Cookbook author Lee makes her fiction debut with a satisfying novel about what happens after you've chased down your dreams. After aspiring screenwriter Emma Guthrie leaves Kentucky for New York City, her dreams of making it big hit a wall with the reality of working in restaurants. But she eventually lands a job on a major movie and promptly falls in love with its heartthrob star, Garrett Walker. Caught up in the celebrity high life, Emma can't resist thoughts of happily-ever-after when Garrett proposes marriage. Seven years later, Emma's first produced screenplay has become a major hit, and Garrett is cheating on her. Emma flees to a sleepy beach town in Mexico, faces a deadly case of writer's block, and gets swept up in surfing, taking lessons with a hunky instructor named Ben, who makes "a heavenly chorus burst into song" upon removing his shirt. Lee captures the scandal that can result when an everyday girl steps into the spotlight. Her novel deftly combines elements of healing, friendship, and love in a well-crafted, sentimental tale of an unlikely underdog who discovers true love on the beach. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

The first of Chilean writer Franz's works to be translated into English, this sprawling, compassionate novel grapples with the consequences of the 1973 coup in Chile, presenting a strikingly clear-eyed vision of historical trauma. Laura Larco, once the youngest judge in the history of the Chilean justice system, fled the country after the coup and has lived for 20 years in Berlin, where she established herself in a university philosophy department. As the book opens, Laura has returned to Pampa Hundida, where she served as the magistrate after the coup, prompted by a question from her idealistic daughter, Claudia—Berlin-born and now living in Chile—who wants to know where Laura was "when all those horrible things were taking place." Laura's return and reassumption of a recently vacated judgeship coincides with a renewed attempt to expose long-buried crimes, especially those of Maj. Mariano Cáceres Latorre, the former commander of a prison camp near Pampa Hundida who has a history with Laura. The narrative is divided between Laura's present-day journey and her account of the past, and once the two accounts coincide, they create a tough vision of the responsibilities history saddles us with and offer a tender but unsentimental understanding of the personal compromises that refuse to remain hidden. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

Dean (Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry—from Music to Hollywood) continues his controversial coverage of the down low lifestyle with a disappointing and salacious debut novel. Aaron Tremble, aka Big A.T., a hugely successful hip-hop producer, is about to give a press conference to make the biggest announcement of his life, one that could ruin his career and for sure his relationship with his girlfriend and baby momma, Jasmine, but as he's about to say the words, he passes out and falls over backwards in front of the hordes of waiting reporters. Buying himself some time, Big A.T. reflects on his sexual awakening as a gay teen and his start in the music world. He was a hungry young producer when he was introduced to Pop, who hooked him up with a group of powerful, influential and secretly gay industry movers and shakers. With the help of this circle, Big A.T. rose quickly to the top. But compromising photos appear, and he's got to make the decision whether to come out of the closet. Dare he expose the world of hip-hop in all its macho posturing? Unfortunately, Dean's got the subject for a compelling novel, but he doesn't have the story. There's not a sympathetic character in the bunch, the dialogue is wooden, and transgressions have no consequences. It's all set up for a sequel; hopefully, not for more of the same. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

Poet Majmudar's unconvincing debut novel portrays the partition of India through the lives of two young brothers, a Muslim doctor, and a young, religious Sikh girl whose father tries to poison her rather than let her fall prey to marauders. The narration—courtesy of the dead father of the two boys—offers ample opportunity for remarks about being dead, and as it charts the lives of the characters, Majmudar makes heavy use of both the concept of partition and the word itself as the boys are separated from their mother in a mobbed train station, the doctor makes his slow way to Pakistan, and the girl sets out alone armed only with kitchen knives. Tedious though not clumsy, the book subjects its characters to public defecation, sex slave traffickers, and to witness suicide, but even the dark ending can't shake the notion that the whole endeavor feels like a semisanitized and oversensationalized theme park ride. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

Thompson (America's Historic Trails) fleshes out the bones of an actual 1885 murder case in his solidly entertaining first novel. When the body of a pregnant young white woman is found floating in a Richmond, Va., reservoir one cold March morning, she appears to have taken her own life. After she's identified as Lillian Madison, Police Justice Daniel Cincinnatus Richardson arrests Tommie Cluverius, Lillian's cousin, for murder. In flashbacks, Thompson reveals the links between Lillian and Tommie, an ambitious, mercurial fledgling lawyer, and Tommie's older brother, Willie, an earnest, steadfast farmer. Lillian is attracted to both, but falls for Tommie, who has his eye set on a more advantageous marriage. A tense trial ensues in which Willie is forced to measure his devotion to his brother against the various versions of events related by Tommie. The strong period setting lifts a somewhat prosaic tragedy. Author tour. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

Mary Monroe's prequel to The Upper Room reintroduces readers to Mama Ruby, a fierce and indomitable woman. This time Monroe focuses on Ruby's early adolescence as the youngest daughter of a preacher in 1930s Louisiana. While her parents shelter her from the harsh world, Ruby is eager for adult sensations, especially sex, and embraces her desire when she meets the promiscuous Othella and her brother, Ike. Ruby and Othella experiment with neighborhood boys and Ruby soon gets pregnant. Othella and her mother persuade her to give the baby up at birth, and doing so haunts Ruby forever. Ruby and Othella then flee smalltown life only to become prostitutes in New Orleans and take part in a killing. Though readers new to the series will have to accept the dialect, ever-present threat of violence, and explicit sex scenes, they'll appreciate the compelling period and the unapologetic characters. Familiarity with The Upper Room smooths the way. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

This wracking maritime psychodrama follows a young boy from his humble beginnings as a child laborer in late 19th-century London to the South Pacific, finding bits of whimsy and beauty in a chaotic story. Jaffy Brown's bleak young life in the slums takes a bright turn when he is carried off by an escaped tiger and wins the notice of Charles Jamrach, a purveyor of exotic animals. Jamrach gives Jaffy a job, and soon the boy is sent on a years-long journey to the South Pacific, where he is supposed to find a dragon. It becomes slowly evident that the dragon quest, which is dispatched in an anticlimax, works as a macguffin for a dark and drifting tale of woe on the high seas as Jaffy's expedition is beset by disasters sinister and otherworldly. Birch's writing is assured and enticing, and she's especially talented at creating floating, still moments amid the action, often as Jaffy pauses to foreshadow or ruminate. Readers will spend much time wondering where this gratifyingly bizarre story is going, though Birch's writing chops do much to smooth the way. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

Groner does a serviceable job of blending a rugged Himalayan setting and Tibetan Buddhist themes with a gritty adventure yarn in this debut novel. After divorcing his unfaithful meth-addict wife, Dr. Peter Scanlon, a 44-year-old cardiologist from Berkeley, accepts a physician's job at a remote Kathmandu Valley clinic, taking his troubled but bright 17-year-old daughter, Alex, with him. Peter soon falls in love with a Nepali nurse and helps free a local sex slave, buying her liberty from a local "lard-ass hustler." And Alex meets an older girl named Devi and begins to explore her sexual identity. As the ominous rumblings of Nepal's Maoists play in the background, Peter is dispatched to a satellite clinic near the Chinese border, taking Alex and Devi along, where they witness evidence of Communist atrocities. When Peter is captured by young Communist guerrillas, his survival depends on cunning and the magical aid of a Tibetan medicine woman. Despite a narrative structure that borders on puzzling, Groner's picaresque story moves at a lively clip, dropping in an unforeseen plot twist that carries the reader's interest to the end. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

With its shades of A Bell for Adano, McArdle's debut—winner of the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award—is a quietly devastating novel about an American trying to do good in a foreign land, but finding that best intentions are not always enough to overcome bureaucracy and entrenched folkways. Twenty-two years after her husband was killed and she was injured and lost her unborn baby in the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing, Angela Morgan sees her Foreign Service career at a dead end until she's sent to a remote British army outpost in northern Afghanistan. She finds herself, as an American, at odds with her British counterparts, and, as a woman, at odds with the culture's attitude toward her gender. In the course of secretly trying to help the locals (and gaining the name Farishta—Dari for angel), Angela begins two touching relationship; one with Rahim, her translator, who, at 23, reminds her of the son she never had; the other with Maj. Mark Davies, a handsome British intelligence officer. Events conspire to force Angela to choose between public service and personal happiness. Based on her experiences as a Foreign Service officer in Afghanistan, McArdle writes insightfully about the quagmire in that country and the human cost of war. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink

Meredith and Connie's lifelong friendship broke apart three years ago, but their grief brings them back together in Hilderbrand's absorbing latest (after The Island). Connie is profoundly lonely following her husband's death and the estrangement from her daughter. Meanwhile, Meredith's husband's investment firm has been revealed as a Ponzi scheme, and the ensuing investigation has, in a very Ruth Madoff–like way, separated her from the life she's known. The women retreat to Connie's Nantucket home, where they repair their relationships and their own broken hearts while a series of threatening events keeps Meredith in hiding. Though Meredith's guilty feelings about missing clues to her husband's dishonesty are overwhelming, the kindness shown by people who support her—including Connie's tentative new flame—encourages her to make good where she can. Much of the novel is told in flashback as Connie and Meredith work through their crises, but Hilderbrand's talents keep those memories as resonant as the present day. Longtime fans and newcomers alike will delight in this timely, touching story of loss, love, friendship, and forgiveness. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2011 | Release date: 06/01/2011 | Details & Permalink