Fiction Reviews: 7/13/2009

The reliably diabolical Self delivers four longish stories about decay, debauchery and deliverance, each at least tangentially related to London's Plantation Club. In “Foie Humain,” the Plantation Club is revealed to be a Soho drunkard's institution forever “lost in the foggy forties” and frequented by a crew of brash boozehounds. Among them, Isobel, the daughter of the protagonist of “Leberknödel,” Joyce Beddoes, who, stricken with “nausea, sickly-sour and putrid; a painfully swollen belly and a hot wire in her urethra,” ventures with Isobel to Zurich for an assisted suicide. Self's wry humor takes Joyce on an unexpected adventure as her cancer-ridden liver leads her from Birmingham to Switzerland and into a mess of religious intrigue. The same wit, and a mess of the Plantation's peripheral characters, continues through two more tales, “Prometheus,” about a London advertising executive whose liver is nibbled upon daily by a vulture in exchange for “bigger pitches with bigger spends,” and “Birdy Num Num,” the least exciting of the collection, which follows a gaggle of junkies. Despite the occasional hiccup, Self's parts function quite well together to produce a picture of putrid beauty. (Nov.)

In this reissue of an Internet phenomenon originally slapped between two covers in 2007 by indie Permutus Press, Wong—Cracked.com editor Jason Pargin's alter ego—adroitly spoofs the horror genre while simultaneously offering up a genuinely horrifying story. The terror is rooted in a substance known as “soy sauce,” a paranormal psychoactive that opens video store clerk Wong's—and his penis-obsessed friend John's—minds to higher levels of consciousness. Or is it just hell seeping into the unnamed Midwestern town where Wong and the others live? Meat monsters, wig-wearing scorpion aberrations and wingless white flies that burrow into human skin threaten to kill Wong and his crew before infesting the rest of the world. A multidimensional plot unfolds as the unlikely heroes drink lots of beer and battle the paradoxes of time and space, as well as the clichés of first-person-shooter video games and fantasy gore films. Sure to please the Fangoria set while appealing to a wider audience, the book's smart take on fear manages to tap into readers' existential dread on one page, then have them laughing the next. (Oct.)

Fante continues to follow in the literary footsteps of his famous father, John Fante (Ask the Dust), with another bruising autobiographical novel about his alter ego, Bruno Dante. When the publication of his short story collection is delayed indefinitely, Dante reluctantly returns to his previous career of L.A. limo driver. His boss, however, first insists that he sober up. He does, and launches into a downward cycle of recovery and inebriation. During his descent, he meets an obnoxious Hollywood producer interested in an adaptation of one of Dante's stories and an Old Hollywood matriarch who might be the key to his salvation. Fante puts Dante though many harrowing moments—waking from a blackout with a gash in his neck; having a spurned lover superglue his penis to his thigh. Like his late father, Fante views life in unsparing fashion, but he seems a little too enamored of his alter ego's downhill trajectory while offering very little insight into the source of Dante's personal demons. The result is a novel that disappointingly titillates more than it illuminates. (Oct.)

Moore (Anagrams) knits together the shadow of 9/11 and a young girl's bumpy coming-of-age in this luminous, heart-wrenchingly wry novel—the author's first in 15 years. Tassie Keltjin, 20, a smalltown girl weathering a clumsy college year in “the Athens of the Midwest,” is taken on as prospective nanny by brittle Sarah Brink, the proprietor of a pricey restaurant who is desperate to adopt a baby despite her dodgy past. Subsequent “adventures in prospective motherhood” involve a pregnant girl “with scarcely a tooth in her head” and a white birth mother abandoned by her African-American boyfriend—both encounters expose class and racial prejudice to an increasingly less naïve Tassie. In a parallel tale, Tassie lands a lover, enigmatic Reynaldo, who tries to keep certain parts of his life a secret from Tassie. Moore's graceful prose considers serious emotional and political issues with low-key clarity and poignancy, while generous flashes of wit—Tessie the sexual innocent using her roommate's vibrator to stir her chocolate milk—endow this stellar novel with great heart. (Sept.)

Bestseller Woods piles on the coincidences in his modestly entertaining fifth thriller to feature CIA agent Holly Barker (after Iron Orchid). When Holly returns home to Orchid Beach, Fla., where she was once chief of police, she's reunited with both welcome and unwelcome figures from her past. Renegade ex-CIA agent Teddy Fay, sporting a new identity, has chosen to settle in nearby Vero Beach. Lauren Cade, a former military comrade, is now a sergeant with the Florida State Patrol. Holly is shocked to learn that James Bruno, her former commanding officer who was tried and acquitted of raping Lauren and who once tried to rape Holly herself, is Orchid Beach's new police chief. Holly's not so shocked to learn that a serial killer and rapist is at work in the area. Woods glibly lets the reader stay well ahead of the legal posse tracking the killer while still keeping a card or two up his sleeve. Playful dialogue and romantic sexual escapades lighten the atmosphere. (Sept.)

Wilson's less than satisfying 13th Repairman Jack novel (after By the Sword) blends 9/11 conspiracy theories with a threat to all life on Earth from otherworldly beings. In the author's alternative history, a shadowy figure floating in a boat in New York harbor causes the collapse of the Twin Towers independently of the suicidal al-Qaeda hijackers by detonating explosives in both buildings. Several years later, Eddie Connell seeks out Repairman Jack, heir to the role of “point man in the war against the Otherness.” Eddie needs Jack's help in finding his forensic scientist sister, Weezy, whom they trace to a New York City hospital ward. Because Weezy had uncovered suspicious stock trading in advance of the World Trade Center attack as well as the editing out of a man from photos of bin Laden and his top deputies, her life is in peril. The apocalyptic plot and frenetic action fail to add up to a chilling read. (Sept.)

Marilyn French's The Women's Room, published in 1977, spoke to a generation. In this final novel, published posthumously, French uses the social unrest of the late 1960s as the seedbed for modern dissatisfaction. Jess Leighton navigates her parents' divorce, the Vietnam War, racism and her burgeoning sexuality with difficulty. She plunges into sex, drugs, bad relationships and life on a commune growing organic vegetables, something she had never imagined back in high school in Cambridge, Mass. A novel that feels like a memoir, there are many beautiful passages and poignant moments, but French tries to cover too much and tells more than she shows. When she pulls back the curtain on specific, life-changing moments in Jess's life, the writing is strong and the investment in the characters deep, which makes the weaker sections all the more frustrating. French's disciples will laud this as a life-affirming work; her critics will dismiss it; but it's too complex and nuanced a novel to be banished into either camp. (Sept.)

Mitchard returns to the Cappadoras from The Deep End of the Ocean (Oprah's first book club pick), proving that, sometimes, sequels work. In this harrowing outing, set 13 years after the events of Ocean, the oldest Cappadora son, Vincent, 29, has become a filmmaker, and with the help of his brother, Ben (who was kidnapped in the first book), and sister, Kerry, makes a documentary about child abduction. When the film is nominated for an Academy Award, the family is pushed into the scrutinizing eye of the public, and then tragedy strikes with the disappearance of Ben's daughter, plunging the family into a riveting ordeal that takes them from Hollywood to a grim, middle-of-nowhere confrontation. Along the way, family bonds are stretched to the breaking point, and Mitchard charts a tormented family dynamic with shocking ease. This action-packed and emotionally rich drama is every bit as satisfying as its predecessor. (Sept.)

Prolific Pulitzer–winner Butler features a colorful cast of underworld dwellers in his latest novel, and, as in Severance and Intercourse, captures stream-of-consciousness in delicious, unleashed rhythm. On the downside, Butler pushes his love for thematic concept to new levels of explicit puppetry (read: gimmick). Hatcher McCord, an anchorman on the Evening News from Hell, reports on hellishly banal traumas while real-life persons suffer hilarious punishment: Adolf Hitler is repeatedly executed, only to be reassembled gruesomely, his face like a stitched football. All are ruled by a smarmy, Armani-clad Satan who smells noxiously of Old Spice aftershave, is only reachable by voice mail and blames everything on his “father issues.” But when McCord discovers that Satan can't read his mind, McCord becomes a vehicle for free will. Newly empowered, he attempts sexual and emotional relations with the love of his afterlife, a headless Anne Boleyn who gives great (if terrifying) oral sex. Butler's lust for the tabloid romp and his stream of the never-ending punch line both irritates and illuminates. The reader's taste will have to be the final arbiters of worth. (Sept.)

Hawk's promising debut, a Southern gothic thriller, introduces Dr. Madeleine LeBlanc, a staff psychologist at New Orleans's Tulane University with a special interest in cognitive schizophrenia. Maddy's father, “Daddy Blank,” suffers from the disease, as does her brother, Marc, whose suicide leads Maddy, who fears she may also be schizophrenic after psychic visits from a “devil-child,” to probe her family's past. Tulane neurologist Ethan Manderleigh provides support as terrible secrets surface about the family sugarcane plantation. Maddy's discovery that a creepy childhood friend is a murderer complicates her quest. Flashbacks to Prohibition-era New Orleans chart the early life of Maddy's clairvoyant, mean-spirited 114-year-old great-grandmother, Chloe, who's rather too spry for her age, despite her magical gifts. Voodoo and scientific research into neuroplasticity make an intriguing, if not always easy, mix. (Sept.)

In Ragen's latest look at the women of Israel's Orthodox communities (after Jephte's Daughter), a rabbi's daughters deal with love and the fallout of adultery. The story begins as three sisters reach marrying age with limited options due to family finances and the inherited disgrace of an adulterous ancestor. The eldest at 20, Dvorah dutifully accepts the hand of a man who is “short and overweight and slurps his soup.” Meanwhile, independent-minded youngest sister Chaya Leah meets secretly with a Hasid (improper marriage material) about to enter the Israeli army. The saddest of the three, middle child Dina, must give up her first love and marry instead a laconic woodcarver. Eventually, unfulfilled emotional needs and a lecherous neighbor drive her to sin; after the Morals Patrol catches up with her, she's exiled to New York. Detailed descriptions of weddings and sexual politics offer much insight, showing both the strength and limits of the Orthodox code of conduct. The pleasures of Ragen's book arise not so much from her characters or plot but from thought-provoking comparisons of Israeli Orthodox and American Jewish life. (Sept.)

Like James Ellroy, Hollywood film developer Schwartz can make the reader squirm, as shown in his debut, a disturbing thriller whose hero is addicted to sex. When several sex murders quickly follow the murder of a prominent councilman's niece, LAPD robbery and homicide detective Hayden Glass, who himself goes to 12-step meetings for sex addicts, senses a connection. Enlisting the help of Kennedy Reynard, an ex-FBI profiler whose skill competes with her raw sexuality for the detective's attention, the pair realize that what links the murders is Glass himself. Despite a denouement that's a tad strained, Schwartz does a fine job of blurring the lines between sexuality and violence, the criminal world and the police world. (Sept.)

Set mainly in the game preserves of South Africa, Meyer's stellar stand-alone thriller delivers muscular prose with a hero to match. When three masked men break into the Cape Town home of Emma le Roux on Christmas Eve, Emma manages to escape over the wall into her neighbor's yard. Emma fears the attack may be connected to recent evidence that her brother, Jacobus, who she thought died 20 years before while serving as a temporary game ranger, is actually alive. She hires professional bodyguard Martin Lemmer to protect her while she investigates. Lemmer is a true original, tough, with a checkered past, a restless inquiring mind and the skills to thwart the masked thugs who are determined to kill his client. After Emma is severely injured, Lemmer goes on the offensive, bent on revenge and determined to solve the ever-widening mystery that threatens to kill them both. Once again, Meyer (Devil's Peak) shows he's a writer not to be missed. (Sept.)

Loehfelm follows Fresh Kills (2008), which won Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award, with another novel that mines the emotional dynamics of family relationships, if with fewer thrills. Kevin Curran, a history teacher at a Staten Island community college, is surprised when his younger brother, Danny, turns up after years spent on the street as a drug addict. Danny, who's kicked his habit but is now working for a local crime kingpin, persuades Kevin to help him dig up several bodies buried on the grounds of the long-abandoned Bloodroot Children's Hospital, a horrifying concentration camp–like institution for kids from which Danny was adopted. Soon Kevin finds himself enmeshed in a complicated plan involving an illegal property development project. The action gets moving in the final pages, but by then some readers will feel they know a lot about Kevin and Danny but not enough about the evil scientists and unspeakable crimes associated with Bloodroot. (Sept.)

Grenville (The Secret River) delivers another vivid novel about the British colonization of Australia, this one a delightful fictionalization of the life of William Dawes, a soldier-scholar who sailed from England in 1788 with the first fleet to transport British prisoners to New South Wales. Dawes's stand-in is Daniel Rooke, a loner with a passion for mathematics and astronomy who makes a living as a marine. He joins the expedition with the hope of tracking a comet that will not be visible from Great Britain, building a makeshift hut and observatory separate from the settlement (largely so he can avoid his prison guard duties). Although food is insufficient and the marines are outnumbered by the convicts, there is little unrest, but while Daniel shifts his ambitions from identifying previously unnamed stars to discovering a language and culture unknown in England, tensions escalate between the newcomers and the Aborigines, forcing Daniel to choose between duty to his king and loyalty to a land and people he has come to love. Grenville's storytelling shines: the backdrop is lush and Daniel is a wonderful creation—a conflicted, curious and endearing eccentric. (Sept.)

Carhart follows The Piano Shop on the Left Bank with an uneven historical about the divide between the rugged frontiers of the New World and the court intrigues of Europe. Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacagawea, acts as a guide for natural scientist Paul Wilhelm of Württemberg. Impressed by Baptiste's knowledge, Paul invites him to travel to Europe and assist him in cataloguing his North American treasures, beginning a five-year adventure that will see Baptiste “change in ways he could not imagine.” In Europe, Baptiste visits noble homes and palaces, attends lavish balls and beds charming women. He ambles through a Parisian market, taking in “its pungent smells and the high, piercing cries from the sellers” and later joins the French gentry on a civilized hunt. It's all marvelously captured, and though Carhart can be less than subtle with some of the race politics, the biggest problem with this finely crafted milieu is that Baptiste's survey of Europe feels more like a prelude than a plot. The imagery is stirring, but the story isn't. (Sept.)

Bestseller Paretsky tracks the poisonous residue of racial hatred that still seeps into Chicago life and politics in her fine 13th novel to feature gutsy PI V.I. “Vic” Warshawski, last seen in 2005's Fire Sale. In her search for a black man who disappeared in 1967, Lamont Gadsden, Vic reconnects with some of her father Tony's old police colleagues; pays a prison visit to Johnny Merton, a notorious gang leader she once defended in her lawyering days; and tracks down Steve Sawyer, who disappeared following a murder conviction. Vic confronts an ugly period in Chicago's history, a peaceful march in 1966 by Martin Luther King that resulted in a white riot and the murder of a young black woman, Harmony Newsome. Digging into this ancient history stirs passions and fears of what secrets might be revealed. The apparent kidnapping of Vic's fresh-out-of-college cousin, Petra, who's come to Chicago to work on a senatorial campaign, raises the ante. (Sept.)

In his beautiful and unsettling new novel, Meyers (The Work of Wolves) examines the effects of a murder on the residents of a small South Dakota town. In an opening sequence that is so disturbing it's difficult to read, teen Hayley Jo Zimmerman is stalked and abducted by a serial killer. The rest of the novel uses the rippling consequences of Hayley Jo's murder to explore the smaller rural tragedies in Twisted Tree, S.D.: Elise, a forlorn grocery clerk, judges everyone by their purchases and hides the secret terrors of her past as a missionary; Sophie Lawrence cares for her invalid stepfather while losing her sanity; Angela Morrison learns to accept the harsh realities of being a rancher's wife; Stanley, Haley Jo's father, channels his grief into a desperate need to connect with a stranger. The novel is brimming with arresting descriptions, and the western setting is employed to surprising effect, as in a sequence contrasting the removal of an invasive salt cedar bush with a father's awareness of his son's first crush. Meyers's small masterpiece deserves comparison to the work of Raymond Carver, Joy Williams and Peter Matthiessen. (Sept.)

Set against the backdrop of WWI and Niagara Falls, this debut tells the story of young Bess Heath and her struggle to navigate a quickly modernizing world. A child of privilege, Bess sees her fortunes change when her father loses his job. Cast into poverty, her family disgraced, Bess tries to hold things together while her sister slips into depression, her father drinks and her mother withdraws. After another tragedy strikes, Bess finds comfort in the love of Tom Cole, a river man with a mysterious connection to the falls. Overcoming the deep privation of the war and their own limited means, the two begin building a life together and renew their commitment to each other and their family. Based loosely on the history of Niagara river man William “Red” Hill, the book incorporates mock newspaper articles with limited success, but does integrate some detailed depictions of domestic life and fascinating natural history into an otherwise uneventful romance. (Sept.)

This crazed black romantic comedy from journalist and author Kennedy (Bling) charts the rocky course of Sydney Zamora, a very angry single. The Cachet magazine writer decides, at 33, that she's got to get married before her eggs sour. So her rich sister hires Mitzi Berman, a successful Manhattan matchmaker, to find Sydney's Mr. Right. Mitzi's challenge, as she sees it, is transforming fierce feminista Sydney into a dress-wearing girly girl (says Mitzi: “If you don't make some radical changes in your behavior, you will die alone”). Catching Sydney's eye is the fabulous Max Cooper, the spoiled playboy heir of a department store fortune, but can her politics mix with his background? Truly, their path to connubial bliss is barbed with obstacles, charted with sarcastic glee by Kennedy, a pioneer of chick lit's naughty stepsister—bitch lit. (Sept.)

Edgar-winner Ellis (Line of Vision) is off to an exhilarating start with this first in a series set in an unnamed Midwestern city featuring grief-stricken attorney Jason Kolarich, who blames himself for his wife and child's death in a car accident. Jason is shaken out of his emotional coma when a stranger called “Mr. Smith” hires him to defend an old friend, Sammy Cutler. About 26 years earlier, Sammy's two-year-old sister was kidnapped from her bedroom during the night. Suspicion centered on Griffin Perlini, a convicted sex offender who lived a few blocks away, but police could never prove that he took the child. Now Sammy is accused of killing Griffin, who he believes murdered his sister. Mr. Smith demands Jason get an acquittal for Sammy, conveniently supplying witnesses and a scapegoat for the case. Ellis avoids clichés in a multilayered legal thriller that depends on precise character studies, an original plot and a surprising but logical twist at the end. Author tour. (Sept.)

Poet and playwright Jackson traverses the freshman year of protagonist Magdalena Grace, revealing the indignities that Maggie and her friends and family endure during the civil rights era. The loosely plotted narrative follows 17-year-old Maggie to Eden University in September 1967, where she is one of a few African-Americans on campus along with roommates Essie Witherspoon and Leona Pryor. Jackson portrays their youthful uncertainties, their desire to fight discrimination and their hesitancy about the future. In a series of vignettes, Maggie dips into black high culture, is a shaken observer to sudden violence, faces overt racism, is beset with family problems, learns the power of sexual attraction and, eventually, helps her friends mount a potentially dangerous protest. Overwritten and suffering from too large a cast of characters, the dazzling turns of phrase do not make up for a lack of cohesiveness. Admirers of Jackson will enjoy the poems that are sprinkled throughout the novel, but its sheer talkiness is a disappointment. (Sept.)

Erickson (The Tsarina's Daughter) focuses on the life of Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, in this lackluster historical. Feared as a contender for the English throne, Mary lived much of her life in captivity. Erickson retraces Mary's entire life, from her youthful marriage to a French king to her secret relationship with James Hepburn, the earl of Bothwell, and finally her 1587 execution at age 44 for treason, ordered by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth. Throughout, Mary lives under the shadow of a prophecy, dooming her to a tragic end. Though she lived in tumultuous times, Mary's story—fraught as it is with long periods of confinement—is not particularly exciting. Nor does she make for a compelling heroine, seeming content to wait on the sidelines and let others act for her. Queen Elizabeth's brief appearances enliven the story a bit, but not enough to save it. Readers desperate for Tudor-Stuart intrigue may find this palatable but not enthralling. (Sept.)

The second in Sharon Lathan's Darcy Saga (Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy) fails on two levels. Readers new to Darcy and Elizabeth will be bored reading page after page about two paragons—he is a gracious and expert billiards player, she is an excellent manager of the household—while they go about their life, with the occasional dustup with Lady Catherine, all while awaiting the birth of their first child. Meanwhile, Austen lovers may well be insulted to read un-Austenesque conversations, scenes and goings-on. Either way, the brilliance of Austen is notably absent. Too often the day-in-the-life focus seems small, as do the couple's PG-13–level lusty thoughts and behaviors. Yes, it's romantic that in a break of Regency tradition they sleep in the same bed and make love often, but it's a lot of nothing after their 15th bout, as is suffering through Darcy hiding his erections from a jovial, knowing father-in-law-to-be. Austen's characters deserve far better than this. (Sept.)

With the expertise of a seasoned writer, Nicoll spins a whimsical love story in his debut novel. Tibo Krovic has been the mayor of Dot, a small town in an unnamed country on the Baltic Sea, for 20 years. He's hopelessly in love with his secretary, Agathe Stopak, who's miserable in a loveless marriage with her drunkard husband. After consulting a psychic, Agathe begins to see the good mayor in a new light, and after the two tiptoe around each other for weeks, Tibo gets up the courage to ask Agathe out for lunch. But being the good man he is, he finds it difficult to cross any other boundaries with a married woman, even as tension builds between them. Meanwhile, Agathe gets tired of waiting for Tibo to make his move and stumbles into a mistake that could have very far-ranging consequences. Told with fantastical detail, delightful insights and a touch of humor, this fairy taleish romance is a genuine treat. (Sept.)

Nunez deftly explores family strife and immigrant identity in her vivid latest. When Anna Sinclair, a New York City book editor, takes a vacation to her parents' home in the Caribbean, she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has advanced breast cancer. Beatrice rejects all suggestions that she be treated in the U.S.—she believes that, as a black woman, she'll receive second-rate care—leaving Anna and her father, John, to tread lightly between respecting Beatrice's wishes and steering her toward what is best for her. As a prominent black family on a largely white island, the Sinclairs are used to straddling two worlds, and Anna's mother's fears cause Anna to examine her thoughts about race. “Fiction best achieves the universal through the specific. It is by telling stories that are plausible, about characters who are believable, that the writer eases us in to exploring the many facets of the human condition,” Anna thinks at one point. Nunez meets these guidelines and more with expressive prose and convincing characters that immediately hook the reader. (Sept.)

Using a hybrid of fiction and political commentary, Estrin recounts the events leading up to the construction of France's first guillotine in this heavy-handed and slow-moving book. The story centers on a doctor, Guillotin, a member of the 1780s National Assembly, who argues for a more humane method of execution. Other important players are Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, the first man to lose his head to the new device; Tobias Schmidt, the piano maker who built the new “painless device”; Charles-Henri Sanson, an executioner; and Pierre-René Grevier, Pelletier's spiritual adviser. Mozart, the Marquis de Sade and, of course, Louis XVI make appearances, with the latter suggesting a modification to the very blade that would end his life only a short time later. Though Estrin evokes revolutionary and pre-revolutionary France, and Dr. Guillotin becomes real through his political tirades, the other characters remain static. Most troublesome, though, is Estrin's intrusion into the narrative to deliver his case against the death penalty (it reads like something from a freshman civics class). The project, overall, has potential, but the execution is botched. (Sept.)

In her impressive debut novel, Stephens offers a rugged and tender tale. Jamie Eugley, a ninth-generation lobsterman in the port village of Owls Head has cared for his brain-injured girlfriend, Anja, for three long years. Jamie suffers deep guilt over her near drowning accident while aboard his lobster boat and her subsequent debilitating coma. Anja's medical improvement has been frustratingly slow, but Jamie continues to nurse his naïve, stubborn fantasy of marrying the recovered Anja. Meanwhile, he deals with a dangerous and violent trap war among the lobstermen and a romance with Happy Klein, a first mate on a tourist schooner up for the summer season who wants Jamie to come back with her to Key West. The bawdy humor, snappy dialogue, colorful local sea myths and rich lobstering details add to the immense appeal of this textured narrative about a superstitious but independent lobsterman's inward and outward struggles. (Sept.)

Walker halfheartedly investigates the unhappy lives of women in a rich Connecticut suburb in her disappointing second outing (after Four Wives). Jacks Halstead is the materially comfortable wife of a hedge fund manager whose secretiveness and locked briefcase make her suspect that all is not well. But Jacks is “a survivor,” and soon she's seducing the very rich husband of Rosalyn Barlow, the community's social empress and, ostensibly, Jacks's friend. For her part, Rosalyn is an icy master manipulator, who needs to perform damage control after their 14-year-old daughter is caught performing fellatio on a boy at school. A pawn in Rosalyn's scheme is Sara, a guileless young newcomer bent on leaving the middle class behind. Throughout, the prose is pedestrian (“warm” smiles, “crisp” fall air) when it isn't ridiculous (“his tongue lay inside her mouth like a giant anchovy”) A banal ink-and-paper soap opera, this achieves neither the pluck of chick lit nor the glitziness of a Jackie Collins. (Sept.)

Clark (Smart Chick mysteries) has cooked up a delicious recipe of intrigue, romance and intelligent character development. Clark, a former comedian, offers her ever-growing fan base equal measures of sharp wit and sassy comebacks through her protagonist, Chloe Ledet, daughter of famous New Orleans restaurateur Chef Julian. When Chloe is summoned back home after an accident hospitalizes her father, she re-enters the scene to conduct business for her dad and gets framed for murder Cajun-style. In quick fashion, Chloe must clear her name with the aid of a childhood beau as she wades through the literal bayous of the South and emotional swamps of old, unresolved childhood issues involving her distracted and distant parents. Clark's story line is full of spice and lingers with an unexpected bite familiar to Cajun cuisine lovers. This text is sumptuous. (Sept.)

Webb's slap-happy second Southern Cousins mystery featuring Elvis Presley reincarnated as a basset hound (after 2008's Elvis and the Dearly Departed) is as corny as all get-out, but Elvis fans are in for a treat. Hair-stylist Callie Valentine Jones and Lovie, her best friend and caterer, are each doing their bit for the annual Elvis Festival in the king's hometown of Tupelo, Miss. A highlight of the festival is the rockin' Elvis impersonator competition. Alas, when the impersonators start dropping dead, all poisoned by peach tea, Lovie becomes the prime suspect. Elvis the hound dog sniffs for clues as Callie and Lovie slip into detective mode. Meanwhile, Jack Jones, Callie's husband from whom she's almost divorced, and amorous vet Luke Champion vie for Callie's heart—and Elvis, who shares narrative duty with Callie in this comic crime caper, worries which dog “parent” will win custody of him if their divorce ever becomes final. (Oct.)

Oscar Wilde once again makes a convincing detective in Brandreth's excellent third whodunit to recreate the late Victorian age (after 2008's Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder). Framed as a puzzle posed by Wilde to his friend Arthur Conan Doyle in 1890, this adventure concerns a series of mysterious deaths plaguing a French acting troupe, the Compagnie La Grange, which Wilde encounters aboard ship in 1883. The first death is of a poodle, Marie Antoinette, whose body a customs officer in Liverpool unearths in a dirt-filled trunk that Wilde believed to be full of books he was bringing home from America. Human victims follow, forcing Wilde and his Watson, real-life journalist and Wilde biographer Robert Sherard, to untangle the complicated nest of emotions at play among the members of the Compagnie La Grange. John Dickson Carr fans will be gratified to find echoes of his style in several places, including the use of false endings. (Sept.)

First published in the U.K. in 1996, the engrossing third entry in Maitland's series to feature David Brock and Kathy Kolla (Spider Trap, etc.) is at last available in the U.S. The day before Kathy begins her new job in Scotland Yard's Serious Crime Branch, she gets a call from her superior, Chief Inspector Brock, that her detective services are needed sooner than expected. Angela Hannaford, a pleasant young woman who taught Sunday school, has been brutally stabbed to death in her parents' South London home, her face mutilated. Kathy, who becomes the head of the investigating team, traces clues to other recent murders of women who all eerily resemble one another, and soon discovers that a theater troupe may be the critical link in the Hannaford case. But as Kathy moves closer to finding the perpetrator, she also inches closer to danger. Maitland does a fine job developing complex, interesting characters within a sinister, well-paced plot. (Sept.)

Venice's Teatro San Marco opera house forms the dramatic backdrop for the start of Myers's absorbing fifth historical to feature castrato Tito Amato (after 2008's The Iron Tongue of Midnight). On the opening night of Torani's Armida, Tito has the audience in his thrall, except for the occupants of a fourth-tier box with its scarlet curtains drawn. Keen to attract their attention, Tito projects his voice in the direction of the closed box. Suddenly, the curtains part, and he sees a masked man struggling with a woman, later identified as Zulietta Giardino, a conniving courtesan. Pushed by her assailant, Zulietta falls to her death into the orchestra pit. Tito and his wife, Liya, who shares a similar background to Zulietta, take a personal interest in her case. Encouraged by Tito, Liya hesitantly returns to the Jewish ghetto of her childhood to investigate, and unexpectedly begins to reconcile with the family that once shunned her. As ever, Myers bring 18th-century Venice to vivid life. (Sept.)

In Grabien's diverting second mystery to feature witty Brit rock musician JP Kincaid (after 2008's Rock and Roll Never Forgets), someone bashes in the head of vocalist Vinny Fabiano with Vinny's own guitar in a San Francisco rehearsal hall. While no one's shedding a lot of tears for the loutish Vinny, who'd recently insulted Bree Godwin, JP's old lady, JP and Bree still want to know what idiot would use a guitar custom-made by luthier Bruno Baines as a murder weapon. Missing from Vinny's stash after the murder is his fabulous pearl-top Zemaitis guitar, similar to one stolen from the Rolling Stones' Ron Wood. After another murder—a blunt instrument breaks the neck of Vinny's guitar tech, Rocco Galliano—JP and mates pool their detecting skills. Readers may learn more about guitars as well as JP's ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis and Bree's cancer scare than they care to know, but JP's perky narration and his love for Bree keep the pages turning. (Sept.)

McCaffrey, the owner of Boston's legendary Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, succeeds in conveying his love of books in his intriguing debut. Boston bibliophile Henry Sullivan, who leads a lonely life in pursuit of rare books, attracts police attention after the strangulation murder of Morgan Johnson, the widow of a renowned literary agent—and Sullivan's former lover. Not long before, Morgan retained Sullivan to appraise her late husband's book collection that she was planning to donate to Boston University. Johnson's husband's relatives, each with a financial motive to have done her in, make up the small circle of logical suspects. Meanwhile, the reappearance of an old girlfriend forces Sullivan to consider another missed opportunity at happiness. Indeed, the crime-solving remains secondary to the author's sensitive portrayal of his middle-aged protagonist's search for meaning, suggesting this novel could've worked as well as straight fiction without the whodunit plot. (Sept.)

At the start of Lake's lurid 13th Georgian historical (after 2008's Death in Hellfire), apothecary John Rawlings, summoned by his pregnant mistress, joins a London carriage bound for the West Country. Other passengers include Jack Beef (aka the Black Pyramid), a bare-knuckle fighter, and his agent. Rawlings, who does detective work for Sir John Fielding of Bow Street, soon gets embroiled in a murder case after a fellow traveler is bludgeoned to death during an overnight stop at an inn. While the Black Pyramid disappears for many pages, Rawlings, with the help of local constable Tobias Miller and fellow Bow Streeter Joe Jago, manages to track down and interrogate all the other passengers on the ill-fated coach. Coincidences abound, as Rawlings observes midway through his deadlocked investigation. In the end, Lake offers a bizarre, if not wholly original resolution to a mystery that will strike many readers as an 18th-century twist on Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. (Sept.)

Lourey's lively fifth murder-by-month mystery (after 2008's August Moon) finds Mira James, assistant librarian and part-time reporter for the Battle Lake Recall, covering the beauty pageant to elect Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy, at the Minnesota State Fair. Unfortunately, “drop dead gorgeous” Ashley Pederson, a native of Battle Lake, Minn., turns up poisoned to death in the refrigerated room where, as winner of the contest, she was having her head sculpted in butter. Mira, in her effort to solve Ashley's murder, uncovers smalltown jealousies, secret love affairs, embezzlement and a big dairy concern engaged in dubious practices. The author does a good job of presenting the fairground activities, even if some of them, like sheep riding (billed as “mutton busting”), border on the absurd. Cozy fans who aren't sticklers for credibility will be entertained. (Sept.)

In Sklepowich's well-paced ninth Venetian mystery (after 2008's Frail Barrier), literary biographer Urbino Macintyre, who's assisting his friend Contessa Barbara with an exhibit devoted to fabric designer Mariano Fortuny, visits the Palazzo Pindar, the home of Barbara's eccentric cousins. The palace houses a museum, including letters from Fortuny to the Pindars. Urbino turns sleuth after the contessa finds one of her cousins, Olimpia, dead at Palazzo Pindar with stab wounds in her chest. Kneeling next to the body is Mina, Barbara's personal maid, holding a bloody pair of scissors and crying, “I killed her! I killed her!” Convinced Mina is innocent, Urbino investigates all the members of the Pindar family, a goodly number of suspects, in an effort to unmask Olimpia's true killer. Sklepowich dramatically juxtaposes the splendor of Venice against the dark deed of murder. (Sept.)

Strahan's third annual anthology provides a solid sampler of good fiction. Stories by well-known authors Holly Black, Stephen King and the late Joan Aiken, though strong, are outclassed by masterful and innovative genre tales written by relative newcomers, such as Kij Johnson's “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss,” Meghan McCarron's “The Magician's House” and Ken Scholes's “The Doom of Love in Small Spaces.” Also notable, Paolo Bacigalupi's “The Gambler,” John Kessel's “Pride and Prometheus” and Rachel Swirsky's “Marry the Sun” use traditional storytelling techniques to build powerful, exciting tales. Only Garth Nix's overlong “Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarsköe” and Margo Lanagan's predictable “Machine Maid” are substandard. Strahan's introduction gives a nice overview of the state of the genre. (Sept.)

The power and originality of Durham's impressive fantasy debut, 2007's Acacia: The War with the Mein, isn't quite matched by this sequel, though it still features intelligent, well-crafted prose and complex characters. After a political assassination led to the overthrow of the Acacian Empire, the murdered king's children were split up and found very different destinies. The focus here is on the oldest, Corinn, now queen. She is a morally ambiguous figure, fiercely guarding her secrets of magic, willing to drug her subjects to stifle dissent and sacrifice her own siblings for power. Her depiction is the book's strength, as many of the other plot elements—betrayals, close brushes with death, terrifying monsters—are standard fare. Fans will still look for book three, but with diminished enthusiasm. (Sept.)

Globe-trekking Israeli editor Tidhar (HebrewPunk) compiles an inconsistent medley of horror-tinged fantasy tales, which may confuse readers drawn in by a title and cover that suggest science fiction. Several stories seem included for their culturally and geographically diverse authors more than their narrative merit, such as Nir Yaniv's plodding “Cinderers,” narrated by a pyromaniac with multiple personalities, and Yang Ping's “Wizard World,” an uninspired take on life inside an online role-playing game. More focused and interesting are Dean Francis Alfar's whimsical “The Kite of Stars,” which describes a journey across fantastical landscapes, and Tunku Halim's “Biggest Baddest Bomoh,” where an office drone consults a deadly shaman for help with his love life. Even the better stories fail to find a fresh take on genre mainstays like ghosts, portals and cannibals. (Sept.)

This expansive series debut, Baen's first foray into epic fantasy, employs classic tropes but speaks with a unique voice. When the Arvon king was slain and his queen and infant son abducted, the merchant council of the Mindal set “vile power-hungry upstart” Gawmage on the throne. Eighteen years later, the highlanders of the Holding still reject Gawmage's rule. Wilum, the aged High Bard, and his bright-eyed apprentice, Kal, hope to locate and restore the lost prince before the Holding falls to Gawmage's army. Plentiful action scenes, narrative dialogue and liberal use of songs and poems recall Tolkien and keep pages turning. Strong characterization, especially of ingenious, daring Kal, obscures some awkward prose and dubious plot revelations. Readers who enjoy Baen's military SF and alternate history may well be pleasantly surprised by this new direction. (Sept.)

Religion and political intrigue turn an adolescent werewolf into a killing machine in this compelling novel of 13th-century Northern Europe. Eighteen-year-old Lilly is superhumanly strong, vulnerable only to silver and trained to help Christians subdue unrepentant pagans. When she slaughters a dozen Christian soldiers and flees into the wilderness, Uldolf, the son of Johnsburg's last pagan chieftain, takes her in. As they come to terms with their histories, the knight Erhard von Stendal comes to hunt Lilly down. Lilly's struggle to reconcile her split personalities—cold assassin and lonely girl—becomes a quest for redemption and love as she endures rape, amnesia and the knowledge of her own terrible actions in the church's service. Swann (Prophets) turns opposing viewpoints into sympathetic perspectives, clearly painting the complex political and religious dynamics of the time. (Sept.)

Misunderstood vampires roam historic Scotland (12th century in one story, 16th in the others) in three novellas. Each of the authors builds a credible paranormal world and sets up a satisfying confrontation. Howell starts off with “The Beast Within,” wherein passion flares when Gybbon MacNaughton, trying to find lost members of a dying vampire tribe, finds near-feral Alice Boyd hiding in the woods. In “The Vampire Hunter,” Grothaus (The Warrior) presents a strong heroine in a likable witch and tavern keeper, Beatrix Levenach, who fights ravening vampires to protect unappreciative villagers. Dahl (To Tempt a Scotsman) introduces serving-wench Kenna Graham, saved from a demon by a laird who then demonstrates a few devilish qualities of his own, in “Laird of Midnight.” Fans of Howell's Highland Thirst and Highland Vampire will find this equally enjoyable. (Sept.)

Subterranean offers readers a representative sampling of Hugo winner Egan's distinctive hard SF, drawing from previously uncollected stories. Two of the nine stories are from the 1990s, two from the early 2000s and five postdating Egan's hiatus from writing while he campaigned for refugee human rights in Australia. Steadfastly reductionist, Egan nevertheless makes room for the moral implications of the treatment of refugees in “Lost Continent,” while “Crystal Nights” offers a pointed critique of technologists enthused by the idea of enslaved creations. Unfortunately, Egan can be heavy-handed at times, as in “Oracle,” where the character Jack serves as a straw-man version of C.S. Lewis. More conventional SF puzzle stories like “Hot Rock” and “Tap” and a forcefully worded introduction on the ethics of artificial intelligence round out the volume. (Sept.)

Romantic comedy author Carroll (The True Match) brings tight prose and excellent pacing to her tense first thriller. Caroline Hughes abandons her abusive, controlling psychiatrist husband, hoping to begin a new life with a new name, but Dr. Porter Moross, a Freudian analyst who's more psycho than therapist, willingly destroys his life and career in a mad effort to track his elusive wife across the country. Finding shelter in a tiny mountain town, Caroline meets divorced football player Ken Kincaid, but their romance sometimes seems wedged into a story mostly focused on Porter's madness and Caroline's fear. Porter is both terrifying and sympathetic, while Caroline seems almost waifish until an unexpected and satisfying ending makes it clear that she's not just waiting for Ken to save her. Suspense fans who like a touch of romance will find this a winner. (Sept.)

Atwood brings back droopy detective Payton Sherwood, familiar from 1999's East of A, in this modernized crime tale. Sherwood is the titular loser: “Two-thirds of the year gone by and I'd only had four paying clients.” Then retired PI George Rowell phones with a job. When Rowell is run down and killed in the street in front of Sherwood's office, Sherwood rifles the old man's pockets, comes up with several unrelated bits of paper and takes off before the cops come. Despite the death of his client, Sherwood begins to unravel a rat's nest of mysteries, with bad guys beating the snot out of him several times along the way. References to Craigslist and eBay jar slightly with the otherwise straightforwardly old-fashioned tale of a PI who cares moreabout honor and truth than money. (Sept.)

Singer-songwriter McGuire adeptly infuses her debut with hardboiled sensibilities and a wide array of mythological influences, set against a moody San Francisco backdrop. October “Toby” Daye is half-human, half-faerie, a changeling PI with a foot in both worlds. After spending 14 years as a fish following a botched assignment, she's desperate to avoid magic, but the dying curse of a murdered elven lady forces her to investigate the killing, with the price of failure being Toby's own painful death. Toby struggles with court intrigue, magical mayhem, would-be assassins and her own past, always driven by the need to succeed and survive. Well researched, sharply told, highly atmospheric and as brutal as any pulp detective tale, this promising start to a new urban fantasy series is sure to appeal to fans of Jim Butcher or Kim Harrison. (Sept.)

Lachlan MacGregor looks like a rather hunky priest, but the 400-year-old undead hero of McCleave's entertaining paranormal romance debut is actually serving penance by gathering souls destined for Heaven, saving them from demons. He also keeps an eye on Emily, the superpowered 14-year-old daughter of his downstairs neighbor, artist Rachel Lewis. Rachel is shocked by her instantaneous attraction to a man of the cloth, but Lachlan's happy to act on their chemistry in between supernatural battles. Swords flash, spells are cast, and twist and turns come head-spinningly quickly, but Rachel is game for anything as long as she can save her daughter and find true love. Readers will hope for sequels in which Emily grows up to be as feisty as Rachel and as powerful as Lachlan. (Sept.)

Originally published in 1993, this wry, wordless, densely packed fable for adults about a little red dog who finds enlightenment in outer space is utterly charming. It starts out fairly straightforwardly—a puppy on a farm hops on a train and ends up in a cruel, confusing city—but before long, NASA has poached the young dog and sent him into space on a rocket ship. He encounters a race of peace-loving green aliens, who teach him to communicate and send him back to Earth as their emissary. Human society isn't quite ready for the dog's message, though, and he ends up achieving a victory that's much more on his own canine terms. Dorgathen's artwork, rendered with ragged brush strokes and raw geometrical shapes, pushes about as far into the realm of abstraction as he can manage without obscuring his characters and settings. Still, the broad pantomime of Dorgathen's storytelling is funny in its own right, and he manages to communicate some complicated concepts without words—a sequence in which the dog explains the aliens' vision of society in a speech at the United Nations is a little marvel of visual shorthand. (Aug.)

A faithful adaptation of the original, Hamilton's comics version conveys the social commentary of the novel, while using the images to develop the tone. He uses grainy, static colors and images obscured by heavy black shadows and textures to portray the oppressive nature of this world where firemen start fires instead of putting them out. Malevolent forces and danger lurk in the shadows pervading the suburban home of fireman Montag and his wife, Mildred. Montag questions the happiness of his mundane life when prodded by his strange new neighbor, a young girl named Clarisse, as well as his wife's drug overdose. This leads him to throw himself into a dangerous struggle to expose the world's hypocrisy by spreading the forbidden knowledge contained in books. The art solidifies atmospheric elements such as the fire and rain; fire, tapering and curling, is rendered into a crucial additional character. Since the original expounds the importance of valuing and preserving books and knowledge, adapting it into the comics form emphasizes the growth of the medium, as well as its potency across genres and subjects. (July)

Picasso's life narrated by a hamburger; pubic hair stencils for men; Bambiffpow Jackson, “there's a fistfight in my very name!”—and that's just part of the first five pages of this hilarious collection of humorous comics and illustrations. Kupperman has been laffing it up for years via cartoons in the New Yorker and animation on Saturday Night Live, but his smart, droll, absurdist humor is best displayed in this compendium of the first four issues of the comic of the same name. Kupperman's wit and imagination is only heightened by the stiff, self-conscious woodcut style he often uses for art, although it sometimes bursts out in a blobbier style for such things as the kid-friendly “Fireman Octopus.” Some stories and characters recur, such as the buddy-cop duo Snake n' Bacon, a snake and a strip of bacon who solve crimes while repeating the same lines, and other characters throw themselves into disaster. The gags pile upon the gags—mock classified ads for Sausage Lad—“Yo, Bitch! You look hungry for sausage!”—rammed on the same page as a '70s cop-show parody starring Albert Einstein and Mark Twain. The humor never lags in a book that is destined to be a comedy classic and is truly one of the funniest books in years. This hardcover edition adds color and an intro by Robert Smigel to the original comics. (July)

Based on the famous video-game series Halo and created by the Eisner-winning team of writer Brian Michael Bendis (Powers) and artist Alex Maleev (Daredevil), this book shows the Covenant invasion of Earth from the perspective of civilians on the ground. Ruwan, a hotel concierge in the beautiful resort city of Cleveland, Ohio—my, how the future changes things—flees the conquering aliens and teams up with Myras Tyla, a musician determined not to be a sitting duck. Instead of simply killing everyone, the Covenant aliens are ransacking the city for the mysterious Key of Osanalan, which they heard about from their captive, Colonel Akerson. Of course, it doesn't exist, but only his brother, Ruwan, knows that. What follows is a genuinely heroic and touching tale. What it isn't is a story about Master Chief John 117, the protagonist of the Halo series and the star of the book's cover. The unbeatable armored super-soldier does appear, but his beautifully drawn and choreographed space-battles have very little to do with the plot. Still, much like its hit predecessor, Halo Graphic Novel, this should appeal to Halo lovers everywhere. Maleev's planetscapes are memorably luminous, and Bendis's dialogue is wry and effective. (June)

An anthology and a collection take on the Bear, then and now

The current state of Russian identity—artistic, political, social and beyond—is vigorously examined in this anthology, offering readers a multifaceted portrait of the complex nation, from short, poetic pieces like Oleg Zobern's “Bregovich's Sixth Journey,” to nearly journalistic narratives like Arkady Babchenko's powerful and harrowing remembrance of the Chechen war (“The Diesel Stop”). The dreams and fears of young and old are included—Roman Senchin's “History” follows a retired and politically indifferent professor who gets caught up in a mass arrest of protesters and subsequently must wake up to the oppressive realities of his country, and Anna Starobinet's “Rules” is a whimsical and poignant sketch of a frighteningly perceptive boy. The editors point out that the stories “fall broadly into the category of what can be referred to as New Russian Realism.” This realism, though, leaves plenty of room for surreal and dryly humorous perspectives (such as Kirill Ryabov's “Spit” and Vadim Kalinin's “The Unbelievable and Tragic Story of Misha Shtrikov and His Cruel Wife”). This is a truly diverse series of revelations. (Oct.)

Masterworks of economy and acuity, these brief, trenchant tales by Russian author and playwright Petrushevskaya, selected from her wide-ranging but little translated oeuvre over the past 30 years, offer an enticement to English readers to seek out more of her writing. The tales explore the inexplicable workings of fate, the supernatural, grief and madness, and range from adroit, straightforward narratives to bleak fantasy. Frequently on display are the decrepit values of the Soviet system, as in “The New Family Robinson,” where a family tries to “outsmart everyone” by relocating to a ramshackle cabin in the country. Domestic problems get powerful and tender treatment; in “My Love,” a long-suffering wife and mother triumphs over her husband's desire for another woman. Darker material dominates the last section of the book, with tortuous stories, heavy symbolism and outright weirdness leading to strange and unexpected places. Petrushevskaya's bold, no-nonsense portrayals find fresh, arresting expression in this excellent translation. (Oct.)