Fiction Book Reviews: 2/1/2010
Reviews of New Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction and Comics

Feb 01, 2010

Backseat Saints Joshilyn Jackson. Grand Central, $24.99 (324p) ISBN 978-0-446-58234-6

Readers willing to stick through a slow beginning will be rewarded in Jackson's eventually riveting fourth novel (after The Girl Who Stopped Swimming). When abused Rose Grandee isn't getting up the nerve to do something about her violent husband, Thom, she reminisces about high school sweetheart Jim Beverly, who once promised to kill Rose's alcoholic father. Rose is also consumed with memories of her mother, who abandoned her when she was a little girl. During what seems like a chance meeting, Rose receives a tarot card reading and is told she'll have to choose between her husband's life and her own, though Rose later realizes, conveniently for the plot, that the card reader is her estranged mother. Egged on by the prophecy, Rose searches out Jim and plans on manipulating him into killing Thom, leading to a tense final section that crescendos with an ending appropriate for a woman with so much fight in her. Though Jackson does a good job conveying Rose's uncertainty and ambivalence, the initial sounding of these themes comes off as redundant and overly long; later, Jackson's writing becomes kinetic, reflecting her heroine's metamorphosis. (June)

Dear Money Martha McPhee. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25 (352p) ISBN 978-0-15-101165-0

A novelist facing midlist obscurity trades her copy of Microsoft Word for a Bloomberg terminal in McPhee's uninspired latest. India Palmer, 38, married, mother of two, and a critical but not commercial success as a writer, has built her life around art but is distracted by the Wall Street wealth of her best friends, Emma and Will, even as they long for her life. When a hedge fund trader—appropriately named Win—arrives with a Faustian bargain, betting he can transform India into a money-making machine, she takes the bait. The transformation is not as unbelievable as it is boring; market money may be exciting, but the making of it is about as lively as dental school. McPhee (L'America) offers a few intriguing finance tidbits, but mostly this is a middling tweak of a familiar story, though a fitting one for these times of shattered money dreams. (June)

Ilustrado Miguel Syjuco. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0-374-17478-1

Winner of the 2008 Man Asian Prize before it was even published, this dizzying and ambitious novel marks an auspicious start to Syjuco's career. The apparent suicide of famous, down-on-his-luck Filipino author Crispin Salvador sends narrator Miguel Syjuco home to the Philippines to come to terms with the death of his literary mentor, research a biography he plans to write about him, and find the author's lost manuscript. With flair and grace, Syjuco makes this premise bear much weight: the multigenerational saga of Salvador's life, a history of the postwar Philippines, questions of literary ambitions and achievement, and the narrator's own coming-of-age story. The expansive scope is tightly structured as a series of fragments: excerpts of Salvador's works, found documents, Miguel's narration of his return to the Philippines, blogs about contemporary terrorist incidents in Manila, and even a series of jokes that tell the story of a Filipino immigrant to America. Though murky at times, this imaginative first novel shows considerable ingenuity in binding its divergent threads into a satisfying, meaningful story. (May)

The Frozen Rabbi Steve Stern. Algonquin, $24.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-56512-619-0

A family of long-suffering eastern European Jews protects a frozen rabbi from pogroms, revolution, and racketeers in this intermittently fabulous multigenerational saga. Stern (The Angel of Forgetfulness) uses two narrative threads, one beginning in 1999 when 15-year-old Bernie Karp discovers a body in his family's freezer, the other beginning in 1889 when the rabbi is frozen during a winter storm. With a ferocious grasp of history and Yiddish humor, Stern follows the family of misfits and geniuses as they flee the Lodz ghetto in Poland with their icy cargo, eventually making their way to New York, Palestine, and Memphis, where, in 1999, the rabbi reawakens. Unfortunately, the brilliant Chagall-like eye Stern turns toward the first half of the 20th century is bleary when it glances at the recent past, in which the story concerns itself more with Bernie's inability to lose his virginity and the newly thawed holy man's lecherous and tedious determination to enjoy 1999, which he considers to be heaven on earth. Stern ties both narratives together neatly, but the remarkable characters who cart the frozen rabbi through such vividly realized hells on earth deserve a bolder legacy than the banal one they get. (May)

The Slap Christos Tsiolkas. Penguin, $15 paper (480p) ISBN 978-0-14-311714-8

This astute exploration of suburban aspirations and failings, winner of the Commonwealth Prize and Tsiolkas's first novel to be published in the U.S., opens at a barbecue in Melbourne, Australia, where nearly two dozen characters are introduced in the opening vignette. The reader barely has time to absorb their names and relationships before the pivotal event occurs: a man, Harry, slaps a bratty child who is threatening his son. At the center of the altercation are Hector, Harry's cousin, and Hector's wife, Aisha, who is friends with Rosie, the mother of the boy who's been slapped. When Rosie and her alcoholic husband press charges, longstanding relationships threaten to fall apart. Told from eight perspectives, each of which gets a novella-like chapter, the novel vividly demonstrates the wide-ranging effects of a single moment's rash decision on characters as varied as Harry's 71-year-old uncle and a high school student coming to terms with his sexuality. Beyond simply igniting the plot, the fateful slap draws attention to generational and philosophical differences regarding family life and the complex political, social, and ethnic milieu of contemporary Australia. (May)

Something Red Jennifer Gilmore. Scribner, $25 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4165-7170-4

Gilmore's second novel (after Golden Country) takes an extended documentary look at divided loyalties within a suburban Washington, D.C., family caught in the cultural and political mayhem of late-1970s America. With the country seized by an energy crisis, a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provoking an American wheat embargo, and a boycott against the Winter Olympics, Dennis Goldstein's job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture is imperiled, as is the business of his New Agey caterer wife, Sharon. Meanwhile, son Benjamin sets off to college, eager to emulate the activism of his grandparents' 1930s generation, and humorless 16-year-old daughter Vanessa dives into punk rock and bulimia. Gilmore excavates every thought process from each: Sharon recognizes that “her faith in the power to make changes in the world felt like a fluid that had been drained from her.” Dennis, on the other hand, is the son of Russian Jewish émigrés for whom the deaths of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg proved the defining, shameful moment of their generation, and he becomes unwittingly tangled in his mother's Old World perfidy. Gilmore relentlessly chronicles these hapless characters' collective flight from numbness with verve. (Apr.)

The Executor Jesse Kellerman. Putnam, $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-399-15647-2

At the start of this outstanding novel of psychological suspense, Kellerman's fourth (after The Genius), 30-year-old philosophy grad student Joseph Geist finds himself at loose ends after being suspended from Harvard (for failing to do any work) and breaking up with his longtime girlfriend. When Geist answers an ad in the Harvard Crimson seeking a serious “conversationalist,” he ends up being paid to debate free will for a few hours a day with Alma Spielmann, an elderly woman of Viennese origin. After the two bond, Spielmann offers Geist free room and board at her Cambridge house, where she lives alone. The sudden appearance of Spielmann's difficult nephew, who relies on Spielmann's financial support, threatens Geist's comfortable relationship with his benefactor. The plot builds to a climax that's as devastating as it is plausible. Few thriller writers today are as gifted as Kellerman at using lucid and evocative prose in the service of an intense and nail-biting story. (Apr.)

The Inheritance Simon Tolkien. Minotaur, $24.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-312-53907-8

Set in 1959, Tolkien's strong if somewhat formulaic legal thriller, his second after The Final Witness, centers on the trial at London's Old Bailey of Stephen Cade, who stands accused of murdering his Oxford historian father. The evidence against Cade is overwhelming. After learning that he was about to be disinherited, Cade sought out his father, from whom he'd long been estranged, and argued with him. The police found his fingerprints on the gun used in the killing. The investigating officer, Det. Insp. William Trave, questions the accused's guilt, despite the case's prosecutor urging him not to “muddy the water.” The truth may lie in Normandy, where the older Cade was involved in an incident that left several French civilians dead toward the end of WWII. While Tolkien, the grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien, could've done a better job of hiding the clues pointing to the real culprit, fans of English courtroom dramas will be satisfied. (Apr.)

The Lotus Eaters Tatjana Soli. St.Martin's, $24.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-312-61157-6

This suspenseful, eloquent, sprawling novel illustrates the violence of the Vietnam War as witnessed by three interconnected photographers. Helen Adams, the first woman combat photographer sent to cover the Vietnam war, navigates the boys' club of war photographers, pushing her way onto military missions. Soon after her arrival in Saigon, she falls under the spell of seasoned, jaded, and married Pulitzer Prize—winning photojournalist, Sam Darrow, while also feeling a confusing pull toward his assistant, Linh, a Vietnamese ex-soldier and knowledgeable photographer and guide. Linh, who has lost his wife and entire family to the war, roams the country with Darrow and then Helen (whom Darrow asks Linh to protect). Soli looks at the complex motivations and ambitions of the waves of American photographers who descended on Vietnam seeking glory and fame through their gut-wrenching photos of mass graves, crippled children, and dying soldiers, while also reveling in sex, drugs, and good times as the war raged around them. This harrowing depiction of life and death shows that even as the country burned, love and hope triumphed. (Apr.)

Dimanche and Other Stories Irène Némirovsky, trans. from the French by Bridget Patterson. Vintage, $15 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-307-47636-4

Ten luminous and newly translated stories by Némirovsky (Suite Française), who died at Auschwitz, expose the miseries that undermine happy families. Set mostly in France, where the author immigrated after the Russian revolution, these accomplished tales create worlds full of secrets and treacheries, such as in the title story, set on one typical Sunday at a bourgeois Parisian home where the middle-aged wife and mother, Agnes—once embittered by her husband's taking of a mistress, but now apathetic to his wanderings—remembers her own lost love. “Flesh and Blood” is a masterpiece of familial subterfuge revolving around an aged matriarch who falls ill and tries to keep peace among her three self-absorbed sons and their grasping wives. In “The Spell,” a young visitor to a messy Russian household gleans dark mysteries around a lovelorn aunt's romantic sorcery; several of the tales, such as “The Spectator” and “Monsieur Rose,” capture aloof, prosperous gentlemen fleeing Paris in advance of the Nazis. In this superlative translation, Némirovsky's characters emerge full-fleshed, and her voice remains timeless and relevant. (Apr.)

The Bride Collector Ted Dekker. Center Street, $24.99 (448p) ISBN 978-1-59995-196-6

Readers who relish being trapped in a character's mind, in particular the mind of an insane serial killer, should enjoy this overlong thriller by bestseller Dekker (Boneman's Daughters). Those not so keen on such musings, even within the mind of a good guy like FBI special agent Brad Raines, who spends pages contemplating the nature of love and grief, will be less enthralled. The Denver killer, Quinton Gauld, driven by some mumbo jumbo about beautiful women being the brides of Christ and his giving them to God, likes to super-glue his victims to the wall, then drain their blood into buckets. The most interesting characters are the institutionalized crazy people whose aid Raines enlists, a diverse and funny group. Few surprises and a stock serial killer, not to mention too much internal dialogue, add up to a routine read. 5-city author tour. (Apr.)

31 Bond Street Ellen Horan. Harper, $25.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-177396-9

A real-life New York City murder case provides the basis for Horan's impressive fiction debut, which works better as a historical novel than as a whodunit. In 1857, Manhattan is horrified and fascinated by a grisly crime—the murder of dentist Harvey Burdell, found on his office floor stabbed more than a dozen times and with his throat cut. The ambitious district attorney, Oakey Hall, who's linked with the Tammany Hall political machine, quickly focuses on Emma Cunningham as the prime suspect. Cunningham, the victim's housekeeper, claims that she and Burdell were secretly married. Her sole hope for avoiding conviction for murder is crusading defense attorney Henry Clinton. Horan alternates deftly between the present and flashbacks to Cunningham's past, capturing both the complex inner lives of her characters and the feel of the times. She also creates exciting courtroom scenes, but some may find the mystery's resolution disappointing. (Apr.)

Super Jim Lehrer. Random, $25 (224p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6763-3

Those expecting an Agatha Christie homage from TV journalist Lehrer (Mack to the Rescue) will be disappointed by this subpar crime novel set in 1956 almost entirely aboard the Super Chief, the train that ran for years between Chicago and Los Angeles. Passengers include a mysterious sickly man, Dale Lawrence, who gets on in Chicago after bribing a porter for a sleeping berth, as well as celebrities like Clark Gable and former president Harry Truman. Many pages of superficial character development pass before the first corpse appears. Arch attempts at satire (e.g., a movie producer's plan for a film set on the train is clearly meant to be a nod to Hitchcock's North by Northwest) don't mix well with earnest scenes like the one in which Lawrence confronts Truman about his decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and later authorize nuclear tests in Nevada. (Apr.)

The Third Rail Michael Harvey. Knopf, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-27250-8

A series of terrifying crimes threatens to paralyze Chicago in Harvey's stellar third novel featuring Chicago PI Michael Kelly (after The Chicago Way and The Fifth Floor). First, a gunman executes two people, apparently at random at different locations, while they ride the T, the city's elevated railway. Next, the sniper shoots at commuters on Lake Shore Drive, killing three people while missing Kelly's girlfriend, Judge Rachel Swenson. Kelly suspects the shooter has an accomplice, a theory dismissed by official law enforcement. The hard-boiled investigator, who at age nine survived a horrific subway accident at the site of one of the T murders 30 years earlier, wonders if there could be a link between that past tragedy and the current spree. The author deftly alternates between his hero's first-person perspective and third-person accounts of the mindsets of the men Kelly seeks. Harvey stakes a persuasive claim as the pre-eminent contemporary voice of Chicago noir. 100,000 first printing; 8-city author tour.(Apr.)

The Barbary Pirates William Dietrich. Harper, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-156796-4

Dietrich's fourth entry in the Ethan Gage series (after The Dakota Cipher) continues the high-octane saga of the intrepid diplomat during the reign of Napoleon. Our hero is in Paris with his three “savant” friends, British geologist William Smith, French zoologist George Cuvier, and fellow American, inventor Robert Fulton. Napoleon dispatches the quartet to chase down the rumor of the fabled mirror of Archimedes, a fantastical prop straight out of science fiction that can emit a death ray. Things turn sticky when Gage's old arch nemesis, the Egyptian Rite, a ruthless cabal out to rule the world, joins the race to grab the death ray for their own evil designs. On his perilous journey from Paris east across the Mediterranean Sea, Gage meets up with British femme fatale Lady Aurora Somerset, Egyptian lover Astiza, and, of course, the savage Barbary Pirates. His quest takes him aboard Fulton's submarine, steaming into the exotic port of Tripoli to a violent, if far-fetched climax. A heart-stomping pulpy yarn, Gage's narrow escapes, hardboiled banter, and unexpected surprises ensure Dietrich's imaginative page-turner will enjoy a long and lively run. (Apr.)

Ask Alice D.J. Taylor. Pegasus, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-60598-086-7

Taylor (Kept) traverses turn-of-the-20th-century Kansas and the sparkling social circles of Jazz Age London in this swirl of provocative prose and cleverly conceived characters. The novel is told from perspectives ranging from a young boy growing up with his quirky, inventor uncle in the English countryside to an aspiring socialite living life from party to party. The stories may appear disparate, but they are, of course, linked, and Taylor twists and tweaks the plots into an absorbing story of money and ballroom mingling centered on Alice Keach, a pensive and secretive woman who has climbed from modest beginnings in Kansas to the pinnacle of social power in London. Though she's at the height of her influence in English society, a dark secret she thought she'd left behind in America comes back to haunt her. As Alice's life begins to unravel and the stories begin to connect, the narrative takes on the urgency of a finely crafted mystery. The novel is absorbing, wonderfully atmospheric, and loaded with intrigue; it's a wonder Taylor isn't better known. (Apr.)

A Murderous Procession Ariana Franklin. Putnam, $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-399-15628-1

In Franklin's well-paced fourth Mistress of the Art of Death novel (after Grave Goods), Henry II of England assigns his trusted doctor friend, Adelia Aguilar, who studied at the School of Medicine in Salerno, Italy, to accompany his 10-year-old daughter, Joanna, on Joanna's wedding procession to Sicily, where the girl is to marry Henry's cousin, William II. Along the way, the clever and brave Adelia has to not only contend with the dangers facing the princess but thwart a diabolical and conniving assassin named Scarry, who bears Adelia a murderous grudge. The suspense rises as members of the royal party start to die unnatural deaths as they journey across Europe. At times, Franklin, who's obviously done a lot of research into the period, in particular into the House of Plantagenet, overexplains or lapses into pedantic description. Still, both fans of historical fiction and mystery readers will be rewarded. (Apr.)

The Exodus Quest Will Adams. Grand Central, $24.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-446-56320-8

At the start of Davis's fast-paced if exhausting second antiquities thriller to feature archeologist Daniel Knox (after The Alexander Cipher), Knox is strolling through a market in Alexandria, Egypt, when he spies what appears to be a valuable artifact, an earthenware bowl, which the young hawker claims is the “fruit bowl of Alexander the Great.” The bowl, which turns out to be connected to the Dead Sea Scrolls, leads Knox to a dig being conducted by the Rev. Ernest Peterson and his team of earnest young theology students. Peterson, a raging religious maniac, is on the trail of a portrait of Christ and will stop at nothing to possess it. Several corrupt Egyptian policemen, each with his own agenda, create too many subplots to keep track of or care about. Egyptian antiquities aficionados will be happy with the historical material, but those with less specific interests will find the frenzied chase confusing, tiring, and something of a letdown. (Apr.)

Windward Passage Jim Nisbet. Overlook, $25.95 (448p) ISBN 978-1-59020-194-7

The compelling tale of a dead smuggler known only as Charley forms the backdrop for Nisbet's ambitious if meandering thriller set largely in the Caribbean. When Charley's sailboat sinks in shallow water with him chained to the mast, Charley's sister, Tipsy, and his drug lord boss, Red Means, launch their own personal salvage operation. Hidden among many bricks of cocaine below the ship's deck is thought to be a DNA sample from an unidentified U.S. president. Together, Tipsy and Red try to figure out who killed Charley and why someone would want some president's DNA, guided by the incomplete log they find in the dry part of the partially submerged boat. Nisbet (Dark Companion) has his own eccentric plotting style that tends to create parallel worlds within his main story. Long-winded and often tediously detailed, these digressions detract from an otherwise addictive narrative. (Apr.)

I Am Not a Serial Killer Dan Wells. Tor, $19.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2247-0

Fans of Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series and its TV spinoff will welcome Wells's gripping debut, the first in a projected trilogy featuring 15-year-old sociopath John Wayne Cleaver. Cleaver lives in Clayton, a small town in the heart of Middle America, where he assists his mother with the family mortuary and seeks to keep his demons at bay through sessions with a psychotherapist and rigid adherence to a set of boundaries. Obsessed with serial killers, Cleaver lives in fear that the monster inside him will break out and act on his violent fantasies. When the eviscerated remains of a local man turn up behind a Laundromat, the first of several murders in which the killer butchers his prey and takes body parts as trophies, Cleaver turns detective. Wells does a good job entering the mind of his unlikely protagonist, but a surprising revelation about the Clayton killer's identity may turn off thriller readers who prefer not to mix genres. (Apr.)

Purge Sofi Oksanen, trans. from the Finnish by Lola Rogers. Grove/Black Cat, $14.95 paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-8021-7077-4

Oksanen's uneven first novel to be translated into English follows one family through three generations during the Soviet occupation of the Baltics. In 1992, Aliide Truu finds a ragged and abused young woman collapsed near her rural Estonian home. The girl, Zara, is supposedly fleeing from her husband, and Aliide, an aged widow, whisks Zara inside and offers her shelter and sustenance. But when Zara shows Aliide an old picture of Aliide and her sister, Ingel, it becomes clear that Zara's choice in sanctuary wasn't coincidental. The contours of each of their lives are gradually revealed: Zara's path from being a poor Russian teenager to a fugitive sex worker (depictions of her working life are especially graphic and lean toward gratuitous) with a violent pimp on her trail; Aliide and Ingel navigating the beginning of the Soviet occupation as they settle into their adult lives in the 1940s, plagued by an oppressive regime and the tortuous demands of jealousy, deceit, and love. The translation has some rough spots, and the narrative can be heavier on history than humanity. (Apr.)

Probation Tom Mendicino. Kensington, $15 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-7582-3878-8

A middle-aged married man whose indiscretion in a men's bathroom forces him to re-evaluate his chosen life becomes a surprisingly sympathetic narrator in this potent debut. When Andy Nocera is arrested at a public highway rest stop, his wife leaves him, prompted by her father, for whom Andy works. Resigned to putting his life back together, he moves home with his mother, recently diagnosed with cancer, and takes a job as a traveling salesman around which he schedules his court-ordered therapy with a stubborn Jesuit priest. Andy attempts to detangle his motivations for both getting married when his emotions lay elsewhere and settling for an existence as a dutiful son. Like a contemporary Ethan Frome, Mendicino's protagonist struggles to reconcile his desires with the expectations of the people around him, and despite the occasional melodramatic moment, sure-footed plotting keeps the narrative from lapsing into a confessional slump. (Apr.)

The Origin of Species Nino Ricci. Other Press, $16.95 paper (496p) ISBN 978-1-59051-349-1

In his overambitious fifth novel, two-time Governor General's award—winner Ricci (The Lives of Saints) introduces Alex Fratarcangeli, a 30-something Ph.D. student living in 1986 Montreal. Markedly immature, anxiety-ridden, and unable to complete his dissertation, Alex is in therapy after a bad break-up, and his interest in Charles Darwin and the meaning of life has him dangling in existential limbo. The novel takes the reader through an exhaustive look at a year in Alex's life—with extensive flashbacks—pausing to flesh out each minor player's tale in sometimes excessive length. Alex's general inability to move forward stems not only from his failed relationships but also from a summer he spent in the Galápagos Islands with an English researcher, and though he slides through a series of sexual relationships with a diverse set of women, it's a platonic friendship with a sickly young woman that brings out the best in him. Ricci's accomplished prose does much to mitigate an unruly story line and an overstocked cast; Alex's pathetic flailings, meanwhile, will, depending on the reader, either endear or annoy. (Apr.)

Stay a Little Longer Dorothy Garlock. Grand Central, $24.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-446-54020-9; $13.99 paper ISBN 978-0-446-54019-3

The prolific Garlock (The Moon Looked Down) returns to a familiar setting—a smalltown boarding house run by a struggling young woman—in her true-to-form latest. In Carlson, Minn., circa 1926, Rachel Watkins ekes out a living overseeing an inn owned by her mother and her likable drunk uncle. She's also a part-time midwife, just as her mother was before Rachel's sister, Alice, died while giving birth to her daughter, Charlotte. Eight years have passed since Mason Tucker, Alice's husband, was presumed dead in WWI, and now Mason's greedy brother, Zachary, wants to force Rachel's family to sell the boarding house. But when Charlotte discovers a shell-shocked hobo with a familiar voice living in a decrepit cabin nearby, she begins to think that he's Mason. As Rachel and her family try to outwit Zachary, love blooms in heartwarming, predictable Garlock fashion. If you've read Garlock before, you'll know what to expect. (Apr.)

Family Value D-L Nelson. Five Star, $25.95 (321p) ISBN 978-1-59414-873-6

The DiDonatos and Marshes of Cambridge, Mass., grapple with identity, love, and marriage in Nelson's facile fourth novel (Chickpea Lover). Both families struggle to overcome professional and personal obstacles, and both have members who were adopted and either yearn to find their biological parents or profess no interest in them. It is a situation ripe for drama, but Nelson mistakes melodrama for plot, dropping a series of irrelevant obstacles in front of her interchangeable characters in place of a real narrative. As the novel progresses, the families' conflicts escalate at a hysterical pitch, converging rapidly and conveniently while the novel rushes toward a conclusion that relies almost exclusively on coincidence. This may work for fans of Nelson's previous novels or readers whose taste includes light, disposable reading. (Apr.)

Call It What You Want Keith Lee Morris. Tin House, $14.95 paper (264p) ISBN 978-0-9825030-8-9

After The Dart League King, Morris returns to the short form with his refreshingly unpretentious if stylistically narrow second collection. In these 13 stories, protagonists turn the reader into a confidant and introduce plots that believably approximate the unique and fitful path of human thought. With the exception of “My Roommate Kevin Is Awesome,” which is written in teen jargon liberally sprinkled with “like,” Morris's prose is polished to transparency and proves surprisingly flexible in terms of tone. In “The Visitation,” an encounter with a charmingly unflappable thief grows into a darkly absurdist cautionary tale. “Guests” captures the aimless rhythms and restlessness of a young man working as a New Orleans parking valet. In the lengthy and affecting “Testimony,” teenager Robert Scott is the key prosecution witness in his friend's murder trial. Robert, until recently an addict, comes slowly to realize the larger dimensions of his actions and his testimony for the first time as he relives the crime in the courtroom and witness box. Though the stories can seem too formally similar, the pieces, individually, are marked by quiet authority and beautifully observed moments. (Apr.)

The Long Way Home Robin Pilcher. St. Martin's, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-35435-0

Pilcher (An Ocean Apart) goes bland in his uninspired fifth novel. Claire Barclay has always been close to her stepfather, Leo, so when Leo suffers a stroke, Claire returns to his estate in Scotland with her husband, Art, to help out, only to land in the middle of wrangling over what to do with the estate. Among the players, childhood friend and chaste love Jonas Fairweather may have ulterior motives beneath his altruistic exterior, and Marcus and Charity, Leo's children from his first marriage, who have never liked Claire, want Leo to sell his house and property. Claire and Art, meanwhile, devise a plan to convert the estate into a conference center. Unfortunately, the characters are more caricature than flesh and blood, particularly the spiteful Marcus and Charity, and Jonas's secrets are pathetic when not contrived. Leo is the best thing going, but he's relegated to a plot device. With such slapdash character work, it's tough to care about where it's all going. (Apr.)

Robin and Ruby K.M. Soehnlein. Kensington, $24 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7582-3218-2

Soehnlein's third novel reintroduces Robin MacKenzie, the gay teen protagonist from The World of Normal Boys. Robin is now 20, in the mid-1980s, and on the night that his older, scholarly lover breaks up with him, he shares an intense sexual experience with George, his black, longtime best friend. When a phone message from his sister, Ruby, on summer break after her first year at college, disturbs him, and he learns that she's disappeared from a party, Robin takes off with George to look for her. Ruby, meanwhile, has been having a hard time with her boyfriend, Calvin, and her housemates at the Jersey shore who are either drunk or high and teasing her about her virginity. Reconnecting with a troubled boy from her past, Ruby leaves to search for him and sets out on her own adventure of discovery. While the brother and sister encounter danger, passion, and sex, Ruby's story is the more engaging, capturing intimately the mood of the period. (Apr.)

In Harm's Way Irene Hannon. Revell, $14.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-8007-3312-4

Suspense writer Hannon (Against All Odds) offers her third in the Heroes of Quantico series, where she presents fast-paced crime drama with an aside of romance. The story opens with the sensitive and artistic piano instructor, Rachel Sutton, happening upon a Raggedy Ann doll buried in the snow of a parking lot. What happens when Rachel picks up this doll shocks and disturbs her, so much so, she presses past her self-preservation mode and tells her story to FBI agent Nick Bradley. Initially nonplussed by her account, Nick is unable to shake a persistent feeling that Rachel is for real and not some psychic wanna-be. Quickly, the report of a missing baby is linked with the doll, as are secrets surrounding Rachel's past. Both Nick and Rachel develop a mutual respect and affection for one another as they piece together the clues behind an ever-climactic mystery. Hannon's tale is engagingly sure-footed overall, yet at points reads too predictably for avid crime enthusiasts. (Apr.)

Solar Ian McEwan. Doubleday/Talese, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-385-53341-6

Booker Prize—winner McEwan (On Chesil Beach; Atonement) once again deploys domestic strife to examine the currents of worldwide change. This time, McEwan shoots for the sun, with the promise of solar energy gradually legitimizing itself in the mind of Nobel Prize—winning physicist Michael Beard. While Bush v. Gore drags on across the Atlantic and Beard's fifth marriage dissolves in an adulterous haze, the waning laureate rides his reputation to a cushy position at a U.K. climate research center, where he is generally disdainful of his younger colleagues. Then, following an epiphany of sorts, Beard pins the accidental death of a rival scientist on his wife's lover and steals the other man's research. By 2009, Beard is in New Mexico, riding high on ill-gotten funding and patents and within sight of a curious redemption. Beard is a fascinatingly repulsive protagonist, but he can't sustain a novel broken up by fast-forwards (all of which require tedious backstories) and a stream of overwritten courtships. The scientific material is absorbing, but the interpersonal portions are much less so—troublesome, since McEwan seems to prefer the latter—making for an inconsistent novel that one finishes feeling unpleasantly glacial. (Mar.)

Mystery

Through the Cracks Barbara Fister. Minotaur, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-37492-1

Sociology professor Jill McKenzie hires PI Anni Koskinen to find the man who raped her in Chicago's Lincoln Park 23 years earlier in Fister's strong sequel to In the Wind (2008). Chase Taylor, a 16-year-old high on coke who was in the park near the time of the assault, was convicted of the crime, but later freed on appeal. McKenzie has assembled data that suggests her attacker is a serial rapist responsible for at least seven additional attacks over a 10-year period that overlaps with Taylor's jail time. Part social worker and part sleuth, Koskinen connects with an array of well-drawn supporting characters, including other rape victims, the lead investigator on the McKenzie case, and the attorney who helped overturn Taylor's conviction. Thoughtful attention to the complexities of police work and social justice lift this gritty mystery well above the norm. Koskinen's empathy with both cops and victims as well as her fierce, brittle independence make her easy to root for. (May)

Vienna Secrets: A Max Liebermann Mystery Frank Tallis. Random, $15 paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-8129-8099-8

Tallis's excellent fourth puzzler set in early 20th-century Vienna (after 2008's Fatal Lies) neatly blends mystery and history. A scary series of murders, which may have a supernatural component, challenge psychiatrist Max Liebermann and Det. Insp. Oskar Rheinhardt. Two men, both with a track record of anti-Semitism, have turned up dead, their heads ripped from their bodies by some powerful force beyond the capacity of a single killer. The first, Brother Stanislav, was a regular contributor to Das Vaterland, a right-wing Catholic newspaper, and spoke at a rally that ended with the fatal stabbing of a young Jewish boy. The second victim, city councillor Burke Faust, had also fomented hatred. An important clue comes from a witness who heard a “whirring sound, like a giant insect” near one crime scene. Meanwhile, Liebermann's defense of a dying patient's rights puts him at odds with the Catholic church. Fans of Caleb Carr will feel right at home. (Apr.)

Liars All: A Brodie Farrell Mystery Jo Bannister. Minotaur, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-0-312-61239-9

British author Bannister opens her well-constructed ninth Brodie Farrell mystery (after 2008's Closer Still) on a somber note with a coldhearted driver running down a young couple outside a South Downs restaurant. Bobby Carson kills Tom Sanger and seriously injures Jane Moss, his fiancée, to whom Tom had just given an exquisite black star sapphire necklace, which Bobby steals. Bobby is caught and eventually punished, but not before he sells the necklace. Bobby's mother hires Brodie, owner of Looking for Something? (an agency that specializes in finding lost objects), to locate the necklace and return it to Jane. Daniel Hood, Jane's assistant and close friend, and Det. Supt. Jack Deacon, the father of Brodie's sick child, Jonathan, provide emotional backup for Brodie, who seeks a cure for Jonathan's brain tumor. Bannister movingly reflects upon the lies sometimes told for love as Brodie makes a difficult choice in the surprising resolution. (Apr.)

False Pretences: An Abbot Agency Mystery Veronica Heley. Severn, $28.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6833-6

In Heley's engaging fourth Abbot Agency mystery (after 2009's False Step), Bea's young live-in female assistant, Maggie, asks the London detective to help her ex-boyfriend, Zander. Zander feels responsible for the fatal heart attack that felled Denzil, his boss at the charitable Tudor Trust, because it was he, Zander, who discovered Denzil was scamming the organization. Now Zander, who's of mixed race, has to return some personal items to Denzil's bigoted widow, Honoria. A rude, bullying woman, Honoria threatens to sue the trust for the defamation of her husband's character. Oliver, Bea's other young live-in assistant, does a little high-tech digging in quest of the truth, while Bea must try to placate elderly Lord Murchison, a member of the trust's board, who faces ruin if the truth comes out. Heley's cast of intriguing characters from every walk of life will please British cozy fans. (Apr.)

The Tulip Virus Daniëlle Hermans, trans. from the Dutch by David MacKay. Minotaur, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-57786-5

Holland's 17th-century tulip craze provides the backdrop for Hermans's middling debut. When British painter Alec Schoeller receives a phone call for help from his beloved paternal uncle, Frank, he rushes over to his uncle's London house, where he finds his battered relative on the brink of death. Frank warns his nephew not to contact the police and to take a 400-year-old book about tulips. While the artist does report the crime to the authorities, he pretends his uncle died before he reached the house, and seeks the truth behind the killing on his own. The present-day action alternates with scenes from 1636 Holland, where tulip mania led to bloodshed. Hermans hits all the obligatory suspense notes, including multiple murders, hostage situations, and a secret men will kill to preserve, but U.S. readers will find nothing particularly new other than the tulip angle. (Apr.)

A House to Die For: A Darby Farr Mystery Vicki Doudera. Midnight Ink (www.midnightinkbooks.com), $14.95 paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-7387-1950-4

Doudera's appealing cozy debut introduces Darby Farr, a half-Asian San Diego realtor. On hearing her realtor aunt, Jane, is dying, Darby heads home to Hurricane Harbor, Maine, to help her aunt's assistant with Jane's last sale—the Fairview estate owned by old brother and sister friends of Darby's, Mark and Lucy Trimble. Bostonian Peyton Mayerson, the head of Pemberton Point Weddings, has made an impressive offer, but backup buyer Emerson Phipps, a prominent Boston surgeon, is sure he'll be Fairview's new owner. Before the multimillion-dollar sale can go through, someone bludgeons Phipps to death in the property's garden shed. Lucy, who's found hurt near the crime scene, becomes a suspect. While real estate matters slow the narrative in places, the author does a good job portraying Darby in her efforts to make peace with her childhood past and solve a murder on a picturesque Maine island. (Apr.)

A Twist of Orchids: A Death in the Dordogne Mystery Michelle Wan. Minotaur, $24.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-312-54994-7

In Wan's diverting third Dordogne mystery (after 2007's The Orchid Shroud), unlikely couple Julian Wood and Mara Dunn—he's an English orchid expert, she's a French-Canadian interior designer—must sort out some relationship issues as well as the consequences of some local murder and mayhem. One market day in Ecoute-la-Pluie, a belligerent youth's assault on a Turkish vendor, who had the audacity to impugn a passing pig farmer's manhood, leads to general commotion in the town square. As the gendarmes race in, Amélie Gaillard, an elderly neighbor of Julian and Mara's, dies in a flying fall down the stairs of the Two Sisters restaurant. Meanwhile, the body of an unidentified male with needle marks in his arm turns up near the Temple of Vesunna, the apparent victim of a gangland killing. A Turkish love potion, thefts by a rhyming burglar, and a hunt for a hitherto unknown orchid all figure in a winning tale that will appeal in particular to Francophiles. (Apr.)

Deadly Inheritance Simon Beaufort. Severn, $28.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6856-5

Two deaths—the stabbing murder of Harry Mappestone at his Herefordshire castle, Goodrich, in September 1102, and the apparently more natural passing of the duchess of Normandy across the Channel the following spring—propel Beaufort's exceptional sixth Sir Geoffrey Mappestone mystery (after 2004's TheCoiners' Quarrel). Sir Geoffrey, a crusader knight, reluctantly comes to Goodrich to claim his late brother's estates. Geoffrey's sister urges him to marry soon and produce an heir to secure the family inheritance. A local bishop asks Geoffrey to investigate the duchess's death. While her doctors said the duchess died from complications of childbirth, the bishop suspects the duke's jealous mistress poisoned her. Well-rounded characters, rich period detail, and a clever closing twist or two put this in the same league as the best work of Kate Sedley and Michael Jecks. Beaufort is the pseudonym of Susanna Gregory, author of the Thomas Chaloner series, and the historian Beau Riffenburgh. (Apr.)

The Edge of Ruin Irene Fleming. Minotaur, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-312-57520-5

The early days of American cinema come vividly to life in the delightful first in a new series from the pseudonymous Fleming (The Organizer as Kate Gallison). In the fall of 1909, Philadelphians Emily and Adam Weiss use all their money to form Melpomene Moving Picture Studios. The newlyweds secure a contract with attorney Howie Kazanow to deliver four one-reel movies by the 23rd of that month. If they miss the deadline, Kazanow gets everything. Filming in New York is impossible because sneaky detectives for Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company will shut down any competitors. Weiss and company, including the talented if often inebriated Robert Montmorency, Russian Vera Zinovia, and ingenue Fay Winningly, head for Fort Lee, N.J., to avoid problems. Complications arise after Adam is arrested for stabbing an Edison detective to death in this sprightly mix of silver screen melodrama and mystery. (Apr.)

SF/Fantasy/Horror

Bone and Jewel Creatures Elizabeth Bear. Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $20 (136p) ISBN 978-1-59606-274-0

Few family feuds feature gem-studded automatons facing off against zombies, but this quirky short fantasy by Hugo-winner Bear (By the Mountain Bound) is the exception. When aging wizard Bijou the Artificer starts encountering people and animals infected with a flesh-decaying spell, she prepares for a long-delayed confrontation with her ex-lover, Kaulas the Necromancer. Each desires the allegiance of Brazen the Enchanter, Bijou's former apprentice, and their weapons include Emeraude, a feral child raised by jackals. Bear provides a sympathetic portrait, drawn in part through Emeraude's nonverbal perceptions, of a dedicated master coming to terms with the end of her life and determined to honor her commitments to the end. The vagueness of the (Persian? Turkish? Provençal?) setting distracts only a little from the exploration of love and loyalty at the core of this engaging tale. (Apr.)

Descent into Dust Jacqueline Lepore. Avon, $13.99 paper (368p) ISBN 978-0-06-187812-1

Old-fashioned vampire fiction—with a little postmodern feminist updating—makes a comeback in this smoothly written debut. In the gray spring of 1862, recently widowed Emma Andrews arrives at remote and dreary Dulwich Manor for a family visit. Cryptic biblical quotes are carved into the walls in odd places, a mysterious “wasting disease” is killing the locals, and Emma's young niece, Henrietta, says she's met a ghost named Marius. Emma fears that she's going insane, just like her mother did, but insanity may be easier to accept than the existence of vampires and the truth about her mother. Lepore successfully captures the mood of traditional gothic fiction, complete with soggy moors, murky religious orders, ancient ruins, dark secrets, and plenty of general mystical weirdness, and complements it with a strong female protagonist for broad reader appeal. (Apr.)

Hawkmoon: The Mad God's Amulet Michael Moorcock. Tor, $13.99 paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2474-0

Venerable fantasy author Moorcock returns to the far future world of the Runestaff in this 1968 sequel to The Jewel in the Skull. Dorian Hawkmoon's journey back to Castle Brass is interrupted by seemingly chance encounters, first with Granbretan's forces and then with a series of increasingly dangerous foes. Aided by his faithful companions, Hawkmoon must outwit the Dark Empire, defeat pirates and monsters, and overcome the Mad God and his army of madwomen to rescue his beloved (and tissue-thin) Yisselda and save Castle Brass. The frenetic action comes at the cost of characterization, and Moorcock unabashedly embraces extraordinary, contrived coincidences as he pushes his protagonists to inevitable victory against overwhelming forces. Some readers will find the story quaintly charming, while others will think it hopelessly outdated. (Apr.)

Blood Pressure Terence Taylor. St. Martin's Griffin, $14.99 paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-312-38526-2

Set in 2007, 20 years after the events of 2009's Bite Marks, Taylor's adrenaline-laced sophomore effort finds the once-evil Adam Caine practicing psychotherapy as Dr. Abel Lazarus; Lori trying to finish writing a biography of Zora Neale Hurston before succumbing to cancer; her former lover Steven struggling with a stalled career; and their daughter, Joie, filming performance art. They form a ragtag band of commandos with vampire Prenelle de Marivaux to combat the twin threats of the antivampire organization Clean Slate Global and supervamp Christopher Ross. Fascinating flashback sequences explore the Harlem Renaissance and prewar Berlin, and a powerful romance between young Joie and aging voodoo-practicing vampire Turner will melt readers' hearts. Taylor keeps readers enthralled while setting the stage nicely for the next installment in this complex, fascinating world. (Apr.)

Secrets of the Sands Leona Wisoker. Mercury Retrograde (Ingram, dist.), $18.95 paper (422p) ISBN 978-0-9819882-3-8

Wisoker's epic debut attempts much and accomplishes only some. The thief Idisio chooses the wrong mark; the desert lord Cafad Scratha signs over his property to a northern king; the northern noblewoman Alyea Peysimum is given unprecedented power. As their lives meet in a complex sequence of events, a world long in balance edges toward chaos. The desert setting is intriguing, but Wisoker crams into one novel a story better spread over two or three, with multiple long-lost heirs, political power games, a strange desert religion, and Idisio's complex history leaving little room for developing characters and interesting ideas. This overambitious tale is certainly engaging, but too trite, rushed, and confusing to be really memorable. (Apr.)

Tales of the Otherworld Kelley Armstrong. Bantam, $25 (400p) ISBN 978-0-553-80788-2

Witches, sorcerers, half-demons, vampires, and werewolves clash in bestseller Armstrong's second Otherworld collection (after 2009's Men of the Otherworld), which includes many stories first posted on her Website to fill in the gaps about characters from her novels. In “Rebirth,” Aaron, a young Englishman, discovers his vampire heritage; in the lighter “Bewitched,” half-demon witch Eve Levine braves racial stereotyping to connect with sorcerer Kristof Nast. The novella “Beginnings” reveals the backstory of Elena, the heroine of 2004's Bitten. The first tales are accessible to new readers, but some stories feel incomplete, and Armstrong's complex worlds, which include magical organizations reminiscent of mafia families, may confuse the uninitiated. Armstrong's longtime fans, however, will be delighted. All proceeds go to World Literacy of Canada. (Apr.)

Seven Deadly Pleasures Michael Aronovitz. Hippocampus (www.hippocampuspress.com), $15 paper (248p) ISBN 978-0-9824296-0-0

“Toll Booth,” the novella that closes Aronovitz's first horror collection, will remind many of the better work of Stephen King. Via a letter from beyond the grave, James Raybeck, who from 1979 to 2008 worked the night shift at a toll booth in the small town of Westville, Ind., describes how horrific ghostly visions plagued those manning the toll booth shortly after its construction. Raybeck dropped out of high school to save the booth from being torn down, though he later pays a gruesome and terrible price. While the tale offers nothing particularly original, the execution and prose are exemplary. Aronovitz is especially good in the opening setup, as the narrator grounds what's to follow in the prosaic details of a municipal engineering project. The other six stories are less remarkable, but all show a subtlety and deftness of touch rare in the genre. (Apr.)

At the Gates of Darkness: Book Two of the Demon War Saga Raymond E. Feist. Eos, $26.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-146837-7

Another day, another demon war. It's all child's play for Feist's heroic Conclave of Shadows in this follow-up to 2009's Rides a Dread Legion, which continues the popular Midkemia series begun in the '80s. Villainous sorcerer Belasco releases demons who battle the usual suspects: clever magician Pug of Sorcerer's Isle; daring Conclave agent James Dasher Jamison, great-grandson of Jimmy the Hand; demon master Amirantha; warlock Brandos; and the tricky elven brothers Laromendis and Gulamendis. Sandreena, Knight-Adamant of the Order of the Shield of the Weak, also gets involved, though she's still brooding over her past relationship with Amirantha. There's an air of “been there, done that” to the familiar YAish fantasy plot, relegating it to the status of comfort reading for Feist's longtime fans. (Apr.)

Up Jim River Michael Flynn. Tor, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2284-5

Veteran SF writer Flynn returns to the world he introduced in 2008's The January Dancer: a human-colonized galaxy thousands of years in the future, on the far side of a dark age that has reduced our era to the stuff of legends and hokey place-names. League superoperative Bridget ban goes missing while searching for an artifact that will protect the League from the Confederacy. When her employers give her up for dead, Bridget's flame-haired daughter, Méarana, turns to one of her mother's ex-lovers, scarred and bitter Donovan, whose work for the Confederacy left him with a shattered mind and seven personalities. The pair retrace Bridget's final steps, accumulating allies and enemies—sometimes difficult to distinguish—on each exotic world they visit. Flynn's tale is self-consciously retro in its sensibilities, with florid prose and a straightforward, conventional plot. (Apr.)

Mass Market

Embers Laura Bickle. Pocket/Juno, $7.99 (360p) ISBN 978-1-4391-6765-6

Bickle's dark, dramatic urban fantasy debut introduces Lt. Anya Kalinczyk of the Detroit Fire Department, who investigates arson by day and hunts ghosts at night. As a unique type of medium, a Lantern or “human bug zapper,” Anya can simply inhale and destroy spirits while accompanied by her familiar, a five-foot-long salamander named Sparky. In an unusual turn of events, Anya learns that the arsonist is a Lantern like herself, a man who simultaneously attracts and repulses her. Though she's a far cry from the usual hip, cheeky urban fantasy heroine, Anya's stoic determination is completely apropos for a crime-solving loner, and Bickle provides plenty of suspense as the arsonist tries to raise a powerful elemental being, and Anya accidentally absorbs a demon that threatens to possess her. Readers will look forward to Anya's future supernatural investigations. (Apr.)

His Darkest Hunger Juliana Stone. Avon, $7.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-180877-7

In this grim, sexy debut paranormal, shape-shifter Jaxon Castille plots to punish his former lover, Libby, for betraying their antiterrorist mission and causing his friend's death. But once he finds Libby, long-buried feelings prevent him from pulling the trigger, and when he learns that she has no memory of him at all and that his clan's enemies, the DaCostas, are plotting against them both, he's glad he held back. Though their passion is soon sizzling again, it takes Libby and Jaxon a long time to overcome their mutual bitterness and distrust, and combine their efforts to uncover and foil the DaCostas' plan. Stone keeps things moving quickly, but flat characters, gaping plot holes, and purple prose (“There was a river of hatred, mistrust, and pain between them”) will turn many readers off. (Apr.)

The Perfect Woman James Andrus. Pinnacle, $6.99 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7860-2215-1

Using experiences from his law enforcement career, Andrus weaves authentic police procedures into his strong debut thriller. William Dremmel, adjunct science instructor at a community college and part-time pharmacy clerk, delights in experimentally drugging his teenage “girlfriends”; then he kills them and stuffs their bodies into duffel bags. Dubbed the Bag Man, he takes pride in his intelligence and ability to dodge the police. Det. John Stallings's daughter has been missing for three years, which is why he transferred into the missing persons division of the Jacksonville, Fla., sheriff's office. While operating on a tip about a runaway, he discovers the corpse of one of Dremmel's victims. Stallings follows every lead as he tries to balance family life and this serial murder case. Andrus's complex, devious characters keep the plot moving right up to the vague, sequel-promising conclusion. (Apr.)

Comics

Hotwire Comics # 3 Edited by Glenn Head. Fantagraphics, $22.99 paper (136p) ISBN 978-1-60699-288-3

The third volume of this comics anthology is a whirl-a-gig of vivid color, giddy fun, black angst, and hauntingly disturbing images, including work by more than 20 artists, including David Sandlin, Tim Lane, and Onsmith. The volume brings together carefully crafted stories with eye-searing artwork, packed with scatological humor, violence, and disquieting sexual acts, including one by a pedophiliac clown. Editor Head's own “Candyland Clinic” is a standout, a pastel-colored critique of the culture of Prozac. R. Sikoryak contributes a memorable abridged Hamlet starring Dennis the Menace, while Mary Fleener reminisces about buying her first gun. Interspersed with the narrative comics are visual works, including a wild full-color, full-page spread by Steven Cerio, David Paleo's eerie “Feral Spheres” and Mark Dean Veca's “Popeyeconography,” which could forever change how readers look at Olive Oyl, Brutus, and the gang. Hotwire Comics 3 is not for the faint of heart, but those who love underground comics or want an introduction to that world as it stands today, will embrace the volume. (Feb.)

Chocolate Cheeks Steven Weissman. Fantagraphics, $16.99 paper (120p) ISBN 978-1-56097-927-2

Classic kid comics are evoked with a weird, horror-inspired twist in the latest Yikes! collection by Weissman. The cast is inspired by well-known horror figures—Pullapart Boy is Frankenstein, Chubby Cheeks is a Jekyll/Hyde character and so on. There's also Lumpy Noodle, who has a brain tumor for a head, and Crustache, whose attribute you can probably guess. Some of the strips are gross-outs in the Johnny Ryan mode; a longer story line involves Chubby's desire to “vanquish his enemies” and X-Ray's search for a nemesis. The second half of the book is concerned with a longer narrative in which the discovery of a dead kitten leads to many complications for all. Weissman has a knack for combining the cute with the eerie and the unsettling, and the art—presented in both b&w and color—is outstanding. However a general lack of more than surface characterization—all the kids speak interchangeably—holds this back from being more than an amusing diversion despite the great appeal of the art. (Jan.)

Animal Crackers: A Gene Luen Yang Collection Gene Luen Yang. SLG (www.slgcomic.com), $14.95 paper (216p) ISBN 978-1-59362-183-4

This early work from the author of the acclaimed American Born Chinese shows that Yang's work has matured significantly. What it does share with his later comics is a tendency toward nonstereotypical Asian-American lead characters. Featuring a secret society of formerly religious aliens devoted to saving the human race, and baked goods that can be turned into cute but demonic monsters by a person's sins, Animal Crackers is charming and funny but lacking in focus. Why must you plug a television into your left nostril in order to talk to the aliens of the San Peligran Order? Why does a brief moment of shared telepathy lead to animal cracker demons made out of hate? Who knows. Yang's art is already very strong, with a level of vibrant visual storytelling and pure potential that makes his Xeric Award for this book understandable. All clean lines and expressive characters forever making irresistibly funny faces, the world of Animal Crackers is visually appealing. Aimed at the young adult market, this book will appeal to Yang fans who want a look at his early work and readers who like such surreal humor as Monty Python. (Jan.)

Memory Donald E. Westlake. Hard Case Crime, $7.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-8439-6375-5

The career of late MWA Grand Master Westlake (1933—2009) spans 50 years with the appearance of this elegant, melancholy novel, written in the 1960s and never before published. Actor Paul Cole is on tour when he sleeps with the wrong married woman, and her husband puts him in the hospital, from which he emerges with short- and long-term memory problems. As he makes his way from the Midwest to his home in New York City, Paul struggles to remember his past and build a future while existing in limbo: unable to keep appointments with doctors or the unemployment office, meeting countless people too caught up in their own agendas or bureaucracies to help him. Lovely language and the overall discourse on the consequences of thoughtlessness make this a significant final work from a master. (Apr.)