Fiction Reviews

Few if any novelists have captured Washington politics with the astute insights of Just, who here casts his dispassionate eye on a man who comes to question whether one can achieve a well-lived life on the outskirts of political action. Born and bred to the political arena, Alec Malone, son of a powerhouse U.S. senator, becomes an outsider twice removed, first by choosing photography as his profession and then by turning down an assignment in Vietnam. Content with his wife Lucia, the daughter of a Czech refugee, Alec dislikes the neighborhood cocktail parties, where a cosmopolitan mix of émigrés and exiles makes Lucia aware of the cultural chasm running through her marriage. Alec is devastated when she leaves him and bemused when, much later, his daughter follows in Senator Malone’s footsteps, though it’s the sudden appearance of Lucia’s long-lost father that provokes Alec to question the meaning of an existence that has avoided the barricades. Just writes with confidence and authority as he works through larger themes of politics, history, war and historical judgment. This intellectually rigorous narrative is absorbing, timely and very Washington. (July)

Harbison (Secrets of a Shoe Addict) pushes a thin plot to its word-count limits in her latest confection, the tale of two former friends who reconnect at their 20th high school reunion. When Allie Denty—tall, blonde and, these days, just a bit heavy—discovers her boyfriend in the sack with another woman, her primary coping mechanism involves a credit card and the Sephora counter. Allie figures that some Dior lashes will help her feel more confident at her reunion—an event that the lovely, formerly mousy Olivia Pelham has no intention of attending until her mother shows up on her doorstep, licking her wounds from a breakup with husband number five. At the reunion, Allie and Olivia have an awkward meeting and go their separate ways until Allie learns that a mutual friend plans to marry a cosmetically enhanced Mean Girl from their class. It’s “life makeover” time for both women, as they get in touch with their true feelings about beauty, careers and, most importantly, love. Like the face cream from which it takes its title, this is slick, light and indulgent. (July)

Christensen follows The Great Man with this slightly lesser work, a coming-of-middle-age novel that explores the sexual lives of three women in their 40s. Best friends since their college days, trust-funder Indrani, therapist Josie and L.A. rocker Raquel are like three very different but close sisters. After flirting with a man at a New York party, Josie realizes that she is sexually starving and decides to leave her husband, though Indrani thinks it’s a terrible move. Meanwhile, on the left coast, the nearly washed-up ex-junkie Raquel becomes embroiled in a scandal when she’s smeared as the other woman to a young actor with a pregnant girlfriend. Raquel hightails it to Mexico City and begs a less than-reluctant Josie to join her. From here the novel takes a predictable route as the women drink their way across the city, Raquel spirals further out of control, and Josie’s inner vixen is awakened. The novel loses some of its mojo in the location change—Mexico City seems just out of focus—but the characters are marvelously realized, and when Christensen’s on a roll, her wit is irresistible. (June)

Twelve-year-old Gwenni Morgan bears witness as her family crumbles under the weight of its secrets in Strachan’s lyrical debut. In a small Welsh village swirling with secrets and gossip, few are willing to tell the truth about who they are. Gwenni soars above the local intrigue in her dreams—each night as she drifts off to sleep she flies away from her family and over the nearby fields and farms—and hopes someday to fly during the day as well. Though most, including her mother, see Gwenni’s unending curiosity as a nuisance, local schoolteacher Elin Evans nurtures Gwenni’s dreams of a different life. When Elin’s husband, Ifan, disappears, town tongues wag, and when his body is found, Gwenni’s mother mourns him more than seems proper. Strachan ramps up the tension, as Gwenni is caught between loyalties and learns some damning family secrets. The author’s light touch keeps the story unfamiliar and surprising, while Gwenni’s über-precocious narration revels in a love for language and reveals an unspoiled innocence about the world. It’s small, quiet and nicely done. (June)

Palahniuk’s 10th novel (after Snuff) is a potent if cartoonish cultural satire that succeeds despite its stridently confounding prose. A gang of adolescent terrorists trained by an unspecified totalitarian state (the boys and girls are guided by quotations attributed to Marx, Hitler, Augusto Pinochet, Idi Amin, etc.) infiltrate America as foreign exchange students. Their mission: to bring the nation to its knees through Operation Havoc, an act of mass destruction disguised as a science project. Narrated by skinny 13-year-old Pgymy, the propulsive plot deconstructs American fixtures, among them church (“religion propaganda distribution outlet”), spelling bees (“forced battle to list English alphabet letters”) and TV news reporters (“Horde scavenger feast at overflowing anus of world history”), before moving on to a Columbine-like shooting spree by a closeted kid who has fallen in love with the teenage terrorist who raped him in a shopping mall bathroom. Decoding Palahniuk’s characteristically scathing observations is a challenge, as Pygmy’s narrative voice is unbound by rules of grammar or structure (a typical sentence: “Host father mount altar so stance beside bin empty of water”), but perseverance is its own perverse reward in this singular, comic accomplishment. (May)

All good thriller writers know how to build suspense and keep the pages turning, but only better ones deliver tight plots as well, and only the best allow the reader to match wits with both the hero and the author. Bestseller Child does all of that in spades in his 13th Jack Reacher adventure (after Nothing to Lose). Early one morning on a nearly empty Manhattan subway car, the former army MP notices a woman passenger he suspects is a suicide bomber. The deadly result of his confronting her puts him on a trail leading back to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and forward to the war on terrorism. Reacher finds a bit of help among the authorities demanding answers from him, like the NYPD and the FBI, as well as threats and intimidation. And then there are the real bad guys that the old pro must track down and eliminate. Child sets things up subtly and ingeniously, then lets Reacher use both strength and guile to find his way to the exciting climax. (May)

A year after 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon disappeared on her way home from the library in an unnamed rural North Carolina town, her twin brother, Johnny, continues to search the town, street by street, even visiting the homes of known sex offenders, in this chilling novel from Edgar-winner Hart (Down River). Det. Clyde Hunt, the lead cop on Alyssa’s case, keeps a watchful eye on Johnny and his mother, who has deteriorated since Alyssa’s abduction and her husband’s departure soon afterward. When a second girl is snatched, Johnny is even more determined to find his sister, convinced that the perpetrator is the same person who took Alyssa. But what he unearths is more sinister than anyone imagined, sending shock waves through the community and putting Johnny’s own life in danger. Despite a tendency to dip into melodrama, Hart spins an impressively layered tale of broken families and secrets that can kill. 175,000 first printing; author tour. (May)

Set in 1956, bestseller Smith’s edgy second thriller to feature Leo Demidov (after Child 44) depicts the paranoia and instability of the Soviet Union after the newly installed Khrushchev regime leaks a “secret speech” laying out Stalin’s brutal abuses. Now working as a homicide detective, Leo has long since repudiated his days as an MGB officer, but his former colleagues, fearful of reprisals from their victims, have begun taking their own lives. Leo himself becomes the target of Fraera, the wife of a priest he imprisoned. Now the leader of a violent criminal gang, Fraera kidnaps Leo’s daughter, Zoya, and threatens to kill Zoya if Leo doesn’t liberate her husband from his gulag prison. Shifting from Moscow to Siberia and to a Hungary convulsed by revolution, this fast-paced novel is packed with too many incidents for Smith to dwell on any in great depth. Though its drama often lacks emotional resonance, this story paints a memorable portrait of post-Stalinist Russia at its dawn. (May)

Guillou has enjoyed smashing success in Sweden and Europe with his Crusades Trilogy, but American readers may be disappointed in this slow-starting first volume, which, for all its complexity and intriguing premise, doesn’t get anywhere near the Holy Land. The epic kicks off in 1150 Sweden with the birth of Arn Magnusson, the second son of a minor nobleman. Arn is sent to a cloister where monks teach him to read, write and work hard. But Brother Guilbert, a former Knight Templar who fought in the crusades, also teaches Arn horsemanship, archery and swordplay. During Arn’s training, his family is involved with court intrigues, treachery and war. Arn, meanwhile, commits cardinal sins and is excommunicated and ordered to serve as a Knight Templar. However, by the book’s close, he’s no closer to Jerusalem than he was when he was born (though a lot of colorful medieval Swedish history has been presented). Perhaps the next two volumes will be more focused and exciting. (May)

Land (The Seven Sins) introduces a tough original heroine, Caitlin Strong, a fifth-generation Texas Ranger, in the first of what hopefully will be a long crime series. Hyperpatriot Harmon Delladonne runs MacArthur-Rain, a corporation with tentacles in all areas of the U.S. government’s security apparatus. Delladonne’s project Fire Arrow threatens both the privacy of all Americans and their very lives. Strong, the only gun-totin’ female in the legendary Texas Rangers, stumbles onto this plot when she finds her supposedly dead husband, Peter Goodwin, in an institution devoted to treating torture victims. She teams with a dangerous former foe, Cort Wesley Masters, to fight not only Delladonne but Emiliato Valdez Garza, the phantomlike head of the Mexican mafia, and the giant Guillermo Paz, a Delladonne henchman who ponders Kierkegaard while slaying his many enemies. The revelations are constant, the characters compelling and the action fast and furious. (May)

In her tightly constructed and captivating first adult novel, bestselling YA author Shepard (the Pretty Little Liars series) explores a family’s biological and emotional interconnectedness—for better or for worse. When 15-year-old Summer Davis is told by a substitute biology teacher that “DNA makes up everything inside you,” and that “nothing else matters... you can’t escape your parents and they can’t escape you,” the silken threads that she imagines link her to her vanished mother become something more like shackles and chains as her mentally ill father’s slow decay continues and eventually lands him in an institution. Summer clings to the hope that her father will get better while simultaneously experimenting with ways to escape the gloomy life she’s inherited; her path eventually leads to the genetics lab at NYU, but the opportunity to pursue her own dreams is undermined by her father, whose deeply hidden secrets begin to trickle out and eat away at the family’s foundation. It’s complicated, rewarding and full of heart, and Shepard creates a rich reading experience in shying from simple answers and happy endings. (May)

Bestseller Bourne (the pseudonym of British journalist Jonathan Freedland) follows his 2006 debut, The Righteous Men, with another Jewish-themed thriller, a cliché-ridden hodgepodge. Weeks before a closely fought U.S. presidential election, disgraced diplomat Maggie Costello comes out of self-imposed exile to mediate a final Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. When a prominent right-wing academic, Shimon Guttman, tries to reach the Israeli prime minister with an urgent message during a peace rally, security guards gun him down because they fear he was trying to assassinate the prime minister. Costello joins with Guttman’s son to track down the secret his father uncovered that could radically affect the negotiations. Bourne does nothing to endear Costello to readers by revealing the reason for her earlier diplomatic disgrace. The ludicrous denouement involves a high-ranking official confessing to all his misdeeds while unknowingly being filmed on a Web cam. (May)

Bestsellers Preston and Child kill off a regular supporting character at the outset of this suspenseful tale of urban terror, their ninth to feature FBI special agent Aloysius Pendergast (after The Wheel of Darkness). William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife, Nora Kelly, an anthropologist with the New York Museum of Natural History, are celebrating their first anniversary when Smithback is fatally stabbed in their Manhattan apartment, apparently by a creepy neighbor, Colin Fearing, an out-of-work British actor. Given eyewitness descriptions of the killer, including one from Kelly herself, as well as surveillance footage showing a blood-stained Fearing emerging from the apartment building right after the crime, the case appears to be open and shut—until Pendergast and his NYPD ally, Lt. Vincent D’Agosta, learn that Fearing died almost two weeks earlier. This taut page-turner can only add to the authors’ growing fan base. 8-city author tour. (May)

Profound loss, desolation and rebuilding are the literal and metaphoric themes of Michaels’s exquisite second novel (after Fugitive Pieces). Avery Escher is a Canadian engineer recently moved to a houseboat on the Nile with his new wife, Jean, in 1964. Avery’s part of a team of engineers trying to salvage Abu Simbel, which is about to be flooded by the new Aswan dam. His wife, Jean, meanwhile, carries with her childhood memories of flooded villages and the heavy absence of her mother, who died when she was young. Now, the sight of the entire Nubian nation being evacuated from their native land before it’s flooded affects both Avery and Jean intensely. Jean’s pregnancy seems a possible redemption, but their daughter is stillborn, and Jean falls into despair, shunning the former intimacy of her marriage. When the couple returns to Canada, they set up separate lives and another man enters the picture. Michaels is especially impressive at making a rundown of construction materials or the contents of a market as evocative as the shared moments between two young lovers. A tender love story set against an intriguing bit of history is handled with uncommon skill. (May)

In this highly entertaining novel about Nigerian Internet scammers, Kingsley Ibe is an engineering school graduate who can’t find a job and still lives at home with his family. After his girlfriend rejects him and his father dies, Kingsley is taken on by his Uncle Boniface (aka Cash Daddy), who is in the business of Internet scams, otherwise known as 419s. Soon, Kingsley is writing e-mail solicitations to the gullible of cyberspace, and any qualms he may have had about ripping off innocent people evaporate as he steps into the good life with a big new house, a Lexus and a new love interest (who doesn’t know how Kingsley “earns” his money). Meanwhile, Cash Daddy develops political ambitions and gains some ruthless enemies bent on crushing him. As the plots converge, Kingsley must decide whether to sell his soul to build a 419 kingdom. Although the narrative follows a somewhat predictable trajectory, Kingsley’s engaging voice and the story’s vividly rendered setting prove that while crime may not pay, writing about it as infectiously as Nwaubani does certainly pays off for the reader. (May)

Love, work and the absence of both figure prominently in Berg’s latest, a rumination on loss and replenishment. Since novelist Helen’s husband, Dan, died a year ago, she’s been unable to write, and though her publisher and agent aren’t worried, she is, particularly after a disastrous performance at a public speaking engagement leaves her wondering if her writing career will be another permanent loss. Meanwhile, daughter Tessa is getting impatient as Helen smothers her with awkward motherly affection. Tessa longs for distance and some independence, but Helen is unable to run her suburban Chicago home without continually calling on Tessa to perform the handyman chores that once belonged to Dan. And then Helen discovers Dan had withdrawn a huge chunk of their retirement money, and Helen’s quest to find out what happened turns into a journey of self-discovery and hard-won healing. Berg gracefully renders, in tragic and comic detail, the notions that every life—however blessed—has its share of awful loss, and that even crushed, defeated hearts can be revived. (May)

Rock ’n’ roll fans will best appreciate Buhrmester’s debut, an average crime novel based on a real-life robbery—the theft in 1973 of $203,000 from a safe-deposit box in New York City’s Drake Hotel containing Led Zeppelin’s earnings from a recent concert series. The subtitle is a bit of a tease, as it becomes clear how unlikely a bunch of losers could plan to rip off a popular band and manage to do so by dumb luck. Patrick Sullivan, a 19-year-old scam artist who specializes in break-ins, returns home to Baltimore to round up a crew hoping to make a big score by stealing Led Zeppelin’s proceeds. The bulk of the book recounts their misadventures, complete with run-ins with the Holy Ghosts, a Christian motorcycle gang. The breezy writing will carry some along, but many will wonder if the plot might’ve been better served if Buhrmester, the current editor of Inked, hadn’t relied on a factual foundation. (May)

A struggling journalist covering the L.A. party circuit ponders her price while writing a feature about a high-class hooker in David’s misfired follow-up to Party Girl. Emma Swanson, hungry for a promotion at Substance—a local glam rag—is young, ambitious and frustrated with her lowly beat. While researching a potential cover story on yuppie hooking, she meets gorgeous if bitchy call girl Jessica Davis, who introduces Emma to her contemporary version of the world’s oldest profession. As Emma’s story looks like it might come together (and Jessica showers Emma with expensive gifts), one of Jessica’s friends offers Emma the editor-in-chief spot at a magazine he’s about to launch. The catch: she’s got to give him the hooker story. What follows is a moralizing journey of self-discovery, replete with a Michael Toms–assisted epiphany. David sets up some interesting parallels between selling your soul and selling your body, but the narrative comes off too lightweight and hokily insidery (Ron Burkle is name-checked) to really deliver on them. (May)

From former Jeff Koons studio assistant Peale, an introspective examination of art, talent and motivation in the contemporary New York art scene. Emma Dial is 32 and the right hand to prominent New York artist Michael Freiburg: Michael dreams up the ideas and Emma—armed with her skill and his trust—does the painting. Through their stormy six-year relationship, Emma has reached a certain level of comfort, painting five or six major works a year at $20,000 apiece. Yet as art becomes work and her talent is appropriated to someone else’s vision, Emma finds it increasingly difficult to visit her own studio, much less come up with ideas of her own. Michael and Emma, of course, also sleep together. When Michael’s friend and rival Philip Cleary enters the picture, choices become increasingly confusing for Emma as Philip pushes her to break free of Michael and focus on her own work. There’s a controlled neatness to the novel that feels at odds with the fury and passions of its artist characters, and the quiet late-book revelations aren’t exactly inspired. All in all, it’s fine, if a bit light. (May)

At the start of Freveletti’s less than impressive debut, a British Airways flight from Miami, Fla., to Bogotá carrying 30-year-old chemist Emma Caldridge crashes in the Colombian jungle. Armed men dressed in fatigues start taking the survivors hostage, but Caldridge manages to escape into the forest. A distress call from her cellphone reaches the U.S. government, which recently sent troops to Colombia to help guard an oil pipeline, as well as Darkview, a Blackwater-like outfit assisting the U.S. military with special ops around the world. Caldridge proves amazingly successful at dodging the bad guys, and even uses her professional training to derive digitalis from a plant for a fellow passenger who’ll die without it. Cameron Sumner, a member of a drug agency who had special reasons for being on the BA flight, provides the requisite romantic interest. Some may cheer the author’s larger-than-life heroine, but the clichéd action offers nothing thriller readers haven’t encountered countless times before. (May)

An Arab-French writer explores in sensuous hindsight the life-changing nature of a passionate affair. Al Neimi’s first-person narrator, a scholar of Arab literature, works as a university librarian in Paris, where her discovery of erotic Arabic texts rekindles the memory of an explosive earlier affair with a man she calls the Thinker. The narrator delights in her secret textual discoveries (“Arabic, for me, is the language of sex,” she writes), which underscore the repression of women, on the one hand, while celebrating the healthful, God-given nature of coition, on the other. Parallel to her research, she prods her female friends for tales of sexual exploits and muses on her own upbringing, when the silence and ignorance surrounding sex fueled her desire for greater knowledge. Despite the novel’s somewhat disorienting structure, the narrator’s description of her sexual awakening with the Thinker delivers sensationally beautiful erotic moments, revealing a skillful, enticing voice from the Arab world. (May)

Hallman’s clever debut collection (after two works of nonfiction) invites the reader into ordinary homes and heads before dropping sly twists of the surreal to examine contemporary culture. In “Ethan: A Love Story,” “odd uncle C—” bonds with his six-year-old nephew, Ethan, with the help of a violent video game. In “Savages,” a high school grad’s father begins an affair with his neighbor, rendezvousing in the cave she’s cut into the shrubberies between their homes. In the title story, an unnamed poet is taken to Nietzsche’s “hospital for bad poets” after collapsing and is given Rilke and oxygen to remedy his “chronic acuteness.” The dark final story, “The History of Riddles,” ties the collection together with a couple who falls in with a very serious board game culture involving deep philosophy and ancient rites. Sometimes the commentary Hallman’s aiming for evades him, but on the whole, his collection is smart and hip, a safer Sam Lipsyte crossed with early George Saunders. (May)

A delectable little book for anyone who ever admired the Bloomsbury group, Sellers’s first novel speaks in painter Vanessa Bell’s voice as she addresses her sister, Virginia Woolf. The story includes everything one ever imagined that happened in the intimate lives of the sisters and their astounding circle, which burst upon late Victorian England and shattered both the artistic and cultural boundaries of the times. Sellers begins during the girls’ childhood with their beloved brother, and as they grow up, she taps into the incest, sexual encounters and homoerotic love with and among the many great minds of the era. The fictional world the author has recreated—of the sisters striving to perfect their respective art forms while trying to keep the reality of children and war and illness at bay—is full of color and intellectual promise and laced with despair and untimely deaths. While the mix of first- and second-person perspectives gets tedious (there are many variations on the theme of “I sensed you watching me”), the narrative’s a genuine treat for Bloomsbury fans and those at least vaguely familiar with the milieu. (May)

Seven years after his acclaimed novel Free Bird, Garrett, a professor of English at Baylor University, returns to fiction with a family love story that starts as slow as the pace in the Oklahoma farming town where it’s set. The plot picks up steam when John Tilden unpacks his past in first-person narration. A class reunion and alumni basketball game planned in the small community churn up a midlife crisis for this married man with kids, stirring up his glory days of basketball and girls. The writing is titillating for Christian fiction but believable as the narrator fights the temptation of a former lover and recent divorcé (“The two of us in my truck flashed into my head, and it took a moment of mental wrestling to body slam it to the mat”). The book explores faithfulness in marriage and friendship through rich, believable characters. Punchy dialogue, particularly the funny exchanges between rancher father and newly vegetarian daughter, should bring knowing nods from parents of teens. Shame plows deep furrows in the heart—a slam dunk for Garrett. (May)

Roncagliolo’s stunning debut, about the brutality of Peruvian society under the Fujimori regime, merits comparison to the work of J.M. Coetzee. In 2000, associate district prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar, who’s returned to the province of Ayacucho from Lima, clashes with his superiors after the discovery of a charred and mutilated corpse. Rigidly adhering to bureaucratic procedure, Saldívar demands that an official police report on the crime be filed, despite the active resistance of the police and the local military commander. The prosecutor’s refusal to abort his inquiry threatens the official line that the Shining Path terrorists are a thing of the past. Eventually, he’s reassigned to help monitor elections, only to encounter more corruption. Within the frame of a puzzling whodunit, Roncagliolo crafts an unsparing view of life controlled by a repressive and paranoid government. A mother fixation, social awkwardness and a desire to impress others lend complexity to the protagonist. (Apr.)

In this perfectly adequate tale of bicontinental love, betrayal and secrets, sisters Anju and Linno Vallara live in Kerala, India, raised by their father after their mother’s apparent suicide. Crippled Linno establishes herself as a talented artist, a skill Anju ruthlessly claims as her own, passing off Linno’s paintings as hers to win a scholarship to study art in New York. When Anju’s dishonesty is eventually exposed, her future crumbles and she runs away, surviving only due to her friendship with Bird, a stranger who carries a key to their mother’s mysterious past. Meanwhile, Linno, who once resigned herself to being her family’s servant, has built a career and, despite her sister’s betrayal, resolves to find Anju and bring her home. As that reunion looms, layers of lies and secrets are exposed until the reader, if not the sisters, glimpses the tangle of honesty and loyalties underpinning the story. James paints Kerala and immigrant New York with identical depth and ease, and the story is a readable balance of well-crafted plot and artful emotion. (Apr.)

In Blunt’s overwrought thriller, 18-year-old Owen Maxwell, an orphan who’s spent the last eight summers traveling across the U.S. with his bombastic great-uncle, Magnus “Max” Maxwell, robbing rich Republicans, wants to give up the criminal life. He’s been accepted to Juilliard’s drama program, and Max is getting too old to pull off the complicated heists. When the pair leaves San Francisco, flush with cash and stolen jewels, they catch the eye of a shadowy group of thieves known as the Subtractors, who track major thefts and steal the loot from the robbers. Complicating matters is “flat-out gorgeous” Sabrina Bertrand, the 20-year-old daughter of a legendary crook known as the Pontiff, one of Max’s idols. Shifting between the Maxwells and the men who pursue them, Blunt (By the Time You Read This) never develops any of the characters beyond the initial stereotypes: the old master losing his touch; his young reluctant apprentice; and various thugs who aren’t above a little torture. (Apr. 27)

Bestseller Fairstein (Killer Heat) has put together a stellar anthology, presented by the Mystery Writers of America, that will appeal both to contemporary noir fans and devotees of Law & Order. The late Edward Hoch starts things off nicely with “The Secret Session,” a concise whodunit centering on judicial corruption at the appellate level. In Barbara Parker’s deliciously creepy “A Clerk’s Life,” a put-upon law clerk for a major Florida firm stumbles on two murders. Joel Goldman highlights the ethical challenges of criminal defense work in “Knife Fight,” as does Eileen Dunbaugh in “The Letter.” By way of counterpoint, Michele Martinez’s “The Mother” and Morley Swingle’s “Hard Blows” dramatize the challenges prosecutors encounter, even when the defendants they charge are, in fact, guilty. The consistently high quality of the 22 selections will lead many to hope the MWA will sponsor more volumes in this vein. (Apr.)

Wagman’s latest novel is a disappointing and angry look at the emotional devastation a young woman brings to her marriage. In breathless prose dominated by ellipses and em-dashes, Wagman portrays the halting narrative of Ramona Smollens, a lonely, repressed, Rita Hayworth–worshipping 17-year-old Philadelphia girl circa the 1950s who meets a young man in the park one week after the death of her father and marries him shortly after. Ramona’s ongoing obsession with Rita Hayworth somewhat masks (and later exacerbates) the sadness in her life, the unsurprising details of which are slowly teased out. Drifting utterly unprepared into her new marriage, Ramona quickly recognizes that her husband leaves her unfulfilled, and her faking of sexual pleasure brings on “incomprehensible feelings of desolation” that are compounded by her assumption that Solomon is being unfaithful to her. The execution’s a bit sloppy, and the experience fairly one-note. (Apr.)

Grabenstein’s appealing fifth John Ceepak mystery (after 2008’s Hell Hole) finds ultra-straight-arrow cop Ceepak and his laid-back partner, Danny Boyle, on leave in Atlantic City. Soon after a former girlfriend of Boyle’s, the nanny for a smarmy stage magician’s children, approaches Boyle for advice, she winds up dead in a bizarre s&m ritual before she can explain the problem. The local police deputize the two Sea Haven, N.J., cops as more corpses pile up. Ceepak and Boyle aren’t too surprised that everyone is lying in a murder case involving professional illusionists with nasty secrets. Grabenstein has a good eye for the grit under a glitzy setting and a good ear for character-defining accents, including Boyle’s wry narrative voice. In less skillful hands, Ceepak might come across as a mere hybrid of Sherlock Holmes and Dudley Do-Right, but the author succeeds in making his hero’s earnest devotion to a rigid code of behavior both believable and moving. (June)

Set in 1931 Berlin, Cantrell’s scrupulously researched debut tolls a somber dirge for Weimar Germany in its last days. In the Hall of the Unnamed Dead, Hannah Vogel, a 32-year-old crime reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt, recognizes a photograph of a naked corpse on a riverbank as that of her beloved brother, Ernst, an unabashedly gay transvestite cabaret singer. In her search for Ernst’s killer, Hannah uncovers his sexual connections reach from newly recruited young Nazis to the highest levels of the Nazi party. Hannah and Anton, a five-year-old waif who claims Ernst was his father, along with her tender lover, Boris, tread an ominous tightrope as Cantrell unveils the best and the worst of the German character, setting the humanity of decent Germans, Jews and gentiles alike, against the Nazis’ raw savagery and mindless militarism. This unforgettable novel, which can be as painful to read as the history it foreshadows, builds to an appropriately bittersweet ending. (May)

Jack the Ripper may be back to his old tricks in 1900 London in Cameron’s chilling tale of prostitution, evisceration and voyeurism. General Denton, an expatriate U.S. Civil War veteran and former frontier sheriff turned novelist, receives a visit one night from a frightened stranger, R. Mulcahy, who claims to have seen Jack the Ripper on the street. Denton and his sidekick, Sergeant Atkins, dismiss Mulcahy as a mad man, but soon afterward they spot a newspaper headline (“Unspeakable Mutilation of a Young Victim”) about the murder of a street girl, Stella Minter. Driven by his instincts as an author and by demons from his tortured past, Denton begins a relentless search for clues to the killer. Through the offices of pettifogging police officials, seedy settlement houses and garish pubs, Denton and social worker Janet Striker trace Stella’s pitiful life until the stunning and violent climax. Cameron with his son writes military thrillers under the pseudonym Gordon Kent (The Spoils of War). (May)

Sam Acquillo, who left his job as head of the Technical Services and Support Division of Con Globe for the humdrum life of a skilled carpenter in the Hamptons, is still a magnet for trouble in Knopf’s rewarding fourth mystery (after 2008’s Head Wounds). George Donovan, Con Globe’s chairman of the board, tries a carrot and stick approach to get Acquillo to find his missing girlfriend, Iku Kinjo, a “brilliant and compelling” consultant. Half of that ploy works, and Acquillo is drawn back into the deadly machinations of corporate intrigue, where the payoff may be wealth or death. Knopf blends familiar elements (cop ally; cop nemesis; bad ex-wife; beautiful, independent girlfriend) in unusually pleasing fashion and adds plenty of original touches as well. Aside from his surprising computer illiteracy, Acquillo is a savvy operator who loves problem solving and has the tenacity of a pit bull. His penchant for intriguing predicaments bodes well for a long and successful series. (May)

A runaway bride is the linchpin of Canadian writer Duncan’s delightful debut, which has won the Minotaur/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. Expatriate Canadian manicurist Penny Brannigan is grieving after the death of a dear friend when the major event of the year occurs in the town of Llanelen, Wales. Social climber Meg Wynne Thompson isn’t universally loved, and when she disappears on her wedding day, a case of jilting at the altar takes on more sinister overtones. Speculation swirls around various members of the bridal party, including the bewildered groom and the suave best man. But Penny, who thinks there was something odd about one client at her salon on the fateful morning, shares her observations with Det. Chief Insp. Gareth Davies and asks uncomfortable questions that place her and a colleague in danger. The scenic Welsh backdrop, village personalities and a budding romance for Penny add color and interest. (May)

At the outset of Arthur Ellis Award–winner Emery’s compelling fourth mystery to feature lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins (after 2008’s Barrington Street Blues), Monty attends the opening of the Schola Cantorum Sancta Bernadetta, “a kind of choir school for grownups, who would be learning or relearning the traditional music of the Roman Catholic Church,” in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When a controversial participant, German theologian Fr. Reinhold Schellenberg, is found nearly decapitated on the altar of an old church just before evening vespers on St. Cecilia’s day, Monty gets involved in the murder investigation. The suspense mounts as Monty and his friend Fr. Brennan Burke, the school’s head, travel to the Vatican and elsewhere in Europe in search of answers. The large pool of suspects from around the globe helps ensure a challenging whodunit. Readers interested in the history and impact of the Vatican II reforms will be especially rewarded. (May)

Two major crimes occupy Det. Insp. Hal Challis and his subordinate and now lover, Sgt. Ellen Destry, in this superior police procedural from Australian Disher, the fifth entry in the Ned Kelly Award–winning series (after 2007’s Chain of Evidence). Challis and his team of Waterloo, Queensland, officers investigate the brutal assault on a private school chaplain as well as the murder of a public official in charge of enforcing compliance with land use regulations. Extra pressure for the first case’s resolution comes from a prominent politician who already has an axe to grind with the police. That Challis’s relationship with Destry violates police regulations complicates matters. Disher has a gift for terse description (e.g., Challis’s boss “wore the look of a man who’d been adored but only by his mother and long ago”). While the deus ex machina solution to the official’s murder may disappoint some, the personal interactions among Challis and his colleagues will quickly engage even newcomers. Author tour. (Apr.)

In this leisurely, character-driven study set in 1952 from Bolivian author de Recacoechea (American Visa), a train ride across the high Andean plain serves as the stage for a high-stakes card game, a quick sexual encounter and murder. The dramatic trip across the Antiplano from La Paz, Bolivia, to the Chilean seaport of Arica only incidentally recalls Agatha Christie’s classic Murder on the Orient Express. The large cast mirrors the political and social scene, including an older businessman and his teenage wife, a skirt-chasing college student, a revolutionary disguised as a priest, expatriates from Ireland and Russia, and a deadly one-legged mine worker who “struck at the floor with his crutches à la Long John Silver, his favorite fictional character.” More Camus than mystery thriller, this novel delights like strong coffee savored in a cosmopolitan cafe. (Apr.)

Fans of comic mysteries will welcome British author Tyler’s debut, the first in a series to feature novelist Ethelred Tressider and his chocoholic literary agent, Elsie Thirkettle. When the body of Tressider’s ex-wife, Geraldine, turns up near his West Sussex home, the police mark Tressider as a person of interest. Aided by Thirkettle, Tressider investigates other suspects, as the official theory switches from possible suicide to a serial killer. One-third of the way in, Tressider’s Wodehousian narrative voice (“You’ll have found the same thing yourself, of course. Just when you think you have committed the perfect crime, things most unfairly take a turn for the worse”) switches to that of Thirkettle, who doesn’t miss a beat sustaining the light tone (“If there’s one thing that gets up my sodding nose, it’s starting a new chapter and finding that the poxy narrator has changed”). The resolution may not satisfy everyone, but the lively characters and amusing banter will bring most readers back for more. (Apr.)

Kasai’s strikingly original but uneven debut posits a world where DNA has gone wild, producing Traders with amazing abilities and “somatics” with a mix of animal and human genes. Sorykah Minuit, a gender-switching Trader, arrives in the dirty, dangerous polar town of Ostara to meet her twin children and their nursemaid. She encounters an octopus-woman who tells her the children have been abducted by the Trader-torturing Collector. Passages of stunning imagery veer abruptly into purple prose as Sorykah heads into the perilous, icy wilderness, only to pause her maternal quest for an extended romp at an isolated pleasure-house. After a brush with death, she abruptly becomes a man with no memory of female life. Kasai’s imaginative reach exceeds her grasp, and she squeezes in numerous intriguing ideas that languish only partially explored. (May)

In Smith-Ready’s espionage farce sequel to 2008’s Wicked Game, Ciara Griffin and her vampire DJs face another threat to their Maryland radio station 94.3 WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll. When the Family Action Network (FAN) disrupts WVMP’s Halloween broadcast by pirating their signal and jamming it with antivampire rhetoric, Ciara swears revenge. Under the aegis of the International Agency for the Control and Management of Undead Corporeal Entities, Ciara turns spy and infiltrates the cult’s fortress, armed with her wits and her vampire-healing “antiholy” blood. Aiding her are a crew of hip vamp buddies and vampire dog Dexter, whom she rescues after finding him chained to a cross outside a FAN enclave. Smith-Ready pours plenty of fun into her charming, fang-in-cheek urban fantasy, which frequently skirts the edge of parody. (May)

Apprentice magician, ardent glassmaker and spunky Nancy Drew–style sleuth Opal Cowan discovers her latent mystical talents and wins the attention of three gorgeous hunks in Snyder’s follow-up to her award-winning Study fantasy series (Poison Study, etc.). In classic coming-of-age fashion, Opal uses her magic powers to help her loved ones and her glass know-how to find the flaws in the Stormdancers’ weather-controlling glass orbs, all amid breathless adolescent quivers of romance and jealousy. Snyder satisfyingly fleshes out her youthful main characters, including the brooding Stormdancer Kade and Opal’s venomous rival, Pazia, but the two-dimensional supporting cast, especially the simplistic villains, don’t bear up as well under close inspection. The wealth of glassmaking lore compensates for the quick-moving but predictable plot, which leaves abundant room for at least two sequels. (May)

Martinez (Too Many Curses) pokes at big-picture questions, like the nature of the universe and the meaning of life, with abundant, zany humor in this charming tale. Monster, who works in cryptobiological containment, first encounters Judy when he rescues her from a yeti that’s trashing the frozen foods aisle of the Food Plus Mart. They meet again when trolls infest her apartment. As an incognizant—someone whose mind can’t acknowledge magic—Judy soon forgets the bizarre events, but Monster suspects she’s somehow involved with the recent uptick in dangerous cryptobiological happenings. When Lotus, keeper of a stone mysteriously linked to Judy, spirits Judy away, Monster attempts to come to her rescue, only to discover that he’s in way over his head. Scary monsters and hilarious scenarios embellish a convoluted plot that suggests even night-shift workers might have a destiny. (May)

Steven Erickson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series only hints at the empire’s distant history, which Esslemont, cocreator of the original world, explores in this dark, powerful novel (first published in the U.K. in 2004) and its planned sequels. On a Shadow Moon night on the Isle of Malaz, dead souls rise and demonlike hounds attack any who dare to leave their homes. Knowing that Emperor Kellanved is prophesied to use the Shadow Moon for his own ends, the emperor’s enemies gather on the small island for their own nefarious purposes, starting a plot that spirals into bloody violence. Esslemont nails the feel and flavor of Erickson’s books and brings the historical characters to life with a dexterity that will win over even the most skeptical fans. (May)

Exhilarating adventure in an edgy world of angels and demons highlights the opener of Day’s Marked trilogy. After a steamy encounter in a stairwell, Evangeline Hollis discovers that she has been branded with the Mark of Cain, unfairly punished because of a man’s attraction to her. She is now a Mark: a celestial bounty hunter charged with sending rogue demons and other Infernals back to hell. Agnostic Eve feels trapped and wants to leave “the firm,” but that requires the aid of the most famous brothers in history: Alec Cain, God’s top Mark and Eve’s former lover, and Reed Abel, who assigns her bounties. Dynamic and vibrant, Eve is an impressive protagonist, and her fierce spirit and determination to make the best of her circumstances will keep readers enthralled. (May)

This spellbinding historical fantasy, first of a series, takes Proctor Brown, ready minuteman and reluctant witch, through the opening battles of the American Revolution. Caught between the demands of a loyalist girlfriend and the needs of his aged parents, Proctor is eager to join the American cause and put his hidden abilities to good use. As he learns more about witchcraft, he finds it employed by both rebels and Royal Marines, and he struggles to master his talents without being exposed. Finlay (The Prodigal Troll) provides enough well-researched minutiae of daily life in colonial America to make this a fine historical novel, while offering a magic-tinged view of the happenings at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill that impressively restores suspense and uncertainty to long-settled events. (May)

In this intense follow-up to 2008’s Dying Breath, just as self-described psychic detective Lucinda Sloan is helpless to stop a monomaniacal serial killer, readers will be helpless to stop turning pages until the end. From the moment the killer branded the Night Watchman sees Lucinda on television, he knows that she will be the grand finale in his latest series of brutal murders. He busies himself sending cryptic messages to her and her friend, Cam Hastings, whose daughter was kidnapped the previous summer and whose sister was the victim of a long-ago murder. Retired FBI agent Vic Shattuck, who is writing a book about the Night Watchman, also receives messages that only tease at the edges of clues about the next victim. A few inconsistencies are tiny bumps on the twisty road to the chilling conclusion. (May)

Chase’s suspenseful debut simmers with a gripping view of present-day China and the terrors it can hold for foreigners. The Chinese government hires U.S. security consultant Peter Avakian to provide security for an upcoming conference for international advisers. The U.S. government has also hired Avakian and Dr. Judy Rose, physician turned spy, to aid in the release of a U.S. gymnast arrested in Beijing for shoplifting. When the Taiwanese president is gunned down, chaos erupts, and Avakian is forced to kill three Chinese soldiers who attack him. Dr. Rose proves to be a stalwart character, immersing herself in the game of espionage as she and Avakian attempt to flee Beijing undetected. Chase’s clear, succinct style is well suited to the swift pace, and quirky, brilliant Avakian will easily entice fans to follow his future adventures. (May)

An unorthodox horror story, equal parts hidden worlds, lost love and mammoths, Heathentown is that rarest of things—a genuinely unusual take on the undead. Anna Romano comes to Florida for the funeral of her friend Kit Durrel, a linguist who had worked with her in Africa and died there in a horrific incident of mob violence. The evening after the funeral, she visits Kit’s grave only to find another visitor already there—Kit herself. This leads to her discovery of a murderously strange culture of the walking dead living in the depths of the Everglades: those that are buried there come back, not so much revived as preserved by something of a ghoulish version of the Fountain of Youth. What follows is a breathless series of escapes and attempted rescues that is also simultaneously an emotional story of sacrifice and lost chances. Bechko and Hardman, who worked together on the Zuda Web comic the Crooked Man, are a perfectly matched team as Hardman’s beautiful, highly cinematic art captures the excitement and complex emotions of Bechko’s memorable and nuanced story. (Mar.)

This volume examining “first time” sexual experiences manages to be frank in its depiction of physical sexuality without becoming pornographic, resulting in a charming “adults only” anthology. This collection honors the human element of sexuality by presenting characters recognizable as ordinary people and deals with intimacy and communication between lovers, and even those engaging in solo activities, giving the book its heart. Displaying a distinctly European sensibility and written by a French woman who identifies herself only as Sybelline, these stories celebrate that most primal of physical connections while featuring art of appealingly high quality. The 10 short stories cover a wide range of erotic happenstances and artistic styles, with the standouts including “First Time” by Alfred, “Sex Shop” by Capucine, “1+1” by Virginie Augustine and “Sodomy” by Dominique Bertail, the story that features easily the most impressive visuals. But the piece that might be of the most interest to mainstream comics readers is “X-Rated,” illustrated by Dave McKean, who created the memorable covers for Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. This is highly recommended for readers looking for something erotic yet artistic and emotionally involving. (Mar.)

Morrison, Quitely and Grant conclude their fresh and compelling take on the most iconic superhero in comics. Recently, grittier modern-day reinterpretations of classic characters, set outside normal continuity, have become the popular way to do a limited series such as this one. Morrison’s Superman, however, is the same defender of truth, justice and the American way recognizable to generations of comics readers. Now, however, his days are numbered. Slowly dying from overexposure to solar radiation, Superman is faced with the dilemma of how to do the most good in his final days and how to prepare the people and planet he loves to carry on without him. Morrison’s feverish style is both a blessing and a curse, as the overwhelming deluge of ideas thrown at the reader confuses even while creating a parallel with Superman’s own constant supersensory information overload. Yet Morrison’s writing recaptures the sense of simple wonder and virtue essential to a classic Superman tale. Quitely and Grant’s art is evocative of the earliest images of the character, a refined evolution of the bright costumes, skylines and chiseled jaws that adds a dignity and humanity to the characters beyond their cartoonish origins. (Feb.)

Wahoolazuma! gathers the first nine issues of Larry Marder’s Beanworld comic, first published in the 1980s. Scanned from the original artwork, the engaging, clear black and white illustrations bring to life a universe populated by beanlike characters, their adversaries the Hoi-Polloi Ring Herd and a variety of other creatures. The society evolves over the course the book, with the beans learning about art, creating new music and inventing useful tools. Their world starts out in perfect balance, with everyone performing their assigned role and depending on others to do the same, but a variety of developments creates crises from which the inhabitants must struggle to recover. The text is at times repetitive and didactic; the first chapter, in which readers need to learn the rules and characters of Beanworld can be tough going. Those who press on and immerse themselves in Marder’s creation will be rewarded with a charming tale. Its themes of environmental conservation, mutual dependency, faith and sacrifice will resonate with readers of all ages facing the challenges of the 21st century, despite being written over two decades ago. (Feb.)

In his debut collection of graphic short stories, Israel-born Shadmi tries to have the last word in sexual malevolence in angst-ridden tales of couplings that go horrendously awry. Alienation reigns in pieces like “The Fun Lawn,” where a man with an underage online porn habit who works in a giant dog suit on a children’s TV show is flummoxed when a beautiful young woman comes on to him, but may just like him for the dog suit. Most of the more effective stories go straight for David Cronenberg–style issues of bodily invasion, such as “Radioactive Girlfriend,” in which a man’s proximity to his lover proves potentially fatal. Surrealist pieces like “Pastry Paradise” and “A Lavish Affair” not so subtly conflate issues of sexual desire, hunger and disgust to fairly little effect. The more simply constructed stories tend to have more punch, like “What Is Wrong with Me?” which humorously contrasts what happens after a late-night hookup separates in the morning; the man pines in agonized love while the woman ignores his calls and watches TV. Shadmi’s art is expressive and simple, focusing on entwined limbs and eyes pinned open with worry, but it’s his sharp writing (shades of Etgar Keret’s violent whimsy) that really brings this collection together. (Feb.)

This spring, Dalkey Archive will publish the last of Céline’s novels to be translated into English.

Céline, a doctor by trade, took the French literary world by storm in 1932 with Journey to the End of the Night. Then he destroyed his reputation by writing anti-Semitic hate tracts during WWII. Exile and a brief imprisonment followed. His early works changed international literature forever, but his later books, written during a period of self-inflicted, backhanded infamy, crystallized his inimitably visceral style and misanthropic attitude.

This is the last of Céline’s novels to languish untranslated. The adroit Marlon Jones has produced an English text that compares with the brilliant translations of Ralph Mannheim (who brought Journey and Death on the Installment Plan into English). Even at his most lucid, Céline’s prose reads like rapid bursts of slangy, profane argot—problematic enough in its own right—issued in a dramatic and confrontational style. True to form, this narrative is practically shouted in short exclamation-pointed bursts (connected, or disconnected, as it were, via ellipses) by a frenetic doctor-narrator named Ferdinand who endeavors to tell the reader about the allied bombardment of Montmartre in April 1944, “baroom!” and “baboom!” and all. The explosions are enough to make the furniture dance around the room, but Ferdinand attends mainly to his beloved cat, Bébert; his girlfriend, Lili; and Jules, a humpbacked local artist he despises. As the destruction of Paris grows more surreal, Ferdinand’s invective against Jules follows suit, and Ferdinand convinces himself that Jules is conducting the entire offensive from atop a windmill. Lili and Ferdinand head to the lower floors of the building to search for their cat, finding that their neighbors, including the Normances, an obese man and his undersized wife, have taken cover under furniture. The bombardment worsens, civilization breaks down, the rooms flood with bodily fluids of all kinds, residents loot a hoard of liquor in a mad bacchanalia, and the giant Normance turns murderous.

Truly, there isn’t much of a plot, and readers who pick this up are going to pick it up because they’re already fans of Céline’s work. Love him or hate him, Céline transformed 20th-century literature, and his influence in American letters is undeniable, hence the importance of this novel: it’s the last missing piece of Celine’s lifework to appear in English, and it provides fresh evidence of why this frustrating, misanthropic and inspired writer is still worth reading. (May)