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Eberstadt (Little Money Street) creates a powerful modern legend in which a drug dealer can be a fairy godmother and the handsome prince may turn out to be your father. Fifteen-year-old Celia Bonnet, aka Rat, lives with her mother, Vanessa, in the Pyrenees, where they survive on what they can scavenge and sell at local markets. Rat dreams of some day meeting her long-gone biological father, who got Vanessa pregnant during a one-night stand. Rat and Vanessa’s tiny family grows first with Morgan, the orphaned son of Vanessa’s best friend, and then with Vanessa’s boyfriend, Thierry. But after Thierry sexually assaults Morgan, Rat and Morgan run away, dreaming of crossing the Channel to find Rat’s biological father, Gillem. Eberstadt invokes the heroines of Charlotte Bront? and Cynthia Voigt to create Rat, who moves forward out of grim determination to protect Morgan, and though Vanessa could be less opaque, Eberstadt creates a sympathetic figure in Gillem, whose artistic crisis takes a backseat to the demands of new fatherhood. Amid the thorns and crumb trails is a portrait of a childhood lived freely, the dangers weighed against its potential for adventure. (Apr.)

Behind every great artist stands a woman driving him to inspiration, aspiration, and desperation, according to Cowell (Marrying Mozart), who bases her latest novel about an artist and his muse on the life of Claude Monet. Beautiful bourgeoise Camille Doncieux leaves her family and fianc? for Monet, whom Cowell depicts early on as a rebellious young man trying to capture in his paintings fleeting moments of color and light before he matures into the troubled genius whose talent exceeds his income. In an art world resistant to change, Camille remains Monet’s great love as he and fellow unknowns Renoir, Pissarro, and Bazille struggle to make ends meet, but, eventually, parenthood, financial pressure, long separations, career frustrations, and romantic distractions take their toll, and even after Monet finally achieves commercial success, the couple still faces considerable difficulty. While glimpses of great men at work make absorbing reading, it’s Camille who gives this story its heart. A convincing narrative about how masterpieces are created and a detailed portrait of a complex couple, Cowell’s novel suggests that a fabulous, if flawed, love is the source of both the beauty and sadness хитрившие art. (Apr.)

Strong writing keeps the reader sucked in to LeCraw’s painful family drama debut. The lovely Marcella is reeling from tragedy; her ex-husband, Anthony, has sent Toni, their only daughter, away to boarding school and on to college. The man with whom Marcella had an affair, Cecil McClatchey, dies in a car accident soon after his wife, Betsy, is murdered. Amid the wreckage is Cecil’s daughter, Callie, fighting for her sanity with two young children, and his son, Jed, who, desperate to fill the void left by the death of his parents, seeks answers from Marcella only to begin a tortured love affair with her as she drowns in guilt, struggling to find some meaning to hold on to. As Marcella comes closer to the truth about Betsy’s murder and Cecil’s death, and mindful that she is now the lover of Cecil’s son, she struggles and fails to gather strength enough to make any decision, right or wrong. It is a story of deep and searing love, between siblings and lovers, but most powerfully, between parents and their children. (Apr.)

This sure-to-please collection by Kyle (The God of Animals) probes the frequently wrongheaded choices girls and young women make to feel happy and loved. Girls growing up with fathers whose wives have vanished, girls perilously desirous of acceptance, young women enthralled by unsuitable men: these are the characters inhabiting Kyle’s low-key tales. In “Nine,” the young protagonist tells elaborate lies to deflect the pain of her mother’s absence, though her attempts at befriending her father’s new girlfriend go terribly awry. “Allegiance” depicts the ruthless extent the new girl will go to get invited to a sleepover party held by the popular girls, especially as her mother offers suggestions for tormenting the weak. Similarly, in “Brides,” the new girl in the high school play learns how to ingratiate herself with the lead and the pervy theater teacher. Meanwhile, dallying with married men only brings grief to smart women, as in “Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore” and the moving title story. There’s no shortage of heartache, and Kyle’s varied approaches to it consistently reveals new ways of feeling bad. (Apr.)

The smartest character in Nelson’s latest is, unfortunately, Stella, a dog who speaks to her master, the sad, divorced, and listless writer Paul, often commenting on his lack of drive and the hours he logs at the local dive (“Do you realize you’re only slightly less routinized than a cat?”). But when Paul’s dad, a former Minneapolis teacher of the year, has a stroke, Paul heads home to deal with his family and his demons, leaving behind the elderly Stella and his noncommittal girlfriend, Tamsen. Paul’s two worlds never meet, though his overachieving brother, Carl, and married-with-children sister, Bits, inflict their share of damage. Everything changes, though, when Paul’s father begins using an instant messaging program to communicate, and after Paul unloads to his dad about his problems, his dad (literally) spells out the answer: quit drinking. Paul takes the advice, and his sobriety ends up being a cure-all. This unfortunately pat twist undermines the work Nelson put into the earlier parts of the book, and what’s supposed to be a feel-good ending comes across as cheap. The characters—Stella especially—deserve better. (Apr.)

Damaged people inhabit this debut novel: people who have been struck by lightning as well as those who have lost loved ones from death, divorce, drinking, or duplicity. Young-Stone tells parallel stories that hurdle storm after storm headlong into one another. One follows the bullied Buckley R. Pitank, who watches as his beloved mother’s life is buffeted by her mean-spirited mother and a fraud of an evangelical preacher. Just when she escapes and finds love, and Buckley sees the possibility of happiness, she is fatally struck by lightning. The other is the story of Becca Burke, a lightning strike survivor whose drunk mother and philandering father have a hard time believing that she has been repeatedly hit by lightning. As Buckley and Becca grow up, Buckley writes The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, excerpts of which begin each chapter, and Becca becomes a painter. What happens when they do finally meet is inevitable. Young-Stone is a very fine writer who has created a host of endearing losers—young, old, literate, and simple, all full of longing. What she does best is portray the incredulousness of the unlucky. (Apr.)

Caldwell follows up the well-received Cataloochee with this homespun effort about a close-knit mountain village’s fight to keep the land its inhabitants have spent their lives cultivating. In 1928, the residents of Cataloochee, N.C., are given an ultimatum by the National Parks Commission to either resign their farmland for a price, or remain, but have their property leased back to them by the government. At the core of this conflict is Silas Wright, a farmer who locks horns with the Parks Commission, disputes both of the options offered, and refuses to succumb to governmental demands. Attorney Oliver Babcock is also making rounds about town securing agreements to negotiate as well. Wright contemplates a lawsuit against the однозначно невозможен Hawkins is now enlisted to be a warden of the park to come. Mild melodrama ensues as the government removes residents from their homes, a mysterious death occurs, Hawkins contends with an unhappy family, and the town fire-starter gets up to his old tricks again. As in his debut, Caldwell again attributes rich historical background to a dizzying array of colorful, authentic Southern characters in an unhurried story about resiliency and the unifying power of community. (Mar.)

Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife) returns to 17th-century India in this romantic fictionalization of the life of Jahanara, the oldest child of the empress Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan’s cherished wife. Mumtaz dies in childbirth, leaving four sons, two teenage daughters and a newborn girl. The grief-stricken emperor seeks consolation in the construction of the Taj, the magnificent Luminous Tomb, while the profundity of his mourning exposes his fallibility to his sons, who begin eyeing his throne. Jahanara and her sister Roshanara choose to back different brothers, and they compete to rule in both the royal harem and their father’s heart. Before long, Jahanara is the one who succeeds as the emperor’s closest confidante, and he refuses to allow her to leave him to marry. Sundaresan has a scholar’s fascination with the period; she’s at her best describing the opulent court or the construction of the Taj Mahal. Little is known about the actual Jahanara, and Sundaresan has blessed the princess’s fictional proxy with such perfection that readers will be tempted to find her flawed siblings not only more believable but also more interesting. (Mar.)

The Solitude of Prime Numbers Paolo Giordano, trans. from the Italian by Shaun Whiteside. Viking/Pamela Dorman, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-670-02148-2

Italian author and mathematician Giordano follows two scarred people whose lives intersect but can’t seem to join in his cerebral yet touching debut. Alice and Mattia, both survivors of childhood traumas, are the odd ones out amid the adolescent masses in their high school. Mattia has never recovered from the loss of his sister, while Alice still suffers the effects of a skiing accident that damaged her physically and stunted her ability to trust. Now teenagers, Mattia, also addicted to self-injury, has withdrawn into a world of numbers and math, and Alice gains control through starving herself and photography. When they meet, they recognize something primal in each other, but timing and awkwardness keep their friendship on tenuous ground until, years later, their lives come together one last time. Giordano uses Mattia and Alice’s trajectory to ask whether there are some people—the prime numbers among us—who are destined to be alone, or whether two primes can come together. The novel’s bleak subject matter is rendered almost beautiful by Giordano’s spare, intense focus on his two characters. (Mar.)

Set in late-19th-century Europe, this slim, melancholy, and sometimes thin novel affords considerable escapist pleasures. At 14, Jack, a misfit orphan with a cuckoo-clock installed in his chest, treks across Europe in search of Miss Acacia, “a little singer… who’s always bumping into things,” he met four years before. In Paris, he finds a companion in M?li?s, a lovesick, quixotic magician, and as their journey unfolds, Malzieu sketches European landscapes and crafts figurative language with irresistible relish: Miss Acacia’s laugh, for instance, is “as light as beads tumbling over a xylophone.” After Jack reaches Spain and finds Miss Acacia, he embarks on a tumultuous relationship with his beloved that will alter his life forever. Despite a few too-cutesy sexual metaphors and coming-of-age tropes, the novel’s sentimentality only rarely devolves into treacle. Calling to mind a host of cultural touchstones, from Pinocchio to The Wizard of Oz, this kaleidoscopic picaresque will enchant many adults and young people alike. (Mar.)

A story of mystery, betrayal, and family tragedy, Dixon’s debut novel, despite its creative story line, falls short in execution. After living in London for a decade, 33-year-old Justin Fisher returns to Southern California with his wife and young son to reconnect with the family he hasn’t spoken to in years. The rub: he can’t remember much of his childhood, or even why he’s kept himself at such a distance. Soon after arriving, he learns his parents are dead, and upon visiting their graves, he discovers a tombstone with his name on it indicating he died at age four. As Justin searches his foggy memories for the truth about his past, the narrative skips back in time to fill in the holes with the tale of Justin’s mother and how her relationship with three men in college dictates her future. Though there’s a payoff in the surprise ending, the plot is painfully overeventful—Justin’s mother’s story often reads like outtakes from a soap opera—and Dixon’s prose struggles to carry the narrative . (Mar.)

After the Sudden Fiction and Flash Fiction anthologies, editors Shapard and Thomas teamed with Gonzalez to create this stunning compilation of short shorts (under 1,500 words) by venerated and emerging Latino writers. In Andrea Saenz’s “Everyone’s Abuelo Can’t Have Ridden with Pancho Villa,” the narrator’s Grandma Jefa discredits the family legends while holding fast to her own: a prescient dream about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Luna Calderon writes about Dia de Los Muertos or, as the social studies teacher in her story calls it, “Day Ah Dallas Mare Toes.” In “Imagining Bisbee,” Alicita Rodriguez recounts the making of a ghost town: “Bisbee’s inhabitants want to disappear. They use P.O. boxes and first names. They hide under straw mats and melt into the horizon.” In “Miss Clairol,” Helena Mar?a Viramontes describes the transformative makeup ritual of a mother: “The only way Champ knows her mother’s true hair color is by her roots, which, like death, inevitably rise to the truth.” The spirited mix of writers also includes Junot D?az, Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez, and Jorge Luis Borges. (Mar.)

Fforde (Practically Perfect) disappoints with the predictable, formulaic, and unrealistic story of three unlucky-in-love women who work in the wedding industry: Sarah, a wedding planner; Elsa, a dressmaker; and Bron, a hairdresser. Sarah is still jaded years after she caught her college boyfriend cheating on her, but hot and charming wedding photographer Hugo seems determined to break down her resistance. Elsa, shy and proper, would prefer to fade into the background, until she meets Laurence, who encourages her to take the spotlight more often. Bron lives with a controlling man and is desperate to strike out on her own path. A plot lands on the three unfailingly polite, sweet, and near-perfect women in the form of a celebrity wedding they must throw together in less than three months. The catch? Sarah’s pregnant sister is getting married the same day and wants Sarah to plan hers as well. Tiresome, twistless plots and two-dimensional characters make this a snore. (Mar.)

After saving New York City in 2009’s The Silent Man, CIA agent John Wells, the hero of bestseller Berenson’s exceptional espionage series, retreats to rural New Hampshire in his compelling fourth outing. He hikes and thinks, accompanied only by his dog, Tonka, but soon enough, John hears from Ellis Shafer, “his sort-of boss at the agency,” who calls him back to Washington, D.C., for a new assignment. An unknown assassin is targeting members of Task Force 673, a now-disbanded secret unit whose job was interrogating terrorists, in particular “high-value detainees,” by any necessary means. Five of the 10-person squad are missing or dead, with the rest in mortal danger. In his pursuit of the killer, John encounters all manner of political intrigue, including convoluted plots set in motion by agency chiefs vying for control of America’s security apparatus, who rely on low-level field spies to carry out their various and bloody plans. (Feb.)

At the start of Mullen’s compelling second novel, set during the heyday of J. Edgar Hoover’s war on crime in the 1930s, violent bank robbers Jason and Whit Fireson (aka the Firefly Brothers) wake up in an Indiana morgue, having miraculously survived bullet wounds that led the authorities to triumphantly announce their deaths. The pair escape and inform the third Fireson brother, Weston, and their mother, that they’re alive. Meanwhile, the embarrassed local police report that ghouls stole Jason and Whit’s corpses. This is but the first of a number of fantastic episodes in which the criminals cheat death, with no logical explanation. Despite the surrealism, Mullen (The Last Town on Earth) makes the despair of the Great Depression palpable, as his antiheroes become folk icons to the downtrodden people of the Midwest resentful of a government that can’t help them. Readers comfortable with significant narrative ambiguities will be engrossed. (Feb.)

World Fantasy Award–winner Shea takes his 1987 short story of the same name and turns it into a trilogy of which this is the first cataclysmic volume. Imagine the Roman Coliseum expanded to encompass the whole of Rome with the Christians replaced by thousands of “extras,” who volunteer in search of enough wealth to escape their poverty, and with gladiators replaced by animatronic “aliens.” All the action in this artificial set designed by the head of Panoply Studios, Val Margolian, is filmed continuously and turned into mega-grossing “vid” entertainment for the masses. Attempting to survive the chaos and reap bonuses dropped by payboat pilots for alien “kills” are L.A. book lovers Japh, Curtis, and Jool. They’re aided by a group of pilots, who are secretly sabotaging Margolian’s spiderlike machines. SF fans and thriller readers alike will go for the furious action on the ground and in the air, with carnage galore, hairbreadth escapes, and heroic sacrifices. (Feb.)

Mercer shows promise, but succumbs to clich?s and the implausible in his debut about a former LAPD narcotics detective trying to rebuild his life after being a heroin addict. Will Magowan’s new job as police chief in the tiny rural California town of Haydenville is his chance to show that he’s again ready for police work. Far from an idyllic town, Haydenville has a thriving meth industry that’s made addicts of many residents. “Nice place to live, if it wasn’t for all the tweakers,” thinks Will, who suspects convicted murderer turned famous author, Frank Carver, who often acts as the town’s patron, is up to no good. Mercer explores with finesse Will’s past, the loss of his son, and his desire to reconnect with his wife, Laurie, but he uses the mayor’s threat to fire Will too often, and as the most casual viewer of police dramas knows, even a smalltown cop can’t just shoot a criminal or have someone die on his watch and expect to be at work the next hour. Author tour. (Feb.)

Back in 1985, FBI special agent E.L. Pender, who was pursuing a serial killer case in California, helped take down Luke Sweet, killer and maker of snuff films. Sweet and his transgendered partner, Teddy Swantzer, didn’t survive, but Sweet’s 15-year-old son, Little Luke, did. In Nasaw’s engrossing fifth thriller to feature Pender (after When She Was Bad), Little Luke tells his own horrific tale as he moves from one misfortune to another with a trail of bodies and a growing list of adults, including Pender, who must die. Now 25, Luke is presumed dead when an explosion destroys the asylum where he’s incarcerated near Santa Cruz. Pender, alarmed when he hears of the murder of Luke’s grandparents, returns to California to see if Luke survived. Nasaw throws a curve when a psychopath called Asmador begins going after the names on Luke’s list. Pender is both hunter and hunted as he treks to a mountain retreat and a surprising climax. (Feb.)

In Porter’s outstanding near-future thriller, David Eyam, the former head of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee, is killed by a bomb in Colombia that was apparently aimed at others. His recently estranged close friend and former colleague in the spook business, Kate Lockhart, is surprised to learn she’s the main beneficiary of Eyam’s will. Her suspicions that the story behind his death is more complex than officially reported are heightened when Eyam’s lawyer is gunned down soon after thugs break into his office. While the basic plot—an attempt to uncover a broad government conspiracy against daunting odds—is familiar, Porter (Brandenburg Gate) invests it with urgency and power by taking current legislation drawn up to combat terrorism and projecting how it would play out if special interests and unscrupulous leaders used it to destroy the privacy of individuals. Shaken U.S. readers will wonder how much of the fiction might soon become fact on this side of the Atlantic. (Feb.)

In this anemic medical thriller from bestseller Palmer (The Second Opinion), former trauma surgeon Dr. Nick Garrity, who suffers from PTSD as the result of a suicide attack on his field hospital in Afghanistan, is now in charge of the Helping Hands RV, a mobile clinic that plies the streets of Baltimore offering medical aid to the homeless. Meanwhile, a high-priced hit man starts to commit a series of murders, his first victim being Belle Coates, a nurse in Charlotte, N.C. When Belle’s sister, Jillian, who lives in Virginia, searches for her sister’s killer, she finds a connection to Nick. Several missing homeless men lead everyone to a massive plot involving high-level politicians and a secret CIA program. The action is all fairly predictable, the characters off-the-shelf, and the writing, if not exactly purple, at least mauve: “A guttural, primal scream exploded from Nick’s throat as he crouched by the body.” 250,000 first printing. (Feb.)

In her fourth collection of short stories, Hagy (Snow, Ashes) explores the lonely state of the Equality State, with its literally and figuratively haunted inhabitants. Hagy has an ear for the locals and a feel for the vast lonely landscape, capturing modern issues like small ranchers’ struggles with wolves and environmentalists, and the small details of late nights in pickups and the gradual erosion of Wyoming’s landscape. Western archetypes make appearances—cowboys and Native Americans, park rangers, prospectors, and preachers, albeit sometimes with a twist. The stories range in tone from the moody mysteriousness of “Border,” about a drifter boy and his dog, and the grimness of the life of early rail workers in “Brief Lives of the Trainmen,” to humor, as in “Superstitions of the Indians,” the collection’s weakest entry, about a college student worried that he might be haunted by a faculty member. Hagy is most comfortable inhabiting the past, and while the contemporary stories misfire a few times, the collection is mostly enjoyable and features a strong, dark current of empty lands, wandering spirits, and dread. (Feb.)

It doesn’t get any more meta than this odd prequel, which recounts Hamlet’s early years as a student at Wittenberg University. After Horatio, who narrates and quickly becomes obsessed with the beautiful Hamlet, is asked to translate and stage a play by the wealthy merchant Baron de Maricourt and his wife, Lady Adriane (who shows a marked weakness for writers), Horatio casts Hamlet in a major role—that of a young woman—as a way of getting to spend time in his company. Soon, Horatio undertakes a series of sonnets to immortalize Hamlet, but when Adriane gets wind of Horatio’s new project, she begins to interfere. Further complications arise with the arrival of a playwright named Will Shake-spear who threatens to usurp Horatio’s position with Lady Adriane and Hamlet. Filled with out-of-context quotes from Hamlet, confusions in sexual identity more commonly found in Shakespeare’s comedies, and cameo appearances by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the novel too self-consciously repurposes elements from Shakespeare’s tragedy, rendering this a colorful if incidental prologue to the tragic events at Elsinore Castle. (Feb.)

The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection Martin Page, trans. from the French by Bruce Benderson. Penguin, $14 paper (182p) ISBN 978-0-14-311652-3

Lots of girls have dumped Virgil, a 31-year-old advertising copywriter who lives in a Parisian apartment building occupied primarily by prostitutes, but only one, Clara, has dared to do so before she even dated him. Virgil can’t remember meeting Clara, the woman who leaves a message on his answering machine that ends their imaginary relationship and sends Virgil on an emotional and sometimes existential journey that prompts him at one point to conclude, in the great absurdist tradition, that he “understood Clara’s decision.” Although the story’s central conceit provides a vehicle by which Virgil can explore the realms of failed relationships, identity, imagination, and invention, his aimless wanderings through a Paris inhabited by mere shades of fully fleshed characters, and his unearned shifts in outlook, suggest that the strengths of this sometimes funny and insightful tale would be better demonstrated in the tighter confines of a short story. (Feb.)

The prolonged and intense Axis bombing of Malta and the British efforts to deliver squadrons of new Spitfire fighters in aid of the strategic Mediterranean island’s defense provide the dramatic backdrop for Mills’s WWII spy thriller. Maj. Max Chadwick negotiates a narrow path feeding info via his weekly bulletin in the Maltese newspaper Il-Berqa, putting a positive spin on Malta’s depressing situation, and seeking to separate rumor from fact. When Chadwick learns that a British submariner may be a serial killer targeting “sherry queens” (e.g., “dance hostesses who worked the bars and bawdy music halls” in the capital city’s disreputable quarter), he has to consider carefully what to reveal. If the murders become public, they could tip the precarious balance of local support against the British. Mills (Amagansett) paints a vivid portrait of a tenacious people, embattled and besieged troops, and a principled man trying to resolve the conflict between duty and justice. (Feb.)

Fifteen-year-old Darren Bennett lives in an entirely recognizable teenage world: he’s obsessed with science fiction and video games, bullied by his older brother, and completely baffled by the opposite sex. On the other hand, Darren’s new, socially awkward best friend, Eric Lederer, lives a life unrecognizable to everyone: Eric can’t sleep, at all, ever, a revelation he shares with Darren in strictest confidence. After overcoming his shock, Darren delights in exploring Eric’s anomalous condition through a series of trials involving, among other things, roofies. When a typical high school fight over a girl leads Darren to tell a stranger about Eric’s bizarre secret, Darren is caught up in the kind of fight-for-your-life adventure he so often daydreams about. Combining a coming-of-age tale with science fiction, Pierson performs a nimble, satisfying balancing act, with enough drama of the day-to-day high school variety to keep the more fantastic elements in check. The result is a fast-moving narrative with an authentic, heartfelt voice, plenty of laughs and spot-on cultural references, and a raucous climax. (Feb.)

MacNeil’s novel, a bestseller in her native Canada, begins in 1953 with five-year-old narrator Mari-Jen Delene weathering a storm in the rundown family house on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. A frightened, quiet child haunted by ghosts and inner voices, punished in Catholic school by the Mother Superior, and burdened by her illegitimacy (she and her older twin brothers, Alfred and Albert, are viewed as her mother Adele’s “mortal sins”), begins to withdraw into silence. Her mother is distant and dismissive; her brothers, while smart and supportive, long to escape the restrictions of their small Acadian village. Thrown into the mix are the delusional and crass Aunt Clara, who sees saints through her window, and perpetually drunk Uncle Jule. Mari-Jen exists in a limbo that is painful and ominous as well as affecting. Her savior is a neighbor, Daniel Peter, who helps her to read and sets her on the path to recovery and adulthood. MacNeil’s characters are imaginative and well realized, while the novel makes an effortless full circle. (Feb.)

In Wiley’s strong second mystery to feature Chicago PI Joe Kozmarski (after 2007’s The Last Striptease), Joe has to contend with a client, Greg Samuelson, who unleashes a torrent of crimes. After Samuelson torches the car belonging to Eric Stone, the man having an affair with his wife, Amy, Samuelson is found severely wounded and his nun boss murdered. This is merely the first body Joe uncovers as elderly but still powerful civil rights activist William DuBuclet plies him with bribes and threats, and Stone tries to hire him to keep an eye on DuBuclet. A complex интернет of relationships reaches back to a crash house in the late 1960s called the Bad Kitty Lounge, where kids gathered for music, dope, and sex, until a fatal fire destroyed it. Joe, who has to figure out what family secret is worth killing for, has plenty of grit, and his style suits Chicago fine. (Mar.)

The relentless cycle of violence and retribution follows Palestinian detective Omar Yussef to New York City, where he must deliver a speech at the U.N. on schooling in the Palestinian refugee camps, in Rees’s excellent fourth mystery (after 2009’s The Samaritan’s Secret). When Yussef’s son, Ala, is arrested after a decapitated body is found in Ala’s Brooklyn apartment, Yussef’s search for the real killer leads him from Atlantic Avenue to Coney Island and back to the U.N. Secretariat. In the process, he discovers that he’s not quite the cosmopolitan man he thought himself to be, a realization shared by many Arab immigrants in the story. In truth, the residents of Little Palestine are caught between its subterranean mosques and the lure of Manhattan, where forbidden pleasures are ready for the plucking. Yussef remains reliably human and compassionate toward human fallibility, while raging openly at the corruption of his own leaders. (Feb.)

Bestseller Stabenow deftly explores the environmental and economic impact of gold mining in her sizzling 17th novel to feature Alaska PI Kate Shugak (after 2009’s Whisper to the Blood). Global Harvest Resources is intent on opening the Suulutaq Mine, where substantial deposits of gold, copper, and molybdenum have been found on state leases in the middle of the Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge, 50 miles from Niniltna. When Kate, “chair of the board of directors of the Niniltna Native Association,” and state trooper Jim Chopin find bear-eaten human remains near the truck of Global Harvest roustabout Dewayne A. Gammons, they assume the remains are Gammons’s. After all, there was a suicide note in Gammons’s truck. Weeks later, a wounded and nearly catatonic Gammons emerges from the woods near Kate’s homestead. More puzzles—and murder—follow. An uneasy resolution to the crimes suggests further drama ahead for Kate and her fellow “Park rats.” Author tour. (Feb.)

The musty, sedate world of old books provides the backdrop for a series of gruesome murders in Edwards’s absorbing fourth Lake District mystery (after 2007’s The Arsenic Labyrinth). Rare book dealers prove an unexpectedly randy lot as they are swept under by sexual undercurrents of obsession, infidelity, and jealousy. Inevitably, desire proves the undoing of one victim after another, as the sociopath responsible, obsessed by Thomas De Quincey’s tract On Murder, fulfills his “destiny… to make nightmares come true.” Leave it to Det. Chief Insp. Hannah Scarlett to find the link between a cold case, the murder of 25-year-old aspiring writer Bethany Friend (or was it suicide?), found drowned in a shallow pool six years earlier, and two active investigations, though not before letting her own conflicted desires get the better of her when her current lover, a secondhand bookseller, falls under suspicion. Hannah’s odd failure to pursue a line of questioning with another suspect also spells trouble. (Feb.)

When Maria Wellman, the unpopular wife of philandering diet guru Dr. Robert Wellman, is found dead on the beach below the couple’s cliff-top estate, Savannah Reid investigates in McKevett’s solid 15th mystery to feature the voluptuous San Carmelita, Calif., PI (after 2009’s A Body to Die For). Granny Reid, who flies in for a vacation, distracts Savannah from her sleuthing, but she also provides major help (and biscuits!) after Savannah and her policeman beau, Sgt. Dirk Coulter, uncover a big secret about the Wellmans. Suspects include battered wife Lydia Mahoney, whose husband was blackmailing Robert, and Karen Burns, a single mom pregnant with Robert’s baby whose mother runs a nightmarish day-care center. Though Savannah’s wit about food and healthy weight continues to sparkle, the “will they or won’t they?” banter between Dirk and Savannah is getting a little tired. Hopefully, McKevett (the pseudonym of Sonja Massie) will let the two fully connect soon. (Feb.)

Time is running out for Julius Caesar, whose assassination is little more than a year away, in Roberts’s fine 13th whodunit to feature Sen. Decius Metellus as sleuth (after 2008’s SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead). As 46 B.C. draws to an end, Caesar is turning the Roman Republic upside down by ordering the institution of a new calendar and assuming even more dictatorial power. Names familiar from Shakespeare, like Brutus and Cassius, are already gathering to voice their dissent. Meanwhile, Decius looks into the deaths of two astronomers, whose necks were broken by a method that stumps Rome’s best doctors. The astronomers’ links to the unpopular Julian calendar and to Caesar’s mistress, Cleopatra, provide multiple avenues for Decius’s investigation, which his wife, Julia, once again assists. That readers know Caesar’s ultimate fate in no way detracts from the enjoyment of this inventive historical. (Feb.)

James Patterson fans will like Dean’s second Frost Sisters mystery featuring sisters Kate, a Southfield Heights, Ind., homicide detective, and Lindsay Frost, a former cop who solved her own murder in the series’ opener, Invisible Shield (2007), and continues to adjust to an afterlife where one can still find romance. A killer strikes close to home when Kate discovers the dismembered body of a childhood friend, caterer Evelyn Jakes, in her car during a Wisconsin skiing vacation. Jakes, as she preferred to be called, had enemies, but who would cut Jakes into pieces and cast them in plaster? Kate and her partner, Det. Gerard Alvarez, investigate, while Lindsay, whom Kate can see and hear, lends otherworldly assistance. Dean laces her bewitching paranormal police procedural with whimsical humor and a touch of pathos, as Lindsay helps fellow ghosts—like an Italian mobster whose wife murdered him—understand why they’re dead. (Feb.)

San Francisco PIs Carly Paladino and Noah Lang, who teamed in Tierney’s Death in Pacific Heights (2009), try to solve the murder of aging novelist Whitney Warfield, ironically slain by a fountain pen, in this lackluster follow-up. Gigolo William Blake, who was seen arguing with Warfield the night the writer was killed, hires Paladino and Lang to clear his name. Blake provides a list of 12 people who might have feared the revelations Warfield planned to make in a tell-all book, including, besides Warfield’s son, wife, and mistress, a number of artistic types with ties to North Beach’s beat past. Alibis and unnatural deaths narrow the suspect list. In the end, Paladino orchestrates a clumsy and contrived showdown of suspects and police in a restaurant back room to expose the guilty. Tierney makes good use of North Beach’s rich history, but it’s not enough to redeem this pedestrian effort. (Feb.)

Set in 1920, bestseller Todd’s 12th mystery to feature the shell-shocked WWI veteran and Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge (after 2008’s A Matter of Justice) is one of the strongest entries yet in a series that shows no sign of losing steam. Rutledge first looks into the disappearance of missionary Walter Teller, who suddenly fell ill in London and later apparently walked out of the clinic where he was being treated. Rutledge questions members of Teller’s immediate family, including his brothers, Peter and Edwin. After the resolution of the case of the missing missionary, Rutledge investigates the bludgeoning death of Florence Teller, apparently the wife of another Peter Teller, in Lancashire. Once again Todd (the pseudonym of a mother-son writing team) perfectly balance incisive portraits of all the characters, not just the complex and original lead, with a tricky puzzle in which the killer is hidden in plain sight for the discerning reader to discover. (Jan.)

Edelman presents a gritty, tech-heavy thriller that builds on cyberpunk tropes in interesting and detailed new ways. The world developed in 2008’s MultiReal and 2009’s Infoquake has become inflamed with civil war and rebellion as MultiReal, a technology that mathematically projects possible futures to aid in decision making, suddenly becomes inaccessible. Into this chaos, MultiReal-D makes its first tentative appearance, building on the earlier technology to allow the user to essentially exist in multiple time lines for 60 seconds. Numerous characters seek their own goals in a labyrinthine plot, but Edelman does manage to bring his disparate threads together to create a coherent and even cohesive conclusion that’s most accessible and satisfying to those who have read the earlier books. (Feb.)

There’s little to like in the ugly and clich?-driven world Rowley (Arkham Woods) creates to launch Tor’s Heavy Metal Pulp line. In a future New York of implanted personalities and heavy weaponry, Det. Rook Venner, the archetypal good cop in a corrupt department, investigates a murder and finds the titular Plesur, a vat-grown, mentally impaired woman designed to be a sex toy, who apparently possesses important evidence. Only Rook can resist Plesur’s engineered hotness, so he brings her home to protect her. Helped by a series of women who die to advance the plot, Rook and Plesur are soon dodging assassins and a vast government conspiracy. Even readers who can tolerate the hackneyed dialogue, overt misogyny, and predictable violence will be annoyed by the utterly unresolved ending. B&w illustrations by Justin Norman mostly serve to pad the story and emphasize its cartoonish nature. (Feb.)

Adorably na?ve and introverted half-demon author Ellina Kostova finds herself sharing her New Orleans home with vampire-werewolf bodyguard Jude Anthony, hired by her brother to protect her from a mysterious stalker. Mutual attraction blossoms, but arousal causes Ellina to sprout embarrassing horns and shiny red scales, while Jude is afraid to mix business and pleasure. Love (the Young Brothers series) sadly neglects the potential in the setting, where demons, vampires, and werewolves mix, humans can become supernaturals, and an immortal has mourned his family for 2,000 years. With a hunky bodyguard as a main character, readers will be disappointed by the lack of good supernatural fights, and the mystery also falls flat. The romance is cute and well paced and the principals are warm and engaging, but that can’t compensate for the glaring flaws. (Feb.)

If science fiction is the literature of outsiders, no one is better suited to writing it than Uncle River, a hermit who uses the solitude and small towns of the American Southwest as the wellspring for these thoughtful, often optimistic stories of depopulated and low-tech futures. A scientist learning from silence to hear what is happening around and inside him (“Counting Tadpoles”), day laborers and subsistence farmers finding less horror from a giant lizard than from their local police (“The Lizard”), and a Hawaiian mariner dream questing to derelict radio telescopes in New Mexico (“Geronimo’s Buttons”) find hope in turning to “Nature’s rhythms and requirements” and away from the material world. River’s slow-paced perspective will challenge readers to stop and reflect on just what kinds of worlds are worth building. (Feb.)

Prolific military SF author Ringo (the Posleen War series) imbues this near-future epic with a somewhat self-indulgent air, mixing lengthy and sometimes interminable discussions of science and economics with do-or-die action. Three years after the alien Grtul drop a transport gate in our solar system and welcome Earth to the galactic community, a Horvath warship shows up and destroys several major cities before extorting protection payments. Fast-thinking entrepreneur Tyler Vernon exploits the literally universal appeal of maple syrup to make a fortune, defies the Horvath, and reveals his ideas for keeping Earth safe, but intergalactic war threatens to derail his plan. This extended thought exercise is infused with plenty of old-fashioned two-fisted can-do attitude, a heavy dose of science, and occasional bursts of dry humor, but shallow characterization and an ambling plot detract from the overall experience. (Feb.)

Fans of 2009’s Act of Will, Hartley’s first tale featuring roguish almost-hero Will Hawthorne, may be disappointed that the adventurers split up early on and two don’t reappear until late in the story. Fortunately, all of the fast pacing, outrageous dilemmas, and sharp, cynical humor are back in full force. Will and his intermittently traitorous friends are about to be captured by soldiers of the Diamond Empire when a mysterious ambassador smuggles them out of the city and possibly the world. They’re almost immediately enmeshed in a war between goblins and the eerily humanlike Fair Folk, where nothing is certain except Will’s ability to make a bad situation worse. Fans will dive in with the gusto of Will quaffing a tankard of beer, and new readers should have no problem keeping up. (Feb.)

Durgin (Scent of Danger) introduces Lisa “Garrie” McGarrity and her team of Albuquerque ghost hunters in this cheerful paranormal romance series launch. Garrie learned her trade at the age of 10 from Rhonda Rose, an invisible childhood friend who turned out to be a ghost. Now “25 and over the hill,” Garrie is burnt out on helping the dead to finish their business with the living, but otherworldly bounty hunter Trevarr persuades her to fly to San Jose’s famously haunted Winchester House, where the ghosts have become strangely agitated. Trevarr makes a tremendous effort to help Garrie and capture her heart, but Garrie doesn’t trust him, and she’s caught unawares by the dark forces arrayed against her. Readers will enjoy the humorous dialogue and ghost-busting lingo, but numerous unanswered questions may lead to frustration rather than anticipation of sequels. (Feb.)

Drake (a pseudonym for bestseller Heather Graham) lures readers to 1865 Scotland in this sensual and mysterious gothic romance. Martise St. James pays a visit to Castle Creeghan in the Highlands, pretending to be the sister of Mary, the recently deceased Lady Creeghan, in hopes of finding the legendary St. James emerald and learning the true cause of Mary’s death. Though she longs to return to Virginia and reclaim her family’s estate following the U.S. Civil War, Martise is soon intensely attracted to Lord Bruce Creeghan and compelled to investigate the castle’s secrets. Martise is an eminently affable protagonist, possessed of sensuality, intellect, and wit. Passion and mystery combine as Martise wonders whether she will lose her heart or her life. Readers will thrill to this tale, a brilliant testament to Drake’s versatility. (Feb.)

Launching a new series, western romance writer Gentry (To Seduce a Texan) sets an unlikely, blood-soaked love affair in late 19th-century Wyoming. The son of a white woman raped by a Sioux warrior, Diablo is a gunfighter-for-hire plotting revenge against wealthy rancher Hurd Kruger and his men, who gang-raped and tortured Diablo 15 years before. After murdering Kruger’s hired hands and stealing his prized possessions, Diablo kidnaps beautiful, obedient Sunny Sorrenson, Kruger’s reluctant fianc?e. Initially insipid, Sunny becomes a much more interesting character as she begins to see the good in Diablo, and their passion blazes like the Texas sun. Gentry’s setting is compelling and readers will celebrate Diablo’s redemption, but the romance and happy ending are undermined by numerous scenes of brutal bloodshed and references to sexual violence. (Feb.)

Mayan myth, including the much-ballyhooed 2012 doomsday theory, forms the backbone of this action-packed debut. Danielle Laidlaw, an investigator for a covert branch of the National Research Institute, sets off into the Amazon with a small group of mercenaries, renegades, rogues, and scholars to uncover the source of mysterious radioactive crystals, hoping to find an ancient Mayan city and a possible source for clean energy. Ruthless billionaire Richard Kaufman has his own plans for the technology and will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means killing Danielle and her team. There are other dangers lurking in the rain forests, including a cartoonishly savage tribe of natives called the Chollokwan and a mysterious man-eating creature. A few sections seem unnecessarily padded, but the fast pace and nonstop violence will keep readers forging ahead. (Feb.)

The first comic created for Amazon Kindle turns out to be more than just an experimental curiosity. When Frank Armstrong, an elderly failed PI, is hired to find a drug boss’s daughter, he sees a chance to redeem himself for failing to prevent his own wife’s murder decades ago. Unfortunately, Frank’s inoperable brain tumor means that his senses betray him so that he doesn’t always know what year he’s living in or whether he’s walking down the gritty L.A. streets or lying flat on his back in a hospital bed. He’s obviously dying; the question is whether he can pull himself together long enough to win moral salvation. Fialkov’s hard-boiled script shows Frank’s desperate toughness, though it’s somewhat unbelievable to discover that he’s been walking around with a compound fracture of his left femur. Tuazon’s crude-looking black and white art is also effective, switching from fine line and wash to scrappy brush work as Frank’s consciousness fluctuates. There’s nothing subtle about Tumor, but it’s successful noir storytelling. (Feb.)

Culling material from his days as a Peace Corps worker in Turkmenistan, Lonergan follows his graphic novel, Flower & Fade, with this charming and engrossing study of a friendship that transcends cultural borders. American Joe works as a teacher in post-Soviet Turkmenistan and acts as our fish-out-of-water everyman, confronted with customs and ways of thought that seem frustratingly pointless. Meanwhile, his native Turkmen friend Azat constantly finds his idealized impression of Americans and their society brought crashing to earth by Joe’s reality checks. Joe (and the reader) are taken in by Azat’s eternally sunny personality and ambitions that exceed his dreamer’s reality, taking us from one flight of entrepreneurial or romantic fancy to another while letting us get to know Azat’s highly critical mother and his bitter, alcoholic brother. Less of a straightforward narrative than a study of two very different men and the situations they find themselves in, this is a simply illustrated charmer that grips readers from its opening pages and remains on the mind well after it has been read and absorbed. (Nov.)

Gaiman’s novella The Sandman: The Dream Hunters, previously illustrated by acclaimed Japanese artist Yoshitako Amano, has been reimagined by award-winning artist Russell. This new release celebrates the 20th anniversary of Gaiman’s Sandman and turns the original prose from 1999 into a graphic novel. The original blended Gaiman’s mythology of the Dreaming with traditional Japanese myths and legends to tell the tale of a fox who makes a wager to dislodge a young monk from his home, losing her heart in the end and causing the intervention of the King of All Night’s Dreaming. The pairing of Gaiman and Russell—previous collaborations between the two have won four Eisner Awards—is as strong as ever; together they develop the tale further, visually expanding upon Amano’s original designs. The hardcover—sure to please the legions of Gaiman and Sandman admirers—also includes commentary and a cover gallery including variant covers by Russell, Yuko Shimizu, Mike Mignola, Paul Pope, and Joe Kubert. (Nov.)

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