Fiction Book Reviews

Yglesias (Fearless) delivers his first novel in 13 years, an autobiographical and devastatingly raw appraisal of a nearly 30-year marriage. As the novel opens in 1975, 21-year-old Enrique Sabas, a high school–dropout literary wunderkind, has just met Margaret Cohen, a vivacious, beautiful budding graphic designer who will become the love of his life. Enrique and Margaret’s romantic and sexual misadventures during the first awkward weeks of their courtship are interspersed with scenes from the couple’s three decades together before Margaret succumbs to cancer: raising children, losing a parent, the temptation of an easy affair. Margaret’s physical decline and Enrique’s acknowledgment of guilt, inadequacy and a selfish desire to postpone his loss are described in blunt, heart-wrenching detail, and Enrique’s ongoing struggles to define the nature of masculinity, the significance of art and the value of marriage add a philosophical layer to the domestic snapshots. Although the couple’s privileged lifestyle can get in the way of the reader-character bond, the texture of their marriage and the pain of their loss will be familiar to anyone who has shared a long-term relationship. (July)

It’s not just a sure-fire formula that’s kept the crown atop the queen of romance, as this thriller proves. The gushy love-conquers-all story of South Dakota wildlife biologist Lil Chance and ex-cop/PI Coop Sullivan takes a back seat to the taut, gritty chase of a serial killer. There’s never a doubt that Lil and Coop—childhood sweethearts who fall in love, drift apart and then reconnect—will help each other mend their wounded hearts: “It was a good day, she thought, when you opened yourself to both the joys and the risks of love,” Lil discovers. Nor is it surprising that a crazed killer will meet his match in feisty Lil. But this premier storyteller proves an ordinary love story can still win your heart, and even an inevitable confrontation may scare you silly. (July)

Fahy’s imaginative debut puts a fresh spin on the survival-of-prehistoric-beasts theme popularized by Jurassic Park. When members of the cable reality show SeaLife, aboard a ship in the South Pacific, respond to a distress beacon from Henders Island, several of the show’s scientists wind up slaughtered by bizarre animals on the remote island. In response, the U.S. government blockades Henders Island to contain the serious biothreat its unique fauna could pose to humanity. The ship’s botanist, Nell Duckworth, joins the investigative team, which quickly finds that arthropods on the island have evolved into sophisticated and ferocious life forms. Particularly memorable and frightening are the creatures Nell dubs “spigers,” which have eight legs and are “twice the size of a Bengal tiger.” Exciting debates on topics like the role of sexual reproduction in the development of life on Earth provide a sound scientific background. (June)

It’s War of the Roses fought by The Real Housewives of New York in this hilarious if overlong morality tale of young love, old fools and happy endings. After 25 years of marriage—most of it squandered on unspoken disappointment, stifled grief and wasted affection—ex-ballerina Cynthia Power and real estate tycoon hubby Jackson are headed for divorce. At the same time, Jackson’s latest condo project is teetering and Carolyn’s ballet board is in turmoil. Though lesbian daughter Vivienne counsels Cynthia to “think three moves ahead,” Jackson, torn between his ambitious and reckless lover and imperious father, is staying in the game by sheer grit. In the end, these volatile emotional wrecks learn to rely on their hearts. Grazer (The Starter Wife) has Hollywood cred and brings a rollicking romantic-comedy tempo to her story of busting up and moving on, even if the cast is strictly celluloid: lovely to look at and unlike anyone walking this planet. (June)

British author Simms (Shifting Skin) emphasizes action over characterization in his first police thriller to be published in the U.S. When a fourth Manchester church is destroyed in an arson incident involving satanic rituals, Det. Insp. Jon Spicer and his Major Incident Team investigate. In the smoldering ruins of the church is a charred corpse. More murders follow, with evidence that the killer is employing methods used in the Middle Ages to slaughter suspected witches. Other leads involve a death metal band, Satan’s Inferno, one of whose members disappeared shortly before the most recent conflagration, and Tristan Arkell, head of the Psychic Academy, whose police record includes a number of allegations of sexual assault. Spicer’s own sister, Ellie, who’s become a Wiccan, may also have relevant information, even as she reveals a dark secret from Spicer’s childhood. The killer’s identity will surprise many readers, but this isn’t enough to salvage a routine plot. (June)

Theroux’s postapocalyptic road novel will inevitably be compared to that other postapocalyptic road novel Oprah liked, and while Theroux (son of Paul) is not the existential stylist McCarthy is, he is a superior plotter. Global warming has decimated civilization, and narrator Makepeace Hatfield is the sole survivor of her Siberian settlement. After coming across another survivor and seeing a plane in the sky, Makepeace heads out to find other settlements. Unfortunately, Horeb, the first settlement she finds, is Hobbesian, and the camp’s leader, Reverend Boathwaite, sells her into a slave gang. Marched a thousand miles west to an old gulag, Makepeace spends five years as a slave and eventually escapes after she’s dispatched as a slave-guard to a ravaged city now known as the Zone. Teaming up with another escaped slave, the two try to trek back to Makepeace’s original home, but tragedy strikes again. Granted, the novel suffers from a certain predetermination—to tell the tale means that the taleteller survives—but Theroux succeeds in crafting a wildly eccentric and intelligent page-turner that’s ultimately and strangely hopeful. (June)

Jeffery Deaver’s “The Weapon,” about the limitations of torture, and Ridley Pearson’s “Boldt’s Broken Angel,” which features a race to prevent a cop’s death, provide solid bookends to this nifty all-original anthology, the sequel to 2006’s Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night. The 23 selections—all by members of International Thriller Writers Inc.—score hits more often than misses. One of the few non-Americans, Spaniard Javier Sierra, might claim the blue ribbon with his tale of impending apocalypse, “The Fifth World.” Lisa Jackson’s “Vintage Death” keeps the reader guessing and on tenterhooks from start to finish. Marcus Sakey’s “The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away” tests the strength of the bonds forged in the current Iraq War when comrades return home. Other contributors include Robert Ferrigno, David Hewson, Jon Land, Carla Neggers and R.L. Stine. In addition to a brief general introduction, Cussler supplies intros to the individual stories. (June)

Bestseller Ignatius (Body of Lies) explores America’s escalating cold war with Iran in a thriller sure to draw comparisons to le Carré’s The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. When Harry Pappas, the new CIA chief of the Iran Operations Division, receives an unsolicited e-mail from an alleged Tehran scientist who calls himself “Dr. Ali” that implies Iran has in fact continued with its nuclear weapons program and is “an imminent threat to global peace,” he shares the information with his superiors only to find an administration bent on warmongering. Having vowed never again to play a role in a senseless conflict that could potentially kill thousands of innocents, Pappas, whose only son was killed while serving in the second Iraq War, must somehow identify Dr. Ali, get him out of Iran and mine his knowledge before the U.S. blunders into another unnecessary war. While the realistic story lines build to a somewhat predictable ending, this remains a page-turner of the highest order. (May)

Edgar-finalist Flynn’s second crime thriller tops her impressive debut, Sharp Objects. When Libby Day’s mother and two older sisters were slaughtered in the family’s Kansas farmhouse, it was seven-year-old Libby’s testimony that sent her 15-year-old brother, Ben, to prison for life. Desperate for cash 24 years later, Libby reluctantly agrees to meet members of the Kill Club, true crime enthusiasts who bicker over famous cases. She’s shocked to learn most of them believe Ben is innocent and the real killer is still on the loose. Though initially interested only in making a quick buck hocking family memorabilia, Libby is soon drawn into the club’s pseudo-investigation, and begins to question what exactly she saw—or didn’t see—the night of the tragedy. Flynn fluidly moves between cynical present-day Libby and the hours leading up to the murders through the eyes of her family members. When the truth emerges, it’s so twisted that even the most astute readers won’t have predicted it. (May)

Irish crime writer McKinty (The Bloomsday Dead) delivers an intelligent novel of suspense about cultural identity. After a hit-and-run driver kills Alberto Suarez, a Cuban defector who’s been working as a rodent exterminator in Fairview, Colo., his daughter, Mercado, a talented young Havana cop, feels duty bound to avenge his death. She obtains a visa to Mexico City under a false pretext and later slips across the U.S. border to get to Fairview, which has become the happening place for the Hollywood cognoscenti. Since someone has to clean up after the wild parties, drugs and general debauchery that keep the town’s underground economy bustling, Mercado joins the silent community of illegal workers living on “Wetback Mountain.” As she investigates her father’s death, she discovers that his secrets, like those of Fairview itself, were far more extensive than she could have realized. In trademark fashion, McKinty winds up his provocative tale with a violent and memorable final act. (May)

This overpoweringly gimmicky faux memoir/biography from Collins recounts a ghostwriter’s turbulent experience with a Donald Trumpesque celebrity real estate magnate. Robert Maxx, the Trump stand-in, is a salacious figure with plans to, among other things, buy Rockefeller Center and rename it after himself. Chronicling his dealings is David Collins, a failed novelist turned ghostwriter who gets an assignment to write a revelatory book that gets to the heart of Maxx. This, of course, is not so easy: the pay is low, and Maxx is a selfish bully who is roundly despised and, as one character remarks, “has no music” in his life. While Maxx’s dealings become increasingly sleazy, Collins finds himself sidetracked by his interest in several women, among them his own ex-wife, his editor and the billionaire’s vengeful ex-wife and his personal assistant. On the surface, this seems timely, but the sporadic references to the economic meltdown feel belatedly shoehorned in, while Maxx comes off as even more of a caricature than his real-life inspiration. However, there’s enough outrageous scandal and over-the-top shenanigans to make this a juicy diversion for fans of The Apprentice. (May)

Break out the tissues, sunblock and margarita mix as four old friends reunite after 23 years for a beach party in Holton’s feast of Southern friendship (after The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes). Mel, Sara, Annie and Lola head out to Wild Dunes, a beachfront palace owned by Lola’s super-rich husband on exclusive Whale Head Island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Spacy Lola is miserably married and leans heavily on medication to deal with her husband’s manipulations. Obsessive-compulsive Annie still broods over a college fling with a married professor even though she’s got a great husband. Social worker Sara still envies glamorous Mel, a witty crime novelist (I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead is her latest) living in New York who’s unlucky in marriage. At 45, each stands at a familiar crossroads covered by many novels of the midlife-empowerment genre, but Holton refreshes the action with winning humor, especially with Mel, whose take-no-prisoners attitude inspires everyone to embrace their present and let the past go. (May)

Fans of historical romance and traditional whodunits alike will welcome Phillips’s second novel, which like her debut, The Rossetti Letter (2007), alternates between past and present. In the present, historian Clare Donovan, who delved into 17th-century Venetian intrigue with handsome Cambridge fellow Andrew Kent in The Rossetti Letter, is now a temporary lecturer at Cambridge’s Trinity College, packed with scheming academics roiling in a hotbed of nearly every human frailty imaginable. When dashing and venal Professor Derek Goodman is found slain clutching a page of a coded diary by 17th-century physician Hannah Devlin, Clare and Andrew get on the trails of vicious killers from different centuries. The mysterious death of Charles II’s sister, Princess Henriette-Anne, wife of Louis XIV’s dissolute brother, propels the main historical narrative. Phillips’s command of period detail and her sure touch with emotional relationships help make this a stand-out. (May)

Balogh continues her chronicle of the Huxtable family in this so-so Regency. Stephen Huxtable, earl of Merton, is dashing, wealthy and unattached, which makes him a juicy target for widow Cassandra Belmont, but she soon learns that heartless seduction is not as easy as she’d hoped. As Stephen begins to probe her past, they find themselves actually falling in love. Surprisingly for a Regency romance, Balogh tackles themes like alcoholism, domestic violence, miscarriage and female independence. Cassandra’s mistrust and vulnerability is understandable, and Stephen is a surprisingly mild, modern type who seems miscast as a Regency hero. While their conflict is believable—she fears a loss of freedom, he fears that she will never be able to trust—the conclusion feels overly contrived. Fans of the series will enjoy, though genre purists may find something off about the modern sensibilities. (May)

Featuring love-at-second sight romance and a fast-moving plot, Michael’s fizzy latest about illegal experiments on humans is farfetched but entertaining. Peter Kelly and Lily Madison regret choices they made in 1986 as impoverished college students when they first met outside a sperm bank and its adjacent fertility clinic. Years later, Pete’s a software mogul and Lily’s a successful clothing designer, and they happen across one another at an airport, where they see a news broadcast about a massacre at the California Academy of Higher Learning. Featured on the report is Josh, a survivor and dead ringer for Pete. Soon, Peter and Lily are on a quest for answers about some sinister dealings at the sperm bank and fertility clinic, Josh becomes a suspect, and a colorful cast of crusaders and villains gets sucked into the fray. Michael makes the wild search a roller-coaster ride of serendipitous fun. (May)

Ray, the 30-year-old protagonist of Tafoya’s raw and redemptive debut, is a sure bet loser. His mother’s dead, his abusive father in prison. His own lengthy record includes car theft, burglary and a two-year jail stint. For the past year, Ray and his buddy Manny have been robbing dope dealers and meth labs in the Philadelphia area. Ray and Manny hit small operations disguised as DEA agents, knowing their victims can’t go to the cops and don’t have the resources to come after them. Inevitably, a job goes bad, resulting in gunshots and death. With too much money at stake and serious bad guys on his trail, Ray realizes that the criminal phase of his life is over. Tafoya gradually reveals pieces of Ray’s past while detailing his increasingly desperate efforts to rid himself of those dogging him and threatening anyone connected to him. A boy “born into the life” makes a wrenching attempt to change course or die trying in a first novel that marks Tafoya as a writer to watch. (May)

The first of Mandanipour’s novels to appear in English follows an ambitious but censored Iranian writer as he attempts to write a Nobel-caliber love story that will pass the censors’ inspection. As a professional writer, narrator Shahriar has known his censor, nicknamed Pofiry Petrovich, for long enough that he can anticipate his objections. Shahriar’s work in progress, which unfolds as a subnarrative within the novel, concerns Dara and Sara, teenagers named after prerevolutionary Iranian children’s book characters, as they explore sexual and emotional love in a nation that forbids physical or social interaction between young people of the opposite sex. As the couple’s love grows, the self-censoring writer strikes out whole passages in anticipation of his censor’s objections. All the while, the writer converses with his censor, his characters, the reader and himself to create an intriguing postmodern, multifaceted romance steeped in Iranian culture. Kudos to Khalili for a wonderfully fluid translation of an intricately layered text. (May)

Beckett’s third thriller to feature Dr. David Hunter, who was almost stabbed to death in 2007’s Written in Bone, takes Hunter from his familiar British surroundings to Tennessee’s legendary Body Farm, where researchers study how corpses decompose. When evidence surfaces that a serial killer is at large, Hunter’s mentor and Body Farm director, Tom Lieberman, enlists his help in tracking down the culprit. After the killer abducts profiler Alex Irving, fears escalate that future victims will include other members of the investigating team. Still traumatized by his brush with death and unsure of the validity of his instincts, Hunter takes a while to hit his stride. As in Written in Bone, Beckett ratchets up the suspense by inserting short sections from the murderer’s perspective, and keeps the tension taut to the end with a late twist. While the final revelation won’t surprise everyone, this entry reinforces the author’s place in the front rank of forensic crime novelists. (May)

This posthumous translation of Rosales, a Cuban-American writer who committed suicide in 1993, delivers a raw, powerful story set in a Miami home for the mentally ill. William Figueras, a 38-year-old writer who, like the author, is an exile from Cuba and suffers schizophrenia, is deposited in a “boarding house” by his aunt, because “nothing more can be done.” His writing was deemed “morose, pornographic, and also irrelevant” by the Cuban government, and now he has grown as hopeless and abandoned as the other desperate outcasts who inhabit the shabby home owned by the miserly Mr. Curbelo and run by a beer-guzzling flunky named Arsenio. Figueras despises the other residents and clearly recognizes how they are being exploited by Mr. Curbelo and Arsenio, yet out of his own state of self-debasement, he joins in the cruelty. Briefly, hope inspires him in the form of a new female inmate, and together they plan an escape. However, life outside promises to be more treacherous than staying in the ward. It’s a frightening, nihilistic cousin of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. (May)

Bestseller Pelecanos (The Turnaround) probes the volatile and fragile relationship between a father, Thomas Flynn, and his son, Chris, in this less than satisfying effort. As a rebellious teen into drugs, Chris had minor brushes with the law and did a stint in juvenile prison. Now 26, he’s working for his father’s D.C.-area carpet installation business and staying clean. Still, Thomas remains disappointed in his son’s lack of achievement or ambition, and Chris remains resentful that he’s not accepted for who he is. A rather tired device, a bag of stolen money found by Chris and a friend and fellow former inmate, serves to set in motion a chain of actions that will lead to critical decisions for both Flynns. Pelecanos adroitly sketches the obstacles and temptations that face juvenile offenders in and after prison, but this novel, with its dispassionate style, never manages to generate high suspense or evoke much sympathy for its characters. Author tour. (May)

Exiled after the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda (1908–1993) worked on this marvelously disturbing novel over a 20-year period, and its first publication was posthumous. As macabre as a Grimm fairy tale, the novel portrays the cruel customs of an unnamed village as seen through the eyes of an unnamed 14-year-old boy. The narrator witnesses his father’s horrible death, which, it becomes clear as the story progresses, happens according to local custom: to pour cement into the mouths of the dying in order to seal their souls within their bodies, then entomb them within a hollowed tree. The narrator also spends a good deal of time with the village prisoner, who for years has been confined to a too-small cage and now is only too happy to explain the bizarre village goings-on to the narrator and his friend, the son of the blacksmith who runs the town. The plot, though anemic, has its share of increasingly perverse twists, and the intense lyricism of Rodoreda’s language, captured here by Tennent’s gorgeous translation, makes her grotesque vision intoxicating and haunting. (May)

The frighteningly prolific Roberts (see also Black Hills, reviewed on page 42) kicks off a frothy series about four friends who form an all-inclusive wedding service called Vows. Mackensie “Mac” Elliot loves capturing happy and playful moments with her camera, but her own life is all about work—until she meets English teacher Carter Maguire. He’s escorting his bride-to-be sister to a meeting with the Vows team and recognizes Mac as the girl he crushed out on in high school. Funny sparks fly: he’s a geeky guy who quotes Shakespeare, she’s a trendy workaholic who loves shoes. He’s crazy about her, which makes him verbally clumsy and, to Mac, charming, though she’s saddled with a needy mother, an absent father and difficulties with both that make falling in love complicated. Roberts pulls off a nice switch in making the woman afraid of saying “I do,” and her gentle humor and likable cast will immediately endear this series to readers. (May)

Rainone’s fun and poignant debut novel centers on a group of longtime friends who reunite for a wedding in their small Rhode Island hometown. As Dan and Lea’s wedding day approaches, four of their friends share narration duties, reminiscing on collective youth, lost innocence and wasted potential. There’s brash burnout best man Ben, who once had promise as a ball player but now tends bar; hippie college dropout Cort, whose dislike of her mother has been softened by her mother’s illness; cokehead bridesmaid Alex, who still holds a torch for Dan; and Shawn, whose would-be musical career has devolved into a singing waiter gig at a theme restaurant. Missing from the reunion is Jason, whose death is often mentioned as the characters recall their schooldays and youths while the nuptial events unfold. Rainone does a stellar job of capturing the personalities and quirks of each protagonist, and the contrast between their bright memories and dim current realities is nicely handled. It may seem gimmicky at first (chapter headings, for instance, are song titles), but the vivid storytelling and mix of hope and heartbreak is an addictive formula. (May)

In this salacious, delightful tale of New York movers and shakers, Boncompagni (Gilding Lily) animates her rich, glamorous, scandalous creatures with a keen eye and irresistible energy. Newly ensconced in her life as the wife of a New York hedge fund derivatives trader, Marcy Emerson is as unimpressed with her neighbors’ materialism and gossiping as she is cowed by the seeming perfection of her new female acquaintances. Nevertheless, she establishes close friendships with fellow hedge fund wives Jill and Gigi as she becomes increasingly aware of her husband’s growing preoccupation with money and appearances—especially when she accepts a job in Gigi’s catering business. When Marcy faces incontrovertible evidence of how far John’s loyal good nature has been stretched, she realizes that for the sake of her own life she must re-evaluate her priorities. Readers fascinated by Upper East Side life will be mesmerized by Boncompagni’s sparkling depiction and may have to fight the temptation to read it all in one sitting. (May)

In her first novel, singer-songwriter and music journalist Greig examines the case of second-year philosophy student Susanna, who frequently wakes up, screaming, from disconcerting dreams. It’s not so much the demands of her course load at the University of Sussex—Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Freud and friends—as it is Susanna’s own experience with Nietzsche’s “great separation,” or the sudden realization that “everything... means nothing to you.” Her boyfriend, Jason, an antiques dealer 10 years her senior, is stingy with affection. Which helps explain why Susanna falls for Rob, a brooding yet innocent-seeming classmate who frequents the dingy campus bars, digs a good protest and lives in dilapidated communal housing. Torn, Susanna opts to date both—it’s the swinging ’70s, after all—but the back-and-forth leaves her dizzy, and when she discovers she’s pregnant and realizes the father could be either man, neither her tutor nor her girlfriends can assuage her. Fumbling through the smoky corridors and lofty ideals of academia, Susanna is, like so many student philosophers, equal parts endearing and insufferable, and even if her dilemma isn’t the most original, Greig makes it uniquely hers. (May)

Spillman, editor and cofounder of lit journal Tin House, brings together a diaspora full of urgency and possibility, featuring recent fiction and nonfiction (mostly fiction) from 30 African authors. First up is Chinua Achebe, author of the groundbreaking Things Fall Apart, looking at North African writers often excluded from the canon, reminding readers that Africa is far from homogeneous (entries come translated from Arabic, Zulu, French and other languages). Each piece finds a human story to illuminate the continent’s history of plight and promise, turning up a range of voices: Helon Habila’s breathtaking tale of a political prisoner forced to write poems for the prison superintendent’s girlfriend; a scene from Ngugi wa Thong’o’s novel Wizard of the Crow depicting an Orwellian celebration for an unnamed ruler; Patrice Nganang’s essay “The Senghor Complex” examining the influence of poet Léopold Senghor, Senegal’s first president (“[for] writers of my generation,” he’s “everyone’s grandfather”). This collection sheds light on a multifarious continent too often thought of in one-size-fits-all terms. (May)

Labiner (Miniatures) delves into the life of Dr. Jozef Apfel, a renowned German psychoanalyst who never solved the mysterious case of his patient, Elsa Z, in the years leading up to WWII. A few generations later, the doctor’s Jewish descendants are scattered across America: Hollywood starlet Lemon Leopold; her psychiatrist brother, Ben; their romance novelist cousin, Eliza. When Eliza is summoned to Berlin by a distant aunt to delve into the family’s past, Lemon comes along and winds up finding meaning in her life. Elsa Z’s traumas are mirrored by the sorrows of generations of Apfel women, most notably Eliza, whose own recent past is entangled with Berlin. Labiner toys with both psychoanalysis and its history: Elsa Z’s hysteria is reminiscent of Freud’s Dora (she even has her own Herr K), and Dr. Apfel’s “triangular seduction theory” ends up causing problems in his own love life. But while this intricate family saga has definite potential, it’s thrown off course by the novel’s frustrating structure, where seemingly random chapters devolve into pseudo-existential travel advice and Labiner’s heavy-handed poetic intentions. (May)

Estep’s entertaining fifth novel features three women—half-sisters Alice and Eloise and their ex-junkie mother, Kimberly—navigating relationships, a half-dozen lovers and innumerable dogs. Alice, the elder sister, is a professional gambler and prefers to keep an emotional distance from her lovers. Things go wrong, however, when she attempts to shake off her latest boyfriend, Clayton; to her dismay, she finds she cares for “the big oaf.” Meanwhile, Eloise, whose boyfriend recently died, gets involved with the glamorous actress Ava Larkin, whom Kimberly met while walking some of the 17 rescued dogs she shelters. After Alice discovers a secret that Kimberly has been harboring, she and her sister are confronted with the need to transform their apparently coldhearted ways. Unfortunately, as the novel progresses, it loses the witty energy of its zinger first chapter, and, as compared to Estep’s adventuresome characters, the conventional nature of Kimberly’s secret disappoints. Nevertheless, Estep (Hex) captures the wily spirit of a woman more inclined to give her heart to a dog than to another person. (May)

Dickner’s first novel is an odd tale of missed connections, restlessness and the search for home that follows three quirky Montrealites. One story line follows a nameless narrator who works in a second-hand Montreal bookshop and reveres an inexpensive compass sent to him when he was a child by his absent father. Meanwhile, Noah, who grew up in the care of a transient single mother, arrives in Montreal to study archeology and rents a room from the owner of a fish shop. Then there’s Joyce, a young woman from a family that claims pirate origins, who washes up in Montreal, finds work in the fish shop and begins her own version of living the family legend. The characters’ lives brush up against one another (largely thanks to a book about pirates that, through various personal connections, ends up as the lightly binding force of the three characters’ fates) but—in a nice subversion of the “intersecting fates” arc—don’t loudly collide. Dickner’s three spiritual nomads are strangely fascinating, while Lederhendler’s smooth translation makes this offbeat novel all the more attractive. (May)

Author prodigy Brown is one to watch after this roaring entrance into Christian suspense fiction. Three prophetic Christian orders called “The Firstborn” must set aside their differences to thwart a terrorist plot. The Firstborn are descendants of a great resurrection that happened after the resurrection of Jesus. Each of the three main characters has a different gift: one enjoys foresight, another has hindsight, and the third, insight. Dialogue and action drive the story in settings that leapfrog across the United States. The dialogue sermonizes but does so in a zingy way (“And yet your God hates all the same people as you,” John replied gravely. “How convenient”). Tension is generated by hostage situations, chases and shootouts intended to stop a terrorist bombing. The author gives readers a huge cast to sort out and religious and political world views to wrestle with throughout. Christian suspense thriller readers will cheer for the Firstborn and for this new voice on the scene. (May)

The opening of Tesh’s entertaining third cozy to feature PI Madeline Maclin (after 2007’s A Hard Bargain) finds Madeline, who’s just opened her own investigative office in Celosia, N.C., under a lot of stress. She has one week both to solve a case that could mean a large inheritance for her client and to paint a picture for a respectable gallery that’s invited her to exhibit. In addition, Madeline can’t resist an offer to guest art-teach at the local elementary school, where she’s on hand for the suspicious demise of a unanimously loathed teacher. The teacher’s death and Madeline’s other case turn out to be linked by the latest must-have collectible cards for kids. The stakes rise when her new husband, semiretired con man Jerry Fairweather, is assaulted while working in a local bookstore, and those same cards are the object of the robber’s desire. Amusing characters and charming village atmosphere more than compensate for a number of plot implausibilities. (June)

Shannon explores the deep, sometimes deadly divide that separates haves and have-nots in his rewarding 11th mystery to feature 60-year-old Jack Liffey, who specializes in locating missing children (after 2008’s The Devils of Bakersfield). Jack’s ex-wife, Kathy, asks him to find Blaine “Blue” Hostetler, her best friend’s missing teenage daughter. Smart and attractive, Blue was involved in such causes as preserving the habitat of the endangered butterfly, the Palos Verdes Blue, and aiding illegal immigrants. Jack’s investigation takes him from L.A.’s ultra-rich enclaves and the surfers’ paradise of Lunada Bay to muddy migrant camps and Tijuana. Once again, Jack’s daughter, Maeve, puts herself in danger to help her dad, with mixed results. Effectively told in part through letters written by a young Mexican immigrant and others written by a scared teenage surfer to his dad, this installment highlights Shannon’s ability to sharply render subtle shades of right and wrong. (May)

Victoria Trumbull, indomitable 92-year-old deputy police officer and poet, investigates smalltown skulduggery in Riggs’s engaging eighth Martha’s Vineyard mystery (after 2007’s Shooting Star). Along with the dead body of widow Lucy Pease, Victoria finds property cards containing tax information in the home of one of the three town assessors, Ellen Meadows, who’s off island. Knowing these cards should never have left the town hall, Ellen gets on the trail of a skimming scheme involving the assessors and their clerk, Oliver Ashpine. Meanwhile, Victoria learns that Ashpine is threatening to reveal the unsavory past of Delilah Sampson, a flamboyant TV star who owns an island property, if Delilah doesn’t pay her outrageously high property tax. Getting an agricultural “restriction” by turning her property into a farm could be the solution to Delilah’s problem. Once again, Riggs, a 13th-generation Vineyarder, depicts the flaws and foibles of her island characters with sympathy and humor. (May)

Near the start of Viets’s hair-raising eighth Dead-End Job mystery (after 2008’s Clubbed to Death), Helen Hawthorne, who’s working at Miguel Angel’s high-end beauty salon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., assists Miguel in fluffing and buffing Honey, the pregnant fiancée of Kingman “King” Oden, a notorious gossip blogger and cable TV star. After the couple exchange “I dos” at King’s Hendin Island waterfront palace, someone shoves a drunken King into his pool, where he drowns. Miguel becomes a top suspect in King’s murder after heroin’s found in the hairstylist’s makeup case. To help clear Miguel, Helen investigates other suspects, including Honey and the victim’s two ex-wives. Meanwhile, Helen must cope with anonymous threats in her mail as well as plan her wedding to her PI boyfriend. Viets keeps the action popping until the cliff-hanging ending, as Helen ignores signs that her best-laid plans have a black hole connected to the past she’s been running from for years. (May)

Jack Leightner juggles two Brooklyn cases in Cohen’s so-so third novel to feature the NYPD detective (after 2007’s The Graving Dock): the staged suicides of two women and the murder of Russian Daniel Lelo, with whom Leightner shared a hospital room years earlier after both men were shot. Leightner, whose previous relationships include an ex-wife and a girlfriend who revealed she was seeing someone else just as he was about to propose marriage, finds himself falling for Lelo’s attractive widow, Zhenya. His refusal to consider Zhenya a serious suspect damages the book’s credibility, as do a number of other mistakes that a veteran like Leightner shouldn’t make. Some awkward prose (e.g., “The girl behind the counter was a skinny little thing dotted—like a doughnut—with bright pink acne”) and a contrived ending don’t help. Reggie Nadleson does a better job of covering much the same geographic and emotional territory in his Artie Cohen novels (Fresh Kills, etc.). (May)

Two narratives drive Liang’s absorbing second mystery to feature PI Wang Mei, who once worked for the ministry of public security (after 2008’s The Eye of Jade): Mei’s search for a missing pop singer, Kaili, and a subplot that begins nine years earlier with the imprisonment of a student, Lin, for participating in the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Mei’s investigation is slowed by the absence of her assistant, Gupin, but as she travels among many Beijing settings, including open-air markets, a big record company’s offices, isolated construction areas and migrant workers’ housing, the city’s astonishing diversity and energy come alive. Fueled by innumerable tidbits about Chinese culture and daily life, the story is refreshingly low on Western-centric references. While the bias is clear, Liang, who left China after taking part in the Tiananmen Square protests, presents the politics with minimal dogma. A twist ending redeems a somewhat thin plot. (May)

At the start of Edgar-finalist Bruen’s lean seventh Jack Taylor novel, the aging, alcoholic Irish ex-cop, who moved to the U.S. in 2008’s The Cross, knows he really ought to be in America, but he’s staying in Galway because his old police partner, Ridge, has developed breast cancer. Meanwhile, he’s received a “shopping list” of intended victims—two guards, one nun, one judge and one child—from the mysterious “Benedictus.” One is already dead, killed in an “unfortunate hit and run,” according to Superintendent Clancy, Taylor’s best friend from years earlier on the force, who dismisses Taylor’s fear that a serial killer is on the loose. Bruen’s trademark terse style is more perfunctory than not, and parts of the narrative read like an outline, as shown by previous cases synopsized in quick asides. Taylor confronts the unlikely killer in what is a less than convincing showdown. Still, series fans should follow Taylor’s current fall off the wagon, suffused by the mellow glow of Xanax, with the usual passionate interest. (May)

Det. Sarah Burke gets a lesson about Arizona’s struggling construction industry and family greed in Gunn’s taut second police procedural to feature the Tucson cop (after 2008’s Cool in Tucson).

When someone shoots arts patron Eloise Henderson to death along with her one-night stand, an ex-con-turned-stagehand, the obvious suspect is Eloise’s husband, with whom she’d been having marital problems. As Sarah and her team begin to investigate Eloise’s past, other possible suspects emerge. Meanwhile, caterer Zachariah Cristofou, prompted by society and theater gadfly “Madge,” concocts a scheme to frame a naïve stagehand, Pauly Eckhardt, for the murders, a plot that goes awry when one of the principals starts spilling the beans. Fans of Cool in Tucson will enjoy catching up with Sarah’s earnest efforts to make a real family for Denny, the daughter of her drug-addicted sister, and her relationship with fellow cop Will Dietz. (May)

Noted for such science books as Darwin’s Orchestra and Adam’s Navel, Sims has compiled a thoroughly enjoyable anthology of what he calls caper stories from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Notable authors include Raffles’s creator E.W. Hornung (“Nine Points of the Law”), as well as names not usually associated with the crime genre like Sinclair Lewis (“The Willow Walk”) and Arnold Bennett (“A Comedy on the Gold Coast”). All 12 tales are classics—suspenseful, humorous and charming. One can only hope for a sequel that will include a couple of curious omissions, namely Maurice Leblanc, of Arsène Lupin fame, and R. Austin Freeman, creator of art forger Danby Croker. (Apr.)

The 32 tales in Kelly’s debut collection are chock-full of weird cults, vampires, mutant monsters and other stock props of generic horror fiction. “Breakfast Serial” and “Yea, Though I Drive” are biter-bit stories in which vagabond psychopaths with murder on their minds are undone by the victims whom they stalk. In “The Web of La Sanguinaire,” an arachnologist pursuing an overgrown species of spider becomes the ultimate sacrifice to his studies when the creatures show an unanticipated talent for turning the tables. Kelly, a stalwart presence from the horror paperback-original market of the 1990s, writes stories that, for the most part, show a workmanlike zeal: after setting up a simple premise, they proceed methodically to eerie finales prepared for by a few well-timed shocks and plot twists. Short on atmosphere and simple in their telling, they nevertheless deliver their share of thrills and chills. (May)

Hoffman (Spirits That Walk in Shadow) infuses this entertaining supernatural thriller with cozy, sexually explicit scenes of reawakening and personal growth. Opal Lazelle’s magical gifts and her talent as a makeup artist have earned her a career in the movies, most recently on the set of Forest of the Night. She soon discovers that actor Corvus Weather is being transformed in both appearance and soul by Phrixos, a mysterious being with designs on Opal and the rest of the cast and crew. Although Phrixos seems generally helpful, Opal wonders whether its ultimate goal is benevolent. Opal’s struggles to anticipate and stymie Phrixos are undermined by her failure to act decisively and Phrixos’s inability to deliver on any of its veiled threats, but Hoffman manages to sustain the tension to the slightly bizarre end. (May)

In this witty, highly amusing tale, British comic fantasist Holt (Barking) describes a modern-day England where magical creatures and sorcerers are commonplace. Mild-mannered Frank Carpenter uses his Acme Portable Door to travel anywhere in time and space and reverse disasters for 10% of the recouped insurance payout. But when his latest assignment, mythological pest exterminator Emily Spitzer, keeps dying, Frank must figure out how to disable the titular device, which kills in “every possible alternative reality in the multiverse.” Things only get more complicated when Frank becomes smitten with his well-armed damsel-in-distress. Eloquently snarky prose supports an otherwise clunky plot replete with fanciful coincidences and unnecessarily convoluted time travel, and Holt’s quirky characters and whimsical voice successfully infuse life into this entertaining romantic comedy. (May)

In Murphy’s crisply written sequel to 2008’s alternate history The Queen’s Bastard, aliens known as the Heseth, the people of the sun, have visited Earth in what would be our 16th century, but the supernatural elements are limited to the occasional use of magical abilities. The plot is more focused on the struggle for power in Echon (Europe), which features familiar rivalries between Aulun (England), Gallin (France) and the Prussian Confederation. As political tensions heat up, Belinda, the witchfire-wielding assassin and illegitimate daughter of Aulun’s Queen Lorraine, faces relationship problems with Javier de Castille, prince of Essandia (Spain) and Gallin, and with her overbearing mother. Murphy tends toward long discussions of war, succession and various attempts by the Heseth to influence human development, mostly balanced by clever intrigue and raw, explicit sex scenes. (May)

Bestseller Stuart (Tangled Lies) delivers fast-paced, dark thrills in this straightforward suspense novel. Professor David Middleton has whisked traveling photographer Rachel Chapman off to sleepy Silver Falls, a small college town in the Pacific Northwest, promising stability for her and her teen daughter, Sophie. Newlywed Rachel soon starts to feel smothered by the gloomy weather and David’s repressive personality, which Sophie finds creepy and disturbing. Then David’s incredibly sexy brother, Caleb, comes home, and young blonde women who resemble Sophie start turning up dead. Rachel is torn between irresistible attraction to her brother-in-law and impatience when he tries to warn her about the serial killer. Stuart breaks little new ground, and readers may be slightly annoyed by the early revelation of the murderer’s identity as well as by Sophie outclassing ostensible protagonist Rachel in both brains and sass. (May)

Kaye’s 2008 debut, Romeo Romeo, got such a warm reception that she’s written it again, from the mistaken identities to the messy Brooklyn apartment. The only real surprise is the heroine: the repellent Annabelle Ronaldi, whose sister starred in the previous title. The morning after her sister’s wedding, Annabelle awakens next to Dr. Mike Flynn, who bears an eerie resemblance to Annabelle’s dead boyfriend, Chip. Mike, unlike Annabelle, makes a believable protagonist, and his interactions with patients provide some of the story’s most heartwarming scenes. Kaye’s intermittent attempts to create psychological depth, however, sit oddly with the dishy one-liners that dominate her prose. The story of a sensitive guy who cooks and cleans for an outspoken modern woman was cute and sparkly the first time around, but this year-old Champagne has lost its fizz. (May)

Lies, lust and libation fuel this early summer beach read, published in the U.K. in 2008 to much acclaim. After a drunken wager, three wine critics set off to produce award-winning vintages. Madeline Arsenault takes on the task of rehabilitating her family’s sluggish and debt-ridden vineyard. Party girl Kelly Eldon would rather sell the winery inherited from a father she never knew, but to get her cut, she has to spend five years as a hands-on owner. Supermodel Christina Morgan hopes her vineyard, a present from her ex-husband, will save her struggling career. Meanwhile, ruthless businessman Mathieu Randon takes steps to keep them all from competing with his own vintages. Darling’s sly wit veils numerous jabs at celebrities and popular culture, and her pitch-perfect description and characterization draw readers into the complex world of vintage wine without overwhelming terminology. (May)

Berry’s impressive graphic novel debut—published to much praise last year in Great Britain—mixes classic noir, a timeless story of love and loss and a shot of black humor with gloomy 1940s London as the perfect backdrop. PI Fernández Britten is known as the Heartbreaker: he’s the one who follows cheating spouses and delivers news that ruins marriages. When glamorous Charlotte Maughton, the daughter of children’s publishing magnate Maurice Maughton, hires him to look into the alleged suicide of her fiancé, Berni Kudos, Britten glumly takes the case. With his trusty sidekick, Stewart Brülightly—who just happens to be a teabag—Britten begins sniffing around Kudos’s job at Maughton Publishing, keeping in mind Charlotte’s suspicion that her fiancé’s death could be tied to a blackmailing scheme aimed at her powerful father. The deeper Britten digs, the more mired he becomes in a pit of long-festering family secrets. For a man who’s made his living telling the truth, Britten begins to realize that there are some instances when it’s best to stay quiet. Gorgeously illustrated with a cartoony but expressive style, with a richly detailed story and empathetically conflicted hero, Berry’s debut should be a hit. (Apr.)

MAD’s early years have been justly lauded for their japing assault on postwar American culture, but this outstanding two-volume boxed set reflects the history of comedy in the period after staff stars like Kurtzman jumped ship in 1956. Humbug, whose mere 11 monthly issues published in 1957 and 1958 are all collected here, was a refreshing if little-noticed seat-of-the-pants hybrid of MAD-style buffoonery and a tony wit that sadly never found its place. Read today, Humbug seems a time capsule from when comedy was entering its drier, postvaudevillian period; comedians still wore ties and were expected to if not attend college at least have read a book or two. The magazine’s mix of chaos and control—Kurtzman’s Cecil B. DeMille–sized comedic crowd scenes set against Larry Siegel’s pitch-perfect literary satires—creates an uneasy balance that almost necessitated a short shelf life, much in the same manner as National Lampoon (which years later briefly picked up the mantle that Humbug threw down). The set might not be best for end-to-end reading (11 issues is a heavy dose, with all those Sputnik and Have Gun, Will Travel references) but for dry cocktail laughs and low schoolboy snorts, it’s hard to think of a better pair of books to have at your nightstand. (Mar.)

This collection of humorous cartoons uses the four panel grid to provide Cliffs Notes crack: a super-rush of literary info in no time flat. Whole epics like Ulysses are reduced to four panels—actually three since panel one is always used for the title and not much else. The book selection includes a nice mix of warhorse classics and more modern fare—A Confederacy of Dunces and American Psycho—as well as genre favorites—The Lord of the Rings and Watchmen. The descriptions of each of the 90 books offered are best when they list the plot twists and developments, but Lange includes his own comic punch lines for most of the stories. The cute and amusing cartoons use a scratchy style reminiscent of a less polished Ivan Brunetti or Johnny Ryan. The rhythm of the four panels makes this a tough book to put down and will provide a quick brushup for folks going literary party hopping or book fair wandering. (Mar.)

This verbose fantasy comic from China is part Alice in Wonderland and part self-help manual. A You is a depressed 19-year-old forklift driver who dreams of chasing rabbits, but it takes him nearly half of the book to fall down the rabbit hole to a wonderland. For the first 60 pages A You’s friends and co-workers tediously lecture him in an attempt to pull him out of his slump. A born complainer, A You thinks he has the worst luck; “Why is my life so boring... and so hard?” he asks. His visit to a utopian fantasy world changes his outlook on life as he watches a dancing street sweeper and a building painter/would-be artist enjoying their menial jobs. At the heart of the comic is a very upbeat message about entrepreneurship delivered by a humanoid zebra named “The Master of Universal Love.” The venture capitalist zebra’s explanation of how he rose to the top is unfortunately told in the uncanny voice of a pyramid scheme leader or an Avon salesman. Peng and Chen are excellent artists, but the book gets bogged down in talky heavy-handedness, as if someone put nice fantasy illustrations into a business self-help book like Who Moved My Cheese. (Mar.)

Signature

Reviewed by Maureen Howard

Colm Tóibín’s engaging new novel, Brooklyn, will not bring to mind the fashionable borough of recent years nor Bed-Stuy beleaguered with the troubles of a Saturday night. Tóibín has revived the Brooklyn of an Irish-Catholic parish in the ’50s, a setting appropriate to the narrow life of Eilis Lacey. Before Eilis ships out for a decent job in America, her village life is sketched in detail. The shops, pub, the hoity-toity and plainspoken people of Enniscorthy have such appeal on the page, it does seem a shame to leave. But how will we share the girl’s longing for home, if home is not a gabby presence in her émigré tale? Tóibín’s maneuvers draw us to the bright girl with a gift for numbers. With a keen eye, Eilis surveys her lonely, steady-on life: her job in the dry goods store, the rules and regulations of her rooming house—ladies only. The competitive hustle at the parish dances are so like the ones back home—it’s something of a wonder I did not give up on the gentle tattle of her story, run a Netflix of the feline power struggle in Claire Booth Luce’s The Women. Tóibín rescues his homesick shopgirl from narrow concerns, gives her a stop-by at Brooklyn College, a night course in commercial law. Her instructor is Joshua Rosenblum. Buying his book, the shopkeeper informs her, “At least we did that, we got Rosenblum out.”

“You mean in the war?”

His reply when she asks again: “In the holocaust, in the churben.”

The scene is eerie, falsely naïve. We may accept what a village girl from Ireland, which remained neutral during the war, may not have known, but Tóibín’s delivery of the racial and ethnic discoveries of a clueless young woman are disconcerting. Eilis wonders if she should write home about the Jews, the Poles, the Italians she encounters, but shouldn’t the novelist in pursuing those postwar years in Brooklyn, in the Irish enclave of the generous Father Flood, take the mike? The Irish vets I knew when I came to New York in the early ’50s had been to that war; at least two I raised a glass with at the White Horse were from Brooklyn. When the stage is set for the love story, slowly and carefully as befits his serious girl, Tóibín is splendidly in control of Eilis’s and Tony’s courtship. He’s Italian, you see, of a poor, caring family. I wanted to cast Brooklyn, with Rosalind Russell perfect for Rose, the sporty elder sister left to her career in Ireland. Can we get Philip Seymour Hoffman into that cassock again? J. Carol Naish, he played homeboy Italian, not the mob. I give away nothing in telling that the possibility of Eilis reclaiming an authentic and spirited life in Ireland turns Brooklyn into a stirring and satisfying moral tale. Tóibín, author of The Master, a fine-tuned novel on the lonely last years of Henry James, revisits, diminuendo, the wrenching finale of The Portrait of a Lady. What the future holds for Eilis in America is nothing like Isabel Archer’s return to the morally corrupt Osmond. The decent fellow awaits. Will she be doomed to a tract house of the soul on Long Island? I hear John McCormick take the high note—alone in the gloaming with the shadows of the past—as Tóibín’s good girl contemplates the lost promise of Brooklyn.

Maureen Howard's The Rags of Time, the last season of her quartet of novels based on the four seasons, will be published by Viking in October.

Metafictional fantasy triptychs.

Almost two decades after the publication of her debut novel, Moonwise, Gilman returns to the fantasy realm of Cloud with a trilogy of interconnected narratives. 2000’s Nebula-shortlisted “Jack Daw’s Pack” follows an otherworldly traveler as he creates a rich tapestry of myth in the cards he throws down. 2003’s “A Crowd of Bone,” which won the World Fantasy Award, is a decidedly nonlinear tragedy about child witch Thea, who flees her goddess mother and a foolish love-struck mortal. The novella “Unleaving,” the original piece of the trinity, revolves around Thea’s daughter, Margaret, who “unravels” the heavens and, in turn, much of the mythos of Cloud. Though the sublimely lyrical Jacobeanesque dialect is challenging, readers who enjoy symbolism and allusion will cherish Gilman’s use of diverse folkloric elements to create an unforgettable realm and ideology. (May)

In this limited edition reprint of three separate, thematically interlinked works, award-winning Serbian author Zivkovic (Impossible Encounters) explores the concepts that make up the building blocks of literature, reading and writing. “The Writer” is a dense, dreamlike stream-of-consciousness account narrated by an unnamed author, who struggles with his inability to complete a novel. “The Book” alternates between the ranting of a self-aware book and a satirical examination of the publishing industry as a whole. The capstone is “The Reader,” eight interconnected vignettes focusing on how books, fruit and men play parts in the life of bibliophile Miss Tamara. Zivkovic’s uniquely stylized, experimental prose, as adeptly translated by Copple-Tosic and Nedeljkovic, appeals to a certain literary mindset, but it’s hard to see it capturing mainstream attention. (May)