Josie Brooks is not interested in disruption. Everything in her life is organized, minimal, and efficient. A successful business consultant in Chicago with a type-A personality, she ruthlessly identifies and slashes any source of economic wastefulness with complete disregard for the employees themselves. Soon, everyone at Diamond Mutual calls her "The Dragon" as she orders the termination of decent, hardworking people for the sake of profit. Josie's rigid life, however, mysteriously begins to unravel when a strangely alluring snow globe appears at her apartment. Soon afterward, Josie is forced to confront her own flaws and fears, beginning an emotional journey toward love, friendship, mourning, and new beginnings. A wide range of characters flesh out this latest installment of Baumbich's (Stray Affections) Snow Globe series, most emerging impressively from the narrative. Particularly noteworthy is Baumbich's ability to make Josie likable even at the height of her self-centeredness. Readers familiar with the first book in the series will note that the place, plot, and characters in the second book are all new, but having a second chance is still a central theme. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

This enigmatic collection by Hall comprises curious musings on the convergence of the natural and human worlds. In "Visitations," dead squirrels are trapped in the wall of a pregnant woman's kitchen while the father of her baby is away. The smell of decay leads to paranoia and the suspicion that the father has cursed the house. "Skinny Girls' Constitution and Bylaws" is a humorously chilling list of girls whose "knees are castanets," who "chant Plath at school assemblies," and whose "job is to fasten ties around men's necks." "All the Day's Sad Stories," a novella, is about a superstitious married couple, Mercy and Jake, trying to conceive despite omens such as Jake's cookie lacking a fortune. Many of these selections, such as "By the Gleam of Her Teeth, She Will Light the Path Before Her," have quirky titles that deliver atmospheric and dreamlike stories sure to fascinate. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Johnson imagines a backstory for Shakespeare's The Tempest in this entertaining tale of mystery, romance, and shipwreck. Recently orphaned, Elizabeth signs on as servant to the crabby benefactress of the Virginia Company, sailing with her from London to the newly founded Jamestown Colony. A colossal tempest strands the passengers and crew near the Bermuda islands, rumored to be inhabited by spirits and cannibals, but upon going ashore they discover a tropical paradise. When the ship's cook falls ill, Elizabeth takes charge of feeding the castaways. Her experiments with native herbs and vegetables are such a hit that she is soon cooking up great feasts for the group. (Johnson includes some of her recipes—for dishes like oyster stew and baygrape jelly.) When Elizabeth gives cooking lessons to her swarthy fellow cook, a romance, encouraged by the pair's mysterious friend William Strachey, blossoms. After William creates a play for the amusement of those stranded, Elizabeth—cast as Miranda—begins to unravel his true identity, and the bond they develop changes the course of her life. Johnson may not be Shakespeare, but her tribute is nevertheless a well-crafted drama. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Harding (Unravelled) takes a hilarious warts-and-all look at the breakup of Lucy and Trent, and its effect on their sullen 15-year-old daughter, Sam. In alternating chapters written by the combatants, Trent whines about the need to figure out "grown-up, man stuff" rather than stay mired in a "hamster-wheel existence" while Lucy rails at Trent's "curly-haired cow" of a girlfriend and considers her own risky revenge-romance with a TV heartthrob who's 13 years her junior—and Sam's ultimate crush. Sam, meanwhile, in a picture-perfect take of angsty adolescence, desperately manipulates her sparring parents. The trio, their lovers, friends, and colleagues are all lovable screwups, and the lessons learned by Lucy, Trent, and Sam lend a pleasant note of poignancy to the madcap antics. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Gilley's debut collection offers admirably constructed narratives from which his troubled protagonists emerge bearing small, resonant victories. The narrator of "Vanishing World" is the youngest son of a suburban Connecticut family that blows apart in the 1960s: mom, unsure this is the life she had envisioned, has an affair; dad struggles to maintain a clientele for artwork falling out of style; one of his twin sisters is murdered; and the narrator experiences his first homosexual love affair while in the navy. In the beautifully depicted "White," a married couple recognizes in the space of a quick, explosive argument the fatal flaws in their relationship. The "lost" young woman narrator of "House of Prayer" becomes vulnerable to the proselytizing of her born-again Christian roommate at the same time she's shaken by her boyfriend's infidelity and her bipolar sister's psychotic episodes. Another lovable misfit redeems himself from misunderstanding in the title story by declaring: "All my life, I seem to have been mistaken for someone else." Telling, make-or-break moments are the crux of Gilley's stories, allowing his sharply etched characters to find unexpected purpose under fire. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Chang, director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of Hunger and Inheritance, sticks close to home as she follows Roman Morris from his days as an M.F.A. student in the late 1980s to his soaring career as a published poet, tenured professor, and Pulitzer Prize winner. Unfortunately, the book lends credence to the clichés that plague modern poets and the institutions that foster them: wine-fueled workshops are held by candlelight, and Roman's fantasies about his talented, beautiful, and aloof workshop professor lead to a student-teacher affair. Roman's eventual success brings out his resentment of the academy and its favoritism and politics, but this is a work of fiction, and the championing of creative writing programs should not be its cause. In Chang's hands, the world of poetry is a cliché; instead of a novel, she delivers a case study of the modern poet with little bearing in reality and characters as one-dimensional as the premise. While the language is well crafted, readers may be disappointed by the lack of quality storytelling. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Laferrière's scintillating American debut recounts the sexual adventures of an eclectic cast of characters under the regime of "Baby Doc" Duvalier, charting their desire for sex and power as they navigate the complexities of life in 1970s Haiti. Roughly at the center is 17-year-old Fanfan, who enjoys seducing the bourgeois women who employ his seamstress mother. Elsewhere, Christina, wife of the American cultural attaché in Port-au-Prince, lives in self-imposed semi-isolation as her husband chases Haitian girls and her teenage daughter takes sexual advantage of the hired help. Meanwhile, women sex tourists from New York, London, Paris, and Boston awaken to lives that feel at once unreal and yet truer than anything back home. One of them, a Parisian journalist, is tricked into marrying a voodoo god and becomes imprisoned on the island; another deserts her husband and children to live in a cottage with a farmer. In each storylike chapter, Laferrière reveals the workings of race, class, and colonialism in Haitian society and the manipulative sexual power that underlies it all. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: | Details & Permalink

For the past year, ever since Ellen Wood lost her husband in a car accident, she's been afraid to leave the house. She struggles to keep her head above water and care for her adolescent son, Charlie, which becomes that much more difficult when she discovers just how little money she has. At a loss for ideas about how to keep her home, Ellen reluctantly agrees to her sister's suggestion that she take in lodgers, and soon a German businesswoman, a handsome journalist, and Ellen's favorite romance author are all living under her roof. Coleman's newest novel tells a mature, thoughtful story, successfully juggling a large cast of characters and creating men and women alike with balance and humor. While some of the twists are predictable, the engaging cast and heartwarming story go a long way toward making up for it. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Hawkins observes the complexities of modern family living from several perspectives (one of which is a three-legged dog) in her uneven latest, at the center of which is Roxanne, the divorced single mother of April and newly adopted mother of Peruvian daughter May. Also in Roxanne's domestic orbit are Mr. Cosmo, a dog; tough-cookie Grandma Jack; and Craig, her wandering significant other, all of whom are given a say. May, mute until age seven, is the strongest voice as she deciphers the secret lives of her family members, even as their suburban Chicago lives look bright from the outside. An unfortunate choice in structure, though, makes this a slog to read: Hawkins (A Year of Cats and Dogs) dawdles her way through a narrative that is essentially a round-robin of backstory before arriving, very late in the game, at a plot development. Languid storytelling and uninspired plotting undermine what could be an enticing family drama. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Archer assembles 15 more of the clever stories for which he is known. They are split between tales of trickery, as with "Stuck on You," where an eager young man is played by a diamond thief, and decidedly sentimental stories, such as "Members Only," about a man who wants nothing more than to join a private country club. Archer marks with an asterisk stories that are based on true incidents (10 in this collection), and whether it is the weight of credibility these stories' genesis lends or if the author works better with some starting material, the entirely imagined stories are also the weakest. "Politically Correct" never gets out of the shallows in its attempt to be provocative, and "Better the Devil You Know," with its evil executive making a deal with the devil (aka Mr. De Ath), is silly even for this author, who usually writes with a winningly light touch. Still, Archer's writing exudes a certain charm and is mostly satisfying. His trademark twists—sometimes a surprise to the reader, sometimes not—and genial tone will endear these mostly cozy stories to his many fans. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink