Fiction Reviews
Reviews of new fiction, thrillers, mysteries, romance, science fiction, and graphic novels

Apr 05, 2010

Turbulence Giles Foden. Knopf, $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-307-59277-4

Foden emerged as a formidable storyteller with The Last King of Scotland, and now he tackles WWII and the beaches at Normandy from an unforeseen perspective: that of Henry Meadows, a Cambridge-educated meteorologist tasked with befriending the reclusive meteorological genius and conscientious objector Wallace Ryman and learning the secrets of the mysterious Ryman number for the Allies, who hope to use it to forecast the perfect moment to launch the D-Day offensive. Questions of turbulence abound as Meadows carries out his scientific reconnaissance amid fascinatingly sketched characters like prescient scientists Brecher and Pyke, Ryman's scheming wife, and the enigmatic Ryman himself, but it is the meticulous fusion of science and military history that dazzles, coming off like an exhilarating fusion of Richard Powers and John le Carré. As the deadline mounts and Ryman takes matters into his own hands, the quickly accelerating plot threatens to overwhelm both the book's methodical pace and the occasionally glutted cast of characters—but, by then, Foden's point, that certainty and probability are values batted about like balloons in the atmosphere, has pierced its target. (Aug.)

[Signature] Reviewed by Marlon James Island Beneath the Sea Isabelle Allende. Harper, $26.99 (464p) ISBN 978-0-06-198824-0 Of the many pitfalls lurking for the historical novel, the most dangerous is history itself. The best writers either warp it for selfish purposes (Gore Vidal), dig for the untold, interior history (Toni Morrison), or both (Jeannette Winterson). Allende, four years after Ines of My Soul, returns with another historical novel, one that soaks up so much past life that there is nowhere left to go but where countless have been. Opening in Saint Domingue a few years before the Haitian revolution would tear it apart, the story has at its center Zarité, a mulatto whose extraordinary life takes her from that blood-soaked island to dangerous and freewheeling New Orleans; from rural slave life to urban Creole life and a different kind of cruelty and adventure. Yet even in the new city, Zarité can't quite free herself from the island, and the people alive and dead that have followed her. Zarité's passages are striking. More than merely lyrical, they map around rhythms and spirits, making her as much conduit as storyteller. One wishes there was more of her because, unlike Allende, Zarité is under no mission to show us how much she knows. Every instance, a brush with a faith healer, for example, is an opportunity for Allende to showcase what she has learned about voodoo, medicine, European and Caribbean history, Napoleon, the Jamaican slave Boukman, and the legendary Mackandal, a runaway slave and master of black magic who has appeared in several novels including Alejo Carpentier's Kingdom of This World. The effect of such display of research is a novel that is as inert as a history textbook, much like, oddly enough John Updike's Terrorist, a novel that revealed an author who studied a voluminous amount of facts without learning a single truth. Slavery as a subject in fiction is still a high-wire act, but one expects more from Allende. Too often she forgoes the restraint and empathy essential for such a topic and plunges into a heavy breathing prose reminiscent of the Falconhurst novels of the 1970s, but without the guilty pleasure of sexual taboo. Sex, overwritten and undercooked, is where "opulent hips slithered like a knowing snake until she impaled herself upon his rock-hard member with a deep sigh of joy." Even the references to African spirituality seem skin-deep and perfunctory, revealing yet another writer too entranced by the myth of black cultural primitivism to see the brainpower behind it. With Ines of My Soul one had the sense that the author was trying to structure a story around facts, dates, incidents, and real people. Here it is the reverse, resulting in a book one second-guesses at every turn. Of course there will be a forbidden love. Betrayal. Incest. Heartbreak. Insanity. Violence. And in the end the island in the novel's title remains legend. Fittingly so, because to reach the Island Beneath the Sea, one would have had to dive deep. Allende barely skims the surface. Marlon James's recent novel, The Book of Night Women, was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Bill Warrington's Last Chance James King. Viking, $24.95 (300p) ISBN 978-0-670-02161-1

This nicely tuned road trip novel from 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award—winner King begins in Ohio, where April Shea is a “pigheaded” 14-year-old girl who experiments with pot and constantly squabbles with her single mother, Marcy. Together, Marcy and April care for Marcy's 79-year-old father, Bill, a Korean War vet and retired salesman now suffering from Alzheimer's. Bill has his heart set on bringing his family together for a reunion, but with this looking ever unlikely—his two sons are perpetually out of the picture—Bill and April take off for California, where April plans on joining a band and Bill imagines he can force a reunion. Along the way, April fends off the lecherous creeps, Bill slips increasingly into his mental twilight, and Bill's children rise above their family dysfunction and band together. The spirited interplay between the gruff but wounded Bill and the perhaps too precocious April provides the most sensitive scenes in this enjoyable first novel. (Aug.)

Lady of the Butterflies Fiona Mountain. Putnam, $25.95 (544p) ISBN 978-0-399-15636-6

A lady lepidopterist may seem an unlikely real-life subject for historical romance, but Mountain (Bloodline) makes it work in this first-person account of the life of Eleanor Glanville, the late 17th-century naturalist accused of madness because of her devotion to studying butterflies. Daughter of a landowner, Eleanor grows up not just admiring the natural beauty of the marshy moors around her but also observing and collecting specimens according to the latest scientific methods. Butterflies become her passion even as she marries Edmund Ashfield, to whom she must cede control of her land, and it is Edmond's lack of passion that drives her into the arms of his dashing friend, Richard Glanville, whom she later marries, though neither husband proves as steadfast as the London apothecary with whom she corresponds about science. In later years, Richard and Eleanor's eldest son join forces to have her declared insane in order to gain control over her property so they can drain the wetlands. In fact, drainage—battles over it, the implications of it—is a huge piece of the novel and provides the most original passages of a lush and confidently plotted historical. (July)

Thin, Rich, Pretty Beth Harbison. St. Martin's, $24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-38198-1

Harbison (Shoe Addicts Anonymous) delivers an enjoyable summer novel that's heavier on '80s nostalgia than originality. Twenty years ago, Holly and Nicola were best friends at camp, united in their hatred of the cabin bully, Lexi. Now, Holly, who owns a Washington, D.C., art gallery, is “pre-engaged” to controlling Randy, who will propose if she can drop 20 pounds. Nicola is an actress in L.A., struggling to follow up her one sleeper hit, but being turned down left and right for roles because she doesn't look right. As Holly sheds the weight, Randy's unpleasantness becomes impossible to ignore, and Nicola undergoes plastic surgery that leaves her unrecognizable even to her grandmother (and doesn't get her any work). Meanwhile, Lexi's father dies and her stepmother cuts her off, leaving her destitute. When Holly runs into Lexi, she realizes that undoing a prank she and Nicola played on her years ago at camp could potentially reverse her fortune. There's nothing outstanding here, but it does the trick as a beach book. (July)

So Cold the River Michael Koryta. Little, Brown, $24.99 (512p) ISBN 978-0-316-05363-1

In this explosive thriller from Koryta (Envy the Night), failed filmmaker Eric Shaw is eking out a living making family home videos when a client offers him big bucks to travel to the resort town of West Baden, Ind., the childhood home of her father-in-law, Campbell Bradford, to shoot a video history of his life. Almost immediately, things go weird. Eric uncovers evidence of another Campbell Bradford, a petty tyrant who lived a generation before the other and terrorized the locals. The older Campbell begins appearing in horrific visions to Eric after he sips the peculiar mineral water that made West Baden famous. Koryta spins a spellbinding tale of an unholy lust for power that reaches from beyond the grave and suspends disbelief through the believable interactions of fully developed characters. A cataclysmic finale will put readers in mind of some of the best recent works of supernatural horror, among which this book ranks. 6-city author tour. (June)

The Nobodies Album Carolyn Parkhurst. Doubleday, $25.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-385-52769-9

Parkhurst (The Dogs of Babel) returns with the story of Octavia Frost: widow, successful novelist, and estranged mother of Milo, lead singer of an up-and-coming band. Milo and Octavia haven't spoken in almost four years, but their separation ends when Octavia learns (from the Times Square news crawl) that Milo has been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend. In short order, Octavia travels to the West Coast, determined to find out who really killed Bettina Moffett. Octavia's quest is peppered with short excerpts from her novels—in original and revised form—though the bits and scraps sometimes come off as filler instead of metafictional excursions into stories Octavia revises for publication and for her own purposes. (Not insignificantly, Milo's band is called Pareidolia, after the human compulsion to see, for instance, the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast.) Parkhurst's voice sucks the reader in immediately—the gift of a real storyteller—but the mixed genre structure will turn off as many readers as it works for, and the mystery plot is thinner than it should be. (June)

Crashers Dana Haynes. St. Martin's, $24.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-59988-1

Haynes's compelling first thriller takes familiar elements—a mysterious airplane crash, a bent FBI agent, a deadly female spy—and mixes them with the world of National Transportation Safety Board aviation disaster investigations. When pathologist Leonard “Tommy” Tomzak, who's attending a Portland, Ore., medical conference, sees a TV report of a nearby jetliner crash, he rushes to the site via helicopter. There Tommy takes charge of the investigation, though he quit the NTSB a few months earlier in a huff. As other NTSB personnel (known as “crashers”) make their way to the crash scene from around the country, Tommy and his local crew secure the site. The forensic details fascinate but aren't for the weak of stomach. Haynes (Sacrifice Play and two other mysteries as Conrad Haynes) nicely integrates several subplots involving terrorism. The slam-bang crash landing of a conclusion will leave readers anxiously awaiting the promised sequel. 100,000 first printing. (June)

This Is Where We Live Janelle Brown. Random/Spiegel & Grau, $25 (336p) ISBN 978-0-385-52403-2

Married 30-something artists Claudia and Jeremy Munger are the unlucky anchors of Brown's shaky sophomore novel, an of-the-moment time capsule in the mold of her well-received All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. Claudia is a filmmaker whose first feature is about to be released; Jeremy is a musician on the brink of mainstream success; together they are living in boho splendor in a newly purchased L.A. bungalow. But when Claudia's film bombs, Jeremy's band breaks up, their adjustable rate mortgage balloons, and Jeremy's famous painter ex-girlfriend, Aoki, comes back on the scene, the Mungers' sense of themselves is harshly tested. The gauntlets the Mungers face verge on Kafkaesque, yet the novel proceeds with painful earnestness. Particularly detracting are the one-note supporting characters: Jeremy and Claudia's parents, an annoying roommate, the corpulent potential producer of Claudia's next film. Aoki, meanwhile, plays a pivotal role but is burdened with a heavy load of temperamental artist clichés. There are lovely small moments—Claudia's awkward run-in with a former student, for instance—that give hope that the undeniably talented author will find her footing again after this flawed effort. (June)

Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Objective: A New Jason Bourne Novel Eric Van Lustbader. Grand Central, $27.99 (448p) ISBN 978-0-446-53981-4

Lustbader's cookie-cutter fifth Jason Bourne novel in the Ludlum franchise (after The Bourne Deception) downgrades the title character to a mere co-star with villain Leonid Arkadin, a graduate of the same covert training program, who also possesses almost superhuman combat skills. Bourne and Arkadin's globe-trotting pursuit of each other drives the main plot, which includes yet another secret cabal bent on world domination, Severus Domna. The members of Severus Domna have their eye on a ring Bourne possesses that's a clue to the location of King Solomon's legendary gold. Arkadin's use of silly aliases (e.g., Stanley Kowalski, Frank N. Stein) dissipates any effort at realism, while implausible and formulaic side stories involving Soraya Moore, ousted from her position with the CIA, don't help. Those who don't mind Bourne's devolution from the tortured amnesiac soul Ludlum created into a stock action hero will be most satisfied. (June)

Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness Tilly Bagshawe. Morrow, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-172830-3

Big bad business shenanigans turn a poor little rich girl into a turbocharged avenger in bestseller Bagshawe's absorbing, if overheated, second Sheldonesque thriller (after Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game). Against her family's wishes, New York socialite Grace Knowles marries Lenny Brookstein, who's more than 30 years her senior—and one of the cofounders of Quorum, “the most profitable hedge fund of all time.” For a while, everything's utterly fabulous, until Lenny's investors lose $75 billion. When Lenny disappears after going for a solo sail off Nantucket one summer day (his body surfaces a month later), Grace winds up in prison for securities fraud, among other charges. Determined to clear her name and Lenny's, Grace pulls off a daring escape. NYPD Det. Mitch Connors sets out to catch the elusive society beauty, but in the course of his hunt provides her some unexpected help. Sheldon fans will find only tenuous links to Sheldon's own novels. (June)

The One That I Want Allison Winn Scotch. Crown/Shaye Areheart, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-46450-7

In the latest from Scotch (Time of My Life), a clichéd story of a baby-craving 30-something, gives way to an aching, honest look into the death and rebirth of relationships. Tilly Farmer is a high school guidance counselor who married her high school sweetheart, has never left her hometown of Westlake, Wash., and is sure that the key to her happiness is getting pregnant. When an unexpected encounter with an old grade school friend (now a psychic) leaves Tilly with the ability to see the future, what she foresees is not a baby but losing her husband to a job in Seattle. Though the far-fetched plot device feels tired, Scotch combines the fallout of Tilly's visions with the burdens of an alcoholic father, angry younger sister, and deceased mother to bring her character into focus. Scotch answers hard questions about the nature of personal identity and overwhelming loss with a wise, absorbing narrative. (June)

A Stranger in the Family Robert Barnard. Scribner, $24 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4391-7674-0

Kit Philipson (born Peter Novello), the reserved hero of this intriguing suspense novel from Diamond Dagger Award—winner Barnard (Last Post), grew up with all too perfect adoptive parents in Glasgow, Scotland. Now that the couple who raised him are dead, Kit seeks answers about his past from his biological parents, and learns that his adoption stemmed from his kidnapping at age three during a Novello family holiday in Trepalu, Sicily, in 1989. His birth mother discourages him from digging into why he was abducted, while his dying birth father won't even acknowledge Kit as his own. Determined to suss out the truth, Kit discovers that his adoptive father and his birth father once had a mysterious confrontation at a conference. Kit must go back to a grandfather's dealings during WWII to move forward, but can there be a sweet family ending after all the coldness and deception? Readers will keep turning the pages to find out. (June)

A Fierce Radiance Lauren Belfer. Harper, $25.99 (544p) ISBN 978-0-06-125251-8

Penicillin operates as the source of romance, murder, and melodrama in Belfer's (City of Light) evocative WWII—era novel. When Life magazine sends strikingly beautiful photographer Claire Shipley to report on a promising new medication made from green mold, Claire, 36, the single mother of a young son, who lost her daughter to blood poisoning eight years before, is moved by the drug's potential to save lives. She also becomes smitten with resident doctor James Stanton, a man with two interests: penicillin and bedding Claire. But as the war casualties pile up, penicillin becomes an issue of national security and the politics of the drug's production threaten to disrupt the pair's lust-fueled romance, especially when James is sent abroad to oversee human trials of the drug. The pharmaceutical companies—including one owned by Claire's father—realize the financial potential in penicillin, which leads to a hodgepodge of soapy plot twists: suspicious deaths, amnesia, illness, exploitation, and espionage. Belfer handily exploits Claire's photo shoots to add historical texture to the book, and the well-researched scenes bring war-time New York City to life, capturing the anxiety-ridden period. (June)

Mr. Peanut Adam Ross. Knopf, $25.95 (335p) ISBN 978-0-307-27070-2

Ross's inspired debut explores the “proximity of violence and love” and begins with the death of Alice Pepin, whose lifelong struggle with depression, insecurity, and obesity comes to an abrupt end at her kitchen table when she is found dead with a peanut lodged in her throat. She has suffered suicide by anaphylactic shock—or so claims her husband, David, a quiet computer game programmer obsessed with M.C. Escher, Hitchcock, and working and re-working a draft of his unpublished novel, a violent possible masterpiece. Gradually, the two detectives on the case begin to see disturbing parallels between their own marital dramas and the Pepins' cruel rotations of brinkmanship and adoration. Ross's depiction of love is grotesque and tender at once, and his style is commanding as he combines torture and romance to create a sense of vertigo-as-romance. It's a unique book—stark and sublime, creepy and fearless—that readers into the darker end of the literary spectrum won't want to miss. (June)

The Madonnas of Echo Park Brando Skyhorse. Free Press, $23 (224p) ISBN 978-1-4391-7080-9

Skyhorse maps in his vivid debut the spirit of L.A.'s Echo Park, where Mexican-Americans define themselves either in alignment with or in opposition to their barrio. Each story-like chapter tells the tale of a character who has grown up in, moved to, or fled Echo Park, such as an itinerant construction worker hired to dispose of a murder weapon, a woman who converses with the Virgin Mary, and a hustler who swears he's going to stay out of prison this time. These lives coalesce around a random shooting that claims the life of a young girl. Family epics also emerge, notably the story of Aurora Esperanza, whose absent father narrates the opening story and whose mother was at the center of a tragedy. Aurora herself closes out the book, drawing together threads of homecoming that weave throughout the novel. Though a few of the narrators' voices aren't distinct enough, Skyhorse excels at building a vibrant community and presenting several perspectives on what it means to be Mexican in America, from those who wonder “how can you lose something that never belonged to you?” to those who miraculously find it. (June)

The Ice Princess Camilla Läckberg, trans. from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray. Pegasus (Norton, dist.), $25.95 (400p) ISBN 978-1-60598-092-8

At the start of Läckberg's haunting U.S. debut, the first of her seven novels set in the Swedish coastal town of Fjällbacka, biographer Erica Falck returns home to sort through her deceased parents' belongings and work on her next book. But this is not the same hometown she grew up in. Summer tourists are turning the former fishing village into a thriving resort, and Erica's controlling brother-in-law is pressuring her to cash in by selling the family home. The apparent suicide of childhood friend Alexandra Wijkner contributes to Erica's grief. Once inseparable, they drifted apart before Alex's family abruptly moved away, and Erica feels compelled to write a novel about why the beautiful Alex would kill herself. Läckberg skillfully details how horrific secrets are never completely buried and how silence can kill the soul. A parallel between the town's downward spiral and the fate of one of Fjällbacka's wealthiest families adds texture. (June)

One Day David Nicholls. Vintage, $14.95 paper (448p) ISBN 978-0-307-47471-1

The Hollywood-ready latest from Nicholls (The Understudy) makes a brief pit stop in book form before its inevitable film adaptation. (It's already in development.) The episodic story takes place during a single day each year for two decades in the lives of Dex and Em. Dexter, the louche public school boy, and Emma, the brainy Yorkshire lass, meet the day they graduate from university in 1988 and run circles around one another for the next 20 years. Dex becomes a TV presenter whose life of sex, booze, and drugs spins out of control, while Em dully slogs her way through awful jobs before becoming the author of young adult books. They each take other lovers and spouses, but they cannot really live without each other. Nicholls is a glib, clever writer, and while the formulaic feel and maudlin ending aren't ideal for a book, they'll play in the multiplex. (June)

Buy Back Brian M. Wiprud. Minotaur, $24.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-60188-1

Set in the New York City art world, this well-paced caper novel from Wiprud (Feelers) will likely appeal to Elmore Leonard fans. Brooklynite Tom Davin works in the morally ambiguous field of what he terms “corporate recovery,” returning stolen paintings, documents, and collectibles to their owners via their insurance companies for a finder's fee without getting the law involved. Tom locates those who took the valuables, then negotiates a price with the insurers. When Tom crosses the line into criminality by arranging for the theft of three paintings from Brooklyn's Whitbread Museum in order to sell them back to the insurance company, the scheme goes awry—his thieves lose the paintings to some other crooks. As Tom tries to figure out who ripped off his crew, he narrowly avoids getting killed several times. The baffling abduction of four cats that Tom's ex-girlfriend abandoned raises the stakes. Readers will want to see more of the captivating Tom Davin. (June)

Seven Year Switch Claire Cook. Hyperion/Voice, $24.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4013-4116-9

Roll out your beach blanket for this sweet summer read about making mistakes and moving on. Struggling and sassy single mom Jill—left to raise three-year-old Anastasia when husband Seth runs away to join the Peace Corp—is just about over the devastating loss when Seth reappears seven years later ready to pick up where they left off. Jill wrestles with her still-raw anger and her precocious daughter's heart-breaking need for her daddy back in her life. “Honey, if you don't forgive him, it'll eat you alive,” counsels Jill's boss and best friend, Joni. For his part, “It wasn't the life we planned,” Seth explains. But Anastasia helps him remember it's the life he needs while Jill discovers letting go teaches you how to hold onto new possibilities. Cook (Must Love Dogs) creates an impossible-not-to-love cast of imperfect, funny, wistful, and wise characters. (June)

The Anniversary Man R.J. Ellory. Overlook, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-1-59020-327-9

This disappointing crime thriller from Ellory (A Quiet Belief in Angels) focuses on a serial killer who restages famous murders with new victims across New York City. As the surprisingly ineffectual NYPD struggles to track down the Anniversary Killer, Det. Ray Irving finds himself unexpectedly allied with the enigmatic and reclusive John Costello, lone survivor of a previous serial killer's rampage and perhaps New York's foremost authority on serial killers. While the fiend strikes again and again, Ray is forced to depend on the fragile John, despite the personal cost to John as well as Ray's growing concerns about John's reliability. Ellory's operatic story, for all its entertaining purple-tinged prose and forays into the lurid underbelly of serial-killer fandom, brings little new to this familiar subgenre. His decaying New York as a place of unrelenting despair and violence will strike many as far more suited to the 1970s than to the present. (June)

Attila: The Gathering of the Storm William Napier. St. Martin's Griffin, $13.99 paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-59899-0

The pseudonymous Napier continues his excellent portrayal of Attila's turbulent life in this second installment to his trilogy (after Attila). The colorful story is told by a Roman scribe, Priscus of Panium, and begins in 441 A.D. as Attila returns to claim the Hun throne after 30 years in exile. Attila, bitter and full of hatred for Rome (and pretty much everybody else), is determined to destroy the Roman and Chinese empires, and the book is rife with Attila's bloody machinations as he murders his rivals, slaughters enemy armies, and uses guile and deception to amass allies. Napier also smartly tells of events on the Roman side as conspiracies and rivalries split the Roman empire, and Aëtius, an out-of-favor Roman general, is tasked with saving Rome from the Hun invaders. The hitch: Aëtius and Attila are old friends from their exile days. Alliances, betrayal, assassination, gory battles, torture, and cruelty mark this blood-soaked historical, and Napier describes it all vividly and with sword-pounding impact. (June)

Based upon Availability Alix Strauss. Harper, $13.99 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-184526-0

Strauss's stellar first novel (after story collection The Joy of Funerals) chronicles the loneliness of New Yorkers loosely connected by the swanky Four Seasons hotel. Hotel manager Morgan, Strauss's strongest protagonist, longs for the company of her older sister, Dale, who died of leukemia as a child. She's in a go-nowhere relationship and hoping to find a friend in Trish Hemingway, an artist and gallery owner who reminds her of Dale. Trish, meanwhile, is coming to terms with growing apart from her best friend, and she's not fully over her fiancé, who left her shortly before they were to be married. Subplots play out and scenes are revisited courtesy of a number of perspectives—hotel employees, friends and family, hotel guests—creating a near mosaic with twinges of darkness, thanks largely to the strange and unexpected things that go on behind hotel doors: the s&m gear Morgan steals after snooping in a guest's room, an abused woman found tied to a bed. Strauss's ending, which strives to be hopeful, comes off as abrupt; otherwise, this is quite sublime. (June)

Broken Glass Alain Mabanckou, trans. from the French by Helen Stevenson. Counterpoint/Soft Skull, $13.95 paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-59376-273-5

Set in a sad-sack Congolese bar called Credit Gone West, this ingeniously satirical novel by Congolese poet and novelist Mabanckou (African Psycho) creates a microcosm of postcolonial African experience through the tales of sodden bar patrons. Broken Glass, a 64-year-old former teacher who renounced a conventional life for the drinking life, jots down his and others' stories in a notebook given to him by the bar's owner, Stubborn Snail, because “the days when grandmothers reminisced from their deathbeds was gone now.” Broken Glass endures ribald tales by unsavory regulars such as Pampers, a frequenter of the sex district who lands in jail, only to be sexually abused by the inmates. Another fixture, Printer, recounts the convoluted tale of his travels in France, where he married a gorgeous white woman, moved to a Paris suburb “well away from negroes,” and then discovered his wife was sleeping with his visiting son. Mabanckou moves fluidly from story to story, stringing sentences together without periods and settling into a pleasing prose rhythm. Literary allusions (Holden Caulfield has a cameo) and gentle ironies punctuate this wickedly entertaining novel. (June)

Hearts on a String Kris Radish. Bantam, $15 paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-553-38475-8

In Radish's unsatisfying latest (after Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA), five women meet, bond, and overcome personal troubles. The women meet in a Tampa, Fla., airport bathroom as a giant storm shuts down the airport. The women decide to make the best of the delay and wait it out in a luxury hotel suite. In the process, they collide with a convention of parapsychics, a sex offender on the loose, and serious personal struggles. Still, the power of sisterhood wins out in the end and the strangers become bosom buddies. Radish's writing is convoluted (“This soft and fast-moving moment is as uncomfortable to her as almost anything hard she has ever done”), and the far-fetched plot is bogged down with hokey twists—dark secrets, undercover agents, and mystical powers. Only Radish's die-hard fans might manage to engage. (June)

High Before Homeroom Maya Sloan. Simon & Schuster/Gallery, $15 paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-4391-7129-5

This coming-of-age debut about a 16-year-old's attempt to get popular by becoming a drug addict is charming, poignant, and engrossing—to a point. “I am just another kid in another mall with ripped jeans and doodles on his Converses,” says Doug Schaffer, and he's not entirely wrong. Angry with his single mom because she spends all of her time thinking about his “pigskin pope” football-hero brother who's off in Iraq, and fixated on a girl from the mall where he works, Doug is painfully self-aware that he is a cliché. But through Sloan's on-point writing, Doug comes alive, even if he doesn't come close to achieving his goal of becoming “a meth addict, or I will kill myself trying.” He runs with the idea long enough, though, to step outside the skin of a high school dork to be turned on to nightclubs, parties, girls, and being thought of as something special. The ending, though, is a disappointment. Once Doug's brother returns, the sharp, uncommon narrative turns as dismissive as any parent who ever wished their kid would just shut up. (June)

Intelligence Susan Hasler. St. Martin's/Dunne, $24.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-57603-5

A 21-year veteran of the CIA, Hasler charts the day-to-day efforts of a team of counterterrorist analysts (aka alchemists) in a strong debut that puts most other thriller authors with similar backgrounds in the intelligence field to shame. Madeline James and her crew of brilliant misfits struggle to piece together shreds of evidence gleaned from mountains of raw data (slag) in a race to uncover a plot that threatens to dwarf the body count of 9/11. They must also battle a management structure bent on denying their findings so the current administration will have the ammunition needed to justify going to war with Iran. The parallels with recent history add to the credibility and suspense. Readers will be left aghast at the toll politics and basic self-serving, cover-your-ass government policies take on agencies and individuals whose job is to keep our country safe. Many will find Hasler's female point-of-view a welcome change from the usual smash and bash male offering in the genre. (June)

The More I Owe You Michael Sledge. Counterpoint (PGW, dist.), $15.95 paper (330p) ISBN 978-1-58243-576-3

In his first novel, memoirist Sledge (Mother and Son) imagines the life of poet Elizabeth Bishop and her lover, socialite and architect Lota de Macedo Soares, while they lived together in Brazil during the 1950s and '60s. Both women struggle with their demons as, from a remote mountain compound in Samambaia (where Lota has designed and built a glass house), Elizabeth wins the Pulitzer Prize and Lota rises to power in the turbulent political sphere of Rio de Janeiro. The book imagines much of the couple's tumultuous, tragically short relationship, based partially on Elizabeth's surviving letters, journals, and drafts (though her correspondence with Lota was burned by Lota's ex-lover). Sledge gives contour to their lives while artfully evoking Brazil's “primeval” rural landscape and uniquely urbane Rio (“half jungle” and “half twentieth-century megalopolis”), and peppers his narrative with appearances by notable contemporaries like Robert Lowell and Frank O'Hara. This is not the first fictionalized history of the couple during this period (when Bishop wrote Questions of Travel and “The Scream”), but Sledge delivers a sensitive and engrossing variation. (June)

Not Untrue & Not Unkind Ed O'Loughlin. Overlook, $26.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-59020-295-1

O'Loughlin's mixed debut finds newspaperman Owen Simmons in possession of his dead colleague's files and, more importantly, a secret they contain. It is Simmons's ensuing tale of his African war reporting that promises to reveal what that secret is, but late in the book, when a minor character publishes “a memoir of sorts” that shares the title and characters of this novel, the reader begins to suspect that Simmons has found in his dead colleague a convenient MacGuffin to string readers through his own war stories. They're good anecdotes that evoke the danger of battle, the horror of its aftermath, and the camaraderie of the brooding and maniacal “bigfeet,” nomads, fixers, stringers, and “lens monkeys” who witness it, but the intrigue promised in the first chapter doesn't run evenly through the story, and Simmons doesn't give away enough of himself, leaving readers with no one to really care for. (June)

Mystery

The Grave Gourmet Alexander Campion. Kensington, $22 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7582-4669-1

Campion's debut introduces a beguiling heroine, 28-year-old Lt. Capucine Le Tellier of the Paris judicial police. Bored with her deskbound job pursuing white-collar crime, Capucine jumps at the chance to get involved in a possible murder investigation. The body of Jean-Louis Delage, the président-directeur général of the automaker Renault, has turned up in the refrigerator of Diapason, a three-star restaurant, where Delage dined earlier that evening with his lawyer. Diapason's owner, eminent chef Jean-Basile Labrousse, is well known to Capucine's restaurant critic husband, Alexandre. What at first appears to be a case of food poisoning is soon ruled a homicide. Capucine's family connections help open political doors and provide useful contacts as she uncovers a plot involving foreign nationals and industrial espionage. Full of amusing characters, this diverting gastronomic mystery builds to a most satisfactory conclusion. Readers will want a second helping. (July)

Moscow Noir Edited by Natalia Smirnova and Julia Goumen. Akashic, $15.95 paper (280p) ISBN 978-1-936070-06-0

As literary agents Smirnova and Goumen note in their introduction to this excellent entry in Akashic's noir series, “A noir tradition does not yet really exist in Russia.” Still, they have managed to find 14 authors whose dark take on humanity would be familiar to the likes of Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson. Story after story offers haunting images: a husband interrupts his bludgeoning murder of his wife to sing their daughter back to sleep (Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's “In the New Development”); a cop eats an apple that fell from the shaven head of a drunken deputy chief detective just shot to death, who'd been playing William Tell (Alexander Anuchkin's “Field of a Thousand Corpses”). In Anna Starobinets's “The Mercy Bus,” a taut tale with a wicked bite, a con man poses as one of Moscow's walking wounded to make his getaway from a charity ball he engineered in order to rip off its patrons. This volume's strength bodes well for a second anthology from these able editors showcasing Russian talents. (June)

Junkyard Dogs Craig Johnson. Viking, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-670-02182-6

Johnson's sixth mystery featuring Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire (after 2009's Dark Horse) will remind readers that a big city isn't necessary for a compelling crime story and enduring hero. One blizzardy February day, Walt and his deputies—Victoria Moretti and Santiago Saizarbitoria—visit the Durant, Wyo., dump, owned by the Stewart family, to investigate a severed thumb found in a discarded cooler. There they discover that the Stewart family patriarch, George, was almost killed after someone dragged him behind a '68 Toronado. Walt winds up playing peacemaker between the cantankerous Stewarts, longtime Durant residents, and the owner of a new housing development bordering the junkyard. When a search of the dump unearths a surprising side business and two deaths follow, Walt realizes he has bigger problems on his hands. Series fans as well as newcomers will cheer the laconic Walt every step of the way. 8-city author tour. (June)

The Taking of Libbie, SD: A McKenzie Novel David Housewright. Minotaur, $24.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-55996-0

Edgar-winner Housewright nicely confounds readers' expectations in his absorbing seventh hard-boiled mystery featuring ex-cop and millionaire Rushmore McKenzie (after 2009's Jelly's Gold). After two men abduct McKenzie from his St. Anthony, Minn., home, and transport him to the small town of Libbie, S.D., McKenzie learns he's wanted for a scam that threatens Libbie's financial future. He's soon able to establish that a con man adopted his identity—and agrees, instead of suing, to help attractive city council member Tracie Blake track down the grifter. McKenzie, who comes to believe that the criminal must have had help from the inside, begins to make enemies with his inquiries. In addition, he must fend off come-ons from several locals and solve a double murder that may be related to the imposter's plot. Crisp prose and clever plot developments help the chapters fly by and should win this deserving author a wider audience. Greg Iles fans will be pleased. (June)

Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress Kyra Davis. Mira, $13.95 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-7783-2789-9

In Davis's fluffy fifth Sophie Katz mystery (after 2009's Lust, Loathing and a Little Dark Chocolate), the part Jewish/part black mystery author and sleuth sets out to avenge the murder of her best friend, Dena Lopiano, the proprietor of an upscale San Francisco sex shop. When a bullet hits Dena in the back at the apartment of Dena's ditzy cosmetician cousin, Mary Ann, Sophie wonders whether Mary Ann, who's intent on a Disney-themed wedding with successful toymaker Monty Sanchez, was the real target, or even Sophie herself. Suspects include Mary Ann's ex-boyfriend, Rick Wilkes; Rick's weird taxidermist girlfriend, Fawn; and Chrissy Powell, the founder of MAAP (Moral Americans Against Pornography), whose husband once dated Dena. Wacky quotes from Fatally Yours, one of Sophie's books, and an exciting cliffhanger ending compensate in part for a surfeit of breathless dialogue and a too obvious killer. (June)

Wheel of Fate Kate Sedley. Severn, $28.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6870-1

British author Sedley smoothly integrates a complex murder case with the cataclysmic political events that roiled England in 1483 in her solid 19th Roger the Chapman historical (after 2009's The Dance of Death). Rakish investigator Roger makes his way home to the West Country after the announcement of Edward IV's death only to find his family gone. Eventually, he tracks his wife, Adela, to London, where she insists that he help her hosts, the Godsloves, who believe they've been targeted for death. Two members of the Godslove clan have been killed, and a third survived an attempt on her life. Roger explores a number of possible theories, including one that a criminal sent to prison by attorney Oswald Godslove seeks revenge. Meanwhile, he must work to avoid getting enmeshed in the struggles for power as England prepares to be ruled by a 12-year-old, Edward V. Sedley's encyclopedic knowledge of the times is evident on every page. (June)

Black Moonlight: A Marjorie McClelland Mystery Amy Patricia Meade. Midnight Ink (www.midnightinkbooks.com), $14.95 paper (264p) ISBN 978-0-7387-1559-9

Set in 1935, Meade's well-crafted fourth Marjorie McClelland cozy (after 2008's Shadow Waltz) takes mystery author Marjorie and her new husband, British millionaire Creighton Ashcroft, to the Ashcroft family's private island off Bermuda. The newlyweds expect to have the island's mansion to themselves and two faithful servants, but instead they're met by a bevy of Ashcrofts, including Creighton's father's secretary-turned-wife. Soon after shocking announcements at a most unpleasant family dinner, someone deals Creighton's disagreeable father, who cheated on Creighton's late mother, a fatal blow to the head. Marjorie provides invaluable assistance to the local police investigating her father-in-law's murder, even as her beloved Creighton becomes the prime suspect. With great aplomb, Marjorie ferrets out the truth in a traditional whodunit that boasts nary a dull moment. (June)

Requiem for a Slave: A Libertus Mystery of Roman Britain Rosemary Rowe. Severn, $28.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6877-0

Steven Saylor fans eager for his next Gordianus novel will find themselves satisfied in the interim with the 11th in Rowe's above average historical series set in second-century Britain (after 2009's Death at Pompeia's Wedding). Longinus Flavius Libertus, a pavement maker with a gift for solving mysteries, returns one day from an errand to his mosaic workshop in Glevum (modern-day Gloucester) to find Lucius, a poor pie seller, lying face down on a heap of tiles, strangled to death. The absence of the dead man's purse suggests that bandits may have murdered the pie seller, who was dressed in a new tunic that could have conveyed a misleading idea of prosperity. An elderly slave, Glypto, overhears a conversation at about the fatal hour between two people, one of whom Glypto can only describe as a “green man,” giving Libertus another avenue to pursue. The detailed picture of life in Glevum, rather than the puzzle, is the book's major attraction. (June)

SF/Fantasy/Horror

Brains Robin Becker. Eos, $13.99 paper (192p) ISBN 978-0-06-197405-2

Becker's slender debut novella is an unusual take on the zombie genre: part Grapes of Wrath, part postmodern memoir. A virus outbreak turns millions of people into mindless zombies, and the remaining humans declare war on the undead. Zombified English professor Jack Barnes discovers that he has retained his memories and his consciousness. Joined by several other sentient zombies, Barnes sets off to find the virus's creator in hopes of presenting a treatise on zombie civil rights. Barnes's dogged entitlement and self-centeredness make him both uninteresting and unbearable, and while Becker's writing is crisp, the plot meanders like its characters, consisting of little more than cannibalistic feasts and tin-eared literary and pop culture references (“Hell is other zombies”; “Perhaps life as a zombie is better than no life at all”). (June)

The Dragon's Secret Donna MacQuigg. Five Star, $25.95 (282p) ISBN 978-1-59414-868-2

Sketchily set in 10th-century Wales, this fantasy romance opens with handsome Viking warrior Kyran vanquishing King Aswyn of Dragon's Head, only a few miles from the cottage of beautiful hedge witch Sayrid. When Sayrid, who saw Kyran's triumph in a vision, later saves him from an attacker, she scorns him as a barbarian but feels drawn to heal his wounds. While Kyran settles into Dragon's Head, the evil witch Brynn plots to kill him so she can become queen and collude with neighboring king Oddrun in taking over all of Wales. Sayrid distrusts Kyran, seeing him as just another conqueror who threatens the poor and vulnerable, but a prophecy links them and requires them to fall implausibly in love. MacQuigg's grasp of history is shaky, but comfortably familiar archetypes and situations will keep undemanding readers turning pages. (June)

The Dark Side of the Diamond The first 10,000 copies of Stephen King's baseball novella include a reproduction of the only known baseball card of Billy Blakely, the story's hero. Blockade Billy Stephen King. Cemetery Dance (www.cemeterydance.com), $25 (112p) ISBN 978-1-58767-228-6 A quirky baseball player with a past shrouded in secrecy is the tragic hero of this macabre tale from the dark side of the all-American sport. In the voice of George "Granny" Grantham, retired third-base coach of the New Jersey Titans, King (Under the Dome) recalls the spring of 1957, when Billy Blakely, a catcher called up from the Titans' Iowa farm system, helped to boost the team out of the basement and add some excitement to the national pastime. Billy hits with such power and guards the plate with such determination (hence his eponymous nickname) that teammates are willing to forgive such eccentricities as his frequently addressing himself in the third person, or bloodying runners who collide with him. Of course, these kinks are clues to a shocking pathology that King coaxes out in a narrative steeped so perfectly in the argot of the game and the behavior of its players and fans that readers will willingly suspend their disbelief. As King's fiction goes, this suspenseful short is a deftly executed suicide squeeze, with sharp spikes hoisted high and aimed at the jugular on the slide home. (May)

Leviathan Wept and Other Stories Daniel Abraham. Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $25 (280p) ISBN 978-1-59606-265-8

Hugo and Nebula finalist Abraham's first collection of nine stories showcases his work in an admirably wide range of genres, but the range of quality is likewise considerable. “Flat Diane,” an eerie tale about a young girl who sees through the eyes of a cardboard cutout mistreated by her relatives, addresses the horror cliché of child abuse in new and meaningful ways. “The Curandero and the Swede: A Tale from the 1001 American Nights” weaves history, humor, folklore, and vivid characterizations together with a deftness that would leave Scheherazade gasping with admiration. By contrast, “A Hunter in Arin-Qin” generates neither a sense of reality nor mythic resonance. Abraham (the Long Price Quartet) has undeniable skill, and readers will wish only for more of it to be on display here. (June)

Department of Temporal Adjustment Veronica R. Tabares. Sun Break (www.sunbreakpublishing.com), $32.99 (292p) ISBN 978-1-60916-004-3

YA fantasy author Tabares (the Behold the Eye trilogy) takes a tentative step into science fiction for adults with a tissue-thin time travel story. Lightweight heroine Vanessa is stressed out by raising three daughters while working toward an archeology degree at a Seattle university. When a closet in the archeology lab turns out to be a portal that takes her decades into the future, her kindly host sends her back right away, erasing her memories of the trip and incidentally leaving her unable to remember how to dress, cook, or recognize her children; but he can't erase the curiosity that draws her back to the portal again and again. Vanessa's temporary amnesia is the story's focus, and SF fans looking for solid characterization or any real exploration of time travel will be disappointed. (June)

The Longer the Fall Inanna Arthen. By Light Unseen (Ingram, dist.), $28 (272p) ISBN 978-0-9793028-9-3

The second book from By Light Unseen publisher Arthen in her Vampires of New England series (after 2008's Mortal Touch) offers a pleasant mix of vampire tropes and a convincing rural New England setting. Diana Chilton, a recently divorced member of the Order of the Silver Light, meets the mysteriously long-lived Thomas Morgan and learns that he's a vampire, cursed by the Fae when he desperately begged them to cure his cancer. Diana agrees to work with Thomas on a long-term spell to rid him of his thirst for blood, but things go horribly (and somewhat predictably) awry. Arthen has a novella's worth of story, and the middle of the book feels padded with sex scenes and spell preparations. Once the spell is complete, though, the pacing picks up, and the story comes to a satisfying conclusion. (June)

Lightborn Alison Sinclair. Roc, $15 paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-451-46329-6

The Lightborn, allergic to darkness, and Darkborn, allergic to light, uneasily face the threat of the mysterious Shadowborn in the complex and challenging sequel to 2009's Darkborn. The previous book's heroine, Darkborn Lady Telmaine Hearne, makes way for her husband's first love, Lightborn Floria White Hand, to take center stage. After Lightborn Prince Isidore is murdered by magical means, his successor, Fejelis Grey Rapids, accuses Floria of the evil deed. The Darkborn grant her asylum, but intrigue in both the light and the dark, including an attempt on Fejelis's life, make it clear that Floria and her allies are far from safe. Sinclair's sometimes stiff Regency prose style and large cast can be a struggle for readers, but the promise of an exciting confrontation will encourage them to persevere through the trilogy's conclusion. (June)

Who Fears Death Nnedi Okorafor. DAW, $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0617-2

Well-known for young adult novels (The Shadow Speaks; Zahrah the Windseeker), Okorafor sets this emotionally fraught tale in postapocalyptic Saharan Africa. The young sorceress Onyesonwu—whose name means “Who fears death?”—was born Ewu, bearing a mixture of her mother's features and those of the man who raped her mother and left her for dead in the desert. As Onyesonwu grows into her powers, it becomes clear that her fate is mingled with the fate of her people, the oppressed Okeke, and that to achieve her destiny, she must die. Okorafor examines a host of evils in her chillingly realistic tale—gender and racial inequality share top billing, along with female genital mutilation and complacency in the face of destructive tradition—and winds these disparate concepts together into a fantastical, magical blend of grand storytelling. (June)

Darkling Fields of Arvon James G. Anderson and Mark Sebanc. Baen, $14.99 paper (448p) ISBN 978-1-4391-3353-8

The second installment of Anderson and Sebanc's Legacy of the Stone Harp saga (after 2009's The Stoneholding) continues the formulaice but entertaining story of young bard Kalaquinn Wright. With a tyrannical usurper sitting on the throne and a darkness spreading across the land, the idyllic Harmonic Age seems to be coming to a close—unless Kal and a small band of misfits can locate the missing heir to Ardiel's ancient throne and rekindle “the Sacred Fire” by finding the Talamadh, a magical harp whose power binds the realm of Arvon together in peace and harmony. The story doesn't offer anything unique, but the authors' stylish and poetic narrative, coupled with a cast of endearing—albeit two-dimensional—characters make this a real page-turner that epic fantasy fans will enjoy. (June)

Mass Market

Vicious Kevin O'Brien. Pinnacle, $7.99 (416p) ISBN 978-0-7860-2136-9

Deftly woven plot twists save bestseller O'Brien's latest serial killer novel from predictability. The “Mama's Boy” killer spent two years kidnapping Seattle mothers and murdering them in front of their young sons; then he dropped off the radar for a decade. Widowed Susan Blanchette is on her way to Cullen, Wash., for an idyllic weekend with her toddler, Matthew, and her fiancé, Allen; high school students Jordan (whose mother was a “Mama's Boy” victim), Leo, and Moira are headed there as well, to celebrate Leo's birthday. When Jordan meets Allen, he thinks he recognizes his mother's killer, but if Allen is “Mama's Boy,” who just kidnapped Moira? While the pace of the novel is strong and the story intriguing, O'Brien (Final Breath) tries too hard to manipulate readers with implausible character actions, over-the-top emotions, and unnecessary obfuscations. (June)

Strange Neighbors Ashlyn Chase. Sourcebooks Casablanca, $6.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-4022-3661-7

When nurse Merry MacKenzie rents an apartment in a historic Boston home, she's taken with her new landlord, sexy baseball pitcher Jason Falco, and intrigued by the possibility of a ghost on the premises. It doesn't take long to figure out that her neighbors are an odd bunch: a couple of witches who run a phone sex business, several shape-shifters, a werewolf, and a vampire in (of course) the basement. The scariest entity by far is determined reporter Lila Crum, whose pursuit of Jason knows no boundaries. Add in Jason's snoopy and decidedly nonsupernatural aunt and the good-natured fun never stops. Chase (Vampire Vintage) brings on plenty of laughs along with steamy sex scenes as Merry and Jason bewitch each other amid the supernatural mayhem. (June)

Unholy Ghosts Stacia Kane. Del Rey, $7.99 (346p) ISBN 978-0-345-51557-5

In this dark futuristic urban fantasy series launch, Kane (Demon Possessed) blurs the boundaries between the living and the dead. Chess Putnam works for the world-ruling Church of Real Truth, debunking false claims of hauntings and banishing the occasional real ghost. When a powerful drug dealer calls on her services to erase her debt to him, Chess finds herself investigating an abandoned airfield, a horrible human sacrifice, an ominous apparition, and a conspiracy against the church itself. Making matters worse are her persistent drug habit, a cursed unhealing wound, and her fondness for extremely dangerous men. What starts out as a promising concept soon deteriorates into a murky mess of ambiguous characters and grim dangers. Chess is too broken to be sympathetic and too stoned to be coherent, and though it's atmospheric and well written, her story simply lacks heart. (June)

Sixty-One Nails Mike Shevdon. HarperCollins/Angry Robot, $7.99 (432p) ISBN 978-0-06-199406-7

Spinning British folklore and history into a one-step-over-from-reality vision of the streets underneath London, Shevdon's debut introduces the supernatural Feyre and their complex relationship with the human half-breeds created to maintain the fertility of the dying Feyre races. Niall Petersen, renamed Rabbit by those who know true names have power, awakens from a heart attack and finds himself in the care of the mysterious Blackbird. His previously unknown Feyre heritage has puts him in the sights of the human-hating Untainted. It also makes him uniquely suited to defending the barriers keeping the Feyre from the human world. An impressively accessible hero, Niall anchors the reader on a journey of discovery that feels constantly off-balance but never jarring. Comparisons to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere are both inevitable and erroneous; Shevdon's grittily believable, charmingly described underworld packs a dark punch all its own. (June)

Comics

To Teach: The Journey, in Comics William Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner. Teachers College Press, $15.95 paper (144p) ISBN 978-0-8077-5062-9

Quinn is a pudgy and energetic boy, whose enthusiastic embrace of snack time prompts a school administrator to label him “hyperactive disordered.” His teacher, however, notes, “it's too easy to caricature every excitable African-American boy as 'at risk' ” and goes on to identify Quinn's many strengths and then persistently encourage them. That teacher is Bill Ayers, the school reform activist and a cofounder of the Weather Underground who got so much attention during the Obama campaign. Ayers is all teacher in this graphic novel ode to the power and potential of his profession. Alexander-Tanner's black and white ink drawings show a classroom in full bloom with activity and learning, while Ayers's text offers pointed discussions of what's wrong with the current state of education in this country. Ayers doesn't just present critiques like the one relating to Quinn that “labeling students has become an epidemic in our schools”; he also shows the methods he uses “to develop a permanent readiness for the marvelous” in his classroom. With plenty of anecdotal examples, he demonstrates ways of opening up a child's eagerness to learn. This fascinating and, yes, educational book will certainly be of interest to teachers, but it will also teach, inspire, and entertain anyone else who picks it up. (May)

High Soft Lisp Gilbert Hernandez. Fantagraphics, $16.99 paper (136p) ISBN 978-1-60699-318-7

From the pages of the venerable comics institution Love and Rockets come 11 stories that loosely revolve around the emotional and sexual misadventures of psychoanalyst, sci-fi fanatic, and heroically voluptuous grade-Z film star Rosalba “Fritz” Martinez. Originally a minor character in Hernandez's expansive Palomar universe, Fritz doesn't exactly take center stage in her own book, either. In fact, we're introduced to our ostensible heroine as merely the fourth of world-famous motivational speaker Mark Herrera's six wives. The ensuing leaps in chronology and POV can be jarring for those not familiar with Hernandez's episodic style (not to mention the daunting mythology built up over 25-plus years of Love and Rockets), but the stories' offbeat humor and manic sexual energy make the adjustment more than worthwhile. Fritz's hypersexuality, bizarre fetishes, rampant vanity, and burgeoning alcoholism provide many of the volume's finest comic moments, but the ample sex on view is rarely sexy. Rather, the characters' libidinous pursuits are tied into an affecting strain of loneliness and regret that pervades even the most outlandish panels. Add to that Hernandez's characteristically thick, expressive line and character design that owes an acknowledged debt to Archie comics, and the result is a charmingly incongruous, occasionally titillating collision of poignancy and pulp. (Apr.)

The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis Ian Boothby and James Lloyd. Abrams, $24.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-8109-8837-8

Two classic animated series are brought together in a comic that offers many surprises, including how well it all works when transported to a new medium. Although both sources are the creation of cartoonist Matt Groening, the broadcast runs of each series referred to the other as works of fiction within their own universes, perhaps seeking to avoid the temptation of an attention grabbing crossover. And yet somehow this assemblage ably accomplishes just such a task while remaining faithful to the source materials. When Futurama's crew from the Planet Express delivery service become trapped in the fictional world of a Simpsons comic book, they must escape from Springfield. But shortly afterward they open a rift that brings the Simpsons characters into the Planet Express world, where the fictional characters must be rescued and returned to the pages of their comic book. Boothby's writing excels at letting each universe and the characters in them maintain their subtly distinct identities even when they blend. The overarching story for the book is designed to easily allow opportunities for affectionate references to comics, to science fiction, and to notable works of fiction. While the Simpsons comics included in the collection are not as strong, the crossover story takes what could have been a simple throwaway gag and instead crafts a funny, intricately detailed story. (Apr.)