherhood in his trademarked slice-of-life style, leavened with awkward, self-deprecating humor. His latest explains how he began making comics, with each chapter focusing on a topic or event leading up to Brown’s early comics, with many of the episodes overlapping and out of order chronologically. As Brown explains in the epilogue, “I try to arrange stories to express the idea of figuring things out,” leading to some meandering at times. Painful college art critiques, health problems (Crohn’s disease), forays into substance abuse and a stint working in a wooden-shoe factory make up the bulk of the events, but Brown doesn’t stay long enough on any one topic to get tiresome. The art is simple and crude at times, but has a comic strip’s direct appeal—Brown’s facial expressions are exaggerated, but make him likable. While some may find this extended trip to one cartoonist’s past egotistical, Brown is still an engaging companion on the journey. (Apr.)

Trondheim, a 2006 Angouleme Festival Grand Prize winner, creates autobiographical sketches with a Seinfeld-ian mania for capturing the quotidian details of normal life, particularly its irritations. The sketches skirt the border of solipsism without ever quite tripping over it. Following up last year’s first Little Nothings volume, Trondheim (Dungeon) presents a comic version of himself drawn as a humanoid chicken—other people show up as dogs, birds and cats, albeit walking on two legs and wearing human clothing—who obsesses over his health and trawls the Internet for obscure facts when he should be working. Most every scene is encapsulated on a single page, but recurring themes crop up throughout, whether it’s Trondheim’s love of the oddball tidbit (discovering that the average human produces six liters of saliva a day provides room for endless speculation) or following his misadventures in foreign lands as he jets off to various comics fairs. Although clearly much of this material was born out of artist’s block and stretches of empty space that make up the day of those who work from home (see the subtitle), Trondheim’s light wit and springlike watercolor tones give even the most curmudgeonly observations a lilting and jesting flair. (Mar.)

In the previous four volumes, our slacker hero got the band together, got a job and got the girl. Now he has to learn how to live with “happily ever after” and finds that there is no such thing. The previous four volumes of O’Malley’s cult hit established the world of Pilgrim, a 24-year-old without any actual skills other than presumed awesomeness. To win the hand of the lovely Ramona Flowers, he must defeat her seven “Evil Ex-Boyfriends” in video-game style battles that incarnate millennial anxieties over finding love, holding a job and somehow managing to stay cool all at once. This time out, he’s got to fight the handsome twins Kyle and Ken Katayanagi who are even more awesome than Scott himself. More importantly, now that he and Ramona are cohabiting, they face danger from the jealousies and insecurities of couplehood. O’Malley’s cartooning has gotten better and better, and there are moments of comedy, high action and even poetry, as when Scott and a ball gown–clad Ramona flee an insufferable party in a daring escape. This penultimate chapter of the Scott Pilgrim saga is one of the strongest ones yet and should win new readers in droves, especially with a Pilgrim movie slated for the end of the year. (Feb.)

The Japanese have it all over Americans when it comes to recycling. Negima Magister Negi Magi started as a schoolboy harem manga series Negima! by Akamatsu (Love Hina), in which Negi’s a master wizard, even though he’s only 10, assigned to teach English at a girls’ school, so he’s surrounded by more than 30 cute schoolgirls in very short skirts. (Akamatsu’s manga are popular because they serve a variety of fantasies but stay lighthearted instead of creepy.) Negima! became an anime, and then the cartoon was readapted back to manga in this series. Unlike the original comic, this version ran in a magazine aimed at boys under 12, so the characters are cute in a more innocent way, although there are surprisingly explicit panty-revealing scenes or other excuses for nudity once a chapter. The stories also concentrate more on adventure. The first story is original to this version and tells of Negi’s graduation test, a monster-slaying quest that’s a standard “young man finds his inner strength” tale. It also introduces his search for his missing father, to add more depth. The rest of the book features Negi protecting his students from a girl vampire, who’s another student. (Feb.)

The most recent volume of Pekar’s autobiographical anecdotes about the nonevents of his life is so self-reflexive it threatens to swallow its own tail. Pekar has been writing American Splendor comics for well over 30 years, but as they’ve become a bigger part of his life, they’ve also become the subject of more of his stories. Many of the several dozen short pieces here at least touch on the process of working on his comics—a few are even variations on the groan-worthy “what am I going to write a story about? I know—I’ll write about having to come up with a story!” formula. The book’s artists, as usual, are decent to excellent—Pekar’s got a fine eye for collaborators. Darwyn Cooke and Rick Geary contribute stylish short strips, and The Boys artist Darick Robertson is a particularly good match with his fine-lined, detailed facial expressions. A few strips are prime Pekar, observant and witty, especially a David Lapham–drawn piece in which he’s pleased to discover “a hard-working, humane, knowledgeable barber”; he’s also starting to explore the physical difficulties of aging in some stories. Too often, though, this volume simply rambles, with Pekar casting himself as a grouch talking to himself about talking to himself. (Jan.)

Signature

Reviewed by Mark Doty

An archetypal vocabulary entered into the late Agha Shahid Ali’s poems from the Arabic masters he loved, from the passionate popular songs of India and even from Bollywood movies: beloved, mirror, flame, rose. But the romance of these recurrent terms is always countered by the reality of political violence and the harsh and bloody erasure of the poet’s homeland, Kashmir—both the Vale of legend and song and also a “country without a post office,” nearly unreachable, shattered in the late 20th century as territory claimed both by India and by Pakistan. Both forced into exile and drawn abroad by the wider landscape of poetry in English, Ali (1949–2001) was a lifelong traveler; he came of age in a time when “Everyone carries his address in his pocket so at least his body will reach home.” No wonder his poems fill with letters, addresses, envelopes, lost messages and maps, and with images of home recalled and revisited in dreams, themselves a mode of travel. The displaced wanderer carries the “sorrows/ that haunt the survivors of Dispersal that country/ which has no map...” Diaspora, he understood, is a category of being in our time.

Ali’s deep attraction to song, the formal properties that lend even the darkest lyric aspects of pleasure, is everywhere on display here. Ali became well-known for popularizing the ancient Persian poetic form the ghazal among American readers. Many of his own fine examples are collected here, but the poems also reveal the influence of Ali’s friend James Merrill, not only in terms of their formal elegance but in the way that a resonant, emotional ambiguity allows the poet to simultaneously celebrate love and lament a landscape of personal and public losses. “I have no house, ” he writes, “only/ a shadow but whenever you are in need/ of a shadow my shadow is yours.” That combination of rue and generosity feels exactly true to this poet’s character, and that signature blend of warmth and regret shines powerfully throughout this entire collection. Perhaps it’s best exemplified in this passage, which evokes a performance by the great singer of ghazals, Begum Akhtar: “It was perhaps during the Bangladesh War,/ perhaps there were sirens,// air-raid warnings./ ...but she went on/ singing, and her voice// was coming from far/ away, as if she had already died./ ...it was/ .../a moment when only a lost sea/ can be heard, a time// to recollect/ every shadow, everything the earth was losing.”

Ali so thoroughly inhabits his exile, in this haunting life’s work, that he makes of it—both for his own spirit and for his readers—a dwelling place. (Feb.)

Mark Doty is a memoirist and poet. His Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems won the 2008 National Book Award for Poetry.