Guilfoile (Cast of Shadows) ventures into Dan Brown territory in his mediocre second thriller. Thanks to a neurostimulator implant received as a child, Canada Gold can process information almost instantaneously, an ability that enables her to work as a jury consultant—and as a card counter. Canada still bears the psychic wounds from multiple traumas. Her father, Solomon, music director of the Chicago Symphony, was charged with the murder of his mistress, a cellist in his orchestra. After his acquittal, Solomon, who claimed to have reconstructed Mozart's intended ending for an unfinished composition, also was murdered. Canada's special gifts attract the attention of a shadowy cabal known as the Thousand, whose members are fanatical followers of the ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras. The Thousand, of course, are behind many of the world's ills, such as the 9/11 attack and Hurricane Katrina, using "big disasters to disguise small crimes." Paper-thin characters and stock chase sequences make for a less than memorable read. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

At the start of this unsuspenseful alternative history thriller from TV screenwriter and producer Kring (Heroes) and Peck (Body Surfing), 1,963 people see an apparition of an oversized flaming boy in the Dallas sky at 11:22 a.m. on December 30, 2012. These numbers correspond to the year, month, and day of President Kennedy's assassination. Flashback to Cambridge, Mass., in October 1963: an attractive woman in the pay of the CIA seduces Harvard grad student Chandler Forrestal, a nephew of Truman's defense secretary, so she can slip him some LSD. The Company believes the drug allows those who take it to access a secret part of the brain known as the Gate of Orpheus. The authors score points for originality in mixing LSD with the events and usual suspects, including the Mafia and J. Edgar Hoover, leading up to Dealey Plaza and the fatal day, but their implausible hidden history of how the world works never coheres. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

In Pearson's subpar fourth crime thriller featuring Idaho lawman Walt Fleming (after Killer Summer), Sheriff Fleming is honored to receive a request for help from legendary Seattle homicide detective Lou Boldt (another Pearson series lead), who's after the killer of Caroline Vetta, a woman with a history of dating professional sports figures. Fleming assists his colleague by setting up interviews with two persons of interest in his jurisdiction, sports agent Vince Wynn and former football team owner Marty Boatwright. When another person connected with the victim, retired linebacker Martel Gale, is found bludgeoned to death, Fleming's inquiries lead him to some uncomfortable conclusions. The identity of Gale's killer may strike some as a cop-out, while Fleming's romance with subordinate Fiona Kenshaw never rises above formula ("If I could wrap up all the happiness in the world into a package, if I could give you that, I would"). With any luck, Pearson will get back on track in the next installment. Author tour. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Brooke and Julian Alter are a happy couple—she's a nutritionist working two jobs to support them, he's a talented musician with a low-level recording contract—but when Julian hits it big in The Devil Wears Prada author Weisberger's not-ready-for-prime-time latest, their marriage wobbles under the strain of fame. Suddenly Julian is traveling nonstop, a pawn of his manager and publicist, and Brooke tries to balance her career with her desire to back him up. Paparazzi stalk their every move (believable in his case, less so in hers); her job is threatened by her repeated absences to attend events like Julian's Grammy appearance; and their shared giddiness dissipates as they are divided—physically and emotionally—as a couple. It takes many dozens of pages and a number of by-the-way announcements that might have ratcheted up the tension if they'd been part of the story to get Brooke and Julian into a crisis, unsurprising though that crisis may be. Weisberger has insightful takes about the price of success in our celebrity-obsessed culture, but Brooke and Julian hew too closely to type to make their struggles sympathetic. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

The career of singer Cheryl Bunterman (aka Cherry Pye), who debuted with Jailbait Records at age 15, is foundering due to her lack of talent and indiscriminate appetite for drugs, booze, and sex in this outrageous, offbeat novel from Hiaasen (Nature Girl). Among those struggling to keep Cherry's career afloat are her mother, Janet Bunterman; producer Maury Lykes; and "undercover stunt double" Ann DeLusia, who will, say, mislead the press into thinking Cherry is out and about when she's really in rehab. Hiaasen has easy targets in misbehaving celebrity sightings, tabloid stalkings, and spin control experts, and he makes the most of them. Crooked real estate developer Jackie Sebago and paparazzo Bang Abbott, who plans to hitch his wagon to Cherry's star, add to the madcap fun. Mayhem follows after Bang kidnaps Ann instead of Cherry by mistake, and ex-Florida governor and eco-vigilante Clinton "Skink" Tyree, who was smitten with Ann after a chance encounter, rushes to her rescue. The torrent of pop culture barbs are bound to please Hiaasen's ardent fans. 500,000 first printing; 12-city author tour. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 07/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

In the enjoyable fourth and final collaboration between Francis (1920–2010) and son Felix (after Even Money), the army career of Capt. Thomas Forsyth abruptly ends when an IED in Afghanistan blows off one of his feet, leaving him with a prosthetic replacement (like another Francis lead, Sid Halley). Upon discharge from National Health Service care, Forsyth makes his way home to Lambourn, where he gets a less-than-warm welcome from his mother, Josephine Kauri, a horse trainer. After learning that her stable has had a series of mishaps, Forsyth discovers that Kauri has been sabotaging her own animals in response to a blackmailer's threats to reveal her tax evasion to the authorities. With nothing else to occupy him, he turns detective to identify the extortionist. Though the plot details won't linger as long as those in Dick Francis's best work, like Whip Hand, this is still a suspenseful read. Francis aficionados will hope that Felix chooses to carry on the family tradition on his own. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

Inspirational romance author Lessman (Daughters of Boston series) opens a new historical fiction series, Winds of Change. In this first book, Lessman's female protagonist, Katie O'Connor, is a smart, sassy young woman full of dreams for a successful career in law. Barriers to Katie's goals are the time period in which she was born (the 1920s) and societal mores that locate women securely in the home. Katie's headstrong nature often does her more harm than good, and her heart pulls her away from a wealthy suitor to childhood acquaintance Luke McGee. With lots of family dynamics and competing story lines, Katie's journey to true fulfillment in both love and faith loses impact. Lessman's writing skill is noteworthy, but the tale would have been more successful if it was more succinct. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

This trite debut follows a psychiatrist named Hector as he attempts to understand "what made people happy." At a crossroads professionally and personally, Hector resolves to take a trip, first landing in China, where he reconnects with an old friend and encounters Ying Li, with whom he spends a night. He also meets an old monk who offers a bit of happiness-related wisdom. Having suffered disappointment in his relations with Ying Li, Hector next heads to Africa, where he makes the acquaintance of a drug lord with a depressed wife, is kidnapped, and learns that "it's harder to be happy in a country run by bad people." Next up is the "big country where there were more psychiatrists than anywhere else in the world" and a meeting with a professor of "Happiness Studies." Lelord, a psychiatrist, writes in the simple prose you'd find in a children's book, and this stylistic choice quickly becomes irredeemably grating. Though the book is an international bestseller, it is far less a novel than a maudlin self-help guide that substitutes pat aphorisms for development. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 08/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

In LaZebnik's breezy reminder that it's never too late to become a responsible parent (after The Smart One and the Pretty One), Rickie Allen, attached to her tattoos, piercings, and punky dyed hair, is terrified of becoming a suburban soccer mom. Still, this spoiled slacker sees no problem in sponging off her wealthy L.A. parents after her trip to adulthood takes a U-turn when she gets pregnant at 18, drops out of Berkeley, and gets ditched by her biology student boyfriend. By the time Rickie's 25, Noah is enrolled at the exclusive Fenwick School, where Rickie meets coach Andrew Fulton, and soon it's a matter of opposites attracting and Rickie learning to do some growing up. Although a little too feel-good fuzzy, LaZebnik's peek at Rickie's struggles to break free of her shortsighted youthful self-righteousness is zany and sweet. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink

One man stands up against injustice and ignorance in a frenetically plotted if rangy novel from the author of The Islands of Divine Music. The large crowd that arrives in Sonoma County's Santa Rosa to celebrate Independence Day in 1876 contains a charismatic utopian minister, a snooty newsman, harmless libertine professor Elijah Applewood, blow-hard Senator Morris, and levelheaded Jeremiah McKinley, our honorable protagonist, who is led on a wild goose chase as he struggles to discover who is menacing his family. The plot takes a few wobbly turns as Senator Morris is found poisoned in his hotel room—for which Jeremiah's beloved mentor, professor Elijah, is blamed and arrested—and Jeremiah's wife and children vanish. But the biggest trouble comes as Elijah disappears and Jeremiah is accused of assisting in his escape, leaving Jeremiah to prove his innocence before he's hanged. Though Addiego is no high prose stylist ("He was naked and joined to... his wife's back by the effluence of their loving"), and many of the characters read like they moseyed out of an old dime novel, fans of western fiction will appreciate the setting, fast pace, and Jeremiah's sheer moral doggedness. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2010 | Release date: 09/01/2010 | Details & Permalink