August Publications

Following the well-received Jem (and Sam), Fairness is the fifth and final volume of British author Ferdinand Mount's Chronicle of Modern Twilight series—though a familiarity with its predecessors is not required. At the center of the story, which spans the latter half of the 20th century, are the wistful, sexually inept Gus Cotton and the love of his life, Helen Hardress. She is a left-leaning blonde dynamo who gets involved in everything from the British miners' strike to a high-profile pedophile hunt. A big hit in England, this and other of Mount's novels have earned him comparisons to Evelyn Waugh. (Carroll & Graf, $26 306p ISBN 0-7867-0850-6)

Winner of the 1978 PEN/Hemingway award, A Way of Life, Like Any Other is Darcy O'Brien's (1939—1989) semiautobiographical account of what it's like to be the son of two divorced film stars (Marguerite Churchill and George O'Brien) whose glory days are behind them. Needless to say, the narrator grows up fast while observing the bizarre events swirling around him—from his mother's suicide attempt and disastrous remarriage to a Russian sculptor to his stay with a high school friend's agitated family in Beverly Hills. O'Brien balances boyish innocence with a very adult perspective on human foibles—the result is scathingly funny and nearly impossible to put down. (New York Review, $12.95 paper 153p ISBN 0-940322-60-9)

When Doubleday published C.D. Payne's cult favorite, Youth in Revolt, in 1995, about 100 pages of text were scrapped. Cut to the Twisp collects these "lost parts" and provides page references to help hardcore fans connect the dots. Also included are a dozen of Payne's comic pieces, including "Let Us All Write a Sophisticated Love Scene," a hilariously noirish multiple-choice exercise; "The Visitation," in which a genteel Brit entertains a space alien who wears a leisure suit and enjoys Cheezits; and "Alumni Notes," a roster of the dubious accomplishments of fictional alums like Crandle Holmes, whose Internet cupcake business went belly-up. (Aivia, $12.95 paper 162p ISBN 1-882647-03-3)

First published in 1943, Virago's Modern Classic series re-releases Kate O'Brien's (1897—1974) The Last of Summer with an introduction by poet Eavan Boland. Young French actress Angèle Maury is traveling in Ireland in 1939; on a whim she visits the village of Drumaninch, her late father's birthplace. There she meets her relatives, the Kernahans: Aunt Hannah and cousins Tom, Martin and Jo. In no time at all, Tom and Martin are smitten with her; she favors Tom and, of course, their proclamations of love stir up complications all around. A gently beguiling tale with hints of darkness at the edges. (Virago, $13 paper 272p ISBN 1-85381-165-3)

An Italian notary's teenaged daughter is desperate to wed in the Marchesa Colombi's (1840—1920) A Small-Town Marriage, trans. by Paula Paige. Denza Dellara becomes smitten with a wealthy, obese young man; though the years slip by without a proposal, she still clings to the hope that one is forthcoming. Almost everyone around her seems to be able to find a mate—her father, her sister, her cousins—but Denza appears destined for old maidhood, just like her rheumatic aunt. It's hard not to root for the naïve heroine in this peculiar comedy of manners. (Northwestern U., $15.95 paper 96p ISBN 0-8101-1841-6)

Six years after her death, Patricia Highsmith is in the middle of a renaissance. Since the release of Anthony Minghella's film of The Talented Mr. Ripley, her stock has been steadily rising among readers. Two reissues, A Suspension of Mercy and Strangers on a Train, feed the flames. In A Suspension of Mercy, American freelance writer Sydney becomes obsessed with the putative murder of his English wife, Alicia; in Strangers on a Train, the source for Hitchcock's 1953 classic, one man's guilty conscience disrupts two men's criminal plans. The movie rights to A Suspension of Mercy have been optioned by Warner Bros. for Heyday Films. (Norton, $11 paper each 224p ISBN 0-393-32197-5; 256p -32198-3)

Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker, editors of Beach: Stories by the Sand and Sea, return this summer with Sail Away: Stories of Escaping to Sea. In this new collection, Lencek and Bosker gather an assortment of fiction and nonfiction covering the experiences and dreams of those who find refuge at sea. With excerpts from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, plus stories by Roald Dahl and James Reid Parker, Lencek and Bosker cover the gamut of maritime adventure. (Marlowe & Co., $16.95 paper 352p ISBN 1-56924-584-3)

The recent craze of hapless singletons tackling seemingly infinite battles in career and romance has inspired yet another jungle of comical mishaps in debut novelist Patrick Sanchez's Girlfriends . From one-night stands to embarrassing high school reunions, Sanchez places his 20-somethings, a trio of chic, ambitious, unlucky-in-love (and often unoriginal) characters, in the most unbelievable though occasionally amusing circumstances. Clearly taking his cue from Candace Bushnell (Sex and the City) and Helen Fielding (of Bridget Jones fame), Sanchez's style is light and entertaining; the episodic nature of the novel may leave readers wondering whether a TV series is in the works. (Kensington, $13 paper 320p ISBN 1-57566-899-8)

Oxford University—educated David Crackanthorpe, a former barrister in London, artistically merges history and suspense in his debut novel, Stolen Marches, winner of Britain's Society of Authors Sagittarius Prize. The novel follows the journey of a former member of the Resistance as he searches for his lost love, a Gypsy prostitute who was sent east to the camps by the Nazis, in the progressively anarchic aftermath of WWII. Crackanthorpe's straightforward style sets the tone as the protagonist gradually becomes embroiled in a complex and dangerous plot involving blackmail and scandal. This entertaining debut will appeal to a broad readership. (Headline [Trafalgar Square, dist.], $12.50 paper 352p ISBN 0-7472-6085-0)