Music Room

Dennis McFarland. Harper Perennial, $12 (275pp) ISBN 978-0-380-71456-8

Martin Lambert, a San Francisco record company owner confronting his wife's desertion and his brother's suicide, blocks grief by falling in love with his brother's pregnant ex-girlfriend, a choral conductor. ``McFarland extracts sweetly sad, haunting music from a family's dysfunction in this debut novel,'' said PW. (May)

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