October Publications

A 12-year-old Albanian girl is sold into prostitution in Italy; a boy is duped by a man who pretends he is a pigeon; an eight-year-old girl is forced by her grandmother to service an old man. Most of the 12 stories in Italian writer Dacia Maraini's chilling collection Darkness involve the betrayal of children by the adults charged with caring for them. Alicetta, a schizophrenic girl, is given baths late at night by a hospital orderly armed with sedatives; Tano, a tough 11-year-old, denounces his father for rape many times, but no one believes him. In spare, luminous prose, Maraini evokes the wary innocence of abused children and the perversity, confusion or stupidity of their parents and guardians. Linking most of the stories is Insp. Adele Sofia, who sucks on licorice drops as she ponders her cases. This is a moving, gracefully written collection. (Steerforth, $21 160p ISBN 1-58642-048-8)

Tahar Djaout, Algerian author of The Last Summer of Reason, was killed in 1993 at the age of 39 in an attack attributed to an Islamic fundamentalist group. The Watchers, the writer's second novel to be published in English, is a pensive, darkly humorous work about an inventor's quest to register his invention and an old rebel's final burst of paranoia. Working late at night, Mahfoudh Lemdjad draws up plans for a modernized loom; Menouar Ziada spots Lemdjad's lighted windows and suspects that he is plotting against the government. False accusations nearly sink Lemdjad, but the tables are unexpectedly turned at the novel's conclusion. Djaout's clotted prose makes for slow going, but his examination of the vagaries of power is illuminating. Trans. from the French by Marjolijn de Jager. (Ruminator (www.ruminator.com), $23 206p ISBN 1-886913-54-4)

Solitude and its consolations—fleeting moments of divine and earthly illumination—are the central themes of World Light, a massive novel by the Icelandic writer and Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness. Released in trade paperback on the 100th anniversary of Laxness's birth, the novel tells the story of Ólafur, an orphan boy who yearns to write poetry. His love for books—"he had a great longing to read... all the books in the world"—consoles him for his harsh treatment at the hands of his adoptive parents and accompanies him into adulthood as he contends with socialism and communism and an unhappy marriage. A new introduction by Sven Birkerts provides much useful background information and explication; the translation by Magnus Magnusson is fluent and accomplished. (Vintage, $15 paper 540p ISBN 0-375-72757-4)

At the age of 14, Rosamund Bolton has already been married and widowed twice. The eponymous heroine of Bertrice Small's Rosamund is the heiress of Friarsgate, an estate on the border between England and Scotland. Her grasping uncle strives to secure her fortune for his own use, but Rosamund is rescued by the patronage of the king, Henry Tudor, who brings her to court and finds her a third husband. Rosamund endures the court intrigue, but she longs for the fields of Friarsgate. Once back in the country, she settles down to raising her three daughters. She has not seen the last of Windsor, though—or young Henry VIII, who vows to bed her. Small's story is slow moving and her prose stiff (" 'I am the heiress to Friarsgate,' " she answered him simply yet proudly"), but Rosamund is an engaging heroine—happily, since this is the first installment in a new series. (NAL, $14 paper 448p ISBN 0-451-20637-1)

The kidnapping of a four-year-old boy opens up a Pandora's box of secrets in Danger Zone, a snappy thriller by Shirley Palmer (A Veiled Journey). Hours after four-year-old Jimmy Cady is snatched from his New Orleans home, his mother disappears, leaving a cryptic note warning her husband, Sam, not to follow her. Sam, a former helicopter pilot for the New Orleans police department, tracks her anyway and discovers that his wife has been running from a dangerous past, which has finally caught up with her. Their paths converge on New York City, where an old Mafia capo, an Irish gangster and the FBI get involved in the action. Revelations come fast and furious, and Palmer's characters are solidly crafted and sympathetic. Author tour. (Mira, $23.95 304p ISBN 1-55166-943-9)