Fiction Reviews: 7/20/2009

Gombrowicz's strange, bracing final novel probes the divide between young and old while providing a grotesque evocation of obsession. While recuperating from wartime Warsaw in the Polish countryside, the unnamed narrator and his friend, Fryderyk, attempt to force amour between two local youths, Karol and Henia, as a kind of a lewd entertainment. They become increasingly frustrated as they discover that the two have no interest in one another, and the games are momentarily stopped by a local murder and a directive to assassinate a rogue member of the Polish resistance. Gombrowicz connects these threads magnificently in a tense climax that imbues his novel with a deep sense of the absurd and multiplies its complexity. Gombrowicz is a relentless psychoanalyzer and a consummate stylist; his prose is precise and forceful, and the narrator's strained attempts to elucidate why he takes such pleasure at soiling youth creepily evoke authentic pride and disgust. Borchardt's translation (the first into English from the original Polish) is a model of consistency, maintaining a manic tone as it navigates between lengthy, comma-spliced sentences and sharp, declarative thrusts. (Nov.)

Nichol (Midnight Cab) easily avoids the sophomore slump with this story of love and betrayal amid the turmoil of WWII. In Nazi-occupied Rouen, France, in 1941, 16-year-old Adele Georges falls in love with a young German soldier named Manfred Halder. They carry out a secret affair while Adele's family falls apart. In a second plot line set in a small Canadian town in 1946, the discovery of a severed finger embroils the brusque police chief, Jack Cullen, in a mystery he must solve to avoid being forced into early retirement and to distract him from his son's wartime death. Back in France, Adele and Manfred are abruptly separated, and in Adele's quest to find him, she meets Canadian soldier Alex Wells, who marries her and brings her home to Canada, where tension builds as the couple adjusts to domestic life in Jack's town. In a not wholly unexpected twist, the two plots meet and the solution to Jack's investigation becomes clear. While the final chapters feel hasty, the vivid prose, harrowing plot and the defiant Adele will keep readers invested in this love story–cum–murder mystery until the very last page. (Oct.)

Plans for an ATM heist go terribly wrong for a bumbling gang of Italian ruffians in Ammaniti's latest. Rino Zena, an unemployed single father with neo-Nazi tendencies, can barely keep his teenage son, Cristiano, out of social services. Zeno's friend Danilo Aprea hopes to buy a lingerie shop in order to woo back his wife after the death of their daughter. Their plan, to boost an ATM, hinges on the car-thieving skills of Corrado Rumitz, nicknamed Quattro Formaggi, a not-quite-right misfit obsessed with a porn star named Ramona. After watching Dog Day Afternoon, Rino takes the movie as a sign from God not to go forward with the plan, but word fails to get to Danilo or to Quattro Formaggi, who, on his way to meet up, is distracted by a teenager he thinks is Ramona. When a massive rain storm hits, the series of tragic coincidences quickly turns deadly. Ammaniti, a wonder at creating graphic black comedy, keeps the plot rolling while pushing his characters to their absolute limits, even if the last act is a bit messy. If the Coen brothers ever wanted to go Italian, this'd be prime adaptation material. (Oct.)

Beneath the Sturm und Drang of Oates's third book of 2009 is the archetypal fairy tale: beauty and the beast. The beauties are the narrator, Krista Diehl, and Zoe Kruller, a waitress and singer who was murdered in Sparta, N.Y., in 1983. The beasts are the men, most notably Krista's father, Eddy, who, as Zoe's lover, is suspected in her murder, and Aaron Kruller, who discovers his mother's body and grows up repressing the thought that his father might have killed her. While the women are torn between attraction to the men and the need to escape them, the men must eventually be blooded, psychically and, in Eddy's case, physically. Eddy starts out a predator, with “tufts of animal-hair” sticking out of his undershirt, and ends up at the wrong end of a barrage of police bullets. While Zoe's murder and Eddy's suicide-by-cop five years later are the story's anchors, the heart of this novel is how Krista and Aaron are drawn together, however briefly. Oates unfolds the central gothic intuition—that beauty and the beast are complements—in a way that Charlotte Brontë would highly approve. (Sept.)

In this sequel to Takeover, Black paints a believable portrait of a professional woman struggling to move on with her life. Cleveland forensic scientist Theresa MacLean has been in a fog of grief since her fiancé, Paul Cleary, was killed in a bank robbery eight months earlier, but her latest case needs all the concentration she can muster. When 24-year-old Jillian Perry, a former escort, turns up dead in the woods, Theresa doubts the police theory that Jillian committed suicide. Jillian was the devoted mother of a five-month-old, and her husband of three weeks, who wasn't the child's father, was on the verge of making big bucks with the innovative video game he and a partner had developed. As Theresa re-examines the evidence, a man claiming to be Jillian's boyfriend wants to claim her body and petitions for custody of her baby. Was he a boyfriend or a stalker? This fast-paced thriller features a lot of detailed forensics with a rip-roaring ending. (Sept.)

Poet Chin's irreverent first novel follows the bizarre fortunes of a Chinese family helmed by a cleaver-toting grandmother and filled out by her twin granddaughters, Moonie and Mei Ling. The girls have a hard time fitting in, in Southern California, working as delivery girls for their family's restaurant and acting as chauffeurs and translators for Granny and her friends. In chapters that read like short stories, varying in tone from darkly comedic to folktale-like, the twins stumble into adulthood. As a teenager, Mei Ling wakes up to discover her formerly slanted eyes are now round, causing her to feel glamorously Americanized and ashamed at the same time. Elsewhere, Granny asks a friend to pray the twins won't end up dancing at the Pink Pussycat. It turns out to be a valid prayer: Mei Ling relentlessly tries to bed customers, leaving responsible Moonie to keep her on a leash. Eventually, Moonie and Mei Ling graduate from the delivery truck and end up in top-notch medical schools, but even in success, their paths are comically divergent. Chin's provocative take on acculturation, immigrant life and family ties is a unique innovation. (Sept.)

Spock-like logic and a bullet-train–paced plot drive Swain's third thriller to feature Florida PI Jack Carpenter (after Midnight Rambler and Night Stalker). When Carpenter fails to stop the brutal abduction of his daughter's college basketball teammate, he's painfully reminded of a serial abduction case he bungled 18 years before. Unearned guilt makes this latest case personal. Half-wit giant Lonnie and fellow inmate/mentor “Mouse” escape from an asylum for the criminally insane, and start seizing student nurses. Lonnie twice nearly kills Carpenter, once by tossing a 400-pound Coke machine at him. Carpenter's (and pooch Buster's) “dogged” search takes them to a small, eerie Florida townwhere the victims have been imprisoned. Bullets predictably fly when Carpenter's FBI friend, Ken Linderman, whose daughter has been abducted, pitches in to help. This installment grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until the last page. (Sept.)

At once an engrossing historical, a love story about an unlikely passion and a novel of ideas that lucidly presents philosophical speculation about natural science, Stott's second novel (after Ghostwalk) is a powerful offering from an immensely talented writer. Narrated by young Englishman Daniel Connor, fresh out of medical school and traveling to a coveted research position in post-Napoleonic Paris in 1815, the novel begins with his realization that his scientific credentials, including a priceless coral specimen, have been stolen by the beautiful woman who sat next to him in the coach. She turns out to be Lucienne Bernard, a notorious thief being pursued by the chief of the Bureau de la Sûreté, Henri Jagot (based on a real figure and bound to make readers think of Javert). A cat and mouse game ensues, as Jagot tries to enlist Connor to trap Lucienne, but Connor falls deeply in love with the philosopher-thief and eventually makes a decision that might cost him his career, his freedom and his spiritual beliefs. Vividly atmospheric, propulsive and intricately plotted, this is a surefire page turner with literary heft and wide appeal. (Sept.)

In his deft new collection, the ever-controversial Al Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) again delves into the various miseries of modern Egyptian life. In the long story “The Isam Abd el-Ati Papers,” the title character rants against Egypt and its citizens with irresistible venom. Isam's hobbies include denouncing the “stupid tribal loyalty” of his compatriots, humiliating his defeated cartoon-drawing father, sleeping with his mother's maid and infuriating his co-workers by blatantly sipping coffee during Ramadan. But when Isam meets the enchanting German, Jutta, it appears that he may have found just the Western woman to ease his existential pain. In the powerful “A Look into Nagi's Face,” Nagi, a half-French student, becomes a sadistic teacher's favorite, upsetting the classroom's balance of power. Domestic violence in a bourgeois Egyptian household gets out of hand in “When the Glass Shatters”; “Dearest Sister Makarim” mocks the formalities and traditions that hinder real communication between the sexes in modern Muslim culture. Acerbic critique of Egyptian culture is what weaves these stories into a coherent collection. The author systematically unveils his country's most revered institutions, from hospitals and schools to religion and marriage. (Sept.)

Gretchen Lowell strikes again—or does she?—in bestseller Cain's grisly third thriller to feature the female serial killer who takes sadistic pleasure in taunting Portland, Ore., detective Archie Sheridan (after Sweetheart and Heartsick). A violent attack that leaves body parts in a rest stop bathroom, along with Lowell's signature heart design, persuades Sheridan, a recovering Vicodin addict, to leave rehab and rejoin the hunt for Lowell. As he and newspaper reporter Susan Ward dig deeper, they discover that while the corpses cropping up around town are reminiscent of Lowell's nasty handiwork, they might also point to one of the myriad fan clubs dedicated to the killer, who has become a media sensation since she escaped from prison in Heartsick. Even though readers may wonder how much longer this extended game can play out, Cain delivers her usual blend of organ-ripping, blood-soaked gore and compelling flawed heroes—and antiheroes. (Sept.)

In Alexander's lackluster fourth Lady Emily historical (after A Fatal Waltz), Emily and her new husband, British intelligence agent Colin Hargreaves, are honeymooning in Constantinople when a half-English harem girl is murdered. After Colin is charged with the investigation, the British crown reluctantly allows Emily to handle questioning within the harem. Emily follows the clues much farther afield, exploring the tangled histories of the victim's diplomat father from whom she was abducted many years before, her troubled archeologist brother and sultans both current and deposed. The author deftly handles the exotic setting and a subplot in which Emily worries she may be pregnant, but a lack of tension and a number of implausibilities, starting with the ease with which a Western woman can play detective in despotic, late 19th-century Constantinople, make this a relatively weak entry. Hopefully, Emily will recover her usual sparkle once the newlyweds return to more familiar ground. Author tour. (Sept.)

Set in Belgium in 1999, Geeraerts's first novel to be made available in English will disappoint those expecting any distinctively Belgian content. Harvard-educated Albert Savelkoul, who's fascinated by J. Edgar Hoover's private life, has risen to the prestigious position of public prosecutor for Antwerp's Court of Appeal, despite having been caught patronizing a prostitute by a police vice squad. He has also engaged in covert acts of corruption, such as assisting Albanian drug dealers escape conviction in exchange for a substantial payoff. When the Belgian representative of Opus Dei, the sinister organization of choice for modern thriller writers, targets Savelkoul for blackmail, the police, after learning of the plot, have their own reasons not to help the prosecutor. While Geeraerts is his country's best-known writer after Georges Simenon, the book suffers from languid pacing and unsympathetic characters. (Sept.)

Gladstone's meandering debut, the latest thriller tied to the mystical date of December 12, 2012, when Mayan legend predicts the world's end, charts the life of Max Doff, starting with his conception in 1949 in Tarrytown, N.Y. After Max “dies” briefly at the age 15, he has a vision of 12 people. On returning to consciousness, he begins a decades-long quest to find them. His path takes him to Yale, where his radical philosophical ideas lead to his forced departure from campus. A formulation like “ 'A is, and is not, equal to A' as the ultimate equation in explaining how to penetrate the impenetrable intellectual domain of 'understanding understanding' ” is symptomatic of Max's difficulty in getting his message, whatever it actually is, across. Max then begins globe-trotting as part of the production team for a documentary on ancient astronauts. Serendipitous encounters with “the twelve” will strike many readers as more contrived than magical. (Sept.)

At the start of Potts's debut, a red-hot suspense novel, a midnight intruder murders D.C. Stroeb, an economics professor at Miami Intercontinental University, and his CPA wife, Rachel, in their exclusive Lotus Island, Fla., estate. Oddly, the killer takes only the couple's laptops. Their 16-year-old daughter, Elise, who was home at the time, suffers emotional trauma in the aftermath. Their 22-year-old son, Jeremy, who can't believe anyone could kill his parents, returns from backpacking abroad to assume the guardianship of Elise, against the wishes of his lawyer uncle, Dwight Stroeb. Jeremy connects with a sympathetic Miami detective, gets a job at his mother's CPA firm and enrolls at his father's university, where he becomes involved with his father's female graduate assistant, a Peruvian-French sexpot. The clue hunt sizzles in a plot driven largely by shifty accounting. By the end, the dangers of creative number crunching are all too apparent. (Sept.)

William Marshal, the younger son of a wealthy family, shows early prowess with a sword and uncommon chivalry, which he puts to good use saving the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Afterward, she makes him arms tutor to her sons, the young princes. Marshal pledges his service to heir Henry and stays with the prince, out of loyalty to Eleanor, throughout Henry's turbulent manhood and rebellion against his father. When Henry dies, Marshal swears loyalty to Henry's brother Richard, putting him at odds with his own brother, who is loyal to Prince John. When Richard leaves on crusade and John conspires to take the crown, Marshal must decide between family and honor. A true historical hero, if little known, William Marshal served under some of England's most famous kings and proved himself again and again throughout the troubled 12th century; Chadwick's novel immerses readers in Marshal's life and times, which should prove intriguing to any fan of historical fiction. The royals, and especially Eleanor, are particularly fascinating characters whom Chadwick employs to great effect. (Sept.)

In his most autobiographical work, veteran Korean novelist and former political prisoner Sok-Yong writes about a recently freed prisoner reflecting on his life through the letters of an old lover. Following an 18-year sentence, Oh Hyun Woo discovers that his former lover, Han Yoon Hee, has died. Oh returns to Kalmae, where they lived together, and discovers Yoon Hee's journals and letters to him. From there, the narrative combines Oh's memories and Yoon Hee's, often flowing seamlessly between the two. Yoon Hee's letters to Oh are layered in rich details and life-changing revelations, suggesting she knows all along that these letters will one day be all that's left of their relationship. Sok-Yong's attention to detail is especially powerful in Oh's descriptions of prison life and returning to the outside world, like “waking up from a nap at the end of a summer day when the sun is setting.” Oh and Yoon Hee's languid, heartbreaking tales of loss and waiting complement each other beautifully, evoking the spirit of Love in the Time of Solitude. (Sept.)

Day's debut novel, inspired by her childhood, is a dated story of four days in the lives of an English family on summer holiday in 1959. WWII vet Jack Singleton is using the holiday in the seaside town of Blackpool to decide his future. A foreman at a cotton mill, he is torn between two job offers: manager of Prospect Mill or union representative. Jack is hiding his predicament from his perfectionist wife, Ruth, while the couple's older daughter, 16-year-old Helen, is obsessed with new, fashionable clothes and finding a boyfriend. Sickly seven-year-old Beth simply wants to escape her overprotective mother. During the brief holiday, the family faces many dilemmas when Jack's wartime adventures come back to haunt him, Ruth's obsession with buying a new house tests her marriage, and the girls deal with treacherous friendships and unwelcome sexual advances. While the plot moves quickly, the number and variety of scrapes the family navigates in only four days strains credulity. Period slang and references are doubtless authentic, but will make the book a difficult read for Americans. (Sept.)

Hamilton's gorgeous and complex fourth novel tracks the 31 hours before Jonas, a sensitive young man raised by idealistic parents (now divorced), straps on a vest of explosives and enters the New York City subway system to martyr himself. The novel begins with Jonas's mother, Carol, knowing, with a mother's instinct, that something is very wrong with her son. Thus begins an odyssey that takes her back to her ex-husband, Jake; to Jonas's girlfriend, Vic; and, finally to the authorities. Hamilton touches on many perspectives, including that of Vic, a dancer who is shocked that her longtime friendship with Jonas recently turned to love; Vic's younger sister, Mara, who tries to fix their parents' failing marriage; Sonny Hirt, an especially perceptive homeless man who senses something is very wrong on the subway where he's panhandling. Through all of this, Jonas ritually prepares for this final act of his life, but without the single-minded fanaticism one expects. It's a very tense narrative, vividly imagined and eerily plausible. (Sept.)

Hicks follows his bestselling The Widow of the South with the grand, ripped-from-the-dusty-archives epic of Confederate general John Bell Hood. The story begins with Hood, on his deathbed with yellow fever, dispersing a stack of papers to former war nemesis Eli Griffin, urging him to publish the general's “secret memoir.” Hood's story picks up in 1878 as he, nearly broke, reflects on the past 10 years' dwindling fortunes. Now, with an artificial leg, a bum arm and nearly no money, he and his wife, Anna Marie, live in diminished circumstances in New Orleans. Over time, their once passionate relationship grows mundane as Hood “watched the years wrench devilry and lust and joy from her face.” Things are also complicated by the violent death of Anna Marie's best friend and the reappearance of former comrade Sebastien Lemerle, who holds a nasty secret he holds about Hood's past. Meanwhile, Hood's marriage and business failures pale in comparison to the yellow fever epidemic that decimates the area. Hicks's stunning narrative volleys between Hood, Anna Marie and Eli, each offering variety and texture to a story saturated in Southern gallantry and rich American history. (Sept.)

Michaels (Mr. & Miss Anonymous) launches the Godmother series, pure recession-proof fun starring a multimillionaire diva and her three best friends. Teresa Amelia “Toots” Loudenberry, 65, has just buried her eighth husband in Charleston, S.C. Fabulously wealthy, Toots zips through a one-week mourning period and persuades her best friends—obsessive-compulsive Ida, overweight Mavis (plus Coco, her Chihuahua) and too-thin smoker Sophie—to come visit and accompany her to Hollywood. Toots is going to secretly buy the Informer, the ailing tabloid that she shamelessly adores and where her reporter daughter Abby Simpson works. But the $10,000,000 transaction hits a snag when Rodwell Archibald Godfrey III, the greedy publisher, absconds with the money to the Cayman Islands. Veteran Michaels, a Golden Girl–style humorist spins some serious make believe magic as she sets up the next installment. Will Mavis and Sophie reach their goal weights? Will Ida overcome OCD? Will Toots save publishing? Anything can happen in La La land. (Sept.)

Levi subjects love to the inexorable tides of history in this articulate and resonant novel. In 1930s fascist Rome, Dino Carpi encounters Sonia Gentile when she breaks her leg at his parents' hotel on New Year's Eve, and as the Italians say, it's amore a prima vista. But their burgeoning relationship appears mortally wounded when Sonia discovers that Dino is Jewish. Sonia's father is a devout Catholic and well-connected supporter of Il Duce. Faced with the possibility of losing the object of his ardor, Dino enters into a compromise with Sonia's father in which he effectively denies his heritage in order to secure her hand. At first merely anxious about the personal implications of this bargain, the real consequences for the couple, their extended families and their young son Michele become increasingly harrowing as the Fascist regime imposes evermore restrictive laws on Italian Jews. The historical milieu performs admirably as the catalyst for a shrewd meditation on love's spectrum, from turbulent passion to petty jealousies. Though the beginning is slow going and disordered, Levi's crystalline prose gradually generates an emotional groundswell of unexpected intensity. (Sept.)

The author of several New York novels (People in Trouble; etc.), Schulman makes an unfortunate shift with this madcap satire set “in the future, when things are slightly better because there has been a big change.” New York has been transformed by the Retrocrat party: franchises have been banned, the minimum and maximum wages are set at $45,000 and $100 million per year, and Staten Island has been declared a part of Texas. In this semiparadise, the unnamed copywriter protagonist has been offered a rare opportunity to have lunch with Harrison Bond, author of the fabulously popular novel My Sperm and the fiction editor of the Brand New York magazine. Bond assigns her a profile of a local artist (word count: eight words) and in the process pitches her into a maelstrom of interlocking relationships, chaotic self-revelations and, eventually, a murder, all of which reveals the dark truth about the new New York. Schulman, however, seems most interested in filling the pages with puns and breathless quirkiness, and while she's got some good ideas, the insistent zaniness of her prose is aggravating at best. (Sept.)

This colorful second installment of Hollick's King Arthur trilogy (following The Kingmaker) continues the bloody legend as the young king of Britain tries to keep his throne amid traitors, rivals and deadly treachery. This is a period of savage brutality, deceit, feud, greed and lust for power, with Arthur, the Pendragon, as merciless and cunning as his challengers. Arthur is 24, married to his second wife, the beautiful Gwenhwyfar. His hostile first wife, Winifred, schemes to unseat Arthur and put her own son on the throne, but other women are also pregnant by Arthur, and familial royal murder plots abound. When Arthur is not bedding his wife, mistress, prostitutes or female spies, he is busy chopping up foes with sword and battle-ax, while doing his own scheming to outwit and destroy his arch enemy, Morgause, who harbors a bitter hatred for Arthur and his family and is the only enemy Arthur fears. Refreshingly, Hollick's Arthur is no Hollywood hero; he's a vicious opportunist, devious and manipulative, a lusty master of expedient decision and action. (Sept.)

To break off an affair with a married man, 23-year-old Vivette takes her grandfather's Buick and drives away from her home in Portsmouth, N.H., heading for Des Moines, Iowa, for no other reason than the attraction of its two silent “s”s. On the way she spends a week in Nebraska with Margaret, who Vivette met when they both worked at the Penhallow Bakery in Portsmouth. Margaret, who also fled heartbreak, is married now and settled down, and Vivette seeks “pointers” on life in the Great Plains. From chapter to chapter, the story shifts between Vivette and Margaret and between the past and present, gradually revealing the details of their involvement with the untrustworthy men they left behind. In her descriptions of food, the Nebraskan landscape, and the rhythms of work at a tourist town bakery, Flick indulges in sensual detail with pleasurable results. But the novel lacks drama; Vivette and Margaret have little to do but ruminate on happiness and their past waywardness. Later chapters revealing the current circumstances of their former lovers adds little insight. (Sept.)

One of the few works by 2008 Nobel laureate Le Clézio to be translated into English, this mythic novel tells two parallel stories of descendants of a holy man called Al Azraq. The novel begins with Nour, a Berber boy who bears witness to the failed rebellion led by Sheik Ma el Aïnine against the French in the years leading up to WWI. In the cadences of an incantation, Le Clézio renders the dire suffering of the displaced desert peoples who turn to Ma el Aïnine for guidance. The parallel story, set in the near-contemporary, portrays Lalla, a young woman who lives on the Moroccan coast and spends her days exploring the seashore and listening to the stories of her aunt and the fisherman Old Naman. After escaping an arranged marriage, Lalla lands in Marseille and finds not the gleaming white city of Naman's stories but a cruel place cut off from nature. Le Clézio's vision is cinematic, his language lyrical and the lives he portrays are vivid and convincing. (Sept.)

In this haunting collection, Holt's lush language pulls literary treasures out of dark places, bringing readers ice from the rings of Saturn “where seeing and vanishing are one,” a cartouche from deep within an ancient tomb and the late-night conversations of a married couple awaiting the end of the world. Magical realism tinges the grim “My Father's Heart,” about a man who keeps his father's heart in a jar on his mantelpiece, and “Scylla,” in which a captain returns from sea to find his home altered by an inexplicable force. An ominous future is the backdrop of “Eurydike,” in which an amnesiac wakes up in a place full of empty beds and incomprehensible clocks. “Aurora” follows the heartbreaking thoughts of a spaceship doomed to harvest ice. A tantalizing puzzle takes root in one story (its title is Greek) as a lonely survivor investigates the cause of a disease that marks its victims with a single word repeated over and over beneath the skin. This collection, with its allusions to mythology and tragic conundrums, demands intelligence and rewards the reader with Borgesian riches. (Sept.)

The author of Down by the River and son of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz returns with the first in a planned series of three novels that attempts to delve into the American psyche during the Jazz Age, starting in the pivotal year of 1929. Schulz has done copious research about the period for this tale of Alvin Pendergast, an Illinois farm boy who survives tuberculosis. After a local dance marathon, Alvin becomes the easy prey of con man Chester Burke, who persuades him to come along on travels and capers that will take them on the road and up against manifold dangers. Unfortunately, the story is so weighed down by patched-together country and old-time vernacular, long stretches of aimless dialogue and detail and background data about irrelevant characters that the story never takes off. Does it mean to be a tall tale, historical novel, road caper, fantasia, cornpone satire, crime thriller or some combination? Random and unconvincing in every way, it's obvious that when Fantagraphics asks, “how does the publisher of The Complete Peanuts reject a novel by Charles Schulz's son?” the answer is, sadly, they could not. (Sept.)

Set in the French hamlet of Briecourt, Lang's first novel in her Great War romance series teems with conflict. Caught on the front lines of WWI and further torn by a senseless family feud, the village reels with uncertainty, fear, suspicion and blame. Julitte Toussaint, as made excessively clear by her perfection, is the story's pious heroine who has unique spiritual gifts and a mysterious history that elicits wonder and, unfortunately, rejection by many of her neighbors. However, refugee and Belgian gentleman Charles Lassone sees past the rumors surrounding Julitte as she brings him food during his time of hiding in the village's church. Their virtuous love story acts as a foil to other subplots involving vanity, greed, pride. The most damning comparison Lang overemphasizes is between the chaste relationship of Julitte and Charles and the suggested sexual fall of her best friend. Lang's novel is a cautionary tale as well as a romance within an exciting framework of war, secrets and blissful reunions. (Sept.)

Sex, self-disgust, horse racing, literary fame and obscurity, delight in foul language (“dry and ridiculous bungholes”), and fleeting but genuine pleasures (from voyeurism to eating a spider crab): Bukowski's many, many remaining fans will find familiar themes in this 12th set of previously unpublished poems to appear since the Los Angeles writer died in 1994. “The god-damned editors don't know anything,” he tells “the lady on the couch,” and indeed he insists on the life, the meat, of the poems. Short lines dominate this particular cull of verse, with plenty of quoted conversation mixed in; as with most of his work, misanthropy rules, making the flashes of mercy—and of sexual acceptance—shine bright indeed: “I was/ sick and I/ turned to look out the/ window/ white yellow grease of/ morning/ burning my/ eyes./ Next to me in bed/ there she was.” The poems may repeat themselves, but they stay true to Bukowski. Few people would want to trade places with this poet for whom “pain sits, pain floats, pain/ waits;/ pain is,” but plenty will continue to cherish his unpretentious words. (Oct.)

Since winning the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1978, Ramke has steadily released strong and strange books of poetry. He is the rare poet who seems to become more himself with each new book, rather than more like an imitation of himself. Nonetheless, perhaps due to the difficulty of much of his work, Ramke has remained a poet's poet. This much-needed and compact selection from his nine previous books serves as a helpful introduction to this poet, whose work straddles aesthetic camps one never knew shared borders—this is language poetry with a Southern twang, or experimental writing with clear, dire subject matter. From the stark clarity of his first poems (“the only horse/ we owned died on Christmas Eve”), Ramke has journeyed toward wholly original aesthetic ground on which his own often fragmentary words share the page, even the line, with passages from obscure texts, definitions, even mathematics. Yet even Ramke's oddest poems always keep a few subjects—fatherhood, knowledge of the self and the other, love, desire—at the forefront, wishing, at times, “To kiss. To move/ mouth against mouth.” And the new poems here are among Ramke's best. (Sept.)

Always thoughtful and heartfelt, Koethe's poems have become simply heartbreaking. Koethe—a 60-something professor of philosophy—writes meditative, introspective poems that have long encouraged comparisons to Wallace Stevens, and Stevens's poems of old age remain on his mind. But Koethe now makes his Stevensian techniques and his sinuous sentences serve a pellucid, omnipresent, all-American nostalgia, for the sights and streets where he grew up and for the promise of youth. Part one considers the sunlit San Diego of his childhood, the diminished Rust Belt aura of Milwaukee, where he lives, and the way that, in poems, anywhere can be everywhere: “I wish the presence of the everyday could be enough,” he muses. “It isn't, though. It's something incomplete.” Part two (a letdown) considers Berlin, where the poet lived for a year; part three (a triumph) investigates, in quietly and carefully metrical lines, the consolation of old age; the excitements of a remembered New York; the fun Koethe had at a dinner party (on 95th Street, in 1966) where he met Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery; and the purpose of art and memory. “That's what poetry is,” the title poem muses, “a way to live through time,/ And sometimes, just for a while, to bring it back.” (Sept.)

Ups and downs, uneven passions and sometimes apparently random associations are the paradoxical constant in this first Selected from Wier (Remnants of Hannah), drawn (without new work) on eight published books of short poems. Wier—now much esteemed as a teacher of poets at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst—began with tight lines haunted by disappointments: poems of the 1970s and 1980s portray a desperate writer with a void, or a nightmare, inside: “A nail had come loose from a vortex/ she'd driven.” To move through this chronological selection is to see Wier grow more whimsical, in her titles (“Nine Sunflowers Standing Seven Feet High Wintering Over in a Snowy Field”) and in her verse, with surreal or nonsensical lists: “A pencil sharpener ascends Mt. Everest./ A bus believes it is a thumbtack./ A baby turns itself inside out and nobody notices... Two doorways fall in love.” Such phrases, in verse and in prose poems, recall Wier's companion, James Tate. Strangest and farthest from prose sense, and farthest from Tate, are the investigations of Reverse Rapture (2005): “(so we deviated) (we variegated) (you were the/ marshal of that parade).” Such poems are not whimsies but quizzical visions, or dreams, in which readers might try hard to get lost. (Sept.)

Moscaliuc's first collection is hard to forget, though its best passages work more like fragments from memoirs than like poems: most of them portray the travails and traditions, the horrifying conditions and small victories, of life in Romania, where Moscaliuc grew up, in the reign of the tyrant Ceausescu (overthrown in 1989) and in the years of deprivation and chaos that have followed. “At ten we each had at least one/ alcoholic parent... anyone could be the informer”; the state's grotesque pronatalist policies (abortion banned, all fertile women spied on, any pregnancy rewarded) led to the suicides of pregnant teens. The same policies helped to fill the state's infamous orphanages; young men and women grew up there, then lived on the streets. In “Visit Home,” set in 2007, homeless kids sniff paint and live under manholes, while “Chicken bones beckon neighborhood strays.” Moscaliuc (who now teaches in New Jersey) can overshoot her mark or grow melodramatic even in her best lines: an orphan she knew, dead at 27, “packed his wings and a silver spoon and returned to the streets.” Yet her powers of observation and image remain impossible to deny. (Sept.)

Hillman's eighth collection of poems is the third in her series of book-length meditations on the elements (her last book was Pieces of Air in the Epic). In these aesthetically challenging, yet often surprisingly clear poems, which span the personal, political and environmental, water is simultaneously a transparent vessel, a mirror and an endangered resource. The first section speaks for and through water and other masks from nature. The title poem begins by sounding the book's central question: “What does it mean to live a moral life.” The poem goes on to suggest how we might fruitfully learn from the titular element: “It's hard to be water/ to fall from faucets with fangs/ to lie under travelers as horizons/ but you must.” The second section contains a series of poems based on hearings in Congress, which Hillman actually attended, where “The Congress folks are tired & beige.” The two-part poems in the third section are dialogues with each month's moon (“December Moon,” “January Moon”), which speaks in cryptic hints reminiscent of Louise Glück's flowers: “Don't ask/ who I am. I was/ the dawn song:/ i helped you hide.” Section four looks at the waters of Hillman's native Northern California. Hillman has become an increasingly difficult poet, while simultaneously growing increasingly interested in how poetry can engage political realities. This is one of the most unusual and compelling books so far this year. (Aug.)

The third in a series of handsomely designed publications of Selected volumes by major poets (following books by James Merrill and Frank O'Hara), this new selection from the whole of Stevens's career should bring this major poet's work to the attention of a new generation. Stevens is arguably the strangest of the High Modern poets, the most difficult to classify. While he partook of classical allusions and nods to American speech like his contemporaries, his poems take place in a world that is thoroughly his own, where a jar placed on the ground “made the slovenly wilderness/ Surround that hill” and Florida is a place where a woman sings by the sea such that it becomes “merely a place by which she walked to sing.” Eminent Stevens scholar Serio presents Stevens's well-known favorites (“The Emperor of Ice-Cream”) as well as lesser-known texts, such as “Someone Puts a Pineapple Together,” hidden in the poet's only volume of prose. As this volume shows, we are still catching up to the force and individuality of Stevens's imagination, and perhaps we never will. (Aug.)

The austere second volume from Greenstreet (case sensitive) picks up on her other career as a photographer. Brief prose poems, spare stanzas and suggestive sequences return to such notions as frame, tint, profile and point of view: “We don't know what it means but we do know that the person disappears.// The bridge/ attracts us with its brightness.” One page can present Greenstreet as a war photographer, getting horror on film; the next can make her a victim, a dreamer, a wanderer, an examiner of linguistic particles at a very far remove. Abstractions and almost mystical hints imply lessons from Michael Palmer (“Dear When-you-stop-you-will-feel,/ Black, the color of space, mourning/ is green for rain”) or from Elizabeth Robinson. Greenstreet is nothing if not challenging, electric and crisp. Readers who find the verse and the situations in the fragment-packed first half of the volume fascinating yet hard to assemble may turn to the concluding set of prose poems, each given a date like a diary (“6 January”): here events and plots mix and dissolve (civil war, childbirth, hiking), but the hurt tone and the laconic technique make them cohere. The book includes a DVD (not seen by PW) with video art by Greenstreet. (Sept.)

“What do I really want to share with people? Not of my methods but of myself?” asks Ali in his third collection, a captivating song of himself that passionately excavates the interdependence between geography and identity. Ali, who is also a novelist, presents a candid history of his wandering life—“I have lived in six cities in five years”— which has perpetually taken place by a river (the Hudson, Nile or Seine), always carrying with him a desire to uncover the hidden aspects of a city and, in turn, his multitudinous self (“Under any city other cities exist. Under any body other bodies”). Ali recounts his journey backward in lists of images and thoughts, and the book's 15 sections are each devoted to a particular city, maintaining a strong narrative arc throughout, crossing genre lines to read as a kind of literary-journalistic, autobiographical text. Ali knows the power of facts; he writes of his time in New York City: “I was in exile, living out of a suitcase in a completely empty apartment in the deserted money district.” This is a fascinating work, brimming with bold meditations on religion, sexuality and what it means to live the life of an artist. (Sept.)

The sharp, witty sequences in Petrosino's debut reveal a poet who has more fun with language, and who shows more range, than most. The titular series, whose moniker uses the same letters as “Robert Redford,” describes an imaginary affair with him, highlighting their differences in taste, in status, in race: “ I gather my afro into a plain elastic hoop... Redford's face goes coltish & aware.” Petrosino has more to say about lust and romance and social class than Redford's celebrity. Other series put more pressure on the sounds of words, in the propulsive sentences of her prose poems or in irregularly rhymed short lines: “The field saint in my skin/ who rakes:// I balm. I slake.” Ten poems all called “Valentine” include kiss-offs, come-hithers and advice: “Ordering food/ is really ordering some of the food... But:/ You can't order some of the love.” Drawing on popular culture, invoking sex often and flirting, or trying to shock, Petrosino rings some of the same bells as Frederick Seidel. But she repeats herself a lot less often, and her jokes are her own generation's: “Who would win, Jack White or Jack Black?” Her poems should attract anybody who wants to find out. (Aug.)

Tadic may be the foremost living poet of Serbia: the short introduction from translator and former U.S. poet laureate Simic calls the Belgrade-based Tadic “a poet of the dark night of history,” and recent Serbian history, with its atrocities, its dictators, its victims of retaliatory bombardments, is behind Tadic's sorrowful, anguished short poems. Yet the “dark things” of the titular poem are at once “close and far away,” “stirring in our hearts”: they are less topical than they are spiritual, folkloric, chthonic. The poet is at once perpetrator and casualty, his guilt exceptional and yet widely shared. His settings without contemporary reference, like minimal stage sets, provide backdrops for nightmarish exclamations: “I'm a cross of human flesh/ on which nothing is crucified.” A few poems even bring in vampire legends. But only rarely do Tadic's poems topple over into gothic caricature; more often they measure the depths of a blasted despair, and they gain—for all their individual brevity—cumulative force. Simic translated the Serbian master's earlier poems previously: this volume, selected from verse published in Serbian since 2001, seems certain to get more attention, since Simic himself is now much better known. (July)

Two hundred years after his death, some of Burns's words are even more famous than he is: the words to “Auld Lang Syne,” for example, and the wish “to see oursels as others see us.” Yet the national poet of Scotland had more in him than the international anthology pieces—including radical politics, storytelling, interesting prose, and verse, in Scots and in standard English. This big book makes a case for Burns as a major romantic poet, whose invitations and angers, stanzas and choruses, merit long appreciation now. Some of the prose bears only historical interest, but many lesser-known poems now shine bright—with anger, sarcasm, self-mockery, double entendres: “I like the lasses—Gude forgie me!/ For monie a Plack [coin] they wheedle frae me,/ At dance or fair;/ Maybe some ither thing they gie me/ They weel can spare.” Few poets have more gracefully or comically asked the ladies to give up their honor. Coming in time for the poet's 250th birthday, the collection should surely let poets, and reviewers, try to give this complex, hardworking and musically gifted figure his due. (July)

Romance dominates Crombie's 13th contemporary procedural featuring Scotland Yarders Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid, who are on the verge of getting married (after 2008's Where Memories Lie). The how, where and when of their wedding proves a considerable source of stress to both, overshadowing the murder investigation of Naz Malik, a solicitor suspected in the disappearance of his wife, Sandra Gilles, an artist specializing in textile collage. Malik was found suffocated in Bethnal Green, with traces of an animal tranquilizer in his system. Meanwhile, James's mother is seriously ill, placing James in the impossible position of trying to fulfill both her familial and work responsibilities. In addition, James must fight to keep Malik's now parentless young daughter from falling into the custody of Sandra's unsavory relatives. Hopefully, Crombie will provide a better balance of police work and her characters' personal lives next time. (Oct.)

Old guilt and new sins create a tangled puzzle in McGilloway's outstanding second Inspector Devlin mystery (after 2008's Borderlands). When Garda Insp. Benedict Devlin discovers the crucified body of James Kerr, an ex-con who claimed he'd returned home to forgive the gang members who betrayed him after a robbery, Devlin sets out to solve that slaying as well as the original robbery, which have links to drug thefts, brutal attempted rapes and additional murders. Devlin, who also has to cope with backstabbing fellow policemen and can't help getting personally involved in his cases, suffers from attacks of panic and conscience that push him to work harder, even when his wife and boss suggest he ease off. This quietly compelling procedural contains much buried passion, especially in the never acknowledged mutual attraction between Devlin and his female partner. Readers will be gripped as they watch this driven Irish detective seek his place in the moral landscape. (Sept.)

Family secrets both past and present underpin this promising mystery debut from Hinger (Come Spring). In compiling oral histories for a county book project, western Kansas historian Lottie Albright encounters racist attitudes in a piece by a prominent local, Zelda St. John. Yet when Fiona Hadley, Zelda's sister and mother of political hopeful Brian Hadley, demands that Zelda's contribution be suppressed, Lottie's sensibilities as a historian are offended. When Zelda and her daughter are murdered, valuable documents are stolen and anonymous letters arrive from an unbalanced individual, Lottie enlists the help of her psychologist twin sister, Josie, with whom she has an uneasy relationship. Lottie's part-time job as a sheriff's deputy, tensions within her marriage and a sensational cold case involving a dead pregnant woman cause further complications. Readers who stick with the often awkward plotting will be rewarded by a nail-biting climax, when Lottie makes a life-altering choice. (Sept.)

Ryan, the pseudonym of a Wisconsin emergency nurse, brings her professional expertise to her crisp debut. Mattie Winston, a former OR nurse, leaves her “Dr. Wonderful” husband, David Winston, after she catches him doing the nasty with Karen Owenby, another RN. Mattie quits her job at Mercy Hospital in Sorenson, Wis., to become the deputy of coroner Izzy Rybarceski, her gay best friend. Mattie's first crime scene, a shooting death, is a shocker since, oops, Karen is the victim. As Mattie's sleuthing progresses alongside the official investigation helmed by hunky homicide detective Steve Hurley, the police haul in David as a prime suspect. Mattie wisecracks her way through an increasingly complex plot that includes two more suspicious shootings. Despite a breezy narrative that reflects the influence of TV shows like CSI and Grey's Anatomy, the book touches on such serious topics as the problem of AIDs patients and others with inadequate medical insurance. (Sept.)

Bowen's convoluted fifth mystery to feature Rep and Melissa Pennyworth (after 2008's Shoot the Lawyer Twice) finds the Milwaukee lawyer and his English professor wife pursuing a couple of cases with a family connection. Rep is doing trademark and copyright work for political activist Ole Lindstrom, while Melissa is investigating the mugging of a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman, found naked and unconscious in an Annapolis, Md., motel, who happens to be Ole's nephew. Meanwhile, the authorities charge Ole's wife, Lena, with attempted murder after someone—Lena claims it was an intruder who entered their house—sneaks up on Ole and whacks him over the head with a skillet. Ole's subsequent murder raises the stakes. Set between December 2008 and May 2009, this up-to-the-minute whodunit is filled with topical allusions that will either amuse or irritate, depending on your politics. The light tone and easygoing dialogue make for a quick read. (Sept.)

Divided equally between reprints and original entries, this fine anthology showcases many of today's top British crime writers, from seasoned veterans like Peter Lovesey and Reginald Hill to newer names like Zoë Sharp and Roz Southey. The creepy opening tale, Carla Banks's Twilight Zone–like “Out of Her Mind,” which features a writer and a knife-wielding killer, contrasts nicely with the humorous story that soon follows, Simon Brett's “Work Experience,” in which burglars plot to rip off a coin dealer's cache stored above a police station. On balance, the 26 selections tend to the scary side, as shown by Ann Cleves's “Games for Winter,” in which a teacher's decision to try his survival skills in a remote part of Alaska has fateful consequences. In one of the book's best tales, Sophie Hannah's unsettling “The Octopus Nest,” a babysitter's chance look at a couple's photo album reveals a stalker. Proceeds from the volume benefit breast cancer charities in the U.K. (Sept.)

At the start of British author Adams's suspenseful third Rina Martin mystery (after 2008's Fragile Lives), Rina, who once played a PI in a TV series and now runs a B&B in the resort town of Frantham, spots a motor yacht turning in circles in the bay. A coast guard boat comes to the rescue and tows the yacht to shore. Aboard are two men, both shot to death. One of them is unidentified, the other is the boat's owner, Paul de Freitas, a computer game software developer, who shared a cliff-side mansion with his brother and sister-in-law. The guests at Rina's B&B, who include a magician and others connected to the theatrical world, lend support as Rina turns sleuth, while her policeman friend, Det. Insp. Mac McGregor, casts a disapproving eye on amateur interference. Industrial spies and government agents, some of them bogus, raise questions about what de Freitas was really up to at his factory at an old army base. Miss Marple fans will find a lot to like. (Sept.)

This delectable first in a new paranormal cozy series from Jaffarian (Booby Trap) introduces Ish Reynolds (aka “Granny Apples”), a charming turn-of-the-20th-century spirit and pie maker, who asks Emma Whitecastle, her great-great-great-granddaughter, to prove her innocent of murdering her husband, Jacob Reynolds. Strung up by vigilantes in retribution for the crime, Granny Apples first tried haunting Emma's mother, Elizabeth, who couldn't handle her visitations. Emma, who's in the midst of divorcing her obnoxious TV talk show husband, is ripe for a diversion. After getting advice about her new clairvoyant and clairaudient abilities from psychic Milo Ravenscroft, Emma goes to Julian, a former mining town near San Diego, Calif., to research Ish's story. Emma's fluttery feelings for Phil Bower, a crusty rancher and lawyer who owns Granny's old property, add zest to this appealing ghost story. (Sept.)

A missing landslide hazard area report followed by a fatal mud slide that wipes out expensive new homes in Washington's (fictional) Latouche County saddles sheriff's investigator Rob Neill with multiple problems in Simonson's pedestrian sequel to Buffalo Bill's Defunct (2008). Rob has to deal with the slide's after-effects and injuries he receives helping with rescue efforts, as well as a murder case after one possible suspect in the LHA coverup is found dead and another disappears. County politics from Sheriff Mack McCormick's office to Madeline Thomas, principal chief of the (fictional) Klalos tribe, intricately tangled with liaisons financial and sexual, offer plenty of motives for the crime. Rob's love interest, librarian Meg McLean, lends support. The author does a good job evoking the beauty of the Washington-Oregon border area between Mount Saint Helens and Mount Hood, but despite a satisfactory resolution to the murder investigation, the epilogue is much too pat. (Sept.)

Four well-known fantasy writers bring magical dogs into the plots of otherwise standard paranormal novellas. Harris's urban fantasy, “The Britlingens Go to Hell,” pits bodyguards Batanya and Clovache against demons, wolfwomen and two hellhounds guarding some unusual prisoners. In Singh's paranormal romance, “Angels' Judgment,” vampire trackers Sara and Deacon must discover who is murdering vampires; one suspect owns a hellhound. In Andrews's sexy “Magic Mourns,” Andrea, a knight who helps people with magic problems, links with a shape-shifter to find a stolen corpse, but first they must get by a three-headed dog. In Brook's page-turning romance “Blind Spot,” Maggie Wren, CIA operative turned vampire's personal assistant, teams up with a hellhound to find her boss's kidnapped niece. Only the most obsessive dog fanciers will be really enthralled by the passing mentions of canines. (Sept.)

Tough women and hot men populate this deliciously sensual anthology. In Laurenston's “The Wolf, the Witch, and Her Lack of Wardrobe,” Smithville's werewolf mayor, Tully Smith, and coven leader, Jamie Meacham, have to stop butting heads and acknowledge their mutual attraction to save themselves and the town. When Sadie James, a wereleopard FBI agent, tracks a shape-shifting killer into a vampire bar in Eden's “In the Dark,” she's shocked to see her supposedly dead lover, Liam Sullivan. In Quinn's “City of the Dead,” witch Dori Falcon searches New Orleans for her brother, only to be helped and distracted by former lover Det. Jake Boudreau. Each compulsively readable story is well-paced and filled with steamy, graphic sex. Laurenston's characters shine with wit and depth, and Eden and Quinn deliver nonstop action. (Sept.)

The latest yarn in Erickson's sprawling Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series is filled with striking characters and ambience, but light on action and plot. Aboard a stolen sailing ship called the Suncurl are the quiet eunuch Korbal Broach, a stocky necromancer, and the eloquent sorcerer Bauchelain, a silver-tongued master of demons. As mystical iron nails in the hull merge belowdecks to form an unsavory, undead consciousness starved for flesh and blood, the beautiful Captain Slater reveals a dark secret that may doom them all. Given barely enough narrative for a short story spread over a novella's page count, only die-hard completists will choose this pricy stand-alone over Erikson's forthcoming trade paperback collection of this and two other Bauchelain & Korbal Broach tales. (Sept.)

Hughes (Engelbrecht Again!) spins an absurdist tale of a supernatural defense agency protecting British interests at home and abroad from monstrous threats, the most monstrous being (of course) the French. Twisthorn Bellow is a bad-tempered golem accidentally soaked in nitroglycerin, assisted by a semi-vocal giant hand and a talking aborted fetus named Miss Stake. Together, they recruit or eliminate other supernatural entities while fending off constant threats delivered unfailingly by a bicycle messenger who is also the president of France. Eventually, as narrated by the Eiffel Tower, they confront the chief villain in his subterranean lair beneath Strasbourg. Wordplay, fractured classical mythology, pop culture and homages to fellow authors, above all the late Philip Jose Farmer, are overwhelmed by heavy satire that turns the tone from gonzo to grim, delivering more temper tantrum than tomfoolery. (Sept.)

Shortlisted for this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award, this sweeping interplanetary adventure is also a thoughtful examination of human nature. The few people remaining on feudal 23rd-century Earth are obsessed with repairing the damaged ecosystem, while the near-anarchic Outers, who fled to the solar system's outer worlds, would rather probe the atmosphere of Saturn and grow gardens in vacuum. Earth tries to rein in the Outers with a campaign of intrigue, assassination and sabotage that culminates in bloody carnage. McAuley (Cowboy Angels) moves deftly among five well-drawn characters in the thick of the action: a cloned spy, a hotshot pilot, a ruthless scientist, a bluntly independent biological engineer and an unscrupulous diplomat. They all, in different ways, must choose between the familiar and the new, struggling to reconcile conflicting desires. This compelling tale opens vast panoramas while confronting believable people with significant choices. (Sept.)

Fans of Brooks's magic kingdom of Landover will welcome this title, the first new book in the series since 1996's Witches' Brew. Ben Holiday's daughter, Mistaya, is now 15 and currently suspended from her private girl's school on Earth for scaring a classmate with magic. Her father—at wit's end despite having defeated many more fantastic challenges—decides to teach her responsibility by sending her to the remote royal library, Libiris. Mistaya runs away, but winds up in Libiris anyway, trying to hide in plain sight. There she discovers a suspicious character called His Eminence, a mysterious voice crying for help and a vast evil threatening all of Landover. The lighthearted story, as with the earlier volumes, can be serious without the convoluted grittiness of Brooks's Shannara saga, and there are plenty of treats for returning readers. (Sept.)

This final volume of works by English author, disillusioned sailor and bodybuilder Hodgson (1877–1918) presents 31 strange and unsettling visions of fantasy, horror and future worlds both terrifyingly close to and infinitely removed from our own, including several condensations and alternate versions of Hodgson's best known works. Despite some labored archaisms and obtrusive dialects, the emotional depth of the poignant “Valley of Lost Children” and the searing “Judge Barclay's Wife” exemplifies Hodgson's penetrating insight into the abuses society masks beneath its supposed values and ideals, while the eerily Swiftian “Date 1965: Modern Warfare,” written in 1908, foresees the horrors of the trenches. Today's readers will find it a struggle, but one worth undertaking. (Sept.)

Moers's elegantly written fourth stand-alone comic fantasy set in Zamonia (after 2008's The City of Dreaming Books) takes us to the city of Malaisea, where everyone is sick except for two characters: Echo, a Crat (a talking cat, more or less), and Ghoolion, an evil alchemist likely responsible for Malaisea's afflictions. Crat and alchemist cross paths when the starving Echo is offered a month of food, entertainment and alchemical secrets, after which Ghoolion will kill him to boil down his fat. Ghoolion proves a magically masterful chef, and Echo quickly becomes fascinated by Ghoolion's work, particularly the morphic meals that seem to transform Echo into different creatures. Secrets are revealed, old bodies unearthed and strange allies made in this entrancing tale of darkness, determined survival and incredibly luxurious cuisine. (Sept.)

Chesley-winning illustrator Brom (The Plucker) weaves together gloomy prose and horrifying adventures in this macabre fairy tale inspired by J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Born of faerie blood, Peter hunts abandoned children, runaways and the hopeless, recruiting for his Devils in Avalon and promising them a place where you never have to grow up. He conveniently fails to mention that Avalon's monsters are very real, and the Devils must practice their war games or risk being tortured to death, eaten or worse. While early chapters are promising, this gothic fantasy stumbles on its own darkness. The devilishly amusing flashbacks to Peter's origins don't make up for the heavy-handed bloodshed, rampant violence and two-dimensional characters. It's all fiendish monsters and desperate battles in this twisted, dark Neverland; the Disney Peter's mirth and good humor are nowhere to be found. (Sept.)

True crime author and conspiracy theorist Benson (Betrayal in Blood) chronicles the real and disturbing life of Sheila LaBarre, who lured vulnerable men back to her remote New Hampshire farmhouse and abused them psychologically and physically. After some of her victims disappeared, a police investigation uncovered the remains of two young men in burn pits on the farm. In 2008, LaBarre—who believed that she was an “avenging angel” ridding the world of pedophiles—pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of first-degree murder, launching one of the longest trials in New Hampshire's history. Benson commendably refrains from sensationalizing the shocking details of sadomasochism, pedophilia, incest and sexual abuse, but the brisk pacing suffers tremendously during some of the drawn-out trial sequences, and the ending to this “X-rated retelling of 'Hansel and Gretel' ” leaves some major questions unanswered. (Sept.)

Barton (The Murder Game) tangles a pair of reunited high school sweethearts in a fast-paced, intriguing plot. Eighteen months after Catherine Cantrell's husband, a respected minister, was burned to death before her eyes, Cathy is back in her hometown of Dunmore, Ala., struggling to make a new life for herself and her teenage son. Further gruesome deaths among the clergy send police detective Jackson Perdue, Cathy's first love, on a search for a serial killer. Barton cleverly interweaves the family lives and dark secrets of a range of religious leaders while convincingly portraying Jack and Cathy's slowly reviving love. The unwieldy cast of characters can be difficult to keep track of and several plot threads are left irritatingly unresolved, but the balanced and pleasing mix of romance and suspense will keep readers satisfied and looking forward to sequels. (Sept.)

Trixa Iktomi, Las Vegas bar owner, information broker and down-to-earth grad of the school of hard knocks, sasses her way into and out of trouble while avenging her brother's death in Thurman's supernatural series launch. Angels and associates of Eden House, an earthly company that employs human demon hunters with psychic talents, face off against demonic fallen angels who eat souls to gain strength. When she gets news of the Light of Life, an impenetrable shield that could protect heaven or hell from attack, Trixa and her Native American bartender, Leo Rain, are determined to locate it before the demons can. Their particular nemesis is Solomon, a handsome demon with an eye on the lovely Trixa. Thurman (Madhouse) breaks little new ground, but urban fantasy fans will find this a pleasant, unsurprising comfort read. (Sept.)

Squires (One with the Darkness) brings her flair for historical vampire romance to revolution-era France. Henri Foucault, the charismatic, wicked duc of Avignon, accidentally turned young Françoise Suchet into a vampire. A few centuries later, Francoise, now jaded San Francisco bartender Frankie, gets the chance to travel back in time and kill Henri. When modern Frankie merges with her 18th-century self, the resulting mix of innocence and experience makes her even more fascinating to immortal Henri than the first time around, while the wise future voice in Francoise's head allows her to discover more of Henri's complexity and secrets. The heroine's dual nature is exquisitely executed, and Squires's lush writing skillfully entwines the dramatic story of an aristocratic smuggler's resistance to corrupt revolution with the romantic tale of lovers drawn together across time. (Sept.)

This slim but densely sly volume collects, at long last, 20 years of Sikoryak's classic lit/classic comics mashups. Blondie and Dagwood act out Genesis in “Blonde Eve”; Garfield tempts Jon into a deal with the devil in “Mephistofield”; and Batman turns into Raskol for a reworking of “Crime and Punishment.” What could be simple parody in other hands is elevated to multileveled artistry by Sikoryak's uncanny ability to mimic the line of artists from Winsor McCay through Jack Davis to Charles Schulz. He goes far beyond mere imitation to eerily inhabit the artistic sensibilities of a dozen cartoonists; the result is as funny as it is impressive. These retellings linger on the philosophical underpinnings of such tales; coupled with the allusions and baggage of these familiar cartoon characters, the crossovers take on a life of their own to become legitimate adaptations. For instance, Little Pearl in “Red Letter Day” features Marjorie Henderson Buell/John Stanley's Little Lulu characters in a note for note retelling of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, contrasting the grim Puritan narrative with the animated expressions of the Bueel/Stanley originals to cast the sin-obsessed settlers into even sharper relief. Readers who pick this up for the well-deserved laughter will get a bonus with the thoughtful metaphors. (Sept.)

The final collection of Azzarello and Risso's 100-issue crime comic book crushes its grand construction into Grand Guignol as the series concludes in an inevitable bloodbath, with its high society cabals, sleeper assassins and no-one-is-innocent bystanders blowing each other to smithereens in the name of hollow revenge. Azzarello's writing serves his thematic purposes (the endless reverberations of violence in American culture), and his punchy, vernacular dialogue glistens with vulgar brio. Where Wilt stumbles, oddly, is its often scattered and distracted plotting, which blunts its impact. Some crucial plot points breeze by with only a baffling allusion, while others get driven home with a jackhammer. By midway, Azzarello's tone has gone fully manic, as his characters brutally destroy themselves in the hope of bringing some pain to their enemies. What never falters, though, is Risso's artwork. He juggles the book's enormous cast, densely packed action sequences, subtleties of facial expression and acrid noir atmosphere with aplomb, balancing spidery line work with monumental, jagged chunks of negative space, augmented by Patricia Mulvihill's twilit earth-tone palette. Even as the story crumbles—the final scene, fittingly, is in a burning, collapsing building—its images are scaldingly vigorous. (July)

1930s-era gumshoe Antonio Mercer finds himself screwed over from all angles when he accepts a missing persons case in which the disappeared dame is his ex-lover. Hired by her equally hot sister, Mercer faces down a number of tough guys, running the gamut from cops, both honest and bent, to gamblers, mob bosses and even short-tempered and knife-wielding musicians, while following the gal's trail, but nothing is ever as it seems. Building to a stark and bizarre conclusion, the team of Rich (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Food Chain) and Jones (Fables) have clearly learned from the noir genre, both filmic and pulp based, and have crafted a riveting successor. Tense and intriguing from start to finish, this is a solid piece of detective fiction coupled with a wholly appropriate and stark visual style that evokes the bygone days of Sam Spade and Mike Hammer. (July)

Signature

Reviewed by Marcel Theroux

In her 2002 speculative novel, Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood depicted a dystopic planet tumbling toward apocalypse. The world she envisaged was in the throes of catastrophic climate change, its wealthy inhabitants dwelling in sterile secure compounds, its poor ones in the dangerous “pleeblands” of decaying inner cities. Mass extinctions had taken place, while genetic experiments had populated the planet with strange new breeds of animal: liobams, Mo'Hairs, rakunks. At the end of the book, we left its central character, Jimmy, in the aftermath of a devastating man-made plague, as he wondered whether to befriend or attack a ragged band of strangers. The novel seemed complete, closing on a moment of suspense, as though Atwood was content simply to hint at the direction life would now take. In her profoundly imagined new book, The Year of the Flood, she revisits that same world and its catastrophe.

Like Oryx and Crake, Year of the Flood begins just after the catastrophe and then tracks back in time over the corrupt and degenerate world that preceded it. But while the first novel focused on the privileged elite in the compounds and the morally bankrupt corporations, The Year of the Flood depicts more of the world of the pleebs, an edgy no-man's land inhabited by criminals, sex workers, dropouts and the few individuals who are trying to resist the grip of the corporations.

The novel centers on the lives of Ren and Toby, female members of a fundamentalist sect of Christian environmentalists, the God's Gardeners. Led by the charismatic Adam One, whose sermons and eco-hymns punctuate the narrative, the God's Gardeners are preparing for life after the prophesied Waterless Flood. Atwood plays some of their religion for laughs: their hymns have a comically bouncing, churchy rhythm, and we learn that both Ren and Toby have been drawn toward the sect for nonreligious reasons. Yet the gentleness and benignity of the Gardeners is a source of hope as well as humor. As absurd as some of their beliefs appear, Atwood seems to be suggesting that they're a better option than the naked materialism of the corporations.

This is a gutsy and expansive novel, rich with ideas and conceits, but overall it's more optimistic than Oryx and Crake. Its characters have a compassion and energy lacking in Jimmy, the wounded and floating lothario at the previous novel's center.

Each novel can be enjoyed independently of the other, but what's perhaps most impressive is the degree of connection between them. Together, they form halves of a single epic. Characters intersect. Plots overlap. Even the tiniest details tessellate into an intricate whole. In the final pages, we catch up with Jimmy once more, as he waits to encounter the strangers. This time around, Atwood commits herself to a dramatic and hopeful denouement that's in keeping with this novel's spirit of redemption.

Marcel Theroux's most recent novel, Far North, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in June.

You get a movie with the book.

CSI creator Zuiker teams with Swierczynski (Severance Package) to create what's billed as the world's first “digi-novel,” involving a seriously weird serial killer and the tortured FBI investigator who's forced to hunt him down. There's nothing really new about the basic concept, but Swierczynski handles the writing with assurance and verve. The killer, known as Sqweegel, is “a psychopath who has shot, raped, maimed, poisoned, burned, strangled, and tortured upwards of fifty people in six countries over a span of more than twenty years.” The investigator, Steve Dark, lives a quiet life with his beloved, pregnant wife, in Malibu, Calif. The digital concept kicks in every 20 pages or so when the reader is referred to a Web site containing 20 two- to three-minute professionally made film clips that bridge the action from one section to another. It's a bit like watching the extras on a DVD—fun, but not really necessary to the main event. 200,000 first printing. (Sept.)