Fiction Book Reviews: 10/26/2009

The latest from Rash (Serena), a collection, begins with “Hard Times,” in which a struggling farmer in the midst of the Great Depression tries to discover who's stealing eggs from his henhouse without offending the volatile pride of his impoverished neighbors. The present-day stories are also situated in poverty-plagued small towns whose young citizens are being lost to meth addictions: in “Back of Beyond,” a pawnshop owner has to intervene when he learns his nephew Danny has kicked his parents out of their house and sold off their furniture to support his habit; in “The Ascent,” a young boy lovingly tends to a couple of corpses—victims of a small plane crash. Rash's stories are calm, dark and overtly symbolic, sometimes so literal they verge on redundant: in “Dead Confederates,” when a man falls into the Confederate tomb he's looting, the graveyard caretaker notes: “I'd say he's helped dig his own grave.” With a mastery of dialogue, Rash has written a tribute and a pre-emptive eulogy for the hardworking, straight-talking farmers of the Appalachian Mountains. (Mar.)

An English accountant and his two wives are the subject of this intriguing and evocative debut novel based on a real-life 19th-century California bigamy case. A loving husband and attentive father, Henry Oades assures his wife, Margaret, that his posting to New Zealand will be temporary and the family makes the difficult journey. But during a Maori uprising, Margaret and her four children are kidnapped and the Oades's house is torched. Convinced his family is dead, Henry relocates to California and marries Nancy, a sad 20-year-old pregnant widow. When Margaret and the children escape, eventually making their way to California and Henry's doorstep, he does the decent thing by being a husband to both wives and father to all their offspring, a situation deemed indecent by the Berkeley Daughters of Decency. Moran presents Henry's story as if making a case in court, facts methodically revealed with just enough detail for the reader to form an independent opinion. But it's Margaret surviving the wilderness, Nancy overcoming grief and the two women bonding that give the book its heart and should make this a book group winner. (Mar.)

Coleridge's latest (after Godchildren) is a lengthy, elaborate skewering of contemporary Britain's wealthy movers and shakers that, while funny and smartly conceived, could stand to lose a good 150 pages. Miles Straker is handsome, wealthy and enormously connected as chairman and CEO of his own public relations firm. When on-the-rise grocery chain owner Ross Clegg secures a plot of land abutting Miles's country seat, Chawbury Manor, and erects a monstrosity of a home, the gauntlet is thrown. While Ross's company grows by leaps and bounds and begins to challenge Miles's top client's market share, the Clegg family worms its way into the Chawbury social scene. Such threats to the upper-crust status quo are not taken lightly, and all-out Straker-Clegg family entanglement ensues. The novel bears all the trappings of a well-crafted social satire—delightfully loathsome characters, romantic intrigue of the most sordid kind, a keen eye for the ever-important details of appearance—but as the narrative progresses, the ever-increasing chains of coincidences and shifts of allegiance begin to feel like a piling-on. Sometimes less is more. (Feb.)

In this richly detailed, beautiful and resonant novel examining the Palestinian and Jewish conflicts from the mid-20th century to 2002, (originally published as The Scar of David in 2006, and now republished after a new edit), Abulhawa gives the terrible conflict a human face. The tale opens with Amal staring down the barrel of a soldier's gun—and moves backward to present the history that preceded that moment. In 1941 Palestine, Amal's grandparents are living on an olive farm in the village of Ein Hod. Their oldest son, Hasan, is best friends with a refugee Jewish boy, Ari Perlstein as WWII rages elsewhere. But in May 1948, the Jewish state of Israel is proclaimed, and Ein Hod, founded in 1189 C.E., “was cleared of its Palestinian children...” and the residents moved to Jenin refugee camp, where Amal is born. Through her eyes we experience the indignities and sufferings of the Palestinian refugees and also friendship and love. Abulhawa makes a great effort to empathize with all sides and tells an affecting and important story that succeeds as both literature and social commentary. (Feb.)

This story of romance between a young Dutch actress and a slightly fictionalized Federico Fellini flounders on poor plotting and overwrought prose. After being reared by a demanding father, Gala and an ambiguous male companion named Maxim travel to Rome in the 1970s to find their fortune as movie stars. There, the beautiful and epileptic Gala eventually attracts the ardor of Fellini stand-in Snaporaz. Told partially in the third-person and partially as Snaporaz's elegiac reminiscences, this potentially interesting story is hampered by clumsy prose; Snaporaz's frequent pronouncements often come off as banal or pretentious (“I gather strange butterflies. My white is made up of so many colors”). Plot momentum might have made such stylistic lapses easier to overlook, but Japin chooses to let his aspiring actors simmer in Italy with little to do for so long that Snaporaz's and Gala's eventual romance feels anticlimactic and belated. Though Japin, author of the widely praised In Lucia's Eyes, brings together a number of promising elements, this book comes up short. (Feb.)

When garment importer Frank Meyer and his family are executed in their Los Angeles home at the start of bestseller Crais's adrenaline-fueled second thriller to feature PI Joe Pike (after The Watchman), LAPD detectives soon connect Meyer to Pike, who knew each other from their days as military contractors. Pike is convinced that Meyer, who left soldiering to start a family, wasn't dirty, even though his murder is the seventh in a series of violent robberies where the victims were all professional criminals. Determined to clear his friend's name, Pike discovers that Frank's nanny and her family have ties to Eastern European organized crime. With the help of PI partner Elvis Cole (the lead in Chasing Darkness and eight other books), Pike engages in a dangerous—and not always legal—game of cat and mouse with some of the city's most dangerous crooks. Pike emerges as an enigmatically appealing hero, whose lethal skills never overshadow his unflappable sense of morality. (Jan.)

From the author of The Kept Man comes an uneven road story about a woman fleeing from her past. Catherine “Moonie” Madison, 25, runs away from her stifling smalltown Nebraska life with a suitcase full of her husband's money, ending up in Las Vegas, where she finds a confidante and partner in crime in Valka, who, like her, is looking for escape. As the story progresses, Attenberg fills in Moonie's backstory via flashbacks; unfortunately, Moonie's hard-luck story is far less interesting than her adventures in Las Vegas. What resonates is her friendship with Valka, her dreamlike evening with a crew of hedonistic celebrity impersonators and her sometimes naïve observations on being outside of Nebraska for the first time. There's a promise of redemption as Moonie begins piecing together an unconventional life and stand-in family, but there's a certain deliberateness to the empowerment theme that makes it feel less than real. There are some nice moments, and Attenberg has a knack for poignant description, but the author seems distracted from the story she set out to tell. (Jan.)

This enthralling stunner, a good old-fashioned read, may herald the overdue return of those delicious doorstop epics from such writers as Barbara Taylor Bradford and Colleen McCullough. Meacham's multigenerational family saga, set in East Texas circa 1914–1985, charts the transformation of Mary Toliver, a wide-eyed 16-year-old heiress, into a calculating cotton plantation queen as hardheaded as Scarlett O'Hara. Her brother, Miles, goes off to WWI, returns home, but then goes back to France to marry Marietta, a French Communist, leaving Mary to deal with their plantation, Somerset, and Darla, their alcoholic mother (who later hangs herself ). Many years later, Mary, now an elderly, terminally ill widow, resolves to defeat the “Toliver Curse” and regrets “selling her soul for Somerset” and giving up her true love, Percy Warwick, the father of their secret child, to marry their friend Ollie DuMont, who helped her save Somerset when Percy refused. Meacham uses three well-balanced viewpoints: Mary's, Percy's and Rachel's, Mary's great-niece, who must confront Percy when she discovers some disquieting family information after Mary dies. A refreshingly nostalgic bouquet of family angst, undying love and “if onlys.” (Jan.)

Rahimi (Earth and Ashes) won the 2008 Prix Goncourt for this brief, melodramatic novel set amid factional violence “somewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere.” It follows the circumscribed movements of a Muslim woman largely confined to the house where she nurses her comatose husband, who's been shot by a fellow jihadist. A humorless, inflammatory mullah pays the woman unwelcome visits, and sexually menacing soldiers break into her house. Though such events generate tension and drama, the novel's cultural and historical milieu lacks specificity, and Rahimi may have erred in sketching the story's political context vaguely. For some readers, his intimate attention to objects and spaces may compensate for the grating confessional tenor that develops later, when the narrator divulges damning secrets to her husband's unresponsive body and fulfilling the book's premise a little too obviously by referring to him as her “patience stone.” McLean's translation is faultless, but the narrator's reminiscences feel stilted; the patience-stone conceit borders on gimmickry; and incidents of a violent or sexual nature seem overdetermined. (Jan.)

A preoccupied playwright father and a cult-actress mother are the stars of the Haas family in Antalek's well-crafted and cunning debut novel. Set in New York and Los Angeles, and spanning 15 years, the novel is told from the perspective of four siblings close in age and their mother, Marilyn, and plays on the wide-ranging themes of love, loss, abandonment and expectation. Opening with Amy, the youngest and most free-spirited, we learn of the family's constant state of tension and tenuousness. George, the second youngest, is sweet and sentimental; eldest sister Kate, a lawyer, is the tough one; and Finn, the second oldest, is an alcoholic. Each sibling's story is full of painful memories involving their parents' neglect and disloyalty, but their coming together is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and to the importance of family ties regardless of family history, making this an endearing and easy-to-relate-to dysfunctional family drama. (Jan.)

Revisiting scenes from The Iliad and delving into the hearts of two ancient heroes, Malouf (Remembering Babylon) evokes the final days of the Trojan War with cinematic vividness. After Achilles withdraws his forces from combat, a move that cripples the Greek army, his best friend, Patroclus, persuades Achilles to let him take the Myrmidons back into combat and to wear Achilles' armor. After Trojan king Priam's beloved son, Hector, kills Patroclus, guilt, rage and grief drives Achilles on a frenzied quest for revenge that sees him slay Hector and then tie Hector's corpse to his chariot and drag it around the besieged city. Priam, desperate to stop the desecration, decides to visit the enemy camp and offer money in exchange for Hector's body. He hires a humble cart driver and, aided by Hermes, they set out on a journey that takes Priam into the unknown and toward a meeting with Achilles. Though Malouf's sparingly deployed details, vigorous language and sly wit humanizes these tragic heroes, the story is unmistakably epic and certainly the stuff of legend. (Jan.)

Near the start of Piñeiro's clever U.S. debut, which won Argentina's Clarin Prize for fiction and has been made into a film, the bodies of three well-to-do men—El Tano Scaglia, Martín Urovich and Gustavo Masotta—turn up in the Scaglias' swimming pool in Cascades Heights, a gated community outside Buenos Aires. The three men, along with Ronie Guevara, regularly had dinner on Thursday nights at one of their houses in this exclusive enclave. The search for the truth behind their deaths takes a backseat to the soap operaish goings-on of the Cascade Heights set, as seen in flashbacks largely through the eyes of Guevara's realtor wife, Virginia. Readers with an interest in contemporary Argentina will appreciate how this crime novel illuminates the hypocrisies of the country's upper classes after 9/11. (Jan.)

Hynd (The Enemy Within) completes the Russian trilogy that features U.S. Treasury agent Alexandra LaDuca. A stark opening chapter concludes with LaDuca zipped in a body bag in a morgue outside Cairo, and the action then goes back two months to introduce the central puzzle—the sighting of Michael Cerny, a CIA agent believed to be dead, then the bang of a car-bomb explosion. After that breathtaking beginning, the action gets leisurely—too leisurely. It takes half the book for LaDuca to get to Cairo to solve the puzzle of Cerny, for whom she worked, following complications in New York and in Rome that weave into the action two major supporting characters, the Russian Yuri Federov and the Italian Gian Antonio Rizzo, who are in some respects more intriguing and complex than protagonist LaDuca. LaDuca's main partner in Cairo, Voltaire, provides more dramatic tension in his moral ambiguity than the offstage character, Cerny. Despite some plotting softness, this espionage thriller is stylish and provides an especially satisfying close without being in the least preachy. (Jan.)

Palmer (Conversations with the Fat Girl) delivers a breezy feel-good story of family bonding. After hearing about her father's stroke, smart-ass heroine Grace Hawkes prepares for the wrath of the siblings she's ignored for the five years since their mother's death. Things are a little tricky, since their dad, Ray, left the family 20 years before and was a prolific philanderer, now remarried to the unsavory Connie. Snappy sibling bickering (sometimes too much of it) takes a bit of the melodramatic edge off as oldest sibling Huston takes charge and is surprisingly given power of attorney. Connie and her adult son, Dennis, aren't happy about this, which raises suspicion among the Hawkes siblings, especially after they visit their father's house and find no trace of Connie having lived there; instead, it's a shrine to Ray's first wife and the kids. As Ray's health declines in the hospital, tensions heat up and a legal showdown looms. There aren't any surprises in the sunny resolution, but Palmer takes enough unexpected detours on the way there to keep readers engaged. (Jan.)

Last seen together in bestseller Coonts's The Assassin (2008), Tommy Carmellini, a CIA operative, and Jake Grafton, the new CIA head of Middle Eastern Operations, try to stop the Iranian president, madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from starting WWIII in this nail-biting near-future thriller. When they fail to do so, Tommy and Jake must attempt to knock out the conventional and nuclear missiles that Iran fires at targets throughout the Middle East. Coonts carefully builds his plot using a wide cast of characters, from insider Iranian spies to cutting-edge aircraft pilots and government officials both high and low. Hardly a page passes without nerve-stretching tension or flat-out action. One can only hope the U.S. president, the head of the CIA and the Israeli prime minister will have this book on their nightstands for easy reference in case fiction turns to reality, an all-too-real possibility as evidenced by recent headlines. 250,000 first printing. (Dec.)

The inevitable prequel to Lavender Morning places Deveraux on familiar historical romance ground as she traces the journey to America of the namesake of the fictional town of Edilean, Va. English-born Edilean Talbot is very out of place when she arrives in 1766 Scotland to live with her uncle. A pressing problem presents itself when her uncle plans to marry off the rich, beautiful and well-educated Edilean to one of his unsavory friends the moment she turns 18. Reluctantly, Angus McTern, the highland hunk who laughs at Edilean even as he falls for her, helps her escape and accompanies her on a transatlantic voyage acting the role of husband. Once in Boston, they go their separate ways, later reuniting when old friends help Edilean dispense with an enemy. After dozens of novels, Deveraux has a sure hand evoking plucky heroines, dastardly villains and irresistible heroes, as well as a well-rounded supporting cast. If the plot seems familiar and occasionally contrived (how convenient laudanum is available when someone needs to be knocked out), the pace moves quickly and the romance sparks with enough voltage to keep readers turning pages. (Dec.)

Although gothic tropes pervade Byrne's strong debut novel, they're doused—or soused, rather—with vibrant Dublin brogue and streetwise wit. On the death of his mother, 26-year-old Denny Cullen comes home to a small, “disgraceful fuckin kip” in Dublin's sprawl, where dwells his quite alive and quite drunk lesbian sister, Paula. She claims there's a gender-bending ghost hiding under the bed, so their friend and methadone-addicted spiritual adviser, Pajo, conducts a kitchen-table séance that prompts Denny to find meaning and purpose in his own life. Overwhelmed by grief and alienated from his father and brothers, Denny struggles against the boozy tides of violent childhood memories, unemployment and low self-esteem. If his aimlessness threatens to scuttle a plot that depends upon the shenanigans of his friends and their enemies, then it's Denny's voice and sensibility that buoy the narrative. He and his mates turn phrases so wry, so inventive, so Irish, that one feels the burning intelligence and resilience that reside in even the mangiest stripe of the Celtic tiger. (Dec.)

Set in a Connecticut college town, bestseller McCullough's disappointing sequel to On, Off (2006) starts off with an over-the-top premise and doesn't improve from there. In April 1967, a dozen murders occur in the normally quiet town of Holloman, Conn., in just 18 hours, culminating in the death by bear trap of Evan Pugh, a student at Chubb University with a penchant for blackmail. The disparate victims include a hooker, a college dean and the head of a major corporation; among the killing methods are four poisonings, three shootings and two pillow suffocations. In an unrealistic move, Capt. Carmine Delmonico of the Holloman police, who's in charge of the unwieldy investigation, sends his sergeants home for a good night's sleep while the crimes are still fresh. The solution may elicit unintended giggles as it papers over holes in logic rather than filling them. (Dec.)

English poet Greenhalgh's debut novel about Coco Chanel and Igor's Stravinsky's short, fiery affair provides an intense look at love, passion and heartbreak. Coco first became aware of Stravinsky in 1913 when the young designer, who was beginning to make her place in French society, attended the debut performance of the Russian composer's Rite of Spring. Seven years later, when the two meet at a dinner party, an immediate and undeniable connection is forged, and soon Coco invites Stravinsky; his sickly wife, Catherine; and their children to stay at her summer home outside of Paris. She isn't without her motives, however, and proceeds over time to seduce Stravinsky. As their affair deepens, the reader's heart breaks for Catherine as she struggles with Igor's emotional abandonment. This finely wrought study in artistic and romantic passion is remarkable for its explicit depiction of the devastation left in the wake of selfishness. (Dec.)

In his second novel, award-winning poet-novelist Gaspar (Leaving Pico) explores an unnamed Massachusetts burg (with a strong resemblance to Provincetown) through its Portuguese-speaking community, a collection of rich, emotionally stormy characters. Centered on Fr. Manuel Furtado, the story begins during Manny's nightly ritual of liquor, pills and prayer late on All-Hallows' Eve, when he finds his long-lost childhood friend, Sarafino Pomba, breaking into his church. Dying from AIDS and running from the law, Sarafino takes up residence in a spare room, intent on convincing Manny that he's been visited by the Virgin Mary. Other mysteries involve Manny's family, lesbian church secretary Mariah Grey and her partner, and a missing religious statue; meanwhile, fellow priest John Sweet investigates Manny's substance abuse problem, hoping to acquire his own parish. Gaspar's winding sentences keep the pace measured, but leave deep impressions regarding the fishing community and its inhabitants. (The author is especially affectionate toward Sarafino, ”So flimsy and brittle, like a dry leaf, with the wind raking the world outside.”) Gaspar's masterful prose should absorb any reader intrigued by immigrant communities. (Dec.)

A hilarious blend of absurdist, futurist and surrealist sensibilities, this new (and only complete) translation of Ilf and Petrov's novel following The Twelve Chairs, first serialized in 1931, is a highly animated tale of a con artist's journey through the cities and hinterlands of Soviet Russia. Part anarchist, part Quixote and part jester, “grand strategist” Ostap Bender, along with his lackeys, rides through the country in a yellow jalopy in search of the elusive “secret millionaire” Alexander Koreiko. Along the way, a superabundance of wild, arresting images and uncanny scenarios materialize, from an elaborate bureaucracy housed in a former hotel where the “white bathtubs were filled with files,” to the introduction of a puzzle maker attempting to make a riddle out of the word “industrialisation”; from the sight of doormen “selling white-striped watermelons by their doorways” to the use of a telegram machine missing a letter. It's an invigorating journey through innumerable paradoxes, dreams and burlesque routines, and though it's intensely chaotic (at times to dizzying effect), this is a finely translated edition of a triumphant literary experiment. (Dec.)

This latest installment to Canadian radio host McLean's Vinyl Cafe series continues the agreeable story of record shop owner Dave; his wife, Morley; their dog, Arthur; and their kids Sam and Stephanie. The lovable Canadian clan wobbles its way through family life and life at the record store, ranging from a gentle yarn of homemade Christmas gifts to the near hysteria of a school play gone wrong; even a false fire alarm can't douse the warm fuzzies. A host of wacky characters orbits Dave's family, including a British aunt who harangues them into making a suitable cup of tea and later disappears when she climbs into a boat on the back of a trailer and is driven off, and Morley's ramrod-straight former roommate, who watches, horrified, as Morley's wild children influence her own. McLean has a talent for describing the little details that reveal our neuroses and folly, but also our generosity and love. These quirky vignettes are as sweet as they are funny, a well-timed holiday treat from a Canadian Garrison Keillor. (Dec.)

French author Echenoz (Ravel) centers his new biographical novel on Emil Zátopek, the first Czech Olympic gold medal winner in track and field. The Nazi occupation of Moravia means mandatory participation in youth organizations; forced to participate in a race, Emil begrudgingly embarks on his athletic career, only to discover a passion for running. Emil's training techniques reject notions of moderation and energy conservation in favor of relentless speed training and little rest. These masochistic efforts pay off as Emil becomes a world champion. But postwar Czechoslovakia's political agenda not only determines his race schedule but also transforms him into a talking head against Western capitalism. In addition to the story's inspirational value, Echenoz elegantly draws parallels between the runner's lack of autonomy and that of his country, which only two decades after the end of WWII was occupied once again by the Soviets. But the author treats his subject with too much distance: he is a running machine, a figure neither fully realized nor entirely allegorical. Linda Coverdale provides a smooth translation. (Dec.)

Stories spiral within stories in this meandering, loose-ended tale of lost love by Renek (Spiritland). Carolyn, the 42-year-old narrator, addresses in second-person her longtime lover, a cultural critic of some renown who has recently left her and their seven-year-old daughter, Jenna. Memory and longing mingle as Carolyn unravels her grief: a woman the couple once spotted in Paris becomes, in Carolyn's imagination, a model named Annabella; a young Swiss woman they encountered in Thailand fends off the advances of a pair of Israeli brothers, then gives in to one, then the other and ends up hating herself. Other stories involve memories of old boyfriends, revealing hidden bits of Carolyn's past; in between she allows glimpses into the couple's unhappiness: her lover's dissatisfaction with the constraints of fatherhood, routine and boredom, and the sense that he has simply fallen out of love. Finally, he is allowed to tell his own story, though there's no real suspense or denouement to this brief work that's defined mostly by an inchoate anticipation. (Dec.)

At the start of Hebert's less than convincing debut, two Coral Gables, Fla., police officers nab burglar Jack Murray outside the house he's just broken into while his partner, Rudy Naxa, escapes with the loot. After serving a year and a day in prison, Murray decides to get out of the game. Murray's patron, a Miami mob boss, makes him the manager of a strip club, which is ostensibly on the up-and-up. Soon, Murray finds himself falling for a new employee of the club, Miranda Mendoza, a 26-year-old pole dancer who's in fact an undercover FBI agent. Later, after Murray runs across Naxa and winds up on the enemies' list of the thugs who have taken Naxa under their wing, he has to struggle to stay on the straight and narrow. That Mendoza is attracted to Murray, despite his past on the wrong side of the law, is as implausible as her revealing her true role to people she barely knows. (Dec.)

The second installment in Poppen's frothy and very conventional historical romance series (after Newport Summer) begins in 1890 with San Francisco sourdough heiress Marianne Addison visiting New York to try to enter Manhattan society. But her appearance at a scandalous Champagne Sunday torpedoes her chances of being accepted by the Four Hundred Club, so off she goes to England to catch a titled man who will impress New York's high society. Alasdair Braden, the fourth Viscount Pennington, makes for a convenient match, and the two fall madly in love, though the happy couple nearly falters from the schemes of the jealous Lord Brantley, a consummate gambler and troublemaker who covets Marianne's money. Poppen's peek into vintage fortune hunting is intermittently diverting, but what it really needs is more of the mischief the title suggests. (Dec.)

Using a literary mystery rooted in Jane Austen's inspiration for Pride and Prejudice, Simonsen's debut novel brings resonance to the story of a love-torn American girl in post-WWII London. Young and eager for adventure, Maggie Joyce has left her jobless Pennsylvania coal-mining town for a typist position overseas. In London, she discovers two love interests as well as connections to the real-life Londoners rumored to have been the basis for Pride's Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Learning to disregard her prim and proper instincts, Maggie becomes closer to her very own version of Darcy, as well as the families of the original Darcy and Bennet, from whom she receives old diary entries and letters. Simonsen is clever and evenhanded, maintaining an unhurried pace in both the Austen adventure and Maggie's love life. Fans of historical fiction and Austen should savor this leisurely read. (Dec.)

First published in the U.K. in 1998, Ironside's solid thriller provides an intriguing look at the contemporary art world. London art historian Nicholas Ochterlonie, while returning one evening to his late mother's flat, where he's lived since his divorce, rescues a woman from an apparent street mugging. The victim turns out to be his next-door neighbor, Julian Bennet, and the two soon become lovers. Ochterlonie is sure that the assault wasn't random and that a threat still looms. Meanwhile, he creates controversy with his growing and increasingly vocal suspicions that a famous Vermeer portrait has been misattributed to the painter. The plot thickens when a police officer from the fraud squad stops by to ask about the real owner of Bennet's apartment, a shady Russian businessman. Ironside (A Very Private Enterprise) does a good job of making her not-entirely-sympathetic lead accessible. (Dec.)

Bestseller Brown (Smash Cut) brings Depression-era Texas to vivid life in this poignant short novel. At the recommendation of Dr. Murdy Kincaid, Ella Barron, a hardworking woman whose husband deserted her, accepts David Rainwater, a relative of the doctor's, as a lodger at the boarding house she runs in the small town of Gilead, Tex. As the local community contends with a government program to shoot livestock and the opposition of racist Conrad Ellis, a greedy meatpacker, to poor families butchering the meat, Ella grows closer to David. Meanwhile, David becomes a special guardian angel to Solly, Ella's nine-year-old autistic son. Dr. Kincaid has gently suggested Ella put Solly in an institution, but she refuses to do so. Brown skillfully charts the progress of Ella and David's quiet romance, while a contemporary frame adds a neat twist to this heartwarming but never cloying historical. (Nov.)

This compelling if prosaically plotted saga of dysfunctional family life, racial tension and liberated-woman romance, the first in a new series from Shamus-finalist Armstrong (Blood Ties), introduces Mercy Gunderson, a U.S. army sniper who's one-quarter Minneconjou Sioux. The discovery of a dead Indian boy on Mercy's late father's South Dakota ranch complicates her return home on medical leave. (Retinal detachment threatens her military career, while wet-work mission flashbacks disturb her sleep.) Then there's Sheriff Dawson, who, as Mercy admits after he snags her nephew for burglary, “raised my hackles and my interest like no other man I'd crossed paths with in the last decade.” Mercy is as tough as an old army boot, with a vocabulary and weapons proficiency to prove it, but she's always had it bad for cowboys. This soft spot, along with her racial identity crisis and a piled-on assortment of family-related guilt trips, leads to a contrived gee-whiz conclusion. (Jan.)

Shamus-winner Estleman's captivating second mystery to feature L.A. film detective Valentino (after 2008's Frames) focuses on legendary screen actress Greta Garbo. In 2005, Matthew Rankin, an elderly department store mogul whose late wife was a close friend of Garbo's, hosts a party honoring the 100th anniversary of Garbo's birth at his Beverly Hills mansion. During the party, Rankin offers to donate a copy of a rare promotional film that Garbo made when she was a salesgirl in Sweden, How Not to Dress, to the UCLA Film Preservation Department if Valentino will dig up dirt on Roger Akers, the tycoon's assistant, who's been blackmailing him. A few days later, Valentino walks into Rankin's study to find the mogul holding a smoking gun and Akers lying dead in front of his desk. Rankin claims he shot Akers in self-defense. Is Rankin telling the truth? Readers will eagerly turn the pages to learn the answer. (Dec.)

Parks's entertaining debut introduces an appealing hero, 31-year-old investigative reporter Carter Ross of the Newark (N.J.) Eagle-Examiner. When the bodies of four men, “each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head,” turn up in a vacant lot, Ross doesn't buy the police theory that the quadruple homicide was the result of a bar robbery gone bad. Despite his white upper-class background, Ross works the streets well, if not fearlessly, in his search for a link among the victims. Parks ratchets up the tension by occasionally interjecting the viewpoint of “the Director,” who orchestrated the slayings. Colorful supporting characters plus Ross's grit and determination keep the story moving at a good clip. Parks, a former print journalist himself, knows his way around a newsroom as the laments for the newspaper industry and the digs at TV reporters attest. Readers are likely to figure out the shadowy Director's identity before the intrepid reporter, but this is a quibble. (Dec.)

Gritty, pull-no-punches realism distinguishes Ingram's debut, the first in a series set in Scotland. One day, while speeding through the streets of Glasgow in an unmarked police car after a high-stakes surveillance target, Det. Constable Cameron Stone hits a teenage mother and her infant, killing them instantly. Stone's career in the force doesn't survive much past his hospital discharge, but a former colleague rescues him from destitution by offering him private investigative work. Stone tries to live down the notoriety of his tragic accident, which leads to the occasional graffiti on his door labeling him a baby killer, and has to fight with his former girlfriend to spend time with their son. Stone gets to take an active role assisting his boss when a client suspects her husband is having an affair with her sister. Though some may not care for the contrived closing twist or the abrupt ending, an obvious setup for the next book, the solid writing will leave most readers wanting more. (Dec.)

Imitating Marilyn Monroe can be fatal as British author Regan shows in her enjoyable third police procedural to feature Det. Chief Insp. Paul Banham and Det. Insp. Alison Grainger (after 2008's Passion Killers). Banham's serious crime squad has been trying for years to nab London crime lord Eddie Chang, who runs a club called Doubles, for trafficking in drugs, firearms and underage Ukrainian girls. When Marilyn impersonators performing at Doubles start meeting untimely ends, Marilyn look-alikes Det. Constable Isabelle Walsh and greenhorn Millie Payne, a police community support officer, go undercover to investigate. The Marilyn link among the victims leads to some deft plot turns. When revealed, the secrets behind Chang's obsession with the Hollywood goddess make the resolution not only satisfying but especially poignant. (Dec.)

The many characters, murders and possible motivations tend to overwhelm Gregory's 15th Matthew Bartholomew chronicle (after 2008's The Devil's Disciples). Late one night in 1357, Bartholomew, a doctor associated with Cambridge's Michaelhouse College, receives a summons to attend an ailing pregnant woman, Joan Elyan. Despite his ministrations, Elyan dies, apparently from a dose of a medicine used to end pregnancy. To Bartholomew's horror, he finds that the drugs may have come from his own stores. The physician is further dismayed to learn of evidence of embezzlement from Michaelhouse by a trusted friend, who dies before he can be confronted. Several more deaths, the theft of some precious chalices and a brother-sister pair of villains who believe Michaelhouse has something that belongs to them complicate an already complicated plot. Still, Bartholomew remains a credible and sympathetic amateur sleuth. (Dec.)

Fans of old-fashioned romantic mysteries will welcome Zellerbach's lighthearted puzzler set mainly aboard a Norwegian luxury liner on a 42-day South American cruise. The paths of 32-year-old San Francisco native Hallie Marsh, a PR whiz and breast cancer survivor, and Dan “Cas” Casserly, a magazine journalist who's one of the ship's lecturers, collide in an adventure that includes a missing passenger who may be a murder victim, a weird parapsychologist and a French divorcée. Despite Hallie's initial fears that her double mastectomy will doom any romance between her and the magnetic Cas, Zellerbach (Secrets in Time) manages to put a humorous spin on the couple's courtship. One caveat: some readers may be disappointed that Cas turns out to be the key crime solver instead of Hallie. (Dec.)

At the outset of Harrison's outstanding fourth 16th-century historical to feature Mara—brehon (a kind of magistrate) of the Burren, a kingdom on the west coast of Ireland (after The Sting of Justice, Oct. 19)—King Turlough O'Brien decides at the last minute to skip an overnight church vigil before an ancestor's tomb. As a result, an assassin instead bludgeons to death the man who takes his place, the king's cousin Mahon O'Brien. Mara, the king's fiancée, isn't entirely sure that her husband-to-be was the intended victim and focuses her investigation on those who would have benefited from the death of Turlough or his cousin, including Mahon's widows and the king's potential heirs. Harrison provides a textbook example of how to do a historical right by artfully combining an insightful and sympathetic detective with a fair-play puzzle and a plausible depiction of the period. (Dec.)

Michael Moorcock's introduction describes this hallucinatory concoction of Farren's poetry, song lyrics, essays, short fiction and social commentary as “a display case of his obsessions from demons to dope to the dangers and rewards of remaining alive in an increasingly berserk universe.” In “Enter the Swordmaid,” vampire Victor Renquist encounters a woman with a sentient sword and gets a nightmarish glimpse into another dimension. “The Voodoo Chile Experience” is a psychedelic roller-coaster ride through extreme “user fatal” video gaming. “Jailhouse Rock” chronicles Farren's experiences in a Van Nuys jail during a major California earthquake. A 1975 comic book entitled Rock & Roll Madness shows an aging Elvis-like character becoming president. Farren is equal parts drug-crazed madman and poetic prophet, and his work both predates and transcends modern bizarro apocaliterature. (Dec.)

Many of the stories in this ambitious overview of human evolution are more historical than speculative. Gerri Leen's deceptively simple “Patterns of Fall” watches loving tree-dwelling humanoids fall prey to hyenas; Lezli Robyn's compelling and memorable “The Dawn of Reason” examines the complexities of mammoth hunting; Max Habilis's gut-wrenching “The Ugly Ones” addresses responsibility and xenophobia. Fans of the fantastic will be on more familiar ground with Camille Alexa's “The Pull of the World and the Push of the Sky,” wherein barely articulate proto-human Gunh learns to fly, and Mike Resnick's delightful “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge,” in which aliens try to determine the origins of now-vanished humankind. The only flat note is Reynolds's choice to put these individually excellent works into a single anthology, where they fail to mesh and will leave both history and SF fans unsatisfied. (Dec.)

This collection of 13 stories is the fifth set in Newford, de Lint's city of artists, musicians and magic, and the first since 2002's Tapping the Dream Tree. Interspersing time travel (“Riding Shotgun,” “That Was Radio Clash”) and period pieces (“The Hour Before Dawn”) with tales of Native American and Celtic magic (“A Crow Girls' Christmas,” “Da Slockit Light”), de Lint creates an entirely organic mythology that seems as real as the folklore from which it draws. From flighty yet powerful avatars to fiendish goblins, the characters are complex and clever, and even the most fantastical still has a sense of humanity. The endings often contain twists worthy of O. Henry. These clever, frightening, wise and entertaining stories are an excellent introduction to de Lint's writing and imagination, and will also provide longtime fans a welcome return to Newford. (Dec.)

Zahn's Cobras (last seen in 1988's Cobra Bargain) deliver superb action and jolting interplanetary plots that almost compensate for conventional characters and well-worn motivations. The alien Trofts have been docile for decades, and the leaders of the Cobra Worlds are starting to wonder whether the nanotech-enhanced Cobra warriors are necessary. Mistrust and fear of the Cobras is burgeoning when a strange message summons second-generation Cobra Jin Moreau Broom and her older son, Merrick, to defend the quasi-Islamic planet Qasama against invading rogue Trofts. Naming the Cobra Worlds after Rome's hills, Zahn emphasizes the stern values of duty, honor, planetary group, and suggests that peace comes only through oft-displayed strength. The rough-and-tumble combat crackles like fingertip laser implants and plays off against Qasaman intrigue, and the psychological tensions surrounding Jin's aging and illness make this a rousing start to a new Cobra trilogy. (Dec.)

The 20th Wild Cards shared-universe novel (after 2008's Busted Flush), written by six authors, continues developing an alternate present while killing off characters right and left. An alien virus released in 1946 killed 90% of humanity and turned 1% of the rest into superpowered “aces.” Now many aces, like Noel “Double Helix” Matthews, want out of the superhero gig, but they reunite to challenge evil idealist Tom “The Radical” Weathers, possibly the world's most powerful ace. Noel and his comrades also discover children forced into experiments that will make ace soldiers of a few, while being horrendously lethal for the rest. Martin and his stable of authors have created a relentless story that will appeal to readers who like action gritty to the point of ruthlessness, cynical politics and only fragile bubbles of hope. (Dec.)

The creativity Butcher displays in his Dresden Files series is less apparent in the derivative sixth fantasy yarn set in quasi-Roman Alera (after 2008's Princeps' Fury). New readers are tossed into a complex plot without any explanation of the considerable backstory, making it hard to connect with the characters or action. The book centers around yet another world-shaking battle between good, represented by Alera, and evil, represented by the vord queen and her legions of scorpionlike followers. A major character is falsely believed dead; there's a traitor in the ranks of the good guys; there's also heroic sacrifice, combat against overwhelming odds, etc. Banter in moments of extreme crisis is absurdly common but never convincing, and neither characters nor story develop anything resembling depth. (Dec.)

After 22 years of pulling the horror content for the now-discontinued Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series, Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound) goes solo with this stellar start to a new “best of” annual. As in the past, her picks confirm that “horror” is a storytelling approach with endlessly inventive possibilities. In E. Michael Lewis's “Cargo,” a haunting Twilight Zone–type tale, an airplane picks up something otherworldly as part of its latest transport. Euan Harvey's creepy “Harry and the Monkey” turns an urban legend into reality. R.B. Russell's “Loup-garou” is a highly original shape-shifter story with a subtle psychological twist, and Daniel LeMoal's “Beach Head” a bracing conte cruel with a Lord of the Flies cast. In addition to the richly varied stories, Datlow provides her usual comprehensive coverage of the year in horror in an introduction that's indispensable reading for horror aficionados. (Dec.)

Kennedy (Beneath the Thirteen Moons) delivers a delightfully unusual Victorian romance. Unlike other American heiresses mingling with London society, Arizona railroad heiress Summer Wine Lee isn't looking for a husband or a title. In fact, she's already engaged. She just needs some social polish so she can marry a rich New Yorker. To this end, Summer hires Byron, an impoverished duke who ekes out a living by bringing Prince Albert gossip. Summer is equipped with a free-spirited best friend, a menagerie of abused stray animals and a host of unladylike skills; Byron has a strange stepfamily, a shrinking violet mistress and a murderer determined to do him in. Their chemistry has plenty of humor, and their passion is intense and breathtaking. Full of unexpected period details of cosmetics and hunting, this romance goes against type in a wonderful way. (Dec.)

Birken (Embolus) delivers a middling medical thriller with an attractive but poorly written protagonist. Dr. Morgan Connolly, chief of emergency medicine at a Florida hospital, is a successful and capable doctor, but suddenly her life is falling apart: she learns she's pregnant just as her husband leaves her; her father is mysteriously murdered; and her investigation of several unexpected deaths at the hospital paradoxically angers the hospital administrators, who call her competence into question. Exhausted, baffled and worried, Morgan realizes she has been targeted by an enemy she must identify before he destroys her. Morgan is a strangely passive heroine, seeming almost unconcerned about her father's murder and the looming specter of single motherhood. Depictions of hospital rivalries add authenticity, but fail to mask a weak plot and various inconsistencies. (Dec.)

Nonstop action and clever plotting power this thrilling debut. When freelance photographer Edie Miller witnesses a brutal murder and the theft of a sacred relic, she knows her life is in danger. She contacts former MI5 agent and scholar Caedmon Aisquith, one of the victim's colleagues, who thinks Edie is crazy until someone tries to kill them. When Edie and Caedmon discover that the Warriors of God believe the artifact will lead them to the Ark of the Covenant and kick off an epic war, they must decipher clues and travel the globe in a race to find the Ark first. Palov makes even the most arcane biblical, historical and mythological knowledge intriguing and accessible, tossing in just a hint of romance and politics. Fans of Dan Brown and Steve Berry will be enthralled. (Dec.)

Ann Aguirre's first book as Ava Gray adds a tiny touch of the psychic to a riveting romantic suspense novel. Con woman Kyra Beckwith can absorb a person's special skills through touch, allowing her to beat them at their own game. She rips off and humiliates a casino owner who then orders a hit on her. Hired for the job by a strange intermediary with an agenda of his own is Reyes, who only kills those he finds deserving of death. Posing as a drifter, he offers Kyra his protection after her latest mark threatens her. Chemistry sizzles between them, and once Reyes realizes his contact lied to him about Kyra's history, the two team up to figure out what's really going on. Strong, nuanced character development adds depth to the danger, but over-the-top coincidence and drama occasionally interrupt the narrative flow. (Dec.)

3 Story is a modern fable, exploring the life of the “giant man,” Craig Pressgang, through the experiences of three women—his mother, wife and daughter. The promotional material claims that Pressgang's “life is well documented in his official CIA biography, Giant Man: Pillar of America,” and the opening pages present his early life in such a straightforward manner that it is easy to believe it is a real story. As Pressgang reaches extraordinary heights, however, the story takes off into the realms of fantasy. Born during WWII, Pressgang's life serves as metaphor for the American mood over the past 60 years, from the flush optimism of the 1950s to the confusion about the country's place in the world as the 21st century dawns. Throughout, the tale retains an emotional honesty, as Kindt meditates on the nature of love and belonging, the changes one makes in a relationship and the exploitation of anyone identified as different. Kindt's washed-out, watercolor palate helps establish the lugubrious tone; his lovely, deceptively simple style reveals the characters' pain—and occasional moments of joy. The “special enhanced die-cut cover” is an appropriately elegant detail for this moving graphic novel. (Oct.)

An ancient device is discovered that enables people to fly using mental control. The main character, Blythe, a flight attendant afraid of heights, has an exceptional predisposition to use this device. With the help of Amelia Earhart, alive because of an accident with the device in the 1930s, Blythe attempts to find a similar device lost by her potentially terrorist lover, Zayn, and of course the fate of the world is at stake. During this search, Blythe enters Zayn's memories and relives them from his childhood until the device goes missing. This divergence wobbles between being a random detour through angsty teenage years and an examination of trust and understanding between people. As Blythe navigates through Zayn's memories and flies a plane with her mind, these fantastical elements would benefit from some understatement; instead, everything is philosophized to the max. Fresh ideas lay an intriguing foundation for the book, but that scenario sometimes gets overwhelmed by the metaphysics. (Oct.)

Asano's beautifully drawn anthology follows up his Harvey and Eisner–nominated Solanin with more short stories about sullen teenagers and 20-somethings. If anything, the short story format makes Asano's mopey protagonists far more sympathetic. Some of the characters are more likable than others; in two related shorts, appealing punk rocker Horita gives up his dreams of becoming a rock star to put on a suit and tie, only to recant later in the book. In “A Town of Many Hills,” a bullied teen believes a talking crow is a death god encouraging her to commit suicide. Like many of the book's protagonists, the girl overcomes her death wish, but hers is the most triumphant victory in the volume. Asano's artwork is very attractive, frequently interspersing all-black panels with the characters' inner thoughts in white text. His teens' navel-gazing thoughts are prone to platitudes, but much less so here than in Solanin. What a Wonderful World! is titled ironically, but its message to aimless and depressed young people is a positive one, told without preaching, and the artwork and strong storytelling make this another standout. (Oct.)

The diminishing profession of editorial cartooning has been a particularly doleful canary foretelling the decline of the daily newspaper format. In this context, this retrospective of the late cartoonist's work defiantly documents the extraordinary career of a daily visual commentator on American political life. Designed to accompany an exhibit at the Library of Congress, the book briefly outlines the artist's career and its historical context, starting with Herbert Block's early career during FDR's term. His first Pulitzer, in 1941, earned him independence when he came under editorial fire for advocating U.S. entry into WWII. After his own military service, he joined the Washington Post, an association that lasted until his death in 2001. The bulk of the book showcases highlights of the artist's seven-decade career. Politically independent but largely progressive, Herblock is presented as prescient on issues including McCarthyism (a term he coined), civil rights and environmentalism. Herblock's best cartoons do more than provide color commentary on political skirmishes. They manifest characters vividly: his viciously ineffectual Eisenhower brandishes a feather opposite an ax-wielding McCarthy, for instance. The book is accompanied by a DVD containing 18,000 cartoons, a nearly complete collection of Herblock's indispensable oeuvre. (Oct.)

Lee's masterful fourth novel (after Aloft) bursts with drama and human anguish as it documents the ravages and indelible effects of war. June Han is a starving 11-year-old refugee fleeing military combat during the Korean War when she is separated from her seven-year-old twin siblings. Eventually brought to an orphanage near Seoul by American soldier Hector Brennan, who is still reeling from his father's death, June slowly recovers from her nightmarish experiences thanks to the loving attention of Sylvie Tanner, the wife of the orphanage's minister. But Sylvie is irretrievably scarred as well, having witnessed her parents' murder by Japanese soldiers in 1934 Manchuria. These traumas reverberate throughout the characters' lives, determining the destructive relationship that arises between June, Hector and Sylvie as the plot rushes forward and back in time, encompassing graphic scenes of suffering, carnage and emotional wreckage. Powerful, deeply felt, compulsively readable and imbued with moral gravity, the novel does not peter out into easy redemption. It's a harrowing tale: bleak, haunting, often heartbreaking—and not to be missed. (Mar.)