Fiction Reviews
Reviews of new Fiction, Mysteries, Thrillers, Romance, Science-Fiction, and Graphic Novels

Feb 22, 2010

In My Father's House E. Lynn Harris. St. Martin's, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-54191-0

Before he died last year, Harris wrote this bangup first installment to a projected series about a bisexual owner of a Miami modeling agency. Bentley L. Dean III runs the Picture Perfect modeling agency in South Beach. His father, a homophobic Detroit millionaire, disowned him after he broke off an engagement and had an affair with a male TV sports reporter, and though the agency's been a success, the recession has taken a big bite out of Bentley's business. Strapped for cash, he reluctantly agrees to supply “gay, bi or very open-minded” eye candy for a VIP party hosted by Prosperity Gentleman's Club, which is run by “Emperor” Seth Sinclair, a closeted gay celebrity. When Jah, an 18-year-old student Bentley's been mentoring, covers for a no-show model and begins an affair with Seth, big trouble looms. Harris's wry tale about second chances highlights what readers have long loved about his work: his ability to depict the pursuit of love and self-respect, regardless of societal and family pressures. (June)

American Music Jane Mendelsohn. Knopf, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-307-27266-9

This digressive novel by the author of I Was Amelia Earhart probes intersecting tales that emerge from the work done by a masseuse-cum-shaman. Honor is a 21-year-old physical therapist at the Bronx VA hospital; Milo Hatch is a particularly traumatized patient who was severely wounded in Iraq. During Milo's treatment, both he and Honor begin having visions of people they don't know. The narrative breaks up in pursuit of the stories behind the visions of the late 1930s love triangle between Joe, a saxophone player and law student; his wife, Pearl, unable to have children after many miscarriages; and Pearl's cousin, Vivian, who shares with Joe a passion for jazz. (Mendelsohn provides, for instance, a tidy excursus on the significance of cymbals in jazz, tracing their provenance to 17th-century Istanbul.) The fallout from Joe and Vivian's messy affair connects back to present day, yet the music evoked by this ponderously embellished work remains a vague, distant noise. (June)

The Seven Year Bitch Jennifer Belle. Riverhead, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-59448-755-2

Welcome to not-so-happily-ever-after. Soon-to-be-40 Izzy just lost her Wall Street job, has a husband who runs a struggling publishing operation from their apartment, a year-old son, and a growing suspicion she's living life in captivity. “It's not that you get a seven-year itch,” divorced pal Joy confides. “It's that they turn you into a seven-year bitch.” And so Izzy goes all in, railing at hubby Russell; becoming involved in her son's nanny's quest to get pregnant; lusting after the rich, handsome guy who got away; and discovering her own heart thanks to her uncommon new job: judging promotional contest essays for 25 cents each. Belle's (Little Stalker) smart and hilariously ridiculous paean to love, marriage, and a baby carriage proves you can't always get what you want and you rarely get what you need, but you always get to choose. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments that come uncomfortably close to the truth about less-than-perfect relationships, which helps salvage an ending wrapped just a little too tight. Still, style and wit count, and on that, Belle doesn't disappoint. (May)

Starfishing Nicola Monaghan. Scribner, $25 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4165-8906-8

In her abysmal second novel, Monaghan (The Killing Jar) delves into the manic, drug-fueled world of late 1990s English finance. Ambitious Frankie Cavanagh gets a job as a floor trader at the London futures and options exchange. Under the lead of her boss, Tom Phillips, an attractive and cocky American, she maneuvers the male-dominated world, slowly earning the trust and respect of some of the men while alienating others. A sexual attraction to Tom evolves into an affair driven by booze, cocaine, Ecstasy, and daring games of chicken that rush headlong toward disaster. While the descriptions of the human mania of the trading floor in its last throes before electronic trading took over are revealing, the tension in this novel flags around Frankie and Tom's relationship and Frankie's dithering about her life. Flabby sentences, flirtations with cliché, and a ridiculous conclusion will leave readers somewhere between puzzled and disappointed. (May)

Beatrice and Virgil Yann Martel. Random/Spiegel & Grau, $23 (208p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6926-2

Megaselling Life of Pi author Martel addresses, in this clunky metanarrative, the violent legacy of the 20th century with an alter ego: Henry L'Hôte, an author with a very Martel-like CV who, after a massively successful first novel, gives up writing. Henry and his wife, Sarah, move to a big city (“Perhaps it was New York. Perhaps it was Paris. Perhaps it was Berlin”), where Henry finds satisfying work in a chocolatería and acting in an amateur theater troupe. All is well until he receives a package containing a short story by Flaubert and an excerpt from an unknown play. His curiosity about the sender leads him to a taxidermist named Henry who insists that Henry-the-author help him write a play about a monkey and a donkey. Henry-the-author is at first intrigued by sweet Beatrice, the donkey, and Virgil, her monkey companion, but the animals' increasing peril draws Henry into the taxidermist's brutally absurd world. Martel's aims are ambitious, but the prose is amateur and the characters thin, the coy self-referentiality grates, and the fable at the center of the novel is unbearably self-conscious. When Martel (rather energetically) tries to tug our heartstrings, we're likely to feel more manipulated than moved. (Apr.)

Alone with You: Stories Marisa Silver. Simon & Schuster, $22 (172p) ISBN 978-1-4165-9029-3

Unwellness is woven through these eight beautiful and brutal stories from Silver (The God of War), who gives readers finely wrought slivers of lives scarred by sickness and the intermingling of hope and despair. The characters in the first two stories, “Temporary” and “The Visitor,” carry scars from their mothers' illness into adult life. In “In the New World,” a 14-year-old boy gets a classmate pregnant, leading his hardworking immigrant father to reflect on his son's future and his own battle to get away from an overprotective father. In “Leap,” a pet-owner's wounded heart heals along with her injured dog, who she believes tried to kill himself. “Three Girls” tells the story of sisters who have to raise themselves in the face of incapable parents, while the title story details the resolution, made while trekking through the Sahara, of a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown. While the stories contain woes that can befall anyone—addiction, brain tumors, heart disease, disability—Silver infuses her characters with a fatalistic resilience that's revealed through tiny, perfect details. (Apr.)

Eight Days to Live Iris Johansen. St. Martin's, $27.99 (416p) ISBN 978-0-312-36815-9

Having injected vampires into 2009's Blood Game, the previous Eve Duncan forensics thriller, bestseller Johansen introduces cryptotheology—the madeup religious stuff of Dan Brown—into this equally outlandish sequel. When Jane MacGuire, Eve's adopted daughter, exhibits her paintings at a Paris gallery, one of Jane's pieces, a creepy portrait titled Guilt, prompts a charge of blasphemy from a dangerous cult. Nailing the dead body of one of Jane's friends to a cross shows the cult members mean business. Last seen in 2006's Killer Dreams, John MacDuff and Jock Gavin show up at Jane's door to protect her. Later Seth Caleb, the mysterious is-he-or-isn't-he vampire from Blood Game, joins the team. An action-packed search to uncover Jane's link to the cult and find a priceless religious artifact takes Jane and company across Europe—a journey that allows little focus on Eve and even less on her trademark forensic sculpting. 500,000 first printing. (Apr.)

Infamous Ace Atkins. Putnam, $25.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-399-15630-4

Set in 1933, Atkins's winning fourth history-based novel focuses on two figures who, as the author explains in an introduction, have been undeservedly “lost in the shuffle of Depression-era gangsters”: George Kelly, who ironically gets saddled with the nickname “Machine Gun,” and his wife, Kathryn. The fast-moving narrative spans a three-month period, starting with a fatal ambush in a parking lot outside Kansas City's Union Station in which hoods gun down several lawmen and the prisoner they were about to drive to Leavenworth. This massacre leads to the FBI obtaining the authority to make arrests and carry weapons. The bulk of the action concerns the Kellys' kidnapping of Charles Urschel, a wealthy Oklahoma oilman, and its aftermath. Atkins (Devil's Garden) brings to vivid life the henpecked George and the bloodthirsty Kathryn as he convincingly conjures up a past era. Not just for crime fans, this should appeal to a wide readership. (Apr.)

Elegy for April Benjamin Black. Holt, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8050-9091-8

Black's engrossing third crime thriller set in 1950s Dublin (after The Silver Swan) finds pathologist Garret Quirke fresh from a stint in alcohol rehab. Quirke reluctantly agrees to help his daughter, Phoebe Griffin, with whom he has a tenuous relationship, find her missing best friend, April Latimer, a junior doctor at a local hospital. Quirke soon finds that members of the powerful Latimer family have all but disowned April, and yet he's sure they know more than they're letting on. Phoebe does her own sleuthing among the group of friends she shared with April, including a stage actress, a handsome Nigerian surgical student, and a reporter. Black (the pen name of Booker Prize—winner John Banville) is equally concerned with exploring the idea of family and loyalty as with spinning a suspenseful whodunit, and his depiction of a fragile father-daughter relationship is as powerful as the unsettling truth behind April's disappearance. Author tour. (Apr.)

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This Robin Black. Random, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6857-9

The stories in Black's solid debut collection are fraught with loss, usually of a loved one. Evocative and lyrical, the characters' introspections, while sometimes overwrought, are balanced by the sharp dialogue. In “The Guide,” a father takes his blind teenage daughter to meet her new seeing-eye dog and is forced to confront her independence. While painting a portrait of a man with Alzheimer's, the aging main character of “Immortalizing John Parker” grapples with the recent death of her lover. The title story is the tale of neighboring couples battling over a fence, told from the perspective of the wife with terminal cancer. In “Pine,” a woman must decide whether to move on from the memory of her dead husband to begin a love affair with her male best friend. Each story is carefully crafted, though Black is at her best when she resists the impulse toward tidiness. (Apr.)

Seeing Stars Diane Hammond. Harper, $13.99 paper (496p) ISBN 978-0-06-186315-8

Hammond (Hannah's Dream) explores the world of wannabe child stars in this taut if sometimes melodramatic novel. At the center is Ruth Rabinowitz, a naïve but determined stage mom who leaves her husband in Seattle to move to L.A. with their 13-year-old daughter, Bethany, who is soon plunged into a torrent of auditions, rejections, and humiliations. Three other teen actors represented by Bethany's manager play tragic stereotypes in the novel and are more vividly rendered than sweet if unremarkable Bethany: Laurel is determined to achieve stardom before her terminally ill mother dies; meanwhile, Allison, a beautiful and deeply troubled girl from Houston, and Quinn, a gifted actor from Seattle, have both been abandoned by cruel stepfathers and weak mothers. Careerwise, the virtually orphaned kids fare better, but this seems incidental in Hammond's lonely, exploitative Hollywood. Though Ruth's struggle to balance conflicting responsibilities is predictably resolved, the girls' stories remain compelling amid the gritty details of the child-acting biz. (Apr.)

In Free Fall Juli Zeh, trans. from the German by Christine Lo. Doubleday/Talese, $26.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-385-52642-5

The theoretical physics concept known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation, in which “everything that is at all possible exists somewhere,” forms the backdrop for Zeh's second novel (after Eagles and Angels), an engrossing if enigmatic story of a murder and its aftermath. German physicists Oskar and Sebastian are both friends and rivals, who have drifted apart after the latter's marriage. While Sebastian is driving his 10-year-old son to camp, the boy disappears during a stop at a gas station. When a woman phones Sebastian and tells him, “Dabbelink must go,” he interprets this to mean that to obtain his kidnapped son's freedom, he must get rid of Dabbelink, a bicycling companion of his wife linked to a medical scandal. Erudite digressions and vivid characters—such as a detective with a trusting nature who learns always “to assume the opposite of what she was thinking”—combine with a devastating 11th-hour reveal to make a memorable intellectual thriller. (Apr.)

Haunt Me Still Jennifer Lee Carrell. Dutton, $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-525-95077-6

Agreeing to direct Shakespeare's notoriously ill-starred “Scottish play” plunges scholar-sleuth Kate Stanley into a cauldron of trouble in this heady, occult-steeped thriller, the sequel to Interred with Their Bones. The reclusive Lady Nairn, decades earlier the bewitching actress Janet Douglas, plans a production featuring priceless Macbeth-linked antiquities, her own return to the stage, and—if Kate can find it—a rumored earlier version of the play said to include actual magic rites. No sooner does the cast assemble at Lady Nairn's Scottish castle, however, than all hell breaks loose. Kate's hallucinatory vision of the savaged body of Lady Nairn's granddaughter foreshadows two very real murders—with Kate a prime suspect. Carrell deftly uses literary scholarship as a springboard for her plot, especially the suspense-building leaps back to Shakespeare's day. She's less successful with the supernatural elements, which increasingly strain credulity, and an anemic romantic subplot. (Apr.)

Without Mercy Lisa Jackson. Kensington, $25 (432p) ISBN 978-0-7582-2564-1

The murder of Julia “Jules” Farentino's father creates a bond with her younger half-sister, Shaylee Stillman in this juicy creep-a-thon from bestseller Jackson (Chosen to Die). That bond is tested years later when 17-year-old Shaylee is shipped off to Blue Rock Academy, an Oregon school in “the middle of no-damned-where” for at-risk teens. Run by iron-fisted Rev. Tobias Lynch, Blue Rock recently had a student, Lauren Conway, go missing and a female teacher dismissed for inappropriate behavior with a student. When Jules takes a teaching position at Blue Rock to rescue Shay, she discovers Cooper Trent, her ex-boyfriend, working there as an undercover PI looking into Lauren's disappearance. The scary “suicide” strangulation of Shay's roommate and the murder of her teaching assistant boyfriend throw the school into further uproar. Meanwhile, the “Leader,” the head of a secret cult at Blue Rock, plots more mayhem. This campy cool thriller builds to a surprising cliffhanger ending. (Apr.)

Small Change Sheila Roberts. St. Martin's/Griffin, $13.99 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-59447-3

The three friends in Roberts's (Angel Lane) light read are happily reminiscent of Sarah Strohmeyer's The Penny Pinchers Club. These Heart Lake, Wash., neighbors become divas living on a dime when harsh economic times hit. Still recovering from a miscarriage, Tiffany Turner is a shopaholic who becomes frantic when her out-of-control credit card spending prompts her husband, Brian, to leave her. Rachel Green is a struggling divorcée with two children who's just lost her teaching job and professes to not need a man until she meets Chad Alvarez. And stay at-home wife and former musician Jess, when informed by her banker husband that he might lose his job, wonders if she can be a rocker chick again. To cope, the “Small Change Club” members decide to simplify their lifestyles and take control of their future. Homing in on issues many readers can identify with, Roberts's women search for practical solutions to a common challenge with humor and froth. (Apr.)

The Leopard's Wife Paul Pickering. Simon & Schuster, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4391-6853-0

LondonTimes columnist Pickering (Wild About Harry) sets his lackluster fifth novel amid the Congo civil war. British pianist Stanley “Smiles” Miles-Harcourt arrives in the region expecting to play in a “Peace and Reconciliation Concert” alongside his estranged mentor, Lyman Andrew. After the rehearsal space is bombed, Smiles, his piano, and a cadre of sympathetic locals embark on a life-threatening journey through the jungle in hopes of finding Lyman and reaching a safe place to broadcast a performance. Pickering's premise—that “[t]he broadcast may just stop the fighting”—is as naïve and far-fetched as it sounds. Among Smiles's guides is the 17-year-old Lola, former lover of Major General Xavier and his upstart brother, Fortuné, who has access to a crucial transmitter. Lola falls in love with Smiles, too, and their affair inspires some of novel's most insipid passages. Meanwhile, Smiles's letters to his psychiatrist, reproduced throughout, fill in the pianist's sordid history, and though his gratuitously violent backstory unfolds with better logic and organization than the Congo adventure, the narrative reads more like a series of awkwardly recounted horrors than a fully formed novel. (Apr.)

Almost Dead Assaf Gavron, trans. from the Hebrew by Gavron and James Lever. Harper Perennial, $14.99 paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-198404-4

Israeli author Gavron offers an unusual perspective on Palestinian suicide bombings in this offbeat, often satirical political thriller. While riding a bus one morning, Eitan “Croc” Einoch, who works for a Tel Aviv consulting company that helps clients save money by teaching them ways to shave seconds off customer-service calls, tries to reassure fellow passengers that a suspicious-looking man isn't a terrorist. Soon after Croc gets off the bus, the man explodes a bomb. When Croc survives two more terror attacks, he becomes a celebrity, a nationalist symbol of defiant survival. While Croc looks into why one of the victims was on the bombed bus, a Palestinian bomber hospitalized in Jerusalem, Fahmi Sabich, plots his revenge. Without resorting to moral relativism, Gavron (Hydromania) sheds light on the region's intractable conflict by allowing readers to relate to Fahmi as well as Croc. (Apr.)

The Last Time I Saw You Elizabeth Berg. Random, $25 (256) ISBN 978-1-4000-6864-7

A high school reunion and all of its attendant dramas is the backdrop of Berg's rose-tinted latest (after Home Safe). For Dorothy Shauman, her 40th reunion is the chance to finally hook up with her high school crush. She prepares weeks in advance for the big night, strange as that may seem, preening in front of the mirror. As Berg surveys the gamut of emotions felt by Dorothy and some of her classmates, she zeroes in on an array of stereotypes—the hot girls, the jocks, the in crowd, the out crowd—and considers what makes each one tick, offering the vanilla revelation that the person on the inside doesn't always match the person on the outside. It's cleanly plotted, ably written, and sure to appeal to boomers staring down the barrel of their own 40th reunions. (Apr.)

How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly Connie May Fowler. Grand Central, $21.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-446-54068-1

In this gloomy novel, Fowler (Before Women Had Wings) presents a day in the life of writer Clarissa Burden, stuck in a loveless marriage and preoccupied with a joyless childhood. Memories of a cruel mother aren't the only things haunting Clarissa; a number of ghosts, including the 19th-century biracial family who had lived in Clarissa's Florida home, also weave themselves into Clarissa's story. Plagued by writer's block and suspicious of her photographer husband (and the nude models he employs), Clarissa leaves home for a day filled with spooky cemeteries, near-death experiences, life-altering conversations, exhilaration, and frustration. The plot tends to meander, incorporating not just incorporeal spirits but occasional jaunts into the minds of Florida's animals; still, Fowler produces some singularly memorable characters. By the time Clarissa stands up to her husband, readers will have suffered mightily through a sweltering Florida solstice, listening to the heroine's witty, sometimes whiney, internal monologue, and wishing for some real action. Fortunately, Fowler delivers on that wish, bringing together all her characters—dead, alive, and imagined—for an explosive conclusion. (Apr.)

Johnny Porno Charlie Stella. Stark House (www.starkhousepress.com), $15.95 paper (340p) ISBN 978-1-933586-29-8

Set in New York City in 1973, Stella's vibrant seventh crime novel catches the cadence and daily grind of organized crime grunts. John Albano, who lost his carpenter job and his union card because he punched out his foreman, now collects cash receipts for the mob from illicit screenings of Deep Throat, the mob-produced pornographic film that reputedly would earn more than $600 million. Still struggling to pay his bills as well as child support for his beloved son, Albano considers getting more involved with the Mafia, despite his qualms. Stella (Mafiya) tosses an eclectic cast of characters into the mix, including Albano's remarried ex-wife and police investigators looking into the mobster Albano reports to, Eddie Vento. Though implausible subplots at times threaten to overwhelm the main plot, admirers of Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins will be happy. (Apr.)

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott Kelly O'Connor McNees. Putnam/Amy Einhorn, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-399-15652-6

McNees lightly imagines the life of Louisa May Alcott, whose Little Women has enjoyed generations-long success. The story begins with a 20-year-old Louisa unhappily moving with her family from Boston to Walpole, N.H., where her Transcendentalist philosopher father pursues a life sans material pleasure. Louisa, meanwhile, plans on saving enough money to return to Boston and pursue a career as a writer. Then she meets the handsome and charming Joseph Singer, who stirs up strong emotions in Louisa. Not wanting to admit that she is attracted to him, Louisa responds to Joseph with defensiveness and anger until, of course, she can no longer deny her feelings and becomes torn between her desires and her dreams. While certainly charming, the simply told, straightforward narrative reads like YA fiction. It'll do the trick as a pleasant diversion for readers with fond memories of Alcott's work, but the lack of gravity prevents it from becoming anything greater. (Apr.)

Hello Kitty Must Die Angela S. Choi. Tyrus (Consortium, dist.), $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-935562-03-0; $14.95 paper ISBN 978-1-935562-02-3

Choi's scorching-hot debut rips into the stereotype of Hello Kitties, young Asian-American women who are upwardly mobile, outwardly modern, but trapped by their families' old-fashioned cultural expectations. A week before turning 28, Fiona “Fi” Yu, a San Francisco corporate lawyer who lives with her parents, uses a silicone device to take her own virginity, an act she soon regrets. When she consults Dr. Sean Killroy about restoring her hymen, the cosmetic surgeon turns out to be Sean Deacon, a former grade school classmate who once lit a girl's hair on fire. Fi renews her friendship with Sean, who draws her into a secret world that's empowering but also highly disturbing. As Sean encourages Fi to fight back when her parents suggest suitors, people who cause problems for Fi wind up dead. A demonic stir-fry of influences, including Amy Tan, Chuck Palahniuk, Clive Barker, and Candace Bushnell, infuses Choi's prose with passionate ferocity. (Apr.)

Powder Necklace Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond. Washington Square, $15 paper (256p) ISBN 978-1-4391-2610-3

When her single mother “needs a break,” London teenager Lila is sent to school in Ghana. Once at Dadaba Girls' Secondary School, Lila finds herself fending for a place among an unforgiving physical and emotional climate. Just as Lila is learning to appreciate the unusual joys of her new home, however, Lila's mother, having found a new boyfriend and a new home, yanks her back to London. Though Lila gets back to school, lands a job, and finds a boyfriend, she's once again shipped off, this time to live with her father in New York. Brew-Hammond uses sensual language to drop readers into each of Lila's strange new settings, crafting vivid portraits of dislocation and discovery. Though the evangelical undertones may turn off some readers and Lila's mom's issues (her aggression, her refusal to let Lila make any decisions for herself) are left largely unaddressed, the beauty of the prose and the resilience of the heroine make this a winning debut. (Apr.)

Between Friends Kristy Kiernan. Berkley, $15 paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-425-23347-4

Kiernan (Catching Genius) again demonstrates her ability to portray true-to-life relationships between women. Ali Gutierrez is mother to 15-year-old Letty thanks to the egg donation of her best friend, Cora. Ali wants to have another child, but first has to convince her husband, Benny, and then Cora, to endure the process one more time. Cora, a free-spirit who's just returned to America from a teaching excursion in Chile, has news of her own—she has a debilitating genetic kidney disease, and she's not sure how to break the news to Ali. Meanwhile, Letty's going through growing pains with her bad-news boyfriend, and when poor choices begin endangering her life, it takes all three of her parents—Benny, Ali, and Cora—to try to save her. With realistic dialogue and pinpointed emotions, Kiernan paints a persuasive portrait of the bonds between mothers, daughters, and friends in this inspiring, heartbreaking tale. (Apr.)

Drift Sharon Carter Rogers. S&S/Howard, $12.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-4165-6653-3

Rogers's murky, downbeat supernatural thriller introduces Drifters, supernatural beings with cross marks in their eyes who become “tethered,” that is, psychically bound, to people. Neither an angel, a demon, nor a ghost, a Drifter is “something God created in his spare time and then forgot on the fringes of reality.” In Lehigh, W.Va., a Drifter, Boy, becomes tethered to Baby Doll Murphy, a 20-year-old college student, after the apparent suicide of Baby Doll's adoptive father, Charles Franklin Murphy, the head of “the Organization,” an evil outfit that's falling apart. Only Baby Doll can see Boy, who acts as her eerie protector. In particular, Boy helps Baby Doll with her dead father's assistant, Maurits Girard, who covets Charles's ring of power, which Maurits believes Baby Doll has stolen. Rogers (Unpretty) cleverly plays with the deus ex machina theme, but Baby Doll's quest for justice concludes in a depressingly robotic resolution. (Apr.)

Dragon Games Stephen Mertz. Five Star, $25.95 (270p) ISBN 978-1-59414-854-5

In this energetic if, at times, hokey thriller set at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, dastardly Dan Price, a private firm's security coordinator, plots a terrorist attack. Guided by a mysterious dominatrix known as “Mistress,” Dan engineers the murders of Captain Li, the head of a Chinese security team, and Jody Simms, a member of Dan's own team. Alarmed by Jody's shooting death, Taggart “Tag” McCall, a disgraced former Secret Service agent, and his girlfriend, Rose Campbell, who both work under Price, investigate, but a star American gymnast's disappearance soon distracts the pair. Meanwhile, Tag attracts the eagle eye scrutiny of Mei Chen, a field investigator for the Ministry of Internal Security. In the end, Tag, despite the angina he suffers, helps expose more than one surprising villain. Besides creating a likable action hero, Mertz (The Korean Intercept) credibly depicts contemporary China. (Apr.)

Dark Heart of the Night Léonora Miano, trans from the French by Tamsin Black. Univ. of Nebraska, $45 (156p) ISBN 978-0-8032-1567-2; $19.95 paper ISBN 978-0-8032-2823-8

Leaden prose and unimaginative detail weigh down this straightforward story of ritualistic atrocity in a fictionalized Cameroon. As a young woman, Ayané, the daughter of parents ostracized from their impoverished village, returns home for a visit from France just as a rebel army occupies the village. There, in the name of national unity, Isilo, the drug-addled rebel commander, has a village elder murdered, humiliates the men, and presses the children into his army. The atrocity bottoms out when he forces the villagers to eat the flesh of one of their own. Miano's plot has the makings of a rich morality tale, but the surprises are trotted out with the plodding pomp of a coronation. The story's effectiveness is also hindered by a cast of thinly drawn characters whose familiarity fails to add needed depth. Though there are occasional stretches that show Miano as a writer of talent, this first novel is marked more by its good intentions than its literary quality. (Apr.)

The Taste of Penny: Stories Jeff Parker. Dzanc (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 paper (144p) ISBN 978-0-9825204-4-4

Ten dark, suspenseful, and tightly wound stories teeter on the edge of catastrophe and the surreal piecing-back-together of life afterwards. Parker (Ovenman) tosses his characters into some form of peril, whether physical—like the narrator of “Our Cause,” who loses the tip of his tongue—or emotional, like the jingoistic American in “The Boy and the Colgante,” who erects a giant illuminated American flag in front of his house in the heart of “French redneck” Quebec. Parker's characters are disfigured or pitiable—one weathers guilt and emotional torture while paralyzed in a wheelchair, one gnaws at his fingers and attempts to excrete a swallowed penny, one stands in line outside the house where his ex-girlfriend is interviewing potential new boyfriends. Parker's prose is concise and quirky, packed with unexpected turns (“It's like yak butter or meat jelly,” says one character. “You don't know exactly what it is but you know it's there”), and aside from the few moments when Parker gets too clever for his own good (as with the unnecessarily obscure “The Briefcase of the Pregnant Spylady”), these stories are haunting and constantly surprising. (Apr.)

The Killing Edge Heather Graham. Mira, $24.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-7783-2771-4

In this captivating novel of paranormal romantic suspense from bestseller Graham (Deadly Gift), part-time model and psychologist Chloe Marin, a traumatized survivor of what was billed as the “Teen Massacre” at a Florida beach house 10 years earlier, has new reason to be afraid. Colleen Rodriguez, one of the models at Chloe's Miami Beach agency, has gone missing while on a shoot in the Florida Keys. Investigating Colleen's disappearance is PI Luke Cane, whose tortured past makes him a perfect match for Chloe, and the pair soon give in to their mutual attraction. Complementing the sensual love scenes are Chloe's chilling visions of ghosts of the victims of her horrific brush with death as a high school senior. Just when Chloe thinks she can look happily to the future, eerie similarities surface between a crime in New Orleans and the massacre. Romance fans will have no reason to complain. (Apr.)

Symphony in White Adriana Lisboa, trans. from the Portuguese by Sarah Green. Texas Tech Univ., $26.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-89672-671-0

Winner of the 2003 José Saramago Prize, this riveting novel follows two sisters from their childhood in rural Brazil into adulthood as they wrestle with a dark family secret. At 15, Clarice goes to live with a great-aunt in Rio de Janeiro, leaving Maria Ines, 11, behind to stir up trouble. As the years pass, their mother grows ever sicker and their massively abusive father drinks himself into a stupor. When Clarice returns home to marry, Maria Ines moves to Rio, where she ignites the passion of young artist Tomás, though her destiny seems to lie with her beloved second cousin, João Miguel. More than 20 years later, Maria Ines and her grown daughter return to the family home where Clarice now lives and where Tomás rents the farmhand's cottage, and a web of trauma, love, and betrayal waits to be unspooled. Lisboa (The Threads of Memory) deftly weaves together scenes of past and present, sister and sister, mother and daughter, and husband and lover, bringing the story to a satisfying crescendo. (Apr.)

Stress Fracture D.P. Lyle. Medallion (IPG, dist.), $24.95 (394p) ISBN 978-1-6054-2134-6

Lyle's routine serial killer thriller introduces crime scene and evidence analyst Dub Walker, a character indistinguishable from the leads of many other such novels. The Huntsville, Ala., authorities ask Walker for help in the third of a series of murders, the brutal beating death of retired sheriff Mike Savage, who's found in his bedroom with a wrought-iron poker stuck in his abdomen. Walker's being an old friend of Savage makes the inquiry personal. There are no obvious connections between Savage and the earlier victims, a 73-year-old retired aerospace engineer and an activist in the local gay community. Providing Walker with a stereotypical motive for focusing on serial killers—a girlfriend during his med school days vanished without trace at the hands of one—does little to add depth. Macavity Award—winner Lyle is the author of Murder and Mayhem: A Doctor Answers Medical and Forensic Questions for Mystery Writers and other nonfiction works on crime. (Apr.)

Homesick Eshkol Nevo, trans. from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston. Dalkey Archive, $15.95 paper (384p) ISBN 978-1-56478-582-4

In his second book in English translation, popular Israeli novelist Nevo pays tribute to the dynamism of his country, honing in on a handful of neighbors in the town of Mevasseret, just outside Jerusalem, whose Arab inhabitants were displaced in 1948. The novel is narrated from multiple perspectives; each intense personality describes the struggle to embrace the tension of everyday life in Israel and come to terms with “the law of the preservation of sadness.” Noa and Amir are a young couple—he a psychology student and she a photography student—adjusting to life together under the same roof; landlords Moshe and Sima in the apartment next door clash over the appropriate religious upbringing of their children. Across the lot a family mourns the loss of a son to the war in Lebanon, and nearby, the Arab Madmonis family faces prejudice on a daily basis. While death and social isolation hover over many scenes, Nevo masterfully explores the dualities of life in Israel, and delicately draws out the hope and love submerged in the hearts of its citizens. (Apr.)

The Fallen Mark Terry. Oceanview (Midpoint, dist.), $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-933515-75-5

Fans of TV's Jack Bauer who place a premium on action may enjoy Terry's third novel featuring superhuman intelligence operative Derek Stillwater (after The Serpent's Kiss), but those who like plausibility in their thrillers had better look elsewhere. Stillwater is working undercover as a maintenance employee at Cheyenne Hills, a resort near Colorado Springs, Colo., which is hosting the G8 summit. The Fallen Angels, a terrorist group whose members are “all recruited from the highest levels of the world's intelligence agencies,” easily manage to take control of the resort. Stillwater and an attractive food service worker, plucky Maria Sanchez, who proves surprisingly lethal, are the world's best hope for preventing an international disaster. Less than logical prose (e.g., “for reasons we don't completely understand, [the terrorists] have proven to be very resistant to our interrogations”) doesn't help the Die Hard plot line. (Apr.)

All About Eva Deidre Berry. Kensington/Dafina, $14 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-7582-3834-4

Living a VIP lifestyle on someone else's dime leads to eye-popping changes for a former New York beauty editor in Berry's hilarious riches-to-rags-and-redemption saga (after The Next Best Thing). Fashionista Eva Cantrell loves being spoiled rotten by investment banker Donovan J. Dorsey, but a fateful opportunity to revise her thinking occurs when Donovan vanishes after being accused of running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Eva returns to Manhattan from a would-be glamorous Swiss vacation to discover Donovan's mother has sold her possessions, the airline has lost eight of her Vuitton bags, and she's been mass defriended on Facebook. Donovan's shady lawyer offers refuge while her friends Kyle and Tameka try to get her back on her feet, but ultimately Eva realizes she must rescue herself. Eva's juicy journey to self-enlightenment amounts to another fine outing for Berry. (Apr.)

The Logic of the World and Other Fictions Robert Kelly. McPherson & Co., $24 (244p) ISBN 978-0-929701-89-9

An omnibus of short fiction by novelist, poet, and professor Kelly reworks classical myths and playfully original ideas in exquisite, descriptive prose. The mythological Andromeda (“a lovely ailment of the mind that is still very much alive”) is chained to a radiator, baring her breasts to anyone who enters the room in the hope that the legendary Perseus will someday rescue her. The title story finds the famed knight Percival intent on slaying the evil dragon, then backing down when the dragon turns out to be wise, well-spoken, and peace-loving. Kelly finds beauty in the V-formation of flying geese (“Do you have a Form in which you move all the days of your life, until you rest peacefully at night?”); in a meticulous 15-page description of every object in a so-called simple room in a chalet; and in a couple's cozy management of the woman's apartment (“He had his two meters, she had her five meters, and that's what the world is like”). Occasionally abstruse and elliptical, though always thoughtful, these stories showcase Kelly's subtle, erudite wit and enviable craftsmanship. (Apr.)

The People Who Watched Her Pass By Scott Bradfield. Two Dollar Radio (Consortium, dist.), $14.50 paper (148p) ISBN 978-0-9820151-5-5

Though Bradfield's fifth novel has the premise of a thriller or a dark psychological study, it flips reader expectations with deadpan irony. At three years old, Sal Jensen is kidnapped by “the man who fixed the hot water heater.” Known to both Sal and the reader as simply Daddy, he treats her with a respect bordering on reverence, and Sal remains calm and keenly observant. (Significantly, neither Sal's original family nor home are ever mentioned.) When nosy neighbor Mrs. Anderson becomes too intrusive, Daddy soon takes off, in effect leaving Sal in the care of Mrs. Anderson, the first of several “foster families” that are revealed in strung-together and seemingly interchangeable vignettes. Most intriguing among the set pieces is the Laundromat where Sal lives for several months. Though Bradfield's (The History of Luminous Motion) wounded child's eye-view of a homogenized America isn't exactly new, he's an adept prose stylist, and his portrayal of children as symbols instead of individuals is incisive. (Apr.)

Leaving Unknown Kerry Reichs. Avon, $13.99 paper (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-180813-5

In this easy but uneven read, Reichs (The Best Day of Someone Else's Life) spends 150 pages spinning her wheels with quirky, appealing characters before revealing a plot-enriching secret about protagonist Maeve Connelly. Maeve's story begins when she loses her job and vows to stop being flighty and irresponsible (“flitterdegibbety”). With her talking cockatiel in tow, Maeve heads west from the Carolinas, planning to reconnect with a friend who's found success in Hollywood. Her plan is predictably derailed when her car breaks down outside the town of Unknown, Ariz., where she's embraced by the locals and takes on a series of jobs—in a funky boarding house, at a bookstore owned by a handsome children's book author, at the local photo shop—while waiting on auto repairs. Chronic hypochondria leads her to seek out the town's doctor, and before long they begin a comfortable romance. Gentle humor and insight drive the sleepy story until a jarring but momentum-building conflict turns up, pushing the story toward a satisfying conclusion. (Apr.)

Floats Horse-floats or Horse-flows Leslie Scalapino. Starcherone (SPD, dist.), $18 paper (168p) ISBN 978-0-9788811-9-1

Once the reader ceases to wonder how acquainted Scalapino is with English and gives in to this amorphous text's rabbit hole of wordplay, there is much vitality to be found. Scalapino forgoes plot in these digressive segments about, say, poaching animal skins in Tibet, the work of a detective, orphan Indian girls engaged in near-slave labor, and a Calcutta girl taken from the streets and put in an orphanage. War has apparently ravaged the natural order of things, and language has been similarly blown apart, as evidenced in nearly every sentence (“The peppering has transformed in wounds simultaneously causing thick wound-cords of rain yet also sense of squeezed eyes crying heavily...”). Scalapino's apocalyptic landscape has been “blow-torched by soldiers” and brutalized by floods, deforestation, errant cattle, wading horses, and a deconstructed tennis match between Venus and Serena Williams. The chaos displayed is intentionally opaque, chronologically scrambled, and lends itself more to reading aloud than to an arduous reading on the page. (Apr.)

Writing Jane Austen Elizabeth Aston. Touchstone, $15 paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-4165-8787-3

When author Georgina Jackson, stalled after one chapter into her second book, is offered a lucrative opportunity by her agent to finish an incomplete Jane Austen manuscript, she has to face up to the fact that she has never read any Jane Austen. But she needs to have a job to stay in England and she needs money to pay her rent, so she buckles down to learn about one of England's most famous authors and, in the process, learns about herself. A surrounding cast of charming characters (Henry, her landlord; his teenage sister, Maud; and Henry's Polish housekeeper, Anna), all thunderstruck that Georgina has never read Austen, are eager to help her get the job done. Despite her best attempts to procrastinate, Georgina ends up with a real appreciation for Austen and a remarkable novel to call her own. Aston writes with appreciation and respect for Austen and great affection for her own characters. Austen derivatives have become their own genre, but Aston is doing something different. She's written a witty page-turning love letter to Austen's work. (Apr.)

The Founding Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Sourcebooks/Landmark, $14.99 paper (560p) ISBN 978-1-4022-3815-4

Originally published in 1980, the powerful first entry in the Morland Dynasty series introduces 15th-century matriarch Eleanor Morland. As a young woman and ward of the powerful Beaufort family, Eleanor was married off to wealthy Yorkshire commoner Robert Morland, despite her carrying a torch for the charismatic duke of York, Richard. As Eleanor grows comfortable in her marriage and her family expands, she resolves to keep her allegiance to Richard, something that threatens to destroy her family as civil war rips England apart. Readers familiar with the struggles of the War of the Roses will find this a refreshing take on the period and will be drawn to Eleanor, sometimes in spite of themselves. While keeping track of the whole Morland clan can be difficult, fans of historicals will be enthralled, eager to see how the staunchly Yorkist Morlands will survive the Tudor years. (Apr.)

Chocolate Magic Zelda Benjamin. Avalon, $23.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-8034-7752-0

Benjamin returns with this second entry to her Love by Chocolate series (Chocolate Secrets) with a run of the mill romance. Since accomplished chocolatier Chloe Brandeau inherited her aunt's ancient apartment building and its misfit tenants, she's been hemorrhaging money even though her business is doing well. Swirling in the background is her friends' chatter that she needs to find a man, and she also has a very attractive offer on the apartment building from an attractive developer, Ethan Behar. After Ethan's intermediaries return rebuffed but enchanted by Chloe's chocolates, he goes to see what all the fuss is about. Yes, sparks fly, and Ethan must decide between the deal and the dame, and Chloe must decide if she can trust him. While the chocolate bits are cute, the leads are razor-thin (Ethan is perfect to the point of parody), and there's never even a sliver of doubt about how things will play out. There are muted hints of a story that could be original and fun, but Benjamin fails to find it. (Apr.)

Shameless Karen Robards. S&S/Gallery, $25 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7434-1061-8

In the long-awaited conclusion to the Banning Sisters trilogy (after Irresistible), Robards reaffirms her skill for addictive Regency romance. In 1817 London, half-British, half-French Neil Severin plies a dangerous trade as the Angel of Death, an assassin wanted dead by the War Office. Neil meets his heart's Waterloo in fiery Lady Elizabeth “Beth” Banning, the youngest Banning sister, who's already jilted several suitors and caused heated gossip among London's high society. During a ball, Neil breaks into the estate of Beth's sister to discover Beth fending off her outraged, newly rejected fiancé. After rescuing her, the two embark on a romance-stoking adventure involving a band of white slavers who kidnap Beth with plans to auction her off at Trelawney Castle, a hotbed of prostitution. Robards's robust narrative maintains the couple's intense passion even up to its sweet resolution, making this a satisfying read for any fan of the genre. (Apr.)

Rooms James Rubart. B&H, $14.99 paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-8054-4888-7

Debut author and professional marketer Rubart has created a suspenseful tale in the vein of Ted Dekker's House, in which inexplicable happenings take over and direct a character's life. Twenty-five-year-old Micah Taylor receives a mysterious letter from a great-uncle he never knew informing him of a home built for him by said uncle. His interest piqued, Micah, a wealthy software company owner, takes off for the Oregon coast to visit his newly acquired 9,000-square-foot house. What he finds is a shape-shifting, mind-boggling revisiting of his past that jeopardizes his future. With only a handful of letters as his guide, Micah tries to summon up the courage to face old wounds that somehow are connected to various rooms in the house itself. As soon as Taylor opens one door, in floods a sea of memories that he must choose to face or run from. Rubart's work clips along nicely, and his premise is compelling. (Apr.)

Poetry

Shahid Reads His Own Palm Reginald Dwayne Betts. Alice James (Consortium, dist.), $15.95 (80p) ISBN 978-1-882295-81-4

Betts's debut begins and ends with a ghazal. The strictness of this traditional Arabic form (a favorite of the late poet Agha Shahid Ali, to whom the title pays homage) is fitting—both to Betts's restrained though fierce talent, and to his autobiographical subject matter, introduced in the opening lines as “the blues of life in prison.” Confinement and restlessness, understanding and disbelief cycle through these clear, smart, brave, and often painful poems. The recurring motif of a hand on a gun surfaces throughout like a hallucination or a premonition, an image at once terribly real and frighteningly unreal. Sometimes it does the work of blunt narrative: “one night// a trigger tucked under/ my index like a/ spliff.” Elsewhere it veers into the surreal: “everyday the small muscles in my finger threaten to pull/ a trigger, slight and curved like my woman's eyelashes.” The unlikely word “mistletoe,” which appears more than once, exemplifies Betts's talent for surprising and emotionally resonant juxtapositions; he describes “small/ ruined cells where ten thousand// years of sentences/ beckon over heads & hearts,/ silent, a promise, like mistletoe.” Finally, it is not the omnipotence of silence—whether of hope or fear—but the power of writing that is this book's true subject: “Some men never pray at night in prison.// Blame me. Write another poem, a sad psalm./ Shahid, sing for the Gods, right in prison.” (May)

Nox Anne Carson. New Directions, $29.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-8112-1870-2

In order to discuss Carson's latest work—a foldout, Jacob's ladder collage of letters, photographs, and poetry, all housed in a beautiful box—one must first address its resistance to being addressed. Rather, what Carson does (and with furious precision) is impress upon us her grief over a life she cannot recapture—for Carson, this life is her brother's, for whom this collection is both an elegy and a history. What results is a work of astonishing candor, in which Carson manages to define the elegy anew by exploring the lacunae of her brother's life. “It is when you are asking about something,” she writes, “that you realize you have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself.” Carson accomplishes just that, creating a physical record of a life in the form of a book that allows its fragments to carry her brother's absence. To call this art object extraordinary—more than a book, it's a reproduction of a scroll Carson made by hand—would be to understate. What Carson has given us is an act of devotion of such integrity that it carries its grief on its back. (Apr.)

The Irrationalist Suzanne Buffam. Canarium (SPD, dist.), $14 (104p) ISBN 978-0-9822376-3-2

Prosy and conversational, Buffam's poetry is full of heavy thought and dark humor, asking, “can worth be conferred/ on a less than epic urge?” She offers advice, “I say wear a watch if you must/ But don't count on it,” but also writes with the belief that “sooner or later/ All burning houses will be mine.” Buffam writes with the conviction that everything is worth observing, but that everything, good or bad, is basically the same—a moment that happens and is gone. The second section of this second book, “Little Commentaries,” borders on aphorism, with poems of no more than two or three lines, such as “On Valleys”: “To be a valley/ Find a hill/ And lie down at its feet.” Buffam manages to be penetrating and at the same time flippant: “Any idiot can become a genius if she wants it badly enough,” she says, seemingly claiming everything, no matter what the scale, is temporary or cyclical: “Enjoy the view while you can,/ Mt. Everest.” (Apr.)

The Common Man Maurice Manning. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22 (112p) ISBN 978-0-547-24961-2

This fourth book by Yale Younger Poet's Prize—winner Manning is, like his previous books, a unified sequence, though this one takes an autobiographical turn, recounting the Kentucky of the poet's childhood, evoking “the first time I heard the story// I was born to tell, the first I knew/ that I was in the story, too.” The poems are friendly, if also full of sadness, as in “Old Negro Spiritual,” which recalls a lost friend, “his voice, the way/ it sounded, a song inside a sound;// it hurt to hear it then, and it hurts/ that I can't hear it anymore.” While recalling his private world, Manning also reaches out to what everyone has in common: “not a day goes by/ that isn't stabbed with common sorrow,// with death, regret, and loneliness,/ and some of us get a bigger portion// of the little tragedies. That's not/ uncommon, though, now is it?” But there are happy memories too, or sad ones tinged with happiness, as in a story about a donkey named “Clyde.” All set in couplets, the poems have a way of running together, but most readers will find themselves charmed by Manning's smart, companionable voice. (Apr.)

Writing the Silences Richard O. Moore, edited by Brenda Hillman and Paul Ebenkamp. Univ. of California, $50 (118p) ISBN 978-0-520-26243-0; $19.95 paper ISBN 978-0-520-26244-7

Almost 60 years of thoughtful, terse, decidedly modernist verse and prose poetry come together in this first collection. Part of the circle of West Coast radical writers around Kenneth Rexroth during the 1940s and '50s, Moore helped to found Pacifica Radio, then produced hundreds of literary programs for the public TV station KQED. All the while he was writing poetry, much of it tersely humble, both philosophical and political, with cadence reminiscent of George Oppen: “How may I be wrong and/ at random say 'I know'/ as the wars go on?” Moore's prose poems show more emotion, and more detail, letting loose with rage or else with satire: “There are those who will start again and again and alone, and there are those who will wait for War to come in their time.” Advancing years (“baggage/ of old age/ tagged and waiting”), landscape, and grief provide occasional themes, but rarely interrupt Moore's focus on the largest questions of ethics, of thought, questions he addresses in the serious fragments out of which his poems are made. The volume offers obvious parallels to other poets discovered in late life, especially to Landis Everson, who moved in the same Berkeley circles. (Apr.)

Breach Nicole Cooley. Louisiana State, $17.95 (96p) ISBN 978-0-8071-3584-6

Cooley's mother and father, who lived in New Orleans, proved unable or unwilling to evacuate when Hurricane Katrina hit. They and their house survived, but the trauma—to Cooley's family and to her region—inspired the poet to tour the devastation in 2006. Her third book is the memorable result: “I came home to see/ the city grieving,” she declares on the first page; “The city drained then hacked apart.” Highly wrought poems (pantouns, and even a sestina) end up outnumbered and overshadowed by pages that simply accumulate startling data: “a torn Blue Roof unspooled yellow caution tape/ sheetrock black rot.” Trying to “write the poem that reveals the city,/ that reveals// what's inside, a house to house search,” Cooley (Resurrection) does not always make compelling phrases, but the pictures she draws are hard to forget. The last segment and the least personal, reacting to what Cooley saw in Mississippi and Alabama, may be the strongest: she not only describes, concisely, her travels, but also gives perverse and angry voice at last to the human impulse toward destruction, toward self-frustration and self-defeat: “Listen, the bird-foot delta is an artifact/ of engineering, so let's break it, let's wash it inland.” (Apr.)

Things That No Longer Delight Me Leslie C. Chang. Fordham Univ., $45 (64p) ISBN 978-0-8232-3199-7; $19 paper ISBN 978-0-8232-3200-0

“I will always be fascinated,” Chang writes, “by details from my grandmother's childhood.” The verse and fragmentary prose of this debut describe her family's life in prerevolutionary mainland China and in Hong Kong. Many short poems react to heirlooms, to oral traditions, and photographs; in a concluding sequence set in the present day, the poet shadows her mother and grandmother “returning/ to China... ravenous, as if poised/ on a threshold,” each street stall “a Kodachrome/ from childhood.” Chang explores her heritage, and she reimagines lives with devotion and loyalty. One immigrant woman, presumably her grandmother, plays “countless games of solitaire... since your husband's death.” Chang also draws on international literary sources: the title poem takes its list form from the Japanese memoirist and courtesan Sei Shonagon, and one especially vivid page derives its form from Eugenio Montale. An allegorical sequence entitled “Serindia” (i.e., roughly, northwestern China) reaches for a spare elegance that reclaims for Asian-Americans the cadence of Ezra Pound's famous Cathay: “Having left my father's court,/ I live in the nomads' camp. I wear fur and felt.” (Apr.)

The Best of It: New and Selected Poems Kay Ryan. Grove, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8021-1914-8

Ryan, the current U.S. poet laureate, may well be the oddest and wisest poet to hold that prestigious post. Her tiny, skinny poems pack a punch unlike anything else in contemporary poetry, though not unlike haiku, if haiku could be cut with a dash of Groucho Marx. This, her first retrospective volume, which also contains a book's worth of new poems, is a much-needed introduction to the work of one of our best and most accessible poets. She asks the necessary questions hiding just beneath the obvious ones: “Why isn't it all/ more marked,/ why isn't every wall/ graffitied, every park tree/ stripped/... / Not why people are; why not more violent?” Odd rhymes draw crystal clear relations between disparate thoughts we never realized had always gone together: “As/ though our garden/ could be one bean/ and we'd rejoice if/ it flourishes, as/ though one bean/ could nourish us.” Pithy poems manage to encapsulate far more than their few words should be able to hold, as in “Bitter Pill,” a new poem: “A bitter pill/ doesn't need/ to be swallowed/ to work. Just/ reading your name/ on the bottle/ does the trick.” Sassy, smart, and deep as they are hilarious, Ryan's poems are among the best. (Mar.)

All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems Charles Bernstein. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26 (298p) ISBN 978-0-374-10344-6

This gathering of 30 years worth of work by the prominent L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet and essayist offers a rigorous critique of the art of poetry itself, which means, among other things, a thorough investigation of language and the mind. Varied voices and genres are at play, from a colloquial letter of complaint to the manager of a Manhattan subway station to a fragmentary meditation on the forces that underlie the formation of knowledge. Bernstein's attention to the uncertainty surrounding the self as it purports to exist in poetry—“its virtual (or ventriloquized)/ anonymity—opens fresh pathways toward thinking through Rimbaud's dictum that “I is another.” In addition to philosophical depth—which somehow even lurks beneath statements like “There is nothing/ in this poem/ that is in any/ way difficult/ to understand”—a razor-sharp wit ties the book together: “You can't/ watch ice sports with the lights on!” These exhilarating, challenging poems raise countless essential questions about the form and function of poetry. (Mar.)

The Nervous Filaments David Dodd Lee. Four Way (UPNE, dist.), $15.95 (96p) ISBN 978-1-884800-05-4

Lee's fourth book is hard to interpret, but hard to ignore: “a priest shouldn't have a tattoo of Darth Vader,” the title poem remarks, before depicting “little silver penguins holding trays.” Exclamatory, vivid, bizarre, and sometimes redolent of the surrealists, Lee's single-line stanzas and sentence fragments suggest a life impossible to sustain, a set of emotions and recollections unmoored from any life story that might serve as guide: “They shredded the moon again she said about the falling snow.” Lee remains conscious of region and locale (“just think of the Midwest/ as a giant Nativity Scene”): yet his ambitions, and his targets, seem to take in almost everything he can see. A style that some readers find disorienting will seem to others all too familiar; it's not clear whether his disorienting style is really anything new. And yet Lee's sharp way with single images, single sentences, almost convulsively fleeting visions, should not be denied. (Mar.)

Unsound Jennifer Martenson. Burning Deck, (SPD, dist.), $14 paper (64p) ISBN 978-1-936194-01-8

Concise, extraordinarily thoughtful, often challenging, and sometimes sexy, Martenson's debut could find admirers far beyond the East Coast avant-garde that seems its natural home. She's certainly a thinker, and her strongest sentences ask how thoughts—her own, but also society's stereotypes—at once create and interfere with apparently natural, visceral pleasure and pain: even “the unraveled edge of the immediate” may not survive “the way formality/ relieves one of the strenuous/ details of self.” Honesty and desire (especially lesbian desire) are hard to consider apart from received ideas, but impossible to portray accurately within them: often abstract, sometimes typographically odd, the couplets and prose poems strain against the dilemma they portray, while never failing (once you look hard) to make sense. “Was I/ holding your hand or merely an opinion?” she asks, and alert readers will answer “both.” Some of her best effects build through several pages, slowly, as her philosophical language sinks in; there are easy-to-reprint short pieces, too—”Intimate Conversations” begins as the poet skips stones across a pond, and ends “The contours too complex, the structure/ tenuous, like inner feelings,/ or the sway of tones enveloping a mood.” (Feb.)

Child of Nature Luljeta Lleshanaku, trans. from the Albanian by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi. New Directions, $13.95 (112p) ISBN 978-0-8112-1847-4

“Two people form a habit,” writes Lleshanaku; “Three people make a story”: this harshly memorable collection (her second in English translation) overflows with stories, incidents of suffering, worry, and hardship related in verse fragments, in mysterious details, in horrifying or revealing asides. Albania, Lleshanaku's native land, suffered through decades of poverty under a Stalinist dictatorship, then suffered again in the chaos and uneven development that came after 1989. Her tableaux of exhausted villagers, smuggled books, and constant frustration reflect her nation, caught between the Third World and the First: village eccentrics, exhausted mothers, and lost children stroll and scatter through her bedraggled gardens, looking up for airplanes overhead. The poems also reflect her self-critical, alert, and skeptical personality. “Monday feels like an odd shoe/ its other chewed by the dog tied at the gate,” one seven-part long poem begins; within her childhood memories, “Broken toys were my playthings.” In one of many poems about Albanian families trapped in collapsing small towns, a mountain in the distance offers eternal, impossible promises of better lives, while the citizens work themselves to death: “The electrocardiogram of sweat dried in the body/ spreads from shirt to shirt/ contagious as a flame.” (Feb.)

Mystery

Final Target Steven Gore. Poisoned Pen, $24.95 (428p) ISBN 978-1-59058-749-2

Getting shot during his morning jog through San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights neighborhood may be one of attorney Jack Burch's lesser problems, as his best friend, cop-turned-PI Graham Gage, swiftly discovers in Gore's promising, Bourne-again debut. Among other problems Burch faces while he remains in intensive care are a violent robbery at his law office; pressure from Russian and Ukrainian gangsters steamed about a natural gas deal he just brokered; and rumors he might be the focus of a probe into fraud at a failed Silicon Valley defense contractor, SatTek. Within days, Gage and his gumshoes are chasing leads on three continents—and finding a toxic web of corruption, treachery, and dead ends. Gore, a former Bay Area private investigator, knows how to tell a compelling story, though the overly convoluted plot and uneven characterizations undercut the suspense toward the end. (May)

Orange County Noir Edited by Gary Phillips. Akashic, $15.95 paper (300p) ISBN 978-1-936070-03-9

“There's a dark side to most places,” even California's sunny Orange County, Edgar-winner T. Jefferson Parker observes in his foreword to this outstanding entry in Akashic's noir series, one of the stronger of the all-original anthologies. The crisp, often seductive prose of the 14 contributors, most of them relatively unknown, is a tribute to the critical judgment of the editor, whose own assured story, “The Performer,” involves a heist at a dog food factory that ends with more than one surprise. Robert Ward, a writer-producer for such TV shows as Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice, offers some wicked twists in “Black Star Canyon,” in which a fictional alter ego gets bounced from the program he created. Gordon McAlpine uses his narrator's job as a security officer at Disneyland in “The Happiest Place” as an effective catalyst for a classic noir plot of betrayal. Other notable tales include Susan Straight's “Bee Canyon” and Dick Lochte's “The Movie Game.” (Apr.)

The Black Cat: A Richard Jury Mystery Martha Grimes. Viking, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-670-02160-4

At the start of bestseller Grimes's muddled 22nd Richard Jury mystery (after Dust), the body of an unidentified woman, who reminds Jury of a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, lies in a mortuary in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Shot outside the Black Cat, a local pub, the victim was wearing expensive clothes, decorous yet sexy. The Thames Valley police wonder why Jury, a Scotland Yard superintendent, is intruding on their turf. The victim proves to have been a professional escort, the only witness to her murder the pub's black cat. Cats and dogs can share their thoughts, mostly mundane, with one another, but, alas, not with humans. More escorts get killed. Unresolved cases from Dust and its predecessor, Old Wine Shades, complicate the plot to little purpose. Off-kilter details jar. No London copper would ask a London cabbie if the cabbie knows a particular street. This subpar effort from one of mystery's major stars will appeal mainly to fans of the talking animal subgenre. 8-city author tour.(Apr.)

One Man's Paradise Douglas Corleone. Minotaur, $24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-61158-3

Perry Mason fans will best appreciate Corleone's undistinguished debut, the winner of the 2009 Minotaur Books/MWA First Crime Novel Award. Manhattan defense lawyer Kevin Corvelli blames himself for failing a client who was killed in prison after being wrongfully convicted. In an effort to make a new start, the attorney relocates to Hawaii, where, despite his resolve to stay out of the media spotlight, he soon lands another high-profile client. Joseph Ginaforte, a law student, stands accused of bludgeoning to death his ex-girlfriend, Shannon Douglas, on Waikiki Beach. Though the evidence against Ginaforte is overwhelming, Corvelli determinedly digs for a basis to establish reasonable doubt with the jury. In his spare time, Corvelli falls for a hot bartender. A convenient chance discovery revealing Douglas's killer won't leave readers impressed by the ingenuity of either the investigator or his creator. (Apr.)

A Question of Motive Roderic Jeffries. Severn, $27.95 (176p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6857-2

Last seen in 2009's Sun, Sea, and Murder, Mallorcan Insp. Enrique Alvarez reluctantly investigates Englishman Robin Gill's fatal fall from a high rock in this lackluster entry in Jeffries's long-running series. A postmortem suggests murder rather than suicide or accident, which means an investigation that will interfere with Alvarez's preferred routine of food, drink, and rest. It also means plenty of phone contact with his boss, Superior Chief Salas, and the inevitable insults, exhortations, and misunderstandings that Salas fires at him. Alvarez interviews Gill's niece, Mary Farren, who lived with the victim, and is smitten by her. Gill's household servants, friends, and financial dealings give Alvarez a list of suspects who might have a motive. Despite Salas's insistence that Farren is the chief suspect, Alvarez chooses to eliminate other, unlikely suspects first, which only serves to make Farren stand out more. Series fans will be left thinking it may be time for Alvarez to retire. (Apr.)

Diamonds for the Dead Alan Orloff. Midnight Ink (www.midnightinkbooks.com), $14.95 paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-7387-1948-1

At the start of Orloff's thought-provoking debut, Josh Handleman, who's separated from his wife in San Francisco, returns home to Reston, Va., to take care of his late father's estate. Josh is shocked to learn that not only was his father, Abe, a secret multimillionaire who generously helped many charities, in particular the Reston Hebrew Home, but the fatal fall Abe took might not have been accidental. He also discovers that Abe collected diamonds, which have vanished, as well as a boarder still in the house—Kassian, a scruffy, elderly Russian overly fond of vodka. Josh is consumed with curiosity after his father's best friend, Lev Yurishenko, accuses Kassian of killing Abe. Josh's hunt for the missing diamonds and a possible killer leads to more disturbing revelations as well as some emotional healing courtesy of the sister of an old high school classmate. Likable characters more than compensate for some slow pacing. (Apr.)

A Witch in Time Madelyn Alt. Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-425-23261-3

Alt is in no hurry to get to the bloodshed in her mild sixth paranormal mystery featuring Stony Mill, Ind., psychic empath Maggie O'Neil, Alt's first in hardcover (after 2009's Where There's a Witch). When Maggie's sister, Melanie, goes into labor, Maggie rushes to the hospital. En route to the delivery floor, Maggie gets stuck in an elevator, where she overhears an ominous conversation between two men (“It's in the bag. No way she'll ever suspect. Not until it's too late”). Maggie later breaks her foot after missing a step on the hospital stairway, offering an opportunity for her hunky wizard boyfriend, Marcus Quinn, to invite her to stay with him while she mends. Plenty of make-out scenes pass between Maggie and Marcus before a corpse turns up. The explanation for the suggestive dialogue she heard will strike many as a letdown. Those expecting only a simple puzzle tacked on to the heroine's continuing quest for romantic fulfillment will be satisfied. (Apr.)

Hook, Line & Sinister Edited by T. Jefferson Parker. Countryman, $23.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-88150-866-6

Fishing can be murder both literally and figuratively, as shown in this rich string of 16 original stories caught and displayed by bestseller Parker. Not all are trophy worthy, but most are keepers, like “Mr. Brody's Trout” by the late William G. Tapply, in which bait shop owner Stoney Calhoun guides an elderly fisherman on a monthlong quest for “a ten-pound native Maine brook trout.” Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak solves a missing person case and metes out poetic justice in her Alaskan village in “Cherchez La Femme.” In John Lescroart's clever “Unsnaggable,” a Yellowstone fishing trip offers a spouse the chance to exit a marriage. Three brief fishing lessons from a hit man teach a suicidal man a life lesson in Brian M. Wiprud's provocative “Granite Hat.” Other contributors include Michael Connelly, Ridley Pearson, C.J. Box, and James W. Hall. This solid anthology demonstrates that a passion for fishing and a passion for writing can hook a reader and reel him in. (Apr.)

Dirty Laundry: A Robyn Kelly Mystery Liz Osborne. Five Star, $25.95 (264p) ISBN 978-1-59414-857-6

Osborne's delightful second Robyn Kelly whodunit (after 2007's Masquerade) provides an entertaining look at hospital life. Robyn, the manager of the patient relations department for a suburban Seattle, Wash., hospital, has the misfortune to find a difficult patient, Jason Hilliard, dead in his bed with IV tubing knotted around his neck. Robyn runs for help, but by the time she and others return, the tubing around Jason's neck is gone. Since her local police detective friend, Matthew Pierce, has thrown out his back, it's up to Robyn to delve into the evidence that Matthew's boss, Captain Roberts, is fumbling over for clues to the killer. Meanwhile, the 40-year-old widow must also deal with hostile patients, unhappy employees, and myriad other responsibilities. A homeless man proves to be an unexpected rescuer and helps bring this clean-as-a-whistle cozy to a perfect conclusion. (Apr.)

SF/Fantasy/Horror

He Walked Among Us Norman Spinrad. Tor, $27.99 (544p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2584-6

Spinrad's shrill messianic novel reaches the U.S. eight years after its first publication in French. Texas Jimmy Balaban is convinced that stand-up comedian Ralf, a self-proclaimed refugee from a horrific world of tomorrow, could be a megastar. Jimmy drafts jaded SF writer Dexter Lambkin and New Age guru Amanda Robin to effect this transformation. Amanda eagerly accepts Ralf at face value, and cynical Dexter is surprised to find himself also falling under Ralf's spell even as the new role takes a terrible toll on the comedian. Spinrad alternates between revulsion at overweight SF fans, whom Dexter shamelessly manipulates for “egoboo pussy” and joke fodder, and an unshakable conviction that these “Monkey People” can change the world if they just apply themselves. Even Spinrad's venerable name won't sell this book to the readers he so palpably despises, leaving it without an audience. (Apr.)

Succubus Shadows Richelle Mead. Kensington, $15 paper (292p) ISBN 978-0-7582-3200-7

Something ominous is tracking reluctant succubus Georgina Kincaid through her effervescent fifth urban fantasy adventure (after 2009's Succubus Heat). An elusive entity that Georgina can't name or fight invades her thoughts and nearly persuades her to kill herself. Georgina's boss, archdemon Jerome, and her angel friend Carter can't even detect the phenomenon, much less figure out how to stop it. Georgina's ex-boyfriend, Seth, is about to marry her friend Maddie, and what with pining after Seth, trying to protect him from another succubus, and being one of Maddie's bridesmaids, Georgia finds that suicide is starting to sound very tempting. Mead's lighthearted romp is plenty of fun on the surface; Georgina's struggles with the gray areas between good and evil provide a powerful undercurrent. (Apr.)

When Good Wishes Go Bad Mindy Klasky. Mira, $13.95 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-7783-2821-6

Klasky continues her adorable As You Wish series with this nearly cinematic romantic comedy. When Rebecca Morris's boyfriend runs off with all her personal funds as well as millions of dollars from their theater group's endowment, her friend Kira comforts her with a box of old costumes and a brass lamp that houses a genie. Becca's wish for a new condo lands her next door to playwright Ryan Thompson, whose latest play conveniently fills a gap in the theater's schedule. Ryan and Becca's working and romantic relationships are challenged by an obnoxious show sponsor, Ryan's guerrilla gardening mother, and mischievous gender-shifting genie Teel (familiar from 2009's How Not to Make a Wish). With broadly comic characters, even pacing, and a charming romance, this cozy evening's read will leave readers smiling. (Apr.)

Bitter Seeds Ian Tregillis. Tor, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2150-3

Debut novelist Tregillis breathes new life into alternate military history with this fun take on WWII. In this version of 1939 Germany, the insane Dr. von Westarp has given WWI orphans superpowers, such as fire-starting, intangibility, and invisibility. As they use their abilities to aid German expansion, young mutant Klaus starts to suspect that he and the other soldiers are being manipulated by his precognitive sister, Gretel. Meanwhile, British secret agent Raybould Marsh recruits his old college buddy, magic-wielding aristocrat Will Beauclerk, to the British cause. Tregillis has trouble fleshing out characters and is overly fond of worn-out plot devices—a disastrous raid survived only by the protagonists, an urchin destined for greatness—but the action sequences are exciting and intense, and the clash of magic and (mad) science meshes perfectly with the tumultuous setting. (Apr.)

Saltation Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Baen, $24 (336p) ISBN 978-1-4391-3345-3

Blazing into their 12th Liaden novel, Lee and Miller prove they can still deliver elegant variations on the theme in this coming-of-age story, a sequel to 2009's Fledgling. Theo Waitley, half-Terran daughter of a Liaden pilot, escapes her stifling homeworld to attend pilot school, where her fierce attitude and extraordinary competence earn her enemies and friends. When her boyfriend's keepsake makes them both a target for galactic-level bad guys, Theo must head to Liad to ask for help from the leader of her father's clan. The story will not disappoint longtime Lee and Miller fans, but readers don't need to know the series to understand or care about the characters, who will also appeal to fans of Elizabeth Moon's Kylara Vatta and other strong young adult heroines. (Apr.)

Pinion Jay Lake. Tor, $26.99 (448p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2186-2

Political conflicts and philosophical arguments find closure at last in this splendidly baroque whirl of geomancy and Victorian clockwork. Young Paolina Barthes, the gear-minded prodigy who became a target for the empire-building ambitions of rival governments in 2009's Escapement, is on the run, heading south over the Wall that God built to divide the hemispheres and keep the Earth's gear turning through the heavens. As spies and ancient secret societies scramble to find her, Paolina struggles to learn how to control her world-shaking abilities, while her heart pulls her toward Boaz, a golemlike man of brass. Lake wields big themes—magic and religion versus science, free will, colonialism, and a bit of romance—with surprising elegance, and readers will enjoy cherishing the characters and pondering the concepts of this “clockpunk” world. (Apr.)

Jared Sarah McCarty. Berkley Sensation, $15 paper (384p) ISBN 978-0-425-23240-8

Sparks fly and opposites attract when vampires meet in McCarty's second novel of four undead brothers caught up in a war among immortals. When Jared Johnson rescues Raisa, a rare female vampire, from a marauding pack of Sanctuary vamps, he treats her more as a treasure to protect than as a woman to woo. Over time, her irritation and frustration with the arrogant alpha male rancher deepens inexplicably into attraction and mutual desire, but Raisa's secrets could tear their relationship apart and bring down disaster on Jared and his family if the lovers aren't careful. The character-driven story lacks any real sense of place, and the well-written erotic interludes come at the expense of plot resolution, character depth, and suspension of disbelief. (Apr.)

Silver Borne Patricia Briggs. Ace, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-441-01819-2

Coyote-shifting garage mechanic Mercedes Thompson, now mated to Adam, the Alpha of the local werewolf pack, embarks on her exciting fifth dark fantasy adventure (after 2009's bestselling Bone Crossed). Three subplots—Mercy's attempt to return a magical book to a fae friend-of-a-friend, her difficulties integrating into Adam's pack, and her roommate Samuel's misery over being a lone Alpha—come together seamlessly, and excitement builds as Mercy and her loved ones go through ever more intense experiences, including a house fire, a suicide attempt, a death sentence, and a reunion between long-ago loves. Briggs creates both well-rounded characters and a complex mythology, resulting in a rich read that's far more than a series of action adventures strung together. Fans of the series will be thrilled; new readers should start at the beginning or risk drowning in the immersive world-building. 6-city author tour. (Apr.)

Mass Market

Glazed Murder Jessica Beck. St. Martin's Minotaur, $7.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-94610-4

This delicious new mystery/recipe series will give readers some serious doughnut cravings. When a dead body is unceremoniously dumped in front of her smalltown doughnut shop in the wee hours of the morning, Suzanne Hart knows it's not going to be an ordinary day. The deceased is Patrick Blaine, a friend and loyal customer. Against advice from her overprotective mother and hunky state police investigator Jake Bishop, Suzanne decides to try to track down Patrick's killer, but her investigation makes her a target. Beck turns a somewhat predictable plot into a light, fun read filled with entertaining characters—Suzanne's two-timing ex-husband, her wacky best friend, and an ex-cop pal who gives her the inside scoop—who have the potential to transcend the cozy mystery formula in future volumes. (Apr.)

Flirting with Forever Gwyn Cready. Pocket, $7.99 (372p) ISBN 978-1-4391-0724-9

This entertaining and lively time-travel romance opens with a bewildering mass of details involving time-jump accountants, incongruity spikes, and the afterlife, but the introduction of sexy art historian Campbell Stratford gets the story moving smoothly. When Cam tumbles through time and finds herself in the late 17th century, a time agent is dispatched to stop her from using artist Peter Lely as a source for scandalous biographies of his contemporaries. Cready (Seducing Mr. Darcy) includes compelling details about art and painting as Peter explains how to paint a leaf and later, following Cam back to her own time, reverently explores a book of 20th-century artworks. As Peter struggles with memories of his dead wife—whom Cam greatly resembles—and Cam's cheating ex-boyfriend breaks her heart again, their passion and quarrels combine in a compelling romance that will leave readers breathless. (Apr.)

Demonkeepers Jessica Andersen. Signet Eclipse, $7.99 (480p) ISBN 978-0-451-22957-1

In this introspective fourth Final Prophecy paranormal (after 2009's Skykeepers), Andersen ramps up the danger. Ex-therapist Jade saw too many bad relationships to believe in love, but the Nightkeepers, who stand between humankind and the apocalypse, need a magic-wielding prophet, and Jade's friend Lucius, the human who fulfilled the prophet's sacrifice, is unable to reach the magic on his own. Jade agrees to try using sex magic to open up his abilities, but when that fails, they realize they must commit to an emotional connection as well. The resulting tale mixes action and elements of Mayan myth—from a voyage to the underworld to a fantastic high-stakes ball game—with soul-searching, lust, and romance. Jade's inner journey is particularly engaging, and while the background makes more sense to returning fans, even new readers will find plenty to latch on to. (Apr.)

Hell Fire Ann Aguirre. Roc, $6.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-451-46324-1

This riveting sequel to 2009's Blue Diablo blends conspiracy theories and magic. Corine Solomon may seem flighty, but nothing will dissuade her from solving the mystery of her mother's death. That means a trip back home to Kilmer, Ga., with her old flame, Chance, who hopes to rekindle their former relationship. It's clear from the start that something is rotten in the town of Kilmer, which is shadowed by a dark spot on the astral plane. Chance's supernatural luck is on the blink, while Corine's psychic powers are growing uncontrollably. Luckily, Corine's mentor and sometime love interest, empath Jesse Saldana, and teen necromancer Shannon are more than willing to help uncover the town's secrets. Full of well-drawn characters, a nearly tangible setting, and the threat of death around every corner, this spine-chilling paranormal mystery is sure to keep readers turning pages—and glancing over their shoulders. (Apr.)

Comics

Bokurano Ours, Vol. 1 Mohiro Kitoh. Viz, $12.99 paper (200p) ISBN 978-1-4215-3361-2

This new series from Mohiro Kitoh (Shadow Star) offers a fresh and unsettling take on the giant robot genre with not one but 15 young protagonists collectively piloting a giant robot. One day on a beach hike at summer science class, a group of junior high kids stumble upon a strange man in a cave filled with computers. The man effortlessly coerces the teens into playing an ominous “game” defending the Earth from gigantic aliens in an equally enormous robot. Although most of the children in the story feel safe, Kitoh effectively establishes a mood of terrifying dread in the reader. Kitoh's teens are in mortal danger and eerily unaware of the scope of their predicament—at least until one them accidentally dies. Kitoh's stark artwork is appealing. The teens pilot the robot from a voidlike cockpit populated with 15 floating chairs, each one drawn to reflect one protagonist's personality. The bare cockpit complements the empty space around the alien-looking robot “Zearth” as he stands between the sea and the sky. The teens are instructed by an untrustworthy floating robot teddy bear with sharp, pointy teeth. The series originally ran in the alternative manga magazine IKKI, and as such, it has a definite alternative comics appeal. (Feb.)

Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s Edited by Michael Dowers. Fantagraphics, $24.99 (887p) ISBN 978-1-60699-313-2

In his introduction to this fascinating treasure trove of an anthology, Dower describes drawing, folding, and stapling his first minicomic back in 1982. Many others were doing the same and their combined efforts added up to a do-it-yourself scene in which “obsessed nutballs” drew like crazy and made trips to the copy shops to get their work out there before the Web. In addition to work by greats like Artie Romero, Rick Geary, and Mary Fleener, and 50 or so others, the book serves as the history of a movement. The Newave Manifesto, written by Clay Geerdes in 1983 starts things off, and introductions and interviews preceding each creator's work puts it in context, while the list of artist Web sites at the end gives readers much more to discover. Some highlights include Dada Gumbo, in which a series of artists riff on the idea of dada; the 1993 comix ode to Louise Brooks by Molly Keily, whose black-and-white drawings offer seductive closeups of the actress's iconic eyes and hairstyle; and Brad Foster's Eternal Conflict, in which a man tries to get through dinner in clear line drawings that coolly present his absurdist difficulties. (Feb.)

Other Lives Peter Bagge. DC/Vertigo, $29.99 (136p) ISBN 978-1-4012-1902-4

Bagge (Hate) again sets his sights on aspects of contemporary human dysfunction, this time focusing on a cast of characters who each hide behind fabricated identities. “Vader Ryderbeck”—né Vladimir Rostov—is a journalist who cannot move past his awkward teenage years and wallows in unwarranted self-loathing while coping with what remains of his Russian immigrant family. Vladimir encounters a scruffy conspiracy theorist who claims to work for the CIA, and can't shake the feeling that he's met the guy before. Upon deciding to interview the conspiracy nut, Vladimir sets in motion an escalating series of events involving himself, the alleged CIA operative, his old friend Woodrow (who is now an online gaming addict) and his live-in girlfriend, Ivy, who resorts to an online fantasy gaming persona for fulfillment when Vladimir fails to make good on his feeble marriage proposal. To say more would give away the surprises Bagge has in store for those who approach this story cold; while not as funny as some of his previous works more based on social commentary, this is prime Bagge that will surprise readers with its artistic maturity and a plot that is in no way predictable. (Apr.)