Current Issue: Fiction

Abate, Carmine THE HOMECOMING PARTY August 1, 2010 - An adventurous and troubled boyhood is piquantly detailed in this 2004 novel from a respected Italian author (Between Two Seas, 2008). It begins one Christmas Eve in the Calabrian town of Hora (“where we speak...an old-fashioned form of Albanian”), as ... Full Review

Bass, Rick NASHVILLE CHROME August 1, 2010 - Based on the career arc of a 1950s singing trio, this mythic novel is sadder than most country songs and stranger than any. A book that defies categorization, and that reads more like cultural criticism than fictionalized biography, this narrative ... Full Review

Bruen, Ken THE DEVIL August 1, 2010 - Someone’s killing Jack Taylor’s friends, and there’s the devil to pay. Literally? Galway’s leading bipolar private eye (Sanctuary, 2009, etc.), whose mood swings from the merely dark to the stygian, is at his low point again. He’d like to resign ... Full Review

Burns, Charles X'ED OUT August 1, 2010 - This graphic novel is more like an apocalyptic hallucination. The first installment of what promises to be a full-color series from one of America’s most renowned graphic artists, appears in some ways to be a throwback to the comic books ... Full Review

Cunningham, Michael BY NIGHTFALL August 1, 2010 - A surfeit of literary and cultural references can’t disguise a lightweight soap opera. Literary subject matter is familiar territory for Cunningham (whose 1998 novel, The Hours, won a Pulitzer), but this novel’s incessant evocations of James, Eliot, Joyce, Mann, Fitzgerald, ... Full Review

Davidson, Hilary THE DAMAGE DONE August 1, 2010 - Even death doesn’t stop the family’s black sheep from causing more problems. Claudia, who ingested drugs the way most of us breathe air, apparently took her last fix, then toppled into her bathtub, where she died. Eerily, the date of ... Full Review

Dickey, Eric Jerome TEMPTED BY TROUBLE August 1, 2010 - Two minutes is long enough to save a life—or end it, as a desperate husband finds out when he takes to a life of crime. Dickey (Resurrecting Midnight, 2009, etc.) starts this bleak tale of a robbery gone wrong with ... Full Review

Donoghue, Emma ROOM August 1, 2010 - Talented, versatile Donoghue (The Sealed Letter, 2008, etc.) relates a searing tale of survival and recovery, in the voice of a five-year-old boy. Jack has never known a life beyond Room. His Ma gave birth to him on Rug; the ... Full Review

Evanovich, Janet WICKED APPETITE August 1, 2010 - The creator of Stephanie Plum (Sizzling Sixteen, 2010, etc.) kicks off a new series that presses familiar ingredients into the genre of supernatural farce. In lieu of bounty hunter Stephanie, Evanovich presents pastry chef Elizabeth Tucker, recently relocated to Marblehead, ... Full Review

Fowler, Christopher BRYANT & MAY OFF THE RAILS August 1, 2010 - London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit has exactly a week to solve a case that promptly blossoms into two cases. After killing PC Liberty DuCaine, the deadly Mr. Fox (Bryant & May on the Loose, 2009) has made his escape from a ... Full Review

Francis, Dick CROSSFIRE August 1, 2010 - The late Dick Francis’s 44th, and last, canter around the track echoes several of his greatest hits. Capt. Tom Forsyth has returned from service in Afghanistan without his right foot. Since the Army’s been his only home for half a ... Full Review

Franklin, Tom CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER August 1, 2010 - There are murders in this Mississippi melodrama, but pay them no mind; its core is the brief friendship of two boys, one black, one white. Larry Ott has been ostracized by the small town of Chabot for 25 years. Back ... Full Review

Franzen, Jonathan FREEDOM August 1, 2010 - The epic sprawl of this ambitious yet ultimately unsatisfying novel encompasses everything from indie rock to environmental radicalism to profiteering in the Middle East. The first novel from Franzen in almost a decade invites comparisons with its predecessor, The Corrections, ... Full Review

Goldberg, Myla THE FALSE FRIEND August 1, 2010 - Picking up the current concerns about bullying and “mean girls,” Goldberg (Wickett's Remedy, 2005, etc.) follows a young woman tracking down a guilty memory from her childhood. Celia, 32, works as a performance auditor in Chicago, where she lives with ... Full Review

Gray, Sarah WUTHERING BITES August 1, 2010 - Another literary classic is hijacked by toothy interlopers, this time courtesy of Gray, aka romance novelist Colleen Faulkner. The formula is simple: Take a classic in the public domain and appropriate most of the author’s prose, sprinkling in references throughout ... Full Review

Gruen, Sara APE HOUSE August 1, 2010 - In this novel about a researcher’s devotion to a family of bonobo apes, the author of Water for Elephants (2006) turns her attention to another mistreated mammal whose intellectual capacity has been undervalued by humans. Aspergerish Isabel Duncan has found ... Full Review

Hill, Ernest FAMILY TIES August 1, 2010 - A novel that focuses primarily on African-American experiences, but Hill provides a universal—and didactic—moral point as he revisits characters from his previous fiction. D’Ray Reid, out of prison for having killed a young man, seems to have turned his life ... Full Review

Indridason, Arnaldur HYPOTHERMIA August 1, 2010 - A suicide reminds a veteran inspector of previous sad cases—and of ghosts from his own past. María, a historian, is found hanged in her country cottage by her childhood friend Karen, with whom she'd planned a getaway weekend. María's husband ... Full Review

Izner, Claude THE MONTMARTRE INVESTIGATION August 1, 2010 - A single red shoe draws Parisian bookseller Victor Legris into another tantalizing murder puzzle. The young ladies of Mademoiselle Bontemps' boarding school look forward to every outing with breathless anticipation. Love-struck Élisa contemplates a secret rendezvous with her admirer Gaston, ... Full Review

Jaffarian, Sue Ann MURDER IN VEIN August 1, 2010 - Odelia Gray (Corpse on the Cob, 2010, etc.) and Granny Apples (Ghost à la Mode, 2009) have a new cousin: Madison Rose, a human living in Los Angeles’s twilight world of vampires. Waitress Madison Rose can hardly believe it. First ... Full Review

Kehlmann, Daniel FAME August 1, 2010 - From German author Kehlmann (Me and Kaminski, 2008, etc.), nine interconnected stories that cleverly explore the seductive nature of fame—and fiction’s role in creating it. Notoriety as both a blessing and (more often) a curse is the thread holding together ... Full Review

Kiely, Tracy MURDER ON THE BRIDE'S SIDE August 1, 2010 - A Jane Austen fan who’s spent too much time with Sense and Sensibility tries to solve a murder at her best friend’s wedding. The friendship between no-nonsense Elizabeth Parker (Murder at Longbourn, 2009) and flighty Bridget Matthews dates back to ... Full Review

Kinsella, Sophie MINI SHOPAHOLIC August 1, 2010 - Plucky über-consumer Rebecca Brandon has her work cut out for her as mum to tiny terror Minnie. With a job she loves (personal shopper, natch), happy marriage and an adorable little daughter, Becky Brandon certainly seems to have it all. ... Full Review

Kipps, Charles CRYSTAL DEATH August 1, 2010 - Conor Bard, the NYPD’s singing detective, makes a second page-turning appearance in the case of the blood-red diamond. Diamonds were not Zivah Gavish’s best friend. Her elegant throat cut, she’s discovered in her sumptuous New York apartment, the fabulous red ... Full Review

Krueger, William Kent VERMILION DRIFT August 1, 2010 - Conflicted protagonist Cork O’Connor works a case that has disturbing connections to his own family, as well as his past, in Krueger’s latest (Heaven’s Keep, 2009, etc.). Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor, former sheriff of fictional Tamarack County, Minn., works as a ... Full Review

Larsen, K.J. LIAR, LIAR August 1, 2010 - A private eye searches for a suspect while her mother tries to find her a man. If Caterina “Cat” DeLuca learned one thing in her divorce, it’s how to catch a cheater. Now older and wiser, Cat has her own ... Full Review

Lindqvist, John Ajvide HANDLING THE UNDEAD August 1, 2010 - Bright lights in a big city herald the return of the dead in Swedish horrorist Lindqvist’s second novel, after Let the Right One In (2007), a vampire tale that was later turned into a movie. This time the author replaces ... Full Review

Lindsay, Jeff DEXTER IS DELICIOUS August 1, 2010 - Fatherly affection, empathy, guilt—could everyone’s favorite law-enforcement sociopath (Dexter by Design, 2009, etc.) be turning soft? As he gawps at his newborn daughter Lily Anne, Dexter Morgan feels a rush of unfamiliar feelings and familiarly satirical thoughts about how sappy ... Full Review

Martin, Steve AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY August 1, 2010 - The NYC art world, seen through the eyes of its most impartial constituents. In his latest novel, Martin (Born Standing Up, 2007, etc.) unveils an ambitious and heartfelt analysis of both the complexity and absurdity of the Manhattan art market. ... Full Review

McDermid, Val FEVER OF THE BONE August 1, 2010 - Under pressure from every side, DCI Carol Jordan, who heads Bradfield CID’s major incident team, and profiler Dr. Tony Hill are forced to work out a new series of relationships with each other. James Blake, Bradfield’s new Chief Constable, seems ... Full Review

Meier, Leslie WICKED WITCH MURDER August 1, 2010 - A coven of Wiccans brings murder and mayhem to Tinker’s Cove. Star reporter Lucy Stone (Mother’s Day Murder, 2009, etc.) has two brand-new neighbors. Diana Ravenscroft owns Solstice, a new purple-painted shop full of crystals, handmade jewelry and books of ... Full Review

Mullany, Janet JANE AND THE DAMNED August 1, 2010 - Jane Austen joins the undead to counter a French invasion of Britain, in the latest from Mullany (The Rules of Gentility, 2007). Stung by the rejection of her first novel, Miss Austen attends a tea-dance with her sister Cassandra, hoping ... Full Review

Nash, David VAN GOGH’S EAR August 1, 2010 - Two brothers leave Utah for Los Angeles, where they move into an apartment above a crack house and embark on a series of drunken escapades and liaisons, stalk a rapist and meet the bloody culmination prefigured at the book’s beginning. ... Full Review

Naslund, Sena Jeter ADAM & EVE August 1, 2010 - The story of the story of Genesis, and a love story reminiscent of Joan Crawford’s worst movies are, uh, juxtaposed, in this very earnest sixth novel from the industrious Kentucky author (Abundance, 2006, etc.). Set in the near future, it ... Full Review

Nunez, Sigrid SALVATION CITY August 1, 2010 - An adolescent orphan finds a home with an evangelical Christian community after his parents perish in an influenza pandemic, in the latest from Nunez (The Last of Her Kind, 2005, etc.). In this not-so-unfathomable scenario, the American health-care system is ... Full Review

Parker, Robert B. PAINTED LADIES August 1, 2010 - Spenser’s last case. The opening sequence, in which Spenser (The Professional, 2009, etc.) makes a monkey out of a college professor who clearly needs him more than Spenser needs the professor, hearkens back to the Boston private eye’s very first ... Full Review

Rendell, Ruth PORTOBELLO August 1, 2010 - What ought to be welcome news—the chance discovery of £115 dropped by a stricken passerby—is the catalyst that brings together another memorably ill-assorted crowd of neurotics, misfits and criminals bent on mischief. Minutes after making a withdrawal from a Portobello ... Full Review

Richie, Nicole PRICELESS August 1, 2010 - Another riches-to-rags-to-riches tales from celebutante author Richie. After tapping the seedier side of her personal life, Richie (The Truth About Diamonds, 2005) composes another avatar for herself, a spoiled heiress digging deep in a time of crisis. Charlotte Williams is ... Full Review

Rushdie, Salman LUKA AND THE FIRE OF LIFE August 1, 2010 - Rushdie’s 11th novel is a sequel to his charming 1990 fable Haroun and the Sea of Stories, written—as was its predecessor—for one of its author’s two sons. Visions of Kipling and J.M. Barrie may swim through readers’ heads as we ... Full Review

Russell, Sheldon THE INSANE TRAIN August 1, 2010 - A one-armed railroad-security agent’s troubleshooting branches out into new territory. Hook Runyon (The Yard Dog, 2009) and his scruffy dog Mixer have a new assignment: Stop checking the tracks around Needles, Calif., and hustle over to Barstow, where the inmates ... Full Review

Schlink, Bernhard THE WEEKEND August 1, 2010 - A tight literary contrivance by the novelist best known for The Reader (1997). Imagine The Big Chill transplanted to the German countryside in the wake of 9/11 terrorism. As the title suggests, this narrative encompasses a single weekend, Friday through ... Full Review

Shors, John THE WISHING TREES August 1, 2010 - From Shors (Beside a Burning Sea, 2008, etc.), a novel almost more heartwarming than a body can stand. Aussie Ian recently lost his American wife, Kate. Although he and his ten-year-old daughter Mattie grieve intensely, they decide to honor Kate’s ... Full Review

Sim, Alastair THE UNBELIEVERS August 1, 2010 - A police inspector tracks a Duke’s killer in 1865 Scotland. Nineteenth-century Edinburgh is a dark industrial city whose shadows Inspector Allerdyce knows all too well. Still mourning his first wife despite his remarriage, Allerdyce has thrown himself into the work ... Full Review

Simpson, Mona MY HOLLYWOOD August 1, 2010 - This dour take on class and immigration from Simpson (Off Keck Road, 2001, etc.) focuses on a circle of wealthy Hollywood families and the nannies who care for their spoiled children. Classical composer Claire moves with husband Paul and new ... Full Review

Story, Rosalyn WADING HOME August 1, 2010 - In this affective second novel from Story (More Than You Know, 2004), a Dallas-based violinist with the Fort Worth Symphony, New Orleans natives struggle to recover their lives as well as their property after Hurricane Katrina. Julian Fortier, 36, who ... Full Review

Tepper, Sheri S. THE WATERS RISING August 1, 2010 - Long-range quasi-sequel to the post-catastrophe yarn A Plague of Angels (1993), another odd blend of magic, science fiction and idealism. Perhaps a thousand years after various man-made disasters culminated in the Big Kill, the world, for the most part, is ... Full Review

Thomas, Scarlett OUR TRAGIC UNIVERSE August 1, 2010 - Freewheeling intellectual journey with no destination. A provocative book called The Science of Living Forever puts reviewer Meg in a reflective frame of mind. As she orders a batch of scientific/philosophical books to pore over, she finds herself questioning her ... Full Review

Thurlo, Aimée NEVER-ENDING-SNAKE August 1, 2010 - Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah has several cases to solve, including her own attempted murder. When Ella, together with Kevin Tolino, the attorney father of her daughter Dawn, and war hero-turned-lobbyist Adam Lonewolf return from a trip to Washington, ... Full Review

Weisberger, Lauren LAST NIGHT AT CHATEAU MARMONT August 1, 2010 - In her fourth novel, the author of The Devil Wears Prada (2003) considers what it would be like if your husband became a rock star. The short answer: not that great. Everyone agrees Brooke and Julian are the real thing: ... Full Review

Woods, Stuart SANTA FE EDGE August 1, 2010 - Santa Fe attorney Ed Eagle’s murderous ex-wife and assorted lesser satellites continue to hatch plots at cross-purposes, all as inconclusively as ever. In the nine weeks since she was sent to a Mexican prison for attempted murder (Santa Fe Dead, ... Full Review

Xu, Ruiyan THE LOST AND FORGOTTEN LANGUAGES OF SHANGHAI August 1, 2010 - Silence—literal and figurative—is the topic of this debut novel in which an American neurologist helps a Chinese businessman regain his powers of speech. While sharing a dinner at the Swan Hotel, Li Jing and his father are nearly killed in ... Full Review

Yu, Charles HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE August 1, 2010 - A man frozen in a universe of his own making must pursue the meaning of life. In this debut novel, Yu (stories: Third Class Superhero, 2006) continues his ambitious exploration of the fantastic with a whimsical yet sincere tribute to ... Full Review