The characters in these tidy stories navigate turbulent relationships with family members and romantic partners, many of whom vanish, as in the title story, about a daughter's struggles to reconcile her father's sudden desertion of their family. In "The Weather," a teenage girl's new friend betrays her. "And if there was one thing I knew," the narrator says, "it was that this wouldn't get easier. It would ache for years." This lesson holds true for most of these stories, particularly in "Remember, Relive," the second-person narrative of a young woman grappling with a traumatic past as her mother sinks into an Alzheimer's haze. Other stories have decidedly narrow focuses, as with "The Separation," about an 11-year-old's relationship with her aloof older sister, or "Escape," about a young widower's fledgling gambling addiction. Though the stories share themes and narrative tone, each stands firmly on its own, with Willis in full control as the characters face down their losses. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

These 10 vigorous stories from Tintocalis mine the inner lives of Russian and Lebanese émigrés and crummy California divorcés alike. Widowed librarian Alexander Valinchuk of "Another Kind of Sleep" decides he is finished with sex, so when thrust into the company of lonely nurse Doris he uses touching stories from the motherland to bolster her desperate need for a human connection. "Honeymoon in Beirut" reveals that Zahlah's dressmaker husband, Emile, has fallen in love with a bolt of silk fabric, as if making her a dress from it would achieve his celluloid dream of America. "Too Bad About Howie" makes us wonder who we should feel worse for: Hopper, who has divorced the nondescript French teacher Sally, Sally for being nondescript, or Howie, the dog beloved by Hopper but lost in the divorce. The chasm between lovers is again underscored in "The Man from Istanbul," where two academics marooned in Iowa discover that making up stories while jogging avoids the alienation that ensues from their real-life histories. Tintocalis's debut is filled with strange characters who maintain puzzling appeal despite—and often because of—their quirks. (Sept.)

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

Some twists and turns in Hoffman's stand-alone thriller may leave readers scratching their heads, but the suspense ratchets up to such a high pitch that most will keep flipping pages till the end. Coincidentally, the 16-year-old daughter of Bobby Dees, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) special agent supervisor, a leading expert on discovering the fate of missing children, has been gone without a trace for almost a year. But that doesn't keep Bobby from being one of the best at his job. His immediate concern is the fate of 13-year-old Lainey Emerson, who's in the hands of a sadistic serial kidnapper known as "Picasso" for his bizarre depictions of his victims delivered to TV reporter Mark Felding. While Picasso taunts Bobby, Felding turns up the media heat on the investigation. Hoffman (Plea of Insanity) paints a scary picture of sexual predators, vulnerable teens, and the shared hunting ground/playground that the Internet provides. (Sept.)

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

Smith shakes up the midlife marriage renewal subgenre with the emotionally complex tale of Elizabeth Whittington, who has accepted that her marriage to Howe Whittington, the wealthiest man in their small Georgia town, is a sham. Howe cheats, has grown hard over the years, and is less than present in their marriage, but after a stroke lands him in a coma, he wakes up, six months later, a changed man. Suddenly, he wants to work on repairing their marriage and helping others fix the problems in their lives. That, naturally, proves to be difficult, and Elizabeth, meanwhile, must decide if she can trust her husband while he tries to right some wrongs, and, in the process, reveals a trove of town secrets. That the story isn't a freewheeling comedy sets it apart from the pack; Elizabeth's struggles feel real (though Howe remains a little cartoonish), and the way Smith (The Red Hat Club) leaves Elizabeth to pursue or abandon her marriage on her own terms is a refreshing departure from convention. (Sept.)

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

Poet and novelist Rosner (The Speed of Light) has written an elegiac story of an emotionally and creatively starved artist and his muse. Danzig is 58, a German painter whose once promising career has stagnated into teaching life drawing classes at San Francisco's Art Institute. Then Merav appears, a lovely Israeli woman, also an artist, who models in his classroom. Merav struggles with instinctual distrust of Danzig: "The poses she took in the first session were all in the shape of fear: a woman turning away from something threatening; a body in flight; the curled-up shape of self-defense, protecting the heart, the belly." When Danzig asks Merav if she will model for him privately, she's reluctant, but their relationship evolves. The present diverges to the past, and Rosner develops her protagonists as though they are pieces of art, slowly becoming unveiled. Although their backgrounds are divergent—Danzig lived in fear of his father while Merav grew up in the safety of a kibbutz without one—their interior lives are similar. Rosner's multilayered composition is rendered in beautiful, spare prose and will resonate long after the last page. (Sept.)

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

Serenely stirring stories from Vietnamese-American Chau track the breaking asunder of an extended Vietnamese boat family newly arrived in California in the 1970s. Fleeing the Vietcong and relocated to San Francisco, the family of aunts, uncles, and cousins has assumed catchy Western names like Sophia (Loren) and Marcel (Marcello Mastroianni), harboring many secrets in their bewildering new life in America. In "Hunger," the troupe of cousins gather their pennies and heads for the pool on July 4, braving verbal abuse from a hostile white neighbor while sharing a single slice of pizza. In "The Pussycats" a young mother, Kim, whose soldier husband, Duc, is imprisoned in Saigon, mistakenly takes her daughter to a porn flick with the title of a children's movie, setting in motion sexual desire for a married friend in her ESL class. Duc shows up after 10 years, in "Taps," as a hollowed-out victim of torture and trauma, now grievously unrecognizable. Well intentioned but misunderstood ("as quiet as they come"), Chau's characters, in portraits that radiate dignity and depth, seek freedom but find crushing loneliness. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Trouble is brewing for aspiring London journalist and single mom Amy Walker in Margolis's frothy, perky latest (after Forget Me Knot). Amy's coffee shop job is threatened when news hits that a Bean Machine franchise will be opening nearby; her love life is falling apart; her six-year-old son, Charlie, wants a father; and on top of it all, the strapping architect working on the evil chain coffee shop has all the markings of a great catch—except for his allegiance with the evil corporation. Then there's Amy's dad, who's dating an erotic poetess, and her mom, who's getting it on with a shaman while trying to get over her divorce. Despite the personal chaos, Amy's determined to break into big-time journalism with a splashy story, and she just might find a juicy one in a swelling local epidemic of man-boobs. Granted, moobs isn't the most appetizing of plot hooks, but Margolis milks as much titillating fun out of the setup as can be reasonably expected. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

A drowning is solemnly relived over the generations in Fosse's circuitous, claustrophobic tale. The text begins in 2002, rewinds to late November 1979, then farther back to the initial occurrence on November 17, 1897: a woman stands at a window watching as a storm kicks up, waiting for her husband to return from taking a rowboat out on the fjord. The participants change fluidly and the passage of time is flattened, from the present couple, Signe and Asle, to a mother and child standing at a bonfire on the bay, recognized by Signe and Asle as Asle's great-great-grandmother, Aliss, and her small son, Kristoffer. In a kind of premonition of the later, central tragedy, Kristoffer falls into the water and is rescued by Aliss, though in the next generation, Kristoffer's son, Asle—namesake of Signe's husband—will have a different experience on the water on his seventh birthday. The immense burden of family history weighs heavily on each generation as ghosts, memories, and tragedies collide to effects both confounding and enlightening. (Sept.)

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

The apparent suicide of an American journalist in 1970s Stockholm propels Persson's ponderous English debut, the first of a trilogy. The victim, John Krassner, was working on a book detailing the exploits of his uncle, Col. John Buchanan, an OSS agent in the years following WWII and Buchanan's ties to a now high-ranking Swedish politician known by the code name "Pilgrim." The Swedish secret police, who were hearing chatter concerning threats to the Swedish prime minister, had been keeping an eye on Krassner at the time of his death. Curious about Krassner after discovering a personal connection to the case, police superintendent Lars Johansson begins his own inquiry and unearths more than he bargained for, including disparate pieces of a vast political conspiracy. In contrast to the work of Stieg Larsson, this thriller lacks both memorable characters and a streamlined plot. (Sept.)

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

The long-delayed resolution of a French family's mystery electrifies de Rosnay's (Sarah's Key) glimpse at the crushing cost of keeping secrets. Parisian architect Antoine Rey and his sister, Mélanie, celebrate her 40th birthday on the island where they vacationed as children with their mother, until she died there in 1974. Upon returning, Mélanie is gripped by a shocking repressed memory and loses control of the car. After a brief spell of amnesia, she tells her brother what it was she remembered: their mother had been in love with a woman. As a skeptical Antoine investigates this twist in their mother's past, an upsetting chain of events unfurls: his daughter's best friend drops dead of a heart condition at only 14 years of age; his teenage son is arrested; and he learns that his father is dying of cancer. Antoine gets support in his quest from a new lover, a Harley-riding mortician who teaches him how respecting death helps one to embrace life. This perceptive portrait of a middle-aged man's delayed coming-of-age rates as a seductive, suspenseful, and trés formidable keeper. (Sept.)

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