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In Peter Straub's "tour de force" new book, A Dark Matter, four high school friends from Wisconsin, who together fell under the spell of a drifter-guru and participated in a ceremony that went woefully and dangerously awry, find themselves, decades later, still dealing with the ramifications of the experience in their separate lives. The story, which unfolds in a "Roshomon-like fashion," stands as "one of the finest tales of modern horror." And in biographer Claire Harman's take on Jane Austen, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World, we get a "sharp and scholarly analysis" of the famed novelist, as well as "the exploitation of her as a 'global brand.'"

A Dark Matter
Peter Straub. Doubleday, $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-385-51638-9
In this tour de force from bestseller Straub (In the Night Room), four high school friends in 1966 Madison, Wis.—Hootie Bly, Dilly Olson, Jason Boatman, and Lee Truax—fall under the spell of charismatic “wandering guru” Spencer Mallon. During an occult ceremony in which Mallon attempts to break through to a higher reality, something goes horribly awry leaving one participant dead. Decades later, Lee’s writer husband interviews the quartet to find out what happened. In Roshomon-like fashion, each relates a slightly different account of the trauma they experienced. Straub masterfully shows how the disappointments, downturns, and failed promise of the four friends’ lives may have stemmed from this youthful experience, and suggests, by extension, that the malignant evil they helped unleash into the world has tainted all hope ever since. Brilliant in its orchestration and provocative in its speculations, this novel ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror. (Feb.)

Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World
Claire Harman. Holt, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8050-8258-6
Diverting anecdotes pepper award-winning British biographer Harman’s (Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson) sharp and scholarly analysis of Jane Austen’s life and the posthumous exploitation of her as a “global brand” having “everything to do with recognition and little to do with reading.” Tracing the rise and fall and rise of Austen’s reputation against a larger historical backdrop, Harman chronicles the WWI-era worshipping “Janeites”; assessments of Austen that minimized her as an “accidental artist”; and modern post-feminist criticism that, in exploring her politics, sexual and otherwise, has placed Austen “in several mutually exclusive spheres at once.” Harman notes that film versions have taken liberties with and overshadowed Austen’s books, concluding that “[o]ne of the horrible ironies of Austen’s currency in contemporary popular culture is that she is referenced so freely … in discussions of ‘empowerment,’ ‘girl power,’ and all the other travesties of womanly self-fashioning that stand in for feminism” today. Yet “it is impossible to imagine a time when she or her works could have delighted us long enough.” Harman herself delights with this comprehensive catalogue of Austen-mania. Illus. (Mar.)

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