Current Issue: Fiction

Brown, Rita Mae A NOSE FOR JUSTICE
September 1, 2010 - City dog meets country dog to solve crimes ancient and modern. Magdalene Rogers’s Wall Street life is a bust. So she and her dachshund Baxter head west to her feisty great aunt Jeep, née Magdalene Reed, who welcomes Mags to ... Full Review
Bruce, Alison THE SIREN
September 1, 2010 - Cambridge DC Gary Goodhew (Cambridge Blue, 2008) must deal with arson, kidnapping, murder and worse. Three years after Nicholas Lewton disappeared from his job at the Celeste pub with a sizable sum belonging to his father, Celeste owner Dougie Lewton, ... Full Review
Byrd, Bobby LONE STAR NOIR
September 1, 2010 - Noir and Texas link 14 previously unpublished stories—two first-rate, the rest not bad. Done to a turn, Claudia Smith’s “Catgirl” is a banality-of-evil story centering on four children, girls, aged about 10, and the charismatic mom of two of them. ... Full Review
Caldwell, Bo CITY OF TRANQUIL LIGHT
September 1, 2010 - In 1906, Mennonite missionaries move to China to proselytize through providing health care and food. A farmer’s boy from the Midwest and a young nurse, they marry and spend the better part of their lives suffering with, and becoming close ... Full Review
Campbell, Liza THE DISSEMBLERS
September 1, 2010 - A female art-school graduate chasing the muse of Georgia O'Keeffe in Santa Fe is drawn into a forgery ring and struggles to embrace her individuality as a person. In Campbell's brief, intensely introspective debut, Ivy Wilkes' dream of becoming a ... Full Review
Cannell, Stephen J. THE PROSTITUTES' BALL
September 1, 2010 - In Shane Scully’s tenth (The Pallbearers, 2010, etc.), the savvy LAPD cop encounters Hollywood glitz, a homicide blitz and almost nothing that is what it seems to be. Can Scully actually stomach as his new partner Sumner “Hitch” Hitchens, a ... Full Review
Child, Lee THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2010
September 1, 2010 - Guest editor Child chooses 20 atmospheric tales whose settings and crimes are all over the map in this 14th entry in Penzler’s annual series. Crime is everywhere. In teeming Campeche City on the Yucatán, a hit man catches up with ... Full Review
Cleeves, Ann BLUE LIGHTNING
September 1, 2010 - Nobody, not even the murderer, can leave the island until the storm clears. Jimmy Perez, a thoughtful, taciturn inspector in the Highland and Islands Police, takes his fiancée Fran, an artist steeped in London gossip, mores and sociability, home to ... Full Review
Donaldson, Stephen R. AGAINST ALL THINGS ENDING
September 1, 2010 - Daggers and wizards, time travel, leprosy—for fans of fantasy, there’s much to like in Donaldson’s latest installment in the multivolume Thomas Covenant epic series of yore. When last we saw Thomas, way back in 1983, he was, to put it ... Full Review
Duffy, Margaret CORPSE IN WAITING
September 1, 2010 - A holiday in Bath designed as a little break from household routine plunges the vacationers into danger. Ingrid Langley is recovering from childbirth, and her husband Patrick Gillard still isn’t back to normal after being drugged in his last case ... Full Review
Dunn, Adam RIVERS OF GOLD
September 1, 2010 - New York taxicabs form the nexus of the drug trade in this messy near-future crime novel, journalist Dunn’s debut. The city is a bleak place in 2012, ravaged by double-digit inflation and unemployment. Buildings stand empty, restaurants shuttered. Organized crime, ... Full Review
Erickson, Carolly RIVAL TO THE QUEEN
September 1, 2010 - The Virgin Queen has competition for the affections of dashing Robert Dudley in the form of her cousin, lovely Lettie Knollys. Erickson (The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots, 2009, etc.) charts the 16th-century Knollys siblings’ affairs of the heart. ... Full Review
Franco, James PALO ALTO
September 1, 2010 - Bleak tales of growing up in the eponymous city. Actor Franco’s stories are impressive: crisp, spare, depressing. Numerous characters recur from story to story, sometimes appearing as narrators, other times as characters within someone else’s narrative frame. Almost all are ... Full Review
Garcia, Tristan HATE
September 1, 2010 - Four Parisians navigate a shifting personal and political landscape in a modern, sexually liberated Europe. Tracing the rise, fall and subsequent reinvention of a generation through a few key relationships, this deliberately provocative novel makes for a gossipy snapshot of ... Full Review
Glass, Julia THE WIDOWER'S TALE
September 1, 2010 - Another heartwarming winner from the NBA-anointed Massachusetts author. Glass (I See You Everywhere, 2008, etc.) observes and gently mocks her charmingly self-absorbed characters in an unmannered manner reminiscent of her popular contemporary Allegra Goodman and their accomplished forerunner Anne Tyler. ... Full Review
Gorman, Ed STRANGLEHOLD
September 1, 2010 - A Chicago political consultant hired by a suburban Illinois Congresswoman discovers that dirty tricks are even dirtier, and more felonious, outside the Windy City. Dev Conrad isn’t running Susan Cooper’s campaign himself. His staffers Ben Weinberg and Kristin Daly are ... Full Review
Grass, Günter THE BOX
September 1, 2010 - A family documentary in the form of a novel, leaving the reader to decide where the line blurs between fact and fiction. This book by the Nobel Prize–winning German author (Peeling the Onion, 2007, etc.) ostensibly allows his eight offspring ... Full Review
Greenman, Ben CELEBRITY CHEKHOV
September 1, 2010 - The stories of Anton Chekhov are hijacked by American celebrities in New Yorker editor Greenman’s latest (What He's Poised to Do, 2010, etc.). The author makes a modest proposal in this thinly conceptualized literary mash-up. “Chekhov drew his characters from ... Full Review
Gregorio, Michael UNHOLY AWAKENING
September 1, 2010 - Could the serial killer terrorizing the village of Lotingen be a vampire? Procurator Hanno Steffeniis has witnessed multiple tragedies in his small town, including a pack of murderous dogs and the horrible death of his baby son Anders during a ... Full Review
Grossman, Paul THE SLEEPWALKERS
September 1, 2010 - In Grossman’s debut novel, a Jewish cop in 1932 Berlin hunts the perpetrators of a grotesque crime, against a backdrop of political turmoil. Willi Kraus, the cop famous for catching the infamous Kinderfresser child murderer some years back, is called ... Full Review
Handler, David THE SHIMMERING BLOND SISTER
September 1, 2010 - Even in toney Dorset, background checks are advisable. Connecticut state trooper Des Mitry has her hands full. A flasher is spending his weekend nights ringing the doorbells, but not the chimes, of the town’s rich old ladies. He leaves no ... Full Review
Hannah, Sophie THE TRUTH-TELLER'S LIE
September 1, 2010 - Professional and personal relationships collide with the energy of supernovas. When Naomi Jenkins’s married lover Robert fails to show up at Traveltel’s Room 11 for their regular three-hour tryst, she scurries to his house, glances in his living room window ... Full Review
Hart, Carolyn GHOST IN TROUBLE
September 1, 2010 - The latest case for one of Heaven’s cleverest sleuths forces her to break a lot of rules. Wiggins, her boss in Heaven’s Department of Good Intentions, knows that Bailey Ruth Raeburn (Merry, Merry Ghost, 2009, etc.) means well. Even though ... Full Review
Katz, Jon ROSE IN A STORM
September 1, 2010 - Rose (Dog Days, 2007, etc.) pens a simple novel of super-canine loyalty and heroism. Relationships and respect—between animals, as well as between animals and humans—feature in this short, heart-tugging tale of a dog with a planet-size work ethic. The story ... Full Review
Kent, Kathleen THE WOLVES OF ANDOVER
September 1, 2010 - In this prequel to The Heretic’s Daughter (2008), Kent tells the fictionalized story of her ancestor Martha Carrier’s courtship with her future husband years before she became a victim of the Salem Witch Trials. In 1673, Martha’s father sends her ... Full Review
Leonard, Elmore DJIBOUTI
September 1, 2010 - Leonard’s company of stock character types—the veteran law enforcer, the savvy professional woman, the seen-it-all sidekick, the horny billionaire—are so cool that they can confront international terrorism without batting an eyelash. Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Dara Barr wants to make a ... Full Review
Leotta, Allison LAW OF ATTRACTION
September 1, 2010 - First-time novelist Leotta follows a rookie federal prosecutor on the case of a lifetime in this thriller set against the backdrop of the Washington, D.C., court system. The author, a federal sex-crimes prosecutor who hails from Michigan and has a ... Full Review
Leung, Brian TAKE ME HOME
September 1, 2010 - The “home” of the title is the minuscule (and aptly named) settlement of Dire, Wyo., where Addie Maine revisits a locus of love and loss 40 years after the tragic events that had transpired there. In the 1880s, Addie travels ... Full Review
Macbain, Bruce ROMAN GAMES
September 1, 2010 - A respected Roman senator turns sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door mystery. It’s 96 CE. Her husband already executed for atheism, Flavia Domitilla, niece of the Emperor Domitian, has been exiled to the island of Pandateria. With the wildly popular ... Full Review
Machart, Bruce THE WAKE OF FORGIVENESS
September 1, 2010 - A wager destroys a farm family in this risk-taking first novel about Czech immigrant landowners in early 20th-century South Texas. Hard men are grabbing land any way they can. Vaclav Skala has been softened by a loving wife, who has ... Full Review
Maupin, Armistead MARY ANN IN AUTUMN
September 1, 2010 - Maupin continues his popular Tales of the City saga (Michael Tolliver Lives, 2007, etc.) with the return to San Francisco of Mary Ann Singleton after 20 years in the cushy Connecticut suburbs. She’s caught her retired-CEO husband cheating via Skype, ... Full Review
Mayor, Archer RED HERRING
September 1, 2010 - Joe Gunther (The Price of Malice, 2009, etc.) pursues a vindictive killer and pays heavily for catching him. Three people meet sudden deaths: two middle-aged women and a 19-year-old boy. A car wreck kills one; another dies horribly in the ... Full Review
McCabe, Patrick THE STRAY SOD COUNTRY
September 1, 2010 - The Irish McCabe uses elements familiar from his previous work for his latest novel, a ghoulish small-town burlesque. The town is Cullymore, on the Irish border; it was also the setting for his last novel (The Holy City, 2008, etc.). ... Full Review
McGlynn, Stacey KEEPING TIME
September 1, 2010 - A perfectly charming debut in which a septuagenarian from Liverpool travels to Long Island in search of her long-lost fiancé. Daisy Phillips is feeling the pressure to move from her quaint English home to a state-of-the-art retirement community. She loves ... Full Review
McMillan, Terry GETTING TO HAPPY
September 1, 2010 - McMillan’s sequel to her popular Waiting To Exhale picks up 15 years later in the lives of the four Phoenix friends—Savannah, Gloria, Bernadine and Robin—still looking for love and happiness as they hit middle age. It’s 2005 and each of ... Full Review
Moore, Graham THE SHERLOCKIAN
September 1, 2010 - Another resurrection of Sherlockiana, the conceit here being the story of tracking down Arthur Conan Doyle’s missing journal from 1900—and solving a murder associated with the journal. Owing to a couple of scholarly articles on Sherlock Holmes, Harold White has ... Full Review
Oates, Joyce Carol SOURLAND
September 1, 2010 - More of (mostly) the same in Oates’s latest collection of 16 in-your-face short stories. Faithful readers will note the familiar mixture of vividly conceived psychodramas redeemed by raw intensity and immediacy, and clichéd depictions of vulnerable and victimized souls dominated ... Full Review
Oldfield, Pamela THE BOAT HOUSE
September 1, 2010 - Prolific Oldfield (The Birthday Present, 2010, etc.) spins yet another tale of England, this one just before World War I in the town of Henley-on-Thames. Marianne Lefevre is a new governess. After losing both her parents, she’s found herself in ... Full Review
Parini, Jay THE PASSAGES OF H.M.
September 1, 2010 - Following novels based on Tolstoy (The Last Station, 1990) and Walter Benjamin (Benjamin’s Crossing, 1997), Parini offers his seventh: a piquant exploration of the life of Herman Melville as sailor, writer and family man. Why piquant? Because Parini places considerable ... Full Review
Pearson, Ridley IN HARM’S WAY
September 1, 2010 - Pearson’s (Killer Summer, 2009, etc.) Sun Valley sheriff Walt Fleming tries to sort out his knotty personal life as he hunts for a killer, with a little help from Seattle cop Lou Boldt, another Pearson character. Things have gotten complicated ... Full Review
Ragen, Naomi THE TENTH SONG
September 1, 2010 - An upper-middle-class Jewish family is thrown into turmoil when a father is accused of abetting terrorism. Things couldn’t be more idyllic for the Samuels clan of Cambridge, Mass. Abigail is exulting in the pleasurable planning of a gala engagement party ... Full Review
Rinna, Lisa STARLIT
September 1, 2010 - Actress Rinna’s debut features an unscrupulous Hollywood diva who will stop at nothing to defeat a younger rival. Tally, Sadie and Mandy, three ingénues who came to L.A. hoping to break into acting, are still waitressing despite years of lessons ... Full Review
Ritter, Todd DEATH NOTICE
September 1, 2010 - A small-town sheriff has her hands full with a vicious serial killer. Perry Hollow, Pa., has never had a murder of its own until a corpse is discovered in a coffin on the side of the road. George Winnick was ... Full Review
Sampson, Fay THOSE IN PERIL
September 1, 2010 - Tracing the history of their paternal forebears turns deadly for the Fewings family (In the Blood, 2009, etc.). Suzie Fewings has done a bang-up job of tracing her West Country ancestry. When her husband Nick inherits a portrait of his ... Full Review
Sandford, John BAD BLOOD
September 1, 2010 - An open-and-shut case of murder leads Virgil Flowers, of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (Rough Country, 2009, etc.), to a twisted, century-old conspiracy. Despite his efforts to pass off Jacob Flood’s death as an accident, it’s no secret that Robert ... Full Review
Schwartz, Stephen Jay BEAT
September 1, 2010 - A harrowing catalog of all the bad things that happen to the two of you and everyone else when you fall in love with a prostitute. When he’s not working cases for LAPD Robbery-Homicide, Detective Hayden Glass (Boulevard, 2009) is ... Full Review
Shanghvi, Siddharth Dhanvant THE LOST FLAMINGOES OF BOMBAY
September 1, 2010 - A rambunctious second novel from the award-winning Shanghvi (The Last Song of Dusk, 2004), in which the spectacle of Bombay serves as backdrop for a dizzying plot involving murder, adultery, AIDS, police corruption, bribery, celebrity and the lonely pursuit of ... Full Review
Spencer, Sally BLACKSTONE AND THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
September 1, 2010 - Marooned in the United States, Inspector Sam Blackstone investigates the kidnapping of a business tycoon. Since an attempt on his life seven years earlier, banker William Holt has lived in seclusion in his Coney Island mansion, running his business from ... Full Review
Taylor, Patrick AN IRISH COUNTRY COURTSHIP
September 1, 2010 - Continuation of Taylor’s popular series about country doctors in the tiny Northern Irish town of Ballybucklebo, circa 1964. At Number 1, Main Street, Ballybucklebo, Dr. Fingal O’Reilly still grapples with the symptoms of his motley group of patients and with ... Full Review
Tremain, Rose TRESPASS
September 1, 2010 - Two very different sets of siblings, one French, one English, seek resolution to their fraught upbringings and present discontent in this latest tale of intertwining lives from Tremain (The Road Home, 2008, etc.). When his success as a London antiques ... Full Review
Willis, Deborah VANISHING AND OTHER STORIES
September 1, 2010 - The well-made, mostly downbeat stories in Canadian writer Willis’s debut collection feature characters with an intimate understanding of loss—loss past, loss present, even the losses to come. In the title story, a daughter struggles to come to grips with the ... Full Review
Winer, Andrew THE MARRIAGE ARTIST
September 1, 2010 - In this resolutely ambitious novel from Winer (The Color Midnight Made, 2002), a present-day art critic’s attempt to understand his dead wife and her brilliant Native-American artist-lover intertwines with the fate of an equally brilliant Jewish artist in 1930s Vienna. ... Full Review

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MOCKINGJAY
- Another season, another embargoed Big Book. This one is the hotly anticipated Mockingjay, the conclusion to Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy. We have had to wait along with the rest of America, as Scholastic, masters at whipping up anticipatory frenzy ...