Alice, the youngest of three sisters, has felt oddly disconnected from her family since the death of her mother when she was four. Leaving her father and siblings and a failed romance in London, she sets out to travel the world, wandering from place to place until her sisters summon her home because their father is dying of pancreatic cancer. Alice is adrift and unsettled, unable to communicate her love to her father before he dies, and self-conscious about her choices when compared to her sisters. Alice alternates narration with Daniel, a 60-year old homeless man whose heart troubles are causing him to revisit his past, including the affair he had with a married woman. As Alice moves forward, cleaning her deceased father’s house and making peace with her sisters, Daniel works up the courage to approach her. The relationship they build is unusual, and Butler’s elegant prose—interspersed with thoughtful lists, such as “Ten things I know about my mother” and “Ten foods that stress me out,” written by Alice and Daniel—makes this a moving debut. Agent: Andrew Kidd, Aitken Alexander Associates (U.K.). (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

Schine’s new novel (after Alice in Bed) is an entertaining, sometimes perplexing exploration of family bonds and bondage. When Fin is orphaned at the age of 11, Lady, his half-sister, takes him in, pulling him away from the dairy farm in rural Connecticut to the Greenwich Village of the mid-1960s. Lady has always been a shining figure to Fin, who was too young to understand the falling-out she had with their father. Now, Fin and Lady form an unconventional family, set against a tumultuous political and social climate. At times the novel has echoes of Auntie Mame; at others, Dawn Powell. The narrator’s voice is used so sparingly as to intrude when it is used, and the reader gets ahead of the story in figuring out who this shadowy figure is in the tale. The bond between Fin and Lady is strong, but the story itself breaks little new ground and doesn’t reveal anything new about the era or the longings of those experiencing it. Schine writes lively dialogue and excels at sensory detail, especially early on, before the plot becomes predictable, as the novel wavers precariously between satiric comedy-of-manners and something more serious. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

Vital storytelling and literary flourishes distinguish Scottish author O’Neill’s creative story collection. Throughout, the author employs original devices, from the elucidating subscript notations of “The Footnote,” to the doodles and flowcharts tracking a relationship’s disintegration in “Figures in a Marriage,” to the fonts and broken typewriter keys of “Typography,” a powerful story that evokes the crushing effects of loss on youth. “The Cockroach,” one of the best, appears early and eschews bells and whistles as it follows a girl in Rwanda. That country is the setting for other stories as well, including “The Genocide,” in which injustice competes with beauty. But lightness and satire saturate the brilliant “A Short Story”; and amidst stories supported by Venn diagrams, exam questions, distinguished author quotations (“Seventeen Rules for Writing a Short Story”), and a tale told through book reviews (“The Eunuch in the Harem”), there’s also sex, clever narration, and illustrative graphics that add wit and whimsy. What brings all of the tonal diversity together is Neill’s obvious understanding of the cohesiveness of language, its power to transcend and overcome, and the way an economy of precious words in a short story can achieve a novel’s worth of emotion. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

The sophomore novel from Young (Pao) is the story of one Jamaican woman’s search for love and self-respect. Sixteen-year-old Gloria, while rescuing her younger sister, Marcia, from rape, kills the would-be attacker. Soon after, she leaves her small town, taking Marcia with her to Kingston. It is 1938, and all over the city, workers are striking and shutting down businesses, but Gloria manages to find work for herself and her sister. However, it quickly becomes apparent that as a poor dark-skinned woman, her life is still controlled by others, particularly predatory men. Yearning for independence, she befriends local prostitutes Sybil and Beryl, and, after losing her job as a shop clerk, decides to accept Sybil’s promise of a life where “yu not beholden to no man for the roof over yu head or have to be grateful to him for putting a ring pon yu finger.” In the brothel, Gloria meets and unexpectedly falls for Pao, the unofficial Chinatown enforcer and protagonist of Young’s previous novel. Set against the political turbulence of a country struggling toward independence, the novel’s treatment of autonomy and self-reliance is admirable yet stale and heavy-handed. Though written in phonetic Jamaican Patois, the prose lacks the vivacity to bring the characters or Jamaica itself to life. Agent: Susan Yearwood, Susan Yearwood Literary Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

For his ambitious fiction debut, a contemporary reworking of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Kiernan (Authentic Patriotism) has crafted an emotionally satisfying and brisk narrative about Jeremiah Rice, a Harvard-educated judge who drowned on a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1906. His frozen corpse is found, intact in a large iceberg, in the present day by molecular biologist Kate Philo. The evil genius Erastus Carthage, who funded the expedition, successfully reanimates Rice before a media horde. It’s a clever conceit, and Kiernan milks it for all it’s worth: religiously motivated protestors lambaste the feat as “blasphemy”; the media goes into a predictable frenzy; even the scientists (largely) behave horrifically in their quest for fame and fortune—except, of course, for the beautiful and kind-hearted Philo, and the even more perfect Rice, a symbol (and not much more) of a gentler, more innocent age, when people were less “vulgar.” There’s a sweet bit of romance between Philo and Rice, and Kiernan is good at making the science fiction sound like science fact. But the characters are never much more than mouthpieces for what appear to be the author’s pieties. Still, this is a gripping novel with a clever conceit. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

Set against the backdrop of the 1871 Chicago fire, this glimpse by Camden (The Rose of Winslow Street) into the past is a sweet, emotion-filled romance to warm the heart and touch the soul. As the sole proprietor of the watchmaking and stewardship enterprise begun by her father, Mollie Knox must not only manage the business end of the exclusive manufacturing venture, but also care for the company’s employees, most of whom are disabled Civil War veterans. In the wake of the blaze, Mollie must team with Zack Kazmarek—a Polish dockworker-turned-lawyer who has intimidated her for years—to find a way to save herself, her adopted family, and her business. When a figure from Mollie’s past appears, difficulties arise all around. While a light read, the cast of characters is varied and lovingly detailed, colorful and bursting with life. Subtle references to faith are unevenly woven throughout the simple story, and some of them are too subtle. Cleverly disguised life lessons balance the uncomplicated storytelling. Agent: Seymour Agency. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

In this second installment of the Culper Ring series, Thad Lane gathers information for the American government during the War of 1812. When Gywneth Fairchild—daughter of a British general—escapes London after witnessing her father’s murder, she finds refuge with the Lane family, whom her father had assured her were friends despite the war between their countries. Gwyn then battles a crippling despair that threatens her health and her budding feelings for Thad, who is likewise drawn to her. As the British menace Washington and Baltimore, Gwyn and Thad’s relationship must reckon with family secrets and forces both spiritual and military. White (Ring of Secrets) skillfully illustrates depression and PTSD in the traumatized Gwyn. Secondary characters shine—new readers will likely seek the first installment to acquaint themselves further. The characters’ Christian faith is artfully integrated into their personalities, words, and actions. The combination of romantic tension, spiritual contention, and wartime intrigue makes for an engrossing, entertaining read. Agent: Karen Ball, Karen Ball Publishing Services. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

M is for Mallory—Kathy Mallory, bestseller O’Connell’s powerful and powerfully flawed New York Special Crimes Unit detective. M is also for morbid, macabre, and mordant—adjectives that can be applied to the plot, the prose, and the humor of this dazzling 11th novel in the series (after 2012’s The Chalk Girl). An audience death on opening night stops Peter Beck’s play The Brass Bed, based on the slaughter of a Nebraska family, as does the discovery of Beck’s bloody corpse in a front-row seat the next night. Add to the strange mix of cast members a mysterious ghostwriter working on the script who leaves taunting messages for Mallory. Mallory makes startling deductions; manipulates witnesses, suspects, and colleagues unsparingly; humiliates a brash official who tries to grab her case; and draws the smalltown sheriff who investigated the actual slayings to Manhattan. Her bravura performance wreaks justice both inside and outside the legal system. Author tour. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

Exquisite Gallic ennui wafts through France-3 TV news anchorman Georget’s first novel, but it doesn’t prevent his appealing hero, national police detective Gilles Sebag, from ferreting out the twisted motives of an apparent serial murderer believed to prey on female Dutch tourists in Perpignan, a bewitching Catalan city rife with history and local color. A few years earlier, Sebag dashed his own career hopes by choosing a half-time parental leave; now, fatigued by the “sad reality” of being a cop, he faces the approach of empty-nest-hood, the possibility that the wife he loves is unfaithful, and the one-upmanship of a smooth young officer from Paris. Sebag, a marathoner as well as a cop who finds Kleenex more useful than revolvers, can’t get used to breaking his suspects into confession. His patient unraveling of both this tortuous case and his own malaise produces a crime novel très formidable. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink

Terrorists seek to cause mass devastation using a virus as a bio-weapon in bestseller Taylor’s entertaining fourth Pike Logan thriller (after Enemy of Mine). The job of thwarting the terrorists falls to Grolier Recovery Services, a company Logan has set up to be independent of Taskforce, a technically “illegal” counterterrorist unit of the U.S. government. Logan’s group traces an Iranian general, Malik Musavi, who’s trying to acquire the virus, to Thailand, where one of their own, an agent known as Knuckles, has been imprisoned after an operation to tap into a police database. Musavi hopes to use a Chechen’s fury at the West to persuade her to infect herself with the disease and then pass the plague on to others. While genre fans will find much that’s familiar (Logan continues to struggle with his feelings toward attractive series regular Jennifer Cahill), clever plotting and solid prose set this above many similar military action novels. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2013 | Details & Permalink