Fiction Book Reviews: 7/6/2009

In her wonderful second novel, Grodstein (Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love) traces a suburban crisis and gives especially perceptive attention to the father-son bond. Pete Dizinoff has it pretty good—an internist with a successful practice, loving wife, nice house in a safe New Jersey suburb and his best friend living close by—but there’s some nasty muck beneath the surface. Some years back, Laura, the daughter of Pete’s best friend, Joe, was suspected of murdering her baby upon birth. Now in her early 30s, Laura’s returned to town after several years of leisurely work and travel and is seducing Pete’s college dropout son, Alec, who is also back in town, pursuing the life of a painter in his parents’ garage. Laura does not fit into Pete’s idea of what’s best for his son, but when Pete intervenes, things spin wildly out of control. Add to this a malpractice case, and Pete senses his life is falling apart. An astute dissector of male aspiration, Grodstein brings great insight into a father’s protective urge for his son in this gripping portrait of an American family in crisis. (Nov.)

Generosity: An Enhancement Richard Powers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-0-374-16114-9 About halfway into Powers’s follow-up to his National Book Award–winning The Echo Maker, a Nobel Prize-winning author, during a panel discussion, talks about how “genetic enhancement represents the end of human nature.... A story with no end or impediment is no story at all.” This then, is a story with both. Its hero, at least initially, is Russell Stone, a failed author of creative nonfiction turned reluctant writing instructor who cannot help transmitting to his students something of his flagging faith in writing. One of them, a Berber Algerian named Thassadit Amzwar, is so possessed by preternatural happiness that she’s nicknamed “Miss Generosity” by her prematurely jaded classmates and has emerged from the Algerian civil war that claimed the lives of her parents “glowing like a blissed out mystic.” After Stone learns that Thassadit may possess a rare euphoric trait called hyperthymia, her condition is upgraded from behavioral to genetic, and Powers’s novel makes a dramatic shift when Thassadit falls into the hands of Thomas Kurton, the charismatic entrepreneur behind genetics lab Truecyte, whose plan to develop a programmable genome to “regulate the brain’s set point for well-being” may rest in Miss Generosity’s perpetually upbeat alleles. Much of the tension behind Powers’s idea-driven novels stems from the delicate balance between plot and concept, and he wisely adopts a voice that is—sometimes painfully—aware of the occasional strain (“I’m caught... starving to death between allegory and realism, fact and fable, creative and nonfiction”). Like Stone and Kurton, Powers strays from mere record to attempt an impossible task: to make the world right. (Oct.)

What starts off as a drive from Nashville to Birmingham quickly moves across the globe as Randall (The Wind Done Gone) unravels the life of Abel Jones. “The day Abel was born, sweet tucked deep in the dark South, Langston Hughes, out west on a speaking tour, typed a little poem in celebration... Abel was colored-baby royalty”—but things aren’t always so sweet. Abel faces run-ins with the KKK and, after a short lifetime as an angry husband and father and a secretive spy, meets his untimely end in the bathroom of a campy dinner theater restaurant. We learn most of his history via his first wife, Hope, following her journey from “a young Georgetown matron” to the present (thoughts on President Obama and all). As she tries to reconcile Abel’s “right to tell necessary lies to his wife, and to whomever else he chose,” she discovers what it is that bound them together in the first place. Randall leaves much to the imagination, but in the end, she successfully creates a family that’s been torn apart and haphazardly put back together by forces sometimes terrifying, sometimes hopeful. (Oct.)

Levison, author of the memoir A Working Stiff’s Manifesto, delivers a ticklish novel about three hapless friends who turn to crime as a last desperate crack at prosperity in their rundown Pennsylvania coal town. Stoner roommates Mitch and Doug are trapped in dead-end jobs. They decide, along with dog-walker friend Kevin, to take something back from the world that’s been ripping them off for years, but as their hilariously inept bungling reveals, the trio is far from criminal masterminds. Levison plays the threesome’s antics for serious laughs as they argue and fall all over each other trying to pull off a caper that will land them enough money to buy a new car. Needless to say, things don’t look good for the three Dillinger-lites. With a nose for half-baked dreams and a keen ear for how man-children talk and “think,” Levison offers an honest and humorous romp through lower-middle class frustration. (Oct.)

James Ellroy fans will find a lot to like in this gritty look at post-WWII Hollywood from Edgar-winner Kanon (Los Alamos). Ben Collier, recently returned to the U.S. from service in the Signal Corps in Europe, travels to California after his sister-in-law, Liesl, informs him that his director brother, Danny, has suffered a serious fall from a hotel window. Was it an accident or a suicide attempt? Ben arrives in time to witness his brother briefly emerge from a coma, but soon afterward Danny dies. While Liesl believes the suicide theory, Ben suspects someone pushed Danny out the window and turns amateur detective to identify the culprit. In a noirish twist, the widowed Liesl comes on to Ben. The stakes rise after Ben learns Danny was playing a part in an anticommunist crusade a congressman is launching against the film industry. Kanon perfectly balances action and introspection, while smoothly integrating such real-life figures as actress Paulette Goddard into the plot. (Sept.)

Inherent Vice Thomas Pynchon. Penguin Press, $27.95 (380p) ISBN 978-1-59240-224-7 Pynchon sets his new novel in and around Gordita Beach, a mythical surfside paradise named for all the things his PI hero, Larry “Doc” Sportello, loves best: nonnutritious foods, healthy babies, curvaceous femme fatales. We’re in early-’70s Southern California, so Gordita Beach inevitably suggests a kind of Fat City, too, ripe for the plundering of rapacious real estate combines and ideal for Pynchon’s recurring tragicomedy of America as the perfect wave that got away. It all starts with Pynchon’s least conspicuous intro ever: “She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to”—she being Doc’s old flame Shasta, fearful for her lately conscience-afflicted tycoon boyfriend, Mickey. There follow plots, subplots and counterplots till you could plotz. Behind each damsel cowers another, even more distressed. Pulling Mr. Big’s strings is always a villain even bigger. More fertile still is Pynchon’s unmatched gift for finding new metaphors to embody old obsessions. Get ready for glancing excursions into maritime law, the nascent Internet, obscure surf music and Locard’s exchange principle (on loan from criminology), plus a side trip to the lost continent of Lemuria. But there’s a blissful, sportive magnanimity, too, a forgiveness vouchsafed to pimps, vets, cops, narcs and even developers that feels new, or newly heartfelt. Blessed with a sympathetic hero, suspenseful momentum and an endlessly suggestive setting, the novel’s bones need only a touch of the screenwriter’s dark chiropractic arts to render perhaps American literature’s most movie-mad genius, of all things, filmable. Inherent Vice deepens Pynchon’s developing California cycle, following The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland with a shaggy-dog epic of Eden mansionized and Mansonized beyond recognition—yet never quite beyond hope. Across five decades now, he’s more or less alternated these West Coast chamber pieces with his more formidable symphonies (V; Gravity’s Rainbow; Mason & Dixon; Against the Day). Partisans of the latter may find this one a tad slight. Fans of the former will know it for the throwaway masterwork it is: playful as a dolphin, plaintive as whale song, unsoundably profound as the blue Pacific. (Aug.)

This thoughtful if less than suspenseful thriller from bestseller Patterson (Eclipse) charts the impact of the brutal murder of black coed Angela Hall at Caldwell College in Wayne, Ohio, on gifted athlete Mark Darrow, who discovered the body and later became a nationally renowned lawyer. Mark’s best friend was convicted of the crime, but many aspects of the trial troubled Mark. Lionel Farr, Caldwell’s provost and Mark’s former mentor, offers Mark the post of college president 16 years after Angela’s murder. Mark agrees to return to Caldwell, now struggling with the suspected embezzlement of $900,000 from its endowment by its current president. With Lionel’s support, Mark investigates both the embezzlement and the old murder. Patterson evokes the quiet schism between town and gown in Wayne as well as the fragile relationship between blacks and whites, while Mark’s probing hits exposed nerves with fatal results. (Sept.)

Diamant’s bestseller, The Red Tent, explored the lives of biblical women ignored by the male-centric narrative. In her compulsively readable latest, she sketches the intertwined fates of several young women refugees at Atlit, a British-run internment camp set up in Palestine after WWII. There’s Tedi, a Dutch girl who hid in a barn for years before being turned in and narrowly escaping Bergen-Belsen; Leonie, a beautiful French girl whose wartime years in Paris are cloaked with shame; Shayndel, a heroine of the Polish partisan movement whose cheerful facade hides a tortured soul; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor who is filled with an understandable nihilism. The dynamic of suffering and renewed hope through friendship is the book’s primary draw, but an eventual escape attempt adds a dash of suspense to the astutely imagined story of life at the camp: the wary relationship between the Palestinian Jews and the survivors, the intense flirtation between the young people that marks a return to life. Diamant opens a window into a time of sadness, confusion and optimism that has resonance for so much that’s both triumphant and troubling in modern Jewish history. (Sept.)

Doctorow, whose literary trophy shelf has got to be overflowing by now, delivers a small but sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers. When WWI hits and the Spanish flu pandemic kills Homer and Langley’s parents, Langley, the elder, goes to war, with his Columbia education and his “godlike immunity to such an ordinary fate as death in a war.” Homer, alone and going blind, faces a world “considerably dimmed” though “more deliciously felt” by his other senses. When Langley returns, real darkness descends on the eccentric orphans: inside their shuttered Fifth Avenue mansion, Langley hoards newspaper clippings and starts innumerable science projects, each eventually abandoned, though he continues to imagine them in increasingly bizarre ways, which he then recites to Homer. Occasionally, outsiders wander through the house, exposing it as a living museum of artifacts, Americana, obscurity and simmering madness. Doctorow’s achievement is in not undermining the dignity of two brothers who share a lush landscape built on imagination and incapacities. It’s a feat of distillation, vision and sympathy. (Sept.)

The swashbuckling spirit of Rafael Sabatini lives on in Perez-Reverte’s fifth installment to the adventures of the 17th-century Spanish swordsman, Capt. Diego Alariste. The novel finds Diego back in Madrid, where even the slightest personal affront can lead to a clash of blades. Accompanied, as usual, by his loyal young servant, Iñigo Balboa Aguirre, and his friend, the poet and playwright Francisco de Quevedo, Diego learns that both he and King Philip IV are rivals for the attentions of the married actress Maria de Costa, who has many other suitors lined up at her dressing room door. Not even a death threat can scare off the ardent captain, who becomes a pawn in an old enemy’s dastardly plot to assassinate the king. Richly atmospheric and alive with the sights, sounds and smells of old Madrid, this tale of derring-do is old-fashioned fun. It’s elegantly written and filled with thrilling swordplay and hairbreadth escapes—escapist books don’t get much better than this. (Sept.)

In Hallinan’s nicely paced third Bangkok thriller to feature writer Poke Rafferty (after The Fourth Water), Poke wins a bet to write the biography of Khun Pan, a major-league bad guy, after a dispute with Pan in a poker game. When local papers run big stories about the deal, a phone caller threatens Poke, his wife and his daughter if he goes ahead with the project. Soon afterward, Poke is forced into a car by gun-wielding men who demand he write the book, but based on interviews with people on a set list. Poke’s efforts to keep himself alive amid competing interests move the plot along. His sangfroid in the face of serious peril, reminiscent of Cary Grant’s in North by Northwest, may strike some readers as out of place in a book that opens with a heartrending scene of a thug instructing a reluctant girl how to become a professional beggar by pinching an infant to make it cry to gain more sympathy. (Sept.)

Two women, one a Northerner with a husband fighting for the Confederacy, and one a Southerner yearning to attend art school in Philadelphia, exchange letters and find in their unlikely friendship the strength to survive the Civil War, and though shades of Scarlett O’Hara occasionally pop up, Hambly manages a mostly original take on a much-covered era. Newly wed to Tennessean Emory Poole, Cora Poole retreats to Deer Isle, Maine, to remain true to her husband among friends and relatives who abhor his allegiance and suspect hers. In Greene County, Tenn., Emory’s neighbor, Susanna Ashford, dabbles in the arts while facing an increasingly dire reality. The correspondents share feelings, views of current events and accounts of their respective tribulations: Susanna nurses the wounded, hunts and sews to pay for her sister’s midwife. Cora raises her infant daughter, cares for her demented mother and also sews as the war exhausts resources. The leads are three-dimensional, occasionally surprising and always sympathetic as they find in their unlikely friendship the strength to accept the loss of their ways of life and to seek new ways where they both might thrive. (Sept.)

In Indridason’s stellar fifth Reykjavik thriller (after The Draining Lake), police detective Erlendur Sveinsson and his team investigate the murder of a dark-skinned Asian boy, found frozen in his own blood one midwinter day outside a rundown apartment block. The author imbues the self-doubting Erlendur with enormous depth, as an insecure father unable to show his love for his errant son and daughter as well as a troubled professional who’s made pain his constant companion. Indridason also lays bare the plight of Thai women brought to Iceland, married and soon divorced by Icelanders, left to raise their children alone in a culture, a climate and a language they don’t understand. On top of this national tragedy is the universal problem of bored, unsupervised youth, raised with no respect for authority and awash in fast food, rock music and violent computer games. Indridason has produced a stunning indictment of contemporary society. (Sept.)

Like her debut, The Opposite of Love, Buxbaum’s second novel concerns a woman struggling with devastating loss. When American ex-pat Lucy Stafford is killed by a mugger, her lifelong best friend Ellie Lerner drops everything to fly to London. Ellie stays on after Lucy’s funeral to care for her friend’s eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, who witnessed her mom’s violent death and has since retreated into silence. Ellie also worries about Lucy’s husband, Greg, who confesses that he “can barely even look at” his daughter; her own divorced parents’ on-again, off-again relationship; and her long-suffering husband, waiting for her in the Boston suburbs. Ellie finds London as much a refuge as a place of mourning; she’s been unable to move past the birth of a stillborn child and feels the need to “borrow” Sophie. As she uncovers more of Lucy’s life, Ellie finds her own spinning out of control, and soon she’s forced to reassess even her deeply held certainties. Buxbaum skillfully handles this tale of grief and growing, resonant with realistic emotional stakes and hard-won wisdom. (Sept.)

McAndrew’s atmospheric second novel (after Going Topless) takes readers into the superficially glamorous lives of the expatriate Sanders family in late 1970s Paris. Fifteen-year-old Charlotte lives with her snobby older sister, “emotionally autistic” father and chic “though she was from Kentucky” mother, Astrid. Charlotte busies herself with the standard obsessions of adolescence: crushes, homework, power plays within her school’s cliques. Her journey to adulthood begins as her parents’ marriage—and her family—crumble when her mother’s affair with a Polish dissident lands Astrid in jail. Forced to choose between her parents, Charlotte moves with Astrid to the punk scene of early ’80s New York and works her way through the milestones of a young woman’s life: high school, college, work. Slowly, she finds her place in the world while her family’s capacity for reinvention leads its members to new and unexpected alliances. McAndrew’s casual but assured depictions of life among the upper crust of Paris and New York (“those heavy-lidded women of indeterminable age”) and wry voice (“one of those iconic Parisian addresses that only foreigners could afford”), make this coming-of-age novel a delectable treat. (Sept.)

A breezy, humorous first novel from Boudinot (after his collection, The Littlest Hitler) chronicles the awkward coming-of-age of a boy whose middle-school crush entwines him into the girl’s dysfunctional family. Cedar Rivers is first introduced when he brings in his own semen for inspection under the microscope in eighth-grade science class, a stunt that impresses incipient beauty Kat Daniels. Groping summer sexual experiments ensue and are cut short as Kat has to spend a month traveling with her mom and her mom’s creepy new boyfriend, George. When Kat returns pregnant, George is the assumed suspect. Boudinot is not overly concerned by this flimsy plot, managing to inject textual interest by alternating the narrative in the voices of first Cedar then Kat, whom Cedar meets with 20 years later to sign a waiver regarding the memoir she’s about to publish. There are ironic, tongue-in-cheek moments (“Ryan Boudinot” is the name of a critic who reviewed Kat’s first book), perhaps to remind the reader not to take any of this too seriously—especially the over-the-top ending—while Boudinot provides moments of gossamer prose. (Sept.)

The protagonist of Cave’s pleasantly demented second novel, set in England, is living out a porno: door-to-door lotion salesman Bunny Munro spends his days seducing invariably attractive women, servicing both their sexual and moisturizing needs. His wife’s suicide, though, threatens to derail Bunny’s amorous adventures, as he can’t shake the feeling that he might somehow be responsible. Another new obstacle is the need to look after his nine-year-old son, Bunny Jr. In an effort to escape the creepiness of the apartment he shared with his wife, Bunny takes his son on the road, teaching him the ropes of salesmanship. Meanwhile, a man in red face paint and plastic devil horns accosts women in northern England before a murderous turn sends him journeying south. Bunny’s deterioration from swaggering Lothario to sputtering pity case suggests he is carrying around more guilt than he cares to admit, and his obsessive behavior, while a bit of a stretch, allows for an interesting portrait of modern family dynamics. Cave’s bawdy humor, along with a gallows whimsy that will be familiar to fans of his music, elevate the novel from what might otherwise be a one-note adventure. (Sept.)

The tragic consequences of a woman’s lost honor and a family’s shame haunt several generations in Trevor’s masterful 14th novel. His prose precisely nuanced and restrained, Trevor depicts a society beginning to loosen itself from the Church’s implacable condemnation of sexual immorality. Years ago, Miss Connulty’s dragon of a mother forced her into lifelong atonement after she was abandoned by her lover. Now, in the mid-1950s, middle-aged and forever marked for spinsterhood in her small Irish town, she is intent on protecting Ellie Dillahan, the naïve young wife of an older farmer. A foundling raised by nuns, Ellie was sent to housekeep for the widowed farmer, and she is content until her dormant emotions are awakened by a charming but feckless bachelor, Florian Kilderry, who has plans to soon leave Ireland. Their affair is bittersweet, evoking Florian’s regretful knowledge that he will cause heartbreak and Ellie’s shy but urgent passion and culminating in a surprising resolution. Trevor renders the fictional town of Rathmoye with the precise detail of a photograph, while his portrait of its inhabitants is more subtle and painterly, suggesting their interwoven secrets, respectful traditions and stoic courtesy. (Sept.)

Harrigan, who spent 27 years at the National Security Agency, brings plenty of insider knowledge but little originality to her clunky debut, a thriller set in late 2000. Alexandra O’Malley, an NSA assistant director, is part of Project Meridian, a program that’s been monitoring a particularly worrisome stream of phone calls placed by terrorist Usama bin Laden (UBL) originating from al-Qaeda headquarters in Afghanistan. The calls concern a major upcoming mission against America, but the phone intercepts cease before hard facts are ascertained. Alex’s boyfriend, CIA agent Gabriel Ayala, parachutes into Afghanistan to tap into the terrorists’ telephone system. After several murders occur involving NSA personnel, Alex takes it upon herself to solve these crimes. Harrigan gives readers an authentic peek behind the curtains of the secretive NSA, but it comes at the expense of a compelling plot or interesting, in-depth characters. (Sept.)

Malfi (The Fall of Never) draws on the experiences of his Secret Service agent father, who infiltrated the Irish gang known as the Westies decades earlier, for this plodding crime thriller. Secret Service agent John Mavio seeks to bring down two violent gangsters, Jimmy Kahn and Mickey O’Shay, in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. To do so, Mavio poses as a fellow crook interested in buying counterfeit money from Kahn and O’Shay, the latter, despite a long track record of bloodshed, having avoided jail even after a police officer witnessed one of his murders. Will Mavio be able to overcome Kahn and O’Shay’s suspicions to get evidence to prosecute them? Few readers will care, given the predictable plot and ponderous prose (e.g., “Manhattan has a way of leading its occupants to certain destinations without said occupants necessarily realizing he or she has been led”). (Sept.)

This stand-alone thriller from Lister, author of the John Jordan series (Blood of the Lamb, etc.), opens on a suspenseful note, but deteriorates toward the end. A camera set up by Remington James to photograph wildlife in the North Florida woods captures images of a man in uniform shooting a woman to death. Soon afterward, the murderer himself, an officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, confronts James, who spends the rest of the book fleeing from the gunman and his colleagues. James’s ability to hold his own against trained killers strains belief, and his repeated inability to restrain himself from using the radio he picked up from one of the killer’s allies, despite his knowledge that doing so could reveal his location, will also try readers’ patience. The author’s sparse prose moves the action along, but the pat resolution won’t win him many new fans. (Sept.)

Poet Gallagher, encouraged into fiction by her third husband, short story master Raymond Carver, has published two prior collections—The Lover of Horses and At the Owl Woman Saloon. The present collection culls from those works; a standout from Lovers, “Girls,” profiles an elderly woman who visits an old friend who no longer recognizes her, but the two seniors manage to reconnect like teenagers, holding hands and gossiping about men. In the later collection, Owl Woman, the impact of Carver’s death is obvious; people struggling with death and loss abound. “I Got a Guy Once” is a heavy-handed working-class narrative of logging in decline. “My Gun” is equally contrived: a woman looking into buying a weapon after her husband’s death is a thinly veiled hack job about the pros and cons of owning a gun. The author’s voice is so different in the two periods (the early stories are gems) and the body of work so slim that the reason behind this collection is elusive. (Sept.)

Roesch’s offbeat debut is set in Unalakleet, Alaska, population 700, a destination that seems like the end of the world for teenage L.A. gang member Cesar Stone, uprooted by his mother after his older brother catches a murder conviction and a life sentence. Navigating without his brother or father, Cesar dwells on regrets while attempting to find himself in the refuge of his mom’s native Alaska. Aggrieved at leaving L.A., but also relieved to be free from the gang’s demands, Cesar bonds with his older cousin Go-boy, a Native with an optimistic outlook that belies personal tragedies. Go-boy bets a homemade tattoo of “Eskimo Jesus” that Cesar will stay in Alaska for a year, where he believes Cesar truly belongs. After becoming accustomed to Go-Boy’s peculiar dependability, Cesar begins to see troubling changes in his cousin; as he charts Go-boy’s drift, he begins to see himself changing as well. Roesch’s compelling story, exotic setting and eccentric characters make this coming-of-age tale a fresh, welcome read. (Sept.)

Yet another discovery of a centuries-old secret that places “the very existence of the Catholic Church” at stake propels Benoît’s formulaic religious thriller. Sinister Vatican officials, afraid that Father Andrei has stumbled on a truth that will call Jesus’ divinity into question, arrange for Andrei’s demise—on a train headed for Rome, he’s tossed out a window to his death. Andrei leaves behind a clue in the form of some cryptic notes for his close friend, Father Nil, whose pursuit of evidence that there was a 13th apostle puts him in peril. Nil’s foes include an improbable odd couple of assassins, a former Mossad agent and a member of Hamas. Some readers may be irked by the author’s failure to explain such matters as why a key volume that leads Nil in the right direction is not better protected or why the ruthless forces behind Andrei’s killing don’t just eliminate Nil early on. (Sept.)

In his American debut, British author Ellory (A Simple Act of Violence) presents an intriguing but overstuffed saga of a man haunted by a serial killer. In 1939, in rural Augusta Falls, Ga., someone brutally rapes and murders a classmate of 12-year-old Joseph Vaughn, the first in what will become more than 30 similar crimes over decades. At age 15, living alone with his mother after the death of his father and yearning to be a writer, Vaughan gathers together a group of local boys and forms the Guardians in the hope of preventing more attacks. It’s the failure of the group, and himself in particular, that eventually drives Vaughan to Brooklyn, where, in an improbable twist, he gets caught up in another murder linked to the killings back home. Ellory simply tries to juggle too many narrative elements. The sheer number of characters and subplots dilute the quiet power of his prose, particularly evident in scenes of Vaughn’s childhood. (Sept.)

Naqvi’s debut novel introduces Chuck, a 20-something Pakistani living in New York and one of the most engaging protagonists to come along in a while. After moving from Karachi to attend NYU, Chuck readily adapts to the customs of his new home—especially those involving alcohol, cocaine and skirt chasing—but he’s not the average drunk college kid: he and his friends, AC and Jimbo, are like a Pakistani-American version of the Three Musketeers—in their own eyes, “boulevardiers, raconteurs, renaissance men.” After graduating, Chuck lands a job as an investment banker (his mother’s idea), and after a good run, he’s fired during a brief economic downturn. Shortly thereafter, his former office building, 7 World Trade Center, is the third building to go down on 9/11. Suddenly, the act of the debonair dandy is a little harder to pull off: with no job, little money, and the rapidly increasing hostility of Americans towards all things Muslim, Chuck struggles to make sense of his newfound status as an outsider. Naqvi’s fast-paced plot, foul-mouthed erudition and pitch-perfect dialogue make for a stellar debut. (Sept.)

The eight stories in this debut collection maintain a sense of isolation and loss while depicting and dissecting the lives of drifting characters making questionable decisions in a quiet Kentucky town. In the title piece, a father is faced with a moral quandary when his 19-year-old son is accused of raping a local teenager. The others follow similar themes of emotional voids and gaps in trust. In “Upright Man,” a college-bound town kid, Matt, befriends “large and muscular and handsome” country-boy Robbie while doing manual labor the summer after graduation. Though Robbie helps Matt get his first girlfriend, Matt secretly desires Robbie’s girl and discovers how easily betrayal overcomes good intentions. The strongest entries are “Parts” and “Proof of God,” opposite sides of the same tale, narrated in turn by the mother who loses her daughter in a horrific crime, and the college classmate who killed her. Throughout each, the fallible characters are handled with delicate honesty. Though the setting tends to feel repetitive, Jones writes with grace and ease, the selections adding up to a powerful sum of reflection, loss and regret. (Sept.)

In 1960s Manhattan, Arthur MacDougal has been thrown out of his exclusive prep school and sent off to the Spooner School for the disciplinary challenged in rural Connecticut. Just minutes after his parents speed back to the city, he hits it off with the fragile and quirky Katrina Felt, daughter of a famous show biz couple, who immediately recognizes Arthur’s latent gayness. Enter Sapphire, Katrina’s roommate, a promiscuous but sweet hippy chick; Nicolas, Arthur’s roommate, still dealing with his mother’s death; and Lenny, the muscular, snaggle-toothed townie who catches Arthur’s eye. Novelist-playwright Stuart (24-Karat Kids) sets his fully drawn character loose in a familiar era, but there’s nothing quaint or retro about his ’60s set; the ubiquitous drugs, the war, the new sense of sexual freedom and the fight against the establishment are pervasive and essential elements. This simple but wholly moving coming-of-age story features a worthy successor to Holden Caulfield coming to grips with what (and who) he cannot change. (Sept.)

Known primarily for his avant-garde music, Momus (aka Nick Currie) proves that he is no slouch as fiction writer either, easily translating his iconoclastic vision to prose. The novel is a phantasmagorical ride through dirty jokes that, in Momus’s twisted alternate reality, dictate the lives of a very unfortunate family. It’s all here: bestiality, incest, rape, murder and combinations thereof, as if related in the locker room of a junior high. There is no clear narrative structure; the action meanders through anecdotes told by the narrator—sometimes a young boy, and sometimes his hugely endowed father—who lives in a glass house and is sometimes imprisoned with a pair known only as the Murderer and the Molester. The humor is dark and absurd and genuinely funny (though not for everyone), and the style is reminiscent of Naked Lunch, with puns and coarse jokes instead of caterpillars and otherworldly creatures. This strong and short novel, despite its uncompromising structure and style, is delightfully crude and never ever dull. (Sept.)

Inspirational novelist Baumbich (Dearest Dorothy series) presents readers with a lovely story of forgiveness, restoration and a dash of hopeful whimsy thrown in for pure pleasure. Baumbich, whose nonfiction is frequently self-deprecating and thoroughly comedic, offers her fiction fans a tale that is “flurrious” with the unexpected and unimagined as Cassandra Higgins, mom to four young boys and day-care provider, sets upon a course of self-discovery after purchasing a snow globe. Cassandra, whose father committed suicide and whose mother barely, and bitterly so, continues to face life one day at a time, revisits her childhood pain as she gazes into this glass globe containing three dogs and a girl resembling herself. This young mother realizes that even with a loving husband, children and a life absent of any major catastrophe, the past continues to wield a mighty force that shapes present-day attitudes and lingering emotional afflictions. Baumbich reaches deep into the heart’s recesses, but does so with the precision of the most skilled emotional physician. For that, her readers will feel nothing but gratitude. (Sept.)

Positioned as a gentle historical romance for lovers of Amish and Mennonite stories, this tale by inspirational Christian novelist Vogel Sawyer (My Heart Remembers) fits this description in too tidy a fashion. Set in 1872, married couple Reinhardt and Lillian Vogt decide to leave their Mennonite village of Gnadenfeld, Russia, for America rather than see their eldest son, Henrik, drafted into the military. The Vogts begin their ocean voyage along with their three sons and Reinhardt’s foster brother Eli Bornholdt when the unthinkable occurs. Faced with sudden tragedy and a future in Kansas now made even more uncertain, Lillian must act quickly and decisively, and does so, but not without drawing the ire of her oldest son. With little to go on but grit, faith and loyalty to each other, these immigrants forge a new life despite obstacles both internal and external. Fans of this type of formulaic fiction won’t be put off by its conclusion or its lightweight treatment of true loss and the grief that follows. Others who prefer more realism in their reads won’t be as easily satisfied. (Sept.)

Quirk abounds in this tale of two sisters, Agnes and Griselda Sparrow. The titular Agnes forswears leaving home when she tips the scale at 600 pounds, and stays put and prays. When what seem to be miracles—healings from serious illnesses—occur, the residents of the small Pennsylvania town of Bright’s Pond naturally attribute them to Agnes. Agnes’s putative power attracts a stranger in need of an unstated miracle, and the plot thickens from there. To pull off such a quirky novel, the characters need to be vividly etched, the writing consistently clever and the plotting persuasive on its own terms. Magnin partly succeeds: she meets the clever quotient, but on the whole the book is uneven. Some of the explanations that account for characters’ decisions aren’t persuasive; some dark plot twists threaten to overwhelm the quirkiness; and the pacing of the first half of the book is slow. Still, Magnin will please those who like their faith fiction with a twist, even if not everything served at the town’s Full Moon Cafe can be swallowed. (Sept.)

Sammy Sullivan, a “crusty old rewrite man” at a New York City tabloid, and his teenage son embark on a weekend of male bonding in Carillo’s witty, insightful second novel. After rough-edged Sammy is fired and his son, Jake, gets expelled from his elite private school, father and son, who’ve grown apart, decide to spend the weekend revisiting places that hold the key to Sammy’s past and may shed light on Jake’s future. Along the way, Sammy confronts painful memories of his religiously obsessive mother and introduces Jake to the boy’s long-estranged grandfather while both try to figure out what’s next. In this coming-of-age tale, there’s often a question of who is parenting whom. Carillo, a former reporter for the New York Post, has an easy way with breezy prose and likable characters. (Sept.)

Hunt (Indiana, Indiana) delivers a fourth novel about drifters that unfortunately never wanders into particularly interesting territory. Unable to find meaning in his life and suffering from a nasty bout of restless leg syndrome, Harry returns to Barcelona, where he once spent a few happy months. At a cafe, a stranger, Ireneo, beckons him to follow, and Harry soon realizes that Ireneo is really after one of the living statues who perform for the tourists, a sad-looking girl in an angel costume. Smitten with the girl, Harry decides to become a living statue of Don Quixote complete with golden body paint designed to attract her interest. Meanwhile, Ireneo, sidetracked by his mother’s sudden illness, searches for the angel while imagining that he is being pursued by ghosts. While lyrically written, the origin of Harry’s malaise is never made clear, and an attempt to fuse his meanderings over the city with the metaphysical explorations of his fellow lost souls is where the novel badly stumbles, leaving strands of the early plot dangling over a sour mishmash of unexplainable sadness. (Sept.)

Aub’s powerful coming-of-age novel (originally published in 1943) is set during the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War and follows a young man’s bewildering political enlightenment as he moves from the Spanish provinces to Barcelona and is caught up in mutinous antigovernment factions. Aub—who was born to German parents, brought up in Spain, then fled the country upon Franco’s ascendancy—creates an intricate tapestry of Spanish society, beginning in the Aragon region near Valencia, where protagonist Rafael Lopez Serrador grows up on a farm. The boy becomes a jeweler’s apprentice and embroils himself in an affair with an older widow before heading to Barcelona to seek his fortune in the spring of 1929. Here, the novel explodes with the sights and smells of the teeming Catalan city, where Serrador falls in with a left-wing crowd while sorting through his own politics. The violence begins to sicken and corrupt Serrador, and the novel closes to one day’s paroxysm of mayhem that engulfs Barcelona. The first in a six-book series, this immersive narrative, fluidly translated, is accessible and gripping. (Sept.)

This stylish debut novel from poet White (The Salt Hour) brings to mind John D. MacDonald’s Florida noirs, but with a modern sensibility. In 1983, after a three-year absence, high school dropout Matt Younger, 30, returns to his parents’ cottage on Amelia Island, Fla. The family’s discontent stems from the earlier drowning of Matt’s older brother, Hale, the “family god.” Matt’s father, Jack, is dying of congestive heart failure while his mother, Emily, is exhausted from around-the-clock caregiving. Relieving his mother, Matt updates Jack on his shady adventures as the self-styled “king of all sailing fools.” Working as a skipper, Matt was hired to pilot a boat from Florida to St. Thomas and en route takes up cocaine running for drug lord Jimmy Q, eventually stealing $2 million worth of coke. But when he docks in the Dominican Republic for repairs, his real troubles begin, in the form of deliciously nasty femme fatale Jesse Dove and Matt’s love interest, local hooker Rosario Estrella. White’s vivid prose, layered plot line and detailed acumen of Caribbean sailing all boost his impressive yarn above run-of-the-mill noirs. (Sept.)

Moran’s latest foray into the world of classical history (after The Heretic Queen) centers upon the children of Marc Antony and Cleopatra . After the death of their parents, twins Alexander and Selene and younger brother Ptolemy are in a dangerous position, left to the mercy of their father’s greatest rival, Octavian Caesar. However, Caesar does not kill them as expected, but takes the trio to Rome to be paraded as part of his triumphant return and to demonstrate his solidified power. As the twins adapt to life in Rome in the inner circle of Caesar’s family, they grow into adulthood ensconced in a web of secrecy, intrigue and constant danger. Told from Selene’s perspective, the tale draws readers into the fascinating world of ancient Rome and into the court of Rome’s first and most famous emperor. Deftly encompassing enough political history to provide context, Moran never clutters her narrative with extraneous facts. Readers may be frustrated that Selene is more observer than actor, despite the action taking place around her, but historical fiction enthusiasts will delight in this solid installment from a talented name in the genre. (Sept.)

Australian author Greenwood’s winning fourth Corinna Chapman mystery (after 2009’s Devil’s Food) boasts a large, eclectic cast of friends and associates of the hefty Melbourne baker, starting with Corinna’s handsome and mysterious Israeli boyfriend, Daniel Cohen. Intriguing supporting players include apprentice baker Jason, an ex-heroin addict; aspiring actresses Kylie and Goss, who work in Corinna’s bakery, Earthly Delights, while awaiting their big break; Mistress Dread, who runs an s&m shop; Meroe, a witch who operates Sibyl’s Cave; and many, many cats. A gathering of witches in Melbourne to celebrate Samhain; a man named Barnabas who calls himself “king of the witches”; a rash of bad drug reactions; a cache of valuables stolen from Greek Jews during WWII; and the appearance of Daniel’s beautiful and svelte former girlfriend, Georgiana Hope, add up to a rich confection that nicely balances humor, villainy and a puzzle. (Oct.)

Clare’s captivating first in a new medieval series dramatizes the clash between the old pagan ways and Christianity in 11th-century England. In 1087, with the death of William the Conqueror, the common people are in a rebellious mood. Meanwhile, Lassair, a 14-year-old girl from a Fenland village with special gifts, is learning to be a healer. When two young men ask her to use her skills to locate a hidden treasure, she can’t refuse. Lassair joins the men on an arduous trek across East Anglia to the coast, where they unearth a 500-year-old solid gold relic. This relic, Lassair realizes, has the power to cause immense harm. Clare (The Joys of My Life and 11 other Hawkenlye mysteries) brings the people of the period to vivid life with close attention to such matters as food, clothes and religious belief. Engaging characters, like Lassair’s obnoxious sister and her storytelling grandmother, enhance a well-crafted plot that builds to a chilling climax. (Sept.)

Set in Oklahoma at the close of WWII, Russell’s engrossing mystery casts light on a little-known corner of American history. When harmless indigent Spark Dugan winds up dead in the Waynoka rail yards, the local yard dog (i.e., railroad detective), Hook Runyon, decides the man’s death was no accident. Runyon soon learns that mild-mannered Dugan may have been involved in a local ring smuggling army goods. As more details come to light, Runyon begins to suspect a big-time operation that involves foul play at a nearby Nazi POW camp—and possibly a local oil tycoon with a penchant for lavish living. With the help of the camp cook and community moonshiner as well as the POW camp’s English teacher, Runyon and his friends are soon ensnared in a dangerous investigation that’s anything but routine railroad detective work. Russell (Dreams to Dust) impressively contrasts the book’s raw, colorful characters with the harsh Oklahoma landscape. (Sept.)

Gorman and Greenberg follow up A Prisoner of Memory (2008) with another impressive anthology, which features a diverse assortment of styles and settings. Readers familiar with Steve Hockensmith only from his novels will enjoy “The Devil’s Acre,” a typically amusing story featuring the Amlingmeyer brothers, cowboys inspired by Sherlock Holmes. Joyce Carol Oates continues to display her facility with crime fiction with her portrait of a man’s descent into violence in “The First Husband.” The title story should attract deserved notice for Tom Piccirilli, who tugs at the heartstrings while maintaining the moral relativism of classic noir. Other contributors include Michael Connelly, T. Jefferson Parker, Charlaine Harris, Bill Pronzini and Charles Ardai. (Sept.)

Parisian bookseller Victor Legris takes a little too long to appear in this sequel to Izner’s Murder on the Eiffel Tower (2008), but eventually Denise Le Louarn, a maid worried about her missing mistress, Odette de Valois, finds her way to Victor’s bookstore. As Odette’s former lover, Victor feels obliged to help—plus, he loves a good mystery. Victor discovers that a delusional old man has inadvertently carried off Odette’s body from the Père-Lachaise cemetery, where she was murdered while following a spiritualist’s advice to honor her “dead” husband. Then Denise turns up drowned in the Seine, another body surfaces and an unexceptional painting of the Madonna commands exceptional interest. Historical and cultural references—to literature, art and music—vividly evoke Paris in 1890. While some readers may find this backdrop a little bulky at times, the increasingly tight plot and several deftly constructed characters keep the story moving. (Sept.)

In British author Heley’s fine 10th Ellie Quicke mystery (after 2008’s Murder in the Park), nosy Ellie, recently married to her minister, must try to solve a missing persons case. After Ursula Belton, a distraught university student, stages a sit-in vigil at Ellie’s husband’s church, Ellie’s drawn into searching for Ursula’s best friend, Mia Prior. Mia disappeared after the drunken fatal fall of a male friend during the opening of posh Prior’s Place, a new block of upscale flats owned by Mia’s high-profile developer stepdad. As Ellie probes into Mia’s background, she comes under the radar of a gang led by Anthony and Timothy Prior, Mia’s stepbrothers. They stalk Ellie, Ursula’s mother and even Ellie’s daughter, Diana, hoping to find where battered Mia and Ursula have escaped to. More strong-coffee crime than weak-tea cozy, Heley’s unflinching take on just how low unscrupulous businessmen may go during recessionary times is an eye-opener. (Sept.)

Divided into two halves, this short, brutally poetic tour of the underside of Brooklyn, Boston and Philadelphia marks the first collaboration between noir masters Bruen (The Guards) and Coleman (The James Deans). Drawing on the classic theme of childhood friends pulled toward different sides of the law, the coauthors tell the story of Nick and Todd in quick concise scenes, sketching backstories and love lives, flipping time and incidents like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Running errands under the cold eyes of an enforcer, Griffin, for the Bible-quoting gangster Boyle, the heroes learn fast enough that “you live in the rain forest, you get wet.” And looming symbolically over their narrow, violent world is the north tower of the World Trade Center. Bruen and Coleman shine, dropping in-jokes, experimenting and displaying all the literary chops that have made their novels such cult favorites among mystery fans. (Sept.)

At the start of Dunn’s sprightly 18th Daisy Dalrymple mystery (after 2008’s Black Ship), Daisy travels to Wiltshire because she’s writing a book about an architectural folly, an elaborate grotto, at Appsworth Hall, owned by Mr. Pritchard of Pritchard’s Plumbing Products. Best friend and freelance photographer Lucy Binscomb (aka Lady Gerald) accompanies Daisy, who leaves behind her husband, Scotland Yard’s Det. Chief Insp. Alex Fletcher, to look after their twin children. On arrival at Appsworth, Daisy and Lucy discover that Mr. Pritchard is hosting a lavish house party, which includes eligible bachelorette Julia Beaufort; Lord Rydal (aka Rhino); Lady Ottaline Wandersley (with whom Rhino is having an affair); and Charles Armitage, a Canadian charmed by Julia. A shocking grotto explosion that takes Rhino’s life spares Lady Ottaline and Rhino’s chauffeur. While Dunn’s cozy confection doesn’t offer a lot of surprises, it does a neat job of evoking upper-class life in 1920s England. (Sept.)

The warmth felt by the contributors toward the Minneapolis mystery bookstore that gives this all-original anthology its name is shown in the high quality of many of its 24 entries. Fans of Alexander McCall Smith who haven’t encountered Michael Stanley yet will be grateful for the introduction after reading Stanley’s whodunit set in contemporary Botswana, “An Issue of Women and Money.” Anne Fraiser’s “Santa’s Little Helper” is a bit of a misfire, a very short procedural about the gunning down of a man dressed as Kris Kringle whose shock ending might have been more effective if the story had more meat on its bones. Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins offer a new wrinkle on the spoiled city woman stuck in the sticks in “Flyover Country,” with a foreseeable resolution that still packs a punch. Other contributors include C.J. Box, Ken Bruen, Reed Farrel Coleman, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Sujata Massey and S.J. Rozan. (Sept.)

Jaunty magician Jack, agent in the U.K.’s occult secret service, goes undercover in the witty sequel to 2008’s Hunter’s Moon. His goal is to crush the Eagle Society, neo-Nazis intent on busting Hitler out of hell and into a handsome new Aryan body. Jack assumes the role of successful banker John Dennis and grapples with Eagle Society members like “lunatic” Sir James Gold as well as annoying MI5 mole Miss Penny Marsh, herself undercover as cultist Alexandra Gentle. Amiable Jack despises some of the violent chores he must undertake in the fight against the forces of darkness, but he soldiers on bravely. Devereux’s quirky blend of horror and deadpan humor bristles with pop culture references, giving Tarantino-style profanity and gore a twist of Robert Rankin tomfoolery and Ian Fleming derring-do. (Sept.)

Shaman Joanne Walker juggles ghosts, zombies and her day job as a greenhorn Seattle homicide detective in her feverishly cluttered fourth adventure (after 2007’s Coyote Dreams). Fortunately, ghost whisperer Billy Holliday is on hand at Joanne’s Halloween party when ghosts burst out of a cauldron. When the ancient Cauldron of Matholwch is stolen from a Seattle museum and a dark pall spreads over the city, it’s not hard to spot the connection. After a dire premonition, Walker travels the astral planes to join the Wild Hunt on a seemingly unrelated quest. The plot doesn’t so much thicken as sag from too many tricky twists and a mishmash of mythology, including Celtic and Native American lore, witchcraft, stage magic, clairvoyance and gods, but at least Joanne remains an appealing protagonist. (Sept.)

In this weighty third installment of the Twilight Reign series (after 2009’s The Twilight Herald), the gods, shocked by their defeat in battle against humankind, have decided to fight back by turning select humans into Mortal-Aspects, demigods who can act as their agents. Lord Isak of the Farlan foiled the advances of the shadow-god Azaer at the battle of Scree, but it was only a temporary fix, and the price paid by Isak and his followers was much too steep. Now, needing to mobilize an army against Azaer and the Menin people, Isak must whip his people into a religious frenzy. Though Lloyd’s prose is as strong as ever, this volume is more of a stepping stone than a solid story in its own right. (Sept.)

This mediocre military SF adventure sequel to 2008’s Tarizon: The Liberator continues the exploits of Leek Lanzia, an Earth-born teenager exiled to the planet Tarizon. Hailed as Tarizon’s savior as per an old prophecy, Lanzia leads the mutant Loyalists and their allies in a vicious war against the hovertanks of the Tarizon Global Army. Lanzia’s episodic adventures include uniting Tarizon’s disparate races, bolstering the Loyalist army’s air forces and attempting to free his completely nondescript mate, Lucinda, from captivity. An epic scale and some nifty ideas can’t hide the shallow characterization and rushed plotting, and Manchee completely squanders the inherent humor of a 17-year-old boy leading an army of mutants. The sparse descriptions and assumed familiarity with the first volume leave much of the story inaccessible to new readers. (Sept.)

Set in Regency England, Mack’s third Pack of St. James scorcher (after 2008’s Wild and Wanton) features the well-drawn character Semyon Taruskin, the youngest of a trio of Russian wolf-blooded brothers who pose as London gentlemen to serve the king. A chance encounter with maid Angelica Harrow drives renowned lover Semyon into lustful fantasies. Angelica’s confident manner and gentle ways convince him she was not born into the servant class, and he intends to make his sensual dreams into reality. When he finds she has been kidnapped, his wolf senses lead him into London’s underworld of orgies, sex slaves and the debauchery of a man known as St. Sin. Titillating sex scenes will keep readers enthralled all the way to a satisfying conclusion that leaves room for future stories featuring secondary characters. (Sept.)

Zivkovic (The Writer/The Book/The Reader) masterfully filters memory and art through absurdism in this limited edition collection. “Compartments” follows an unnamed man as he is escorted through six rooms on a train, encountering odd travelers who tell him about a mysterious muse-like woman. “Four Stories Till the End,” the pinnacle of both storytelling and strangeness, features four people, each interrupted in turn by guests who tell art-themed stories with delightful digressions on the horrible crimes prevented by circus detectives and the need for any top hotel to have a weapons factory. “Amarcord,” named for Fellini’s 1973 film, comprises 10 short stories wherein various people buy, sell and lose their memories. Two shorter pieces round out the collection, which neither has nor needs mainstream appeal; fans of Zivkovic’s unclassifiable quirkiness will quickly snap up all 500 copies. (Sept.)

Gischler (Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse) populates a world of intrigue with supernatural creatures in this highly entertaining novel. Allen Cabbot is saved from flunking out of graduate school by the extremely difficult Prof. Evergreen, who invites him to join a research project in Prague. Almost immediately, Allen finds himself tangling with Battle Jesuits, a Society of Witches and a vampire, and he learns that Evergreen’s real goal may be the philosopher’s stone. The feisty ghost of 16th-century alchemist Edward Kelley serves as narrator, complaining about the picture on his Wikipedia entry while explaining the history behind Allen’s adventure. While the characters lack depth, even the villains are approachable and likable. Dan Brown fans who don’t mind a little humor and magic mixed into their thrillers will enjoy this charming tale. (Sept.)

Elrod ties up some loose ends from Cold Streets and picks up where 2006’s Song in the Dark left off in Jack Fleming’s swaggering 12th adventure. Jack, a hard-boiled vampire PI/club owner in 1938 Chicago, subdues and wins over Gabe “Whitey” Kroun, “a big bad gang boss” from New York whom Jack soon discovers is also undead. Whitey’s vampire blood helps Jack’s best friend, Charles Escott, survive a deadly infection and injuries from a nasty fight, but it may turn him into a bloodsucker. Elrod sometimes gets too caught up in nostalgic gangster-style chatter, but the action is solid, and while newcomers might feel like they’ve wandered into a half-finished film starring Humphrey Bogart and Vincent Price, fans will be thrilled. (Sept.)

In this too-short but sweet fantasy novella, MacAvoy (the Lens of the World trilogy) slips into the dreamy Asian-flavored world of Pacific coast painter, psychic and martial artist Ewen Young. Not long after Ewen receives a warning from two Chinese thugs wanting to collect on his uncle’s massive gambling debts, a mysterious man called John Chow kills his uncle and then shoots Ewen, wounding his heart. While recovering in the hospital, Ewen travels to the “in-between,” a psychically created realm where he helps the troubled patients of his psychiatrist twin sister and foresees Chow’s death. Det. Rick Petersen, impressed by his abilities, encourages Ewen to repeatedly brave the scary trip between worlds to learn more about Chow’s motives. Ewen’s story is ripe for more in-depth treatment, but there’s still plenty of good stuff in this slim package. (Sept.)

Set in 1854 England, this steamy trilogy opener from bestseller Martin (Heart of Courage) is an enjoyable mixture of tension and romance. Royal Dewar, the dashing duke of Bransford, promised his dying father that he would marry for money and restore the family fortune, and he dutifully proposes to wealthy Jocelyn Caulfield. His heart, however, belongs to Jocelyn’s penniless but beautiful cousin, Lily Moran. Fiercely independent Lily tells Royal of her criminal past, but instead of spurning her, he asks her help with a scheme to recover the money his father lost to a swindler. As Lily and Royal struggle to resist their passion, haughty Jocelyn finds unexpected love with a man below her station. Though the conflict ties up too neatly and plot holes diminish the suspense, the romance smolders enough to make the next books worth waiting for. (Sept.)

Downum effectively combines action, magic, police procedure and political intrigue in this complex and striking debut. Isyllt Iskaldur, a Selafaïan forensic necromancer, travels to the monsoon-soaked canal city of Symir, capital of Sivahra. Her plot to undermine the occupying Assari Empire before it can invade Selafai is complicated by her attraction to handsome Imperial fire-mage Asheris. Isyllt’s bodyguard Xinai, a Sivahran native, despises the empire for its brutal destruction of her clan; young apprentice mage Zhirin Laii struggles between love for a guerrilla leader and loyalty to her mother, a respected politician. Refreshingly, Downum treats necromancy as an unclean but necessary defense against evil and nicely handles the complex nuances of a quasi-Westerner fomenting revolution in a quasi-Asian country occupied by quasi-Arabs. A strong (if not happy) conclusion still leaves plenty of room for sequels. (Sept.)

Bestseller London (The Book of Scandal) puts her historical romances aside to pen a contemporary heartbreaker inspired by post-9/11 patriotism. Macy and Finn Lockhart work hard and love deeply on their horse ranch in Texas until Finn joins the army and is killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Three years later, Macy has glued herself together enough to put the ranch up for sale and marry land broker Wyatt Clark. Then comes the paralyzing news that Finn is alive and coming home. Macy suddenly has two husbands and must decide where her future lies. Difficult choices lead to bad behavior all around, and while London knows how to keep pages turning, the lack of sympathetic characters may leave readers struggling more with their personal feelings about war and grief than with the tension of the story. (Sept.)

In this first book of a new cowboy trilogy, prolific author Brown (To Trust) makes plenty of amateur mistakes. Milli Torres returns to her grandfather’s Texas ranch only to find that the next door neighbor is the man who fathered her child during a one-night stand two years ago. Beau “Lucky” Luckadeau is too dense to connect the scrappy cowgirl to a woman he’s convinced was only a drunken hallucination. When Beau finds out he’s the father of Milli’s daughter, the requisite romancing begins. Stock obstacles hinder the relationship, from Beau’s gold-digging fiancée to Milli’s overly dramatic five-hour flounce off before a country song convinces her to turn around, but the conventional outcome is never in doubt. Shifting points of view and flat characters make this a decidedly subpar addition to the genre. (Sept.)

Taking a break (mostly) from his powerful and painstakingly constructed stories of historical New York in novels like Dreamland and Paradise Alley, Baker takes a welcome dive into the graphic novel field with this punchy and ghostly modern-day noir. The setting—today’s rusted and listless landscape of Coney Island—fits the dead-end daydreaming of his protagonist. Alik Streinikov is a former Russian soldier fleeing nightmares of the cruelties he witnessed in Chechnya and now working as an enforcer for a sideshow mob fragment that’s about to get pushed out by a more vicious gang. Alik’s already iffy toehold on society’s ladder is complicated by a serious drug habit and worse addiction to Marina, a hooker/fortune teller whose every card reads like bad news. Marina keeps reminding Alik of his nightmares, and before long he’s spiraling through alternative pasts (from early 20th-century New York to the Russian civil war), which repeat the same inescapable tragedies. The artwork by Zezelj (Northlanders) has a windswept, slashing quality to it that captures Coney Island’s bitter, salty ocean air on the page. A tough-nosed crime story redolent with magic and sadness, Luna Park serves as a fine showcase for two great artists working to the best of their abilities. (Nov.)

It takes a lot of nerve to use the Holocaust as setting for a superhero story, but villain/antihero Magneto’s background requires it, and the story by Pak and DiGiandomenico carries out the idea with respect. The boy who would become Magneto is Max Eisenhardt, smart and athletic, living with his family in Germany in 1935. He watches in horror as the Germans invade Poland, prompting his family to flee; he sees them killed, like thousands of others; he takes his place as a worker in a concentration camp. But all the while, it nags at him that he should be fighting back, and his father’s admonition to wait for the moment, “a time when everything lines up, when anything is possible, when suddenly you can make things happen” rings in his head, as does the face of the girl he has always loved, a girl who has ended up in a Gypsy camp, fated for extermination. This is an inherently powerful story, handled with grace and care, delivered in a haunting, painterly style—and filled with historical information and context. Extensive back pages include a teacher’s guide to using this series in the classroom. (June)

Bagge made his reputation with the wicked social satire of Hate, but since 2001 he’s also produced these short comics for the libertarian magazine Reason—mostly reported pieces about politics and culture, but also some single-page opinion strips. The formula is that Bagge attends some sort of event (the opening of a tribal casino, an “exit strategy for the war on drugs” conference, a lecture by the author of a book about the founding fathers), observes everyone and mocks them mercilessly. His visual style—in which people are all huge-mouthed, squinty-eyed, rubber-limbed caricatures—is turned up all the way to “jeer”; it’s also pretty funny on its own. Bagge aims his (constitutionally protected) satirical blunderbuss at both the left and the right, and occasionally points it at fellow libertarians and even himself. He follows up a piece in which he eviscerates self-righteous antiwar protesters with one in which he notes his own failure to do much to oppose the Iraq war. And when he meets with Ron Paul, he observes both that Paul was his favorite candidate in the 2008 primaries and that “the betrayed part of me just wanted to punch him in his kindly old racist-pandering face.” (June)

Advertising, religion, sex and politics are just a handful of the topics touched on by Tatsuya Ishida’s popular Web comic, Sinfest. This first volume collects the first 600 outings of the nearly 10-year-old strip. The cute, slightly raunchy cast of characters includes Slick, the womanizer, Monique, who may or may not be a tramp, the Devil, God and a slew of other demons, angels, animals and humans. While clearly influenced by comic strips such as Peanuts and using takeoffs on some of that strip’s familiar setups, Ishida takes his work into dark, politically incorrect directions. The art is likewise a mix of comic strip cute and manga that’s accessible to a broad range of readers. Bonuses in this volume include a sampling of Sinfest the College Years, proving that the comic was once raunchier and harsher than its current incarnation. Harsh as it is, Sinfest offers many laughs; it may be brutally funny, but it is dead honest and refreshing. And underneath the shock value of some of its gags is a comic strip very much in the classic newspaper tradition. (June)

This experimental sci-fi work from CLAMP reads like a romantic version of Akira. In the far future, a mysterious government organization monitors and confines psychic children in the “Clover” program. A professional singer and “one-leaf” ranked psychic named Ora has only the ability to predict her own death. The most powerful psychic in the world, a “four-leaf” girl named Sue lives a life of voluntary isolation inside a gilded cage. Sue hears Ora’s singing inside her head, befriends her via telephone and hopes to meet her one day. Events in the book unfold in a reverse chronology, as the first chapter takes place after Ora’s death and proceeds backwards in time. CLAMP manages to present a richly detailed retro-mechanical future using a minimum number of panels per page; reading this book is like looking into a dystopic future through one tiny, perfectly square frame, as the story unfolds across nearly blank pages scattered with repeating love song lyrics. The character designs are magnificent and tiny details on the clockwork birds and imaginative effects are stunning. Though CLAMP’s most experimental work, it’s still accessible to a wide audience. (June)