Budding novelists ready to bloom

By Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 7, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated December 7, 2007 at 7:47 a.m.

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New novelists looking for attention might as well be asking for rain in the midst of a drought. There are always far more titles than spots available in the newspapers and magazines that might publicize them.

That, alas, leaves many great works withering on the vine.

So today, just call us the rainmaker, as we shower attention on some of the best titles of 2007 you may have missed.

To bring you our annual great debuts issue, seven critics volunteered to read first novels all year long by authors whose works weren't reviewed in the regular books pages. They screened more books than ever before - nearly 100 titles (97 to be exact), stories of all plots and prose styles.

Here, you'll find 25 of their favorites.

A special thanks . . .

To our dedicated volunteers, who devoted countless hours to this annual project: Joan Hinkemeyer, Christine Jacques, Verna Noel Jones, Justin Matott, Steve Ruskin, Vicky Uhland and Dan Whipple.

American Youth

By Phil La Marche (Random House, 240 pages, $21.95)

* Author's background: La Marche was a writing fellow in the Syracuse University Graduate Creative Writing Program and was awarded the Ivan Klima Fellowship in Fiction in Prague, Czech Republic. He also has taught creative writing workshops at Colgate and Syracuse in New York.

* Plot in a nutshell: The fatal shooting of a school friend at a young teen's home was an accident. The "boy," as the author refers to him throughout much of the book, didn't pull the trigger. However, he did load the gun while showing it off to his friends and then failed to unload it before leaving the room.

The judgment and blame that follow quickly cause his life to spiral out of control. Along with this crisis, the novel explores the dynamics of town residents who become conflicted as a new generation of outsiders moves in, changing the lives of those who previously felt they had ownership of the rural neighborhood.

Ultimately, it's the animal-like territorial behavior among a group of righteous youth seeking to "side" with the boy that threatens to bring him down.

* Sample of prose: "The boy knew it was dangerous, driving with a drunk. He'd seen the commercials. He'd been subject to the campaigns in school. But to care about your physical well-being, you have to care about your physical well-being. The boy's drunk mind fantasized about crashing full speed into one of the broad pines on the side of the road - his body flying into the dashboard, through the windshield, headlong into the trees and small saplings. Pain was what his body craved. It pleaded to be burned and scalded and dashed to pieces. It longed for relief."

* Author reminds me of: Ernest Hemingway, for his ability to build an electrifying story through simple, carefully chosen yet powerful words.

* Best reason to read: This novel is rich with quietly riveting characters. Through images that will haunt you, it shows how small missteps can turn a youth's life around in ways he cannot imagine.

- Verna Noel Jones

The Flawless Skin of Ugly People

By Doug Crandell (Virgin Books, 192 pages, $14.95)

* Author's background: Crandell lives in Georgia and is the author of two memoirs and numerous short stories.

* Plot in a nutshell: In a tabloid culture where it seems that only beautiful people are allowed to fall in love, acne-ravaged Hobbie and obese Kari have managed to remain a couple for nearly 20 years, ever since they met in middle school. Acutely aware of their outward appearances, they drift through nondescript jobs in nondescript cities, moving on whenever they begin to feel too noticeable.

Finally, Kari has had enough. She checks into a weight-loss clinic, leaving Hobbie to brood and pick his pustules in their latest rental refuge in the Georgia mountains. But a bear attack lands gentle, unassuming Hobbie in the hospital and into a recuperation stay with Kari's dad, where, in a darkly comic yet touchingly sweet way, Hobbie learns to deal with Kari's changes and with the childhood molestation that left them both emotionally and physically disfigured.

* Sample of prose: "Kari didn't lie and say my face was handsome in its own way, or rugged like my Aunt Rosie used to try and convince me in high school. Nope, Kari would stroke my topographical cheeks and ask me if it hurt."

* Author reminds me of: A less- intense J.D. Salinger.

* Best reason to read: This book works on many levels, tackling the topics of inner and outer beauty, shame and love, all through the eyes of a character so funny, confused and appealing that he makes us forgive the flaws in ourselves and others.

- Vicky Uhland

Ghostwalk

By Rebecca Stott (Spiegel & Grau, 320 pages, $24.95)

* Author's background: Stott is a professor at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, and the author of several nonfiction books. She is also a regular contributor to BBC Radio.

* Plot in a nutshell: Lydia Brooke is a ghostwriter charged with completing the manuscript of a historian who recently was found drowned in the river Cam. She soon discovers that the manuscript holds clues connecting a series of suspicious deaths that occurred 300 years apart in Cambridge, the first series taking place in the mid-17th century, the others in the early 21st century.

Lydia works in an isolated studio, where unnatural lights and strange dreams begin to wear thin the veil between past and present. Her research brings together Isaac Newton and a network of European alchemists with present-day neuroscience and a violent animal-rights group.

* Sample of prose: "I saw the white hair first. A thin young man . . . his university gown was scarlet. He met my eyes. Mutual recognition, a raised eyebrow, the slightest upturning of the edges of his mouth. What was I doing hallucinating Newton on a bridge in Cambridge? He was as definite as a picture in a frame, yet around him everything fell away. There was a smudge around him. As if what I was seeing was something underneath the surface of my reality, as if someone had rubbed away the surface of my Cambridge."

* Author reminds me of: Iain Pears, author of An Instance of the Fingerpost, for an intelligent portrayal of science and mystery in 17th-century England.

* Best reason to read: Its successful combination of mystery, thriller and historical narrative, all set against the timeless backdrop of ancient, gloomy Cambridge.

- Steve Ruskin

I Love You, Beth Cooper

By Larry Doyle (Ecco, 272 pages, $19.95)

* Author's background: Doyle was an editor at Spy and New York magazines before moving into TV, writing for Beavis and Butt-Head and The Simpsons. He lives in Baltimore.

* Plot in a nutshell: This hilarious coming-of-age novel begins when geeky, sweaty, zitty Denis Cooverman chooses his high school valedictory speech to declare his love for head cheerleader and senior- class glamazon Beth Cooper. When that fails to win her over, he and his potentially gay best friend Rich crash a cool-kids graduation party where Denis finally gets to kiss the object of his obsession, only to be discovered by Beth's very large boyfriend, on furlough from the Army. A wild night ensues, complete with a renegade Hummer, trashed McMansions and everything else you'd expect from an Emmy-winning comedy writer.

* Sample of prose: "But even Einstein (who, according to geek mythology, bagged Marilyn Monroe) would not have overlooked these facts; even Einstein's brain, pickling in a jar at Princeton, would be able to grasp the infinitudinous import of these two simple facts, which now hung over Denis' huge head like a sword of Damocles - or to the non-honors graduates, like a sick fart. The two incontrovertible, insurmountable, damn sad facts were these: Beth Cooper was the head cheerleader; Denis Cooverman was captain of the debate team."

* Author reminds me of: Conan O'Brien's late-night comedy team.

* Best reason to read: Dude, the writer of The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-Head belches out a book, and you have to ask why you should read it?

- Vicky Uhland

Landsman

By Peter Charles Melman (Counterpoint, 320 pages, $24.95)

* Author's background: Melman teaches English at Hunter College High School in New York City. He was raised in Louisiana, the chief setting of the novel, and earned a doctorate in creative writing from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

* Plot in a nutshell: Elias Abrams, a New Orleans Jew on the run from the police and his former fellow gangster lowlifes, joins the Confederate Army to put some distance between him and his troubles. He's befriended by an older soldier, John Lee Carlson, a book-loving college professor who improbably tells stories from Ovid in the calm places on the edges of the Civil War's carnage.

Abrams begins a slow, painful journey of redemption when his commanding officer gives him a letter to be delivered to any Jewish Confederate soldier from a Nora Bloom, considerably above Elias in station. With Carlson's help, Elias begins an epistolary romance in which he eventually discovers love, honor and his religious roots - although not in ways that the reader initially expects.

* Sample of prose: "Carlson soon returns. 'Pack up your kit,' he insists, kicking Abrams in the boots. When a surprised Abrams does not budge, he kicks him again. 'Let's go, get moving.'

" 'Now hold on there -'

"This is the spark of contention Carlson was hoping for. 'No, Elias,' he snaps, 'you hold on. See, I'm not asking about last night, because when you finally get around to opening your goddamned mouth, I'm sure I'll have story enough for years. But here's what I won't brook: I won't brook watching you run off into the woods to get yourself hanged for desertion. Not after what I went through, no sir.' "

* Author reminds me of: Given the setting, comparisons to Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain are inevitable, but I thought Landsman was a more unusual and gripping read.

* Best reason to read: Melman's Abrams is far from lovable, but his determination in the face of challenges has you rooting for him. The battle scenes are gripping, and the sex scenes are sexy.

- Dan Whipple

Portrait of an Unknown Woman

By Vanora Bennett (William Morrow, 432 pages, $24.95)

* Author's background: Bennett, an award-winning journalist who writes for The Times in London and Times Online, lives in London.

* Plot in a nutshell: History and fiction blend gracefully in this 16th- century novel narrated by Meg, the adopted daughter of Sir Thomas More, as the family copes with the tumult created by More's search for heretics and his opposition to Henry VIII's decision to remarry.

In this family filled with secrets, the German artist Hans Holbein appears and shrewdly creates portraits revealing the complex family dynamics and duplicities, while also offering Meg a breath of sanity and a hint of uncomplicated love.

* Sample of prose: (More speaking): "It's one thing to be gentle with a crook who'll chip away at the rules a bit if you don't show him you're watching. But it's quite another to stand meekly by and let the kind of evil take hold that will sweep away all the rules and laws we live by. I can't make little jokes with heretics and bind them over. They are the darkness."

* Author reminds me of: Tracy Chevalier, whose Girl With a Pearl Earring also breathes human life into history.

* Best reason to read: This absorbing novel is rich in colorful historical detail and probes the mysteries and depths of the human heart, as well as showing the universality of human dreams, passions and politics.

- Joan Hinkemeyer

The Sabotage Cafe

By Joshua Furst (Knopf, 272 pages, $23.95)

* Author's background: Furst graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first publication was a collection of short stories, Short People. He teaches at Pratt Institute in New York City.

* Plot in a nutshell: Sabotage begins from the point of view of Julia, a mentally unstable mother living in suburbia, dependent on pills to keep her illness and her traumatic past at bay. The story moves quickly to her daughter, Cheryl, as she runs away to become part of the homeless youth in the Twin Cities. Throughout the cruelty, squalor, half-starvation and awkward sex that is Cheryl's new life, Julia hovers over her daughter from afar, seemingly by telepathy. As an occasional presence, her awareness of how she's failed her child makes her voice strong and despairing.

There's no happy reunion in the end. But there are pinpoints of redemption, and their light is in proportion to the misery around them.

* Sample of prose: Julia has a breakdown that sends her to an institution, but Cheryl doesn't leave home then. Instead, she runs away after her mother returns from the asylum. Julia wonders why Cheryl didn't go earlier, when "she'd watched me revert from the sometimes-wise, sometimes-lovely, sometimes-weird Mom into the smaller thing I'd always been, the frightened animal I'd kept hidden from her. I'd winced and cowered, I'd shivered. I'd quaked. I'd shown myself to be, at least for a time, incapable of doing her any good. And I can't fathom, I don't understand at all, why she didn't leave then when everything was broken, why she waited instead for everything to be fine."

* Author reminds me of: Martha Cooley's The Archivist, in his description of how the mad feel about their madness.

* Best reason to read: Julia's struggle to do the right thing in spite of her illness and in spite of - and sometimes with - her husband's help is utterly captivating.

- Christine Jacques

Satisfaction

By Gillian Greenwood (Shaye Areheart Books, 304 pages, $24)

* Author's background: Educated at Somerville College, Oxford, England, Greenwood became editor of The Literary Review in her 20s, followed by work in arts television. She is executive producer of the South Bank Show and lives in London.

* Plot in a nutshell: At its simplest, Satisfaction tells the story of friends and family members who love and betray one another, suffer anxieties and face deep disturbances in their lives. Yet there's much more to this intriguing story.

It opens with Amy Fielding, who has come to see clinical psychologist Patrick McIlhenny with the puzzling confession that she suffers from "an excess of happiness."

The novel then bounces intermittently between two decades, employing this vehicle to unveil the short-circuited lives and dreams of the characters.

There are lots of secrets and miscommunications as the story details the deep complexities of love, family and friendship. To say more would spoil the plot. Like Alice in the rabbit's hole, the reader can't help but move quickly through the pages as this tale gets "curiouser and curiouser."

* Sample of prose: "Amy's foot, Patrick noticed, was drawing small circles on the rug as she spoke, moving slowly, a silent counterpoint to the fractured rhythms of her voice. The foot, he fancied, was determined to see this through, and, with surprising speed, she found a way back, beyond her marriage and the more recent events that she'd claimed were her purpose in visiting him. She was speaking on waves of her breath, depositing the past, and though it was clear to him that she'd said the words often before, there was a fear in her voice that her story might never really be heard."

* Author reminds me of: William Faulkner, for her compelling word pictures.

* Best reason to read: Satisfaction is skillfully constructed and captivating. There are no wasted words among its wealth of descriptive phrases, outlining the strangely intertwined and tragic lives of its characters.

- Verna Noel Jones

Skylark Farm

By Antonia Arslan (Knopf, 288 pages, $23.95)

* Author's background: Arslan, who lives in Italy, has a degree in archaeology, teaches at the University of Padua and has drawn on the story of her own family for her novel.

* Plot in a nutshell: The human faces of genocide leap poignantly from the pages of this gripping story as Arslan writes of Turkey's systematic attempt to exterminate all Armenians in 1915. The story follows the gentle pharmacist Sempad, as well as his wife and children, from the days of their placid life in an Armenian community through the rumors and suspicions about political alliances to their final days when all males were savagely butchered and females abused and sent to desert exile.

* Sample of prose: "The night is over, and no trace of the men. None of these families will see them again. Many years later, with the Armenian passion and the world war both at an end, the fate of the men will be discovered: forced in the night to leave the Walt Warehouse, where they were killed one after the other in Falls Valley, where their unburied corpses were left staring at the sky, their eye sockets empty, naked and stripped of everything, even the majesty of death."

* Author reminds me of: Micheline Marcom, whose Three Apples Fell From Heaven is another story of the Armenian tragedy told in similar spare but evocative prose.

* Best reason to read: This soul-wrenching novel about man's inhumanity to man is all the more powerful because of Geoffrey Brock's sensitive translation of Arslan's tightly controlled, vivid prose.

- Joan Hinkemeyer

Walk On, Bright Boy

By Charles Davis (The Permanent Press, 144 pages, $26)

* Author's background: According to his bio, Davis researches walking guides. Such experiences strongly flavor this novel.

* Plot in a nutshell: Set in Inquisition-era Spain, a powerful condemned prelate recalls a critical incident of his youth, when he betrayed his best friend, a Moor. The Moor (his only name in the book) is a holdover from pre-Christian Spain, tolerated because he knows the intricacies of the irrigation system on which the community's livelihood depends. But as a heathen, he is viewed with suspicion.When the authoritative hand of the Spanish Inquisition, called The Inquisitor, arrives in the community, he enlists the populace's latent tribalism against the Moor, hoping to strengthen the Inquisition's political hold over the barely civilized regions of newly Christianized Spain.

* Sample of prose: "Even though they were now largely invisible, the Moor pointed to each village, hamlet, and finca within sight of our eyrie, and named every one of them as he pointed. When he had finished his litany, he asked if I knew the meanings of those names, and I had to admit I did not.

" 'That is understandable,' he said. 'They are all Arabic names . . . your people have not renamed them. . . . Why should this be, do you think?'

"Again, ignorance was all I had to offer, but not wishing to disappoint him, I suggested in my childish way that it was because my people were too busy surviving to be naming things and that in time these places would be called by Christian words.

" 'Perhaps they will,' he said. . . . 'But I think not. Listen. When you name a place you make it your own. For near a dozen generations my people lived here, learned to live with this landscape and make it their own. That is why I am here. I was chosen because I speak your language. But I was kept here because I know this place and it is mine.' "

* Author reminds me of: Davis' lyrical language and pacing remind me of French author Montaigne's engaging, anecdotal essays.

* Best reason to read: For the rhythm of the language; its vibrant, sympathetic characters; a tense, crisply paced plot and its fascinating philosophical excursions.

- Dan Whipple

The Archivist's Story

By Travis Holland (The Dial Press, 256 pages, $23).

* Author's background: Holland, who holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, has written stories for several literary journals, including Ploughshares and Glimmer Train. He's received two Hopwood Awards, a scholarship program at the University of Michigan for promising writers.

* Plot in a nutshell: Pavel Dubrov works in the basement at Moscow's Lubyanka Prison immediately before the onset of WWII. His job is cataloging the work of Russian writers, which is to be used as evidence against them.

But the young archivist is a former teacher of literature, and a lover of many of the poems and stories he now must destroy. As his friends and acquaintances fall under suspicion of the secret police and some are arrested, he realizes that he is slated for arrest himself after he completes this unwelcome task and is faced with a decision that requires all of his courage: whether to stand up, probably fruitlessly, for the sanctity of literature and freedom of expression against the indifferent power of the state; or to retreat into a reduced and cowardly life.

* Sample of prose: "And here he is, the master himself. Babel. A single box, twenty-seven green folders. Pavel sets the heavy cardboard box onto the concrete floor. In the topmost folder lies Babel's unsigned, unfinished, beautiful story. Kneeling under a bare light bulb in its wire cage, he reads it straight through. Afterward, when he returns to his desk, Pavel is almost surprised to discover that he is still holding the story in his hands. After that, what follows is surprisingly simple. The story, a mere eleven pages long, folded and tucked tightly under his belt, brushes the small of his back. His shirt and coat conceal the tiny bulge entirely. Upstairs, the guard posted at the main entrance of Lubyanka barely glances at his identification card.

* Author reminds me of: Alan Furst, in subject matter, spareness of prose and evocation of pre-war atmosphere.

* Best reason to read: The plot moves along briskly, the tension building to the last. The characters are fully realized, so that you genuinely care about the fates of all of them.

- Dan Whipple

The Art Thief

By Noah Charney (Atria Books, 304 pages, $25).

* Author's background: Charney, 27, is founding director of the first consulting group on art crime prevention. He has masters degrees in art history from the Courtauld Institute in London and Cambridge University and is pursuing a doctorate in the history of art theft at Cambridge. He divides his time between New Haven, Conn.; Cambridge, England; and Rome, Italy.

* Plot in a nutshell: This mystery involves the baffling theft of three priceless pieces of art: from a Baroque church in Rome; the National Gallery of Modern Art in London, and the basement vault of the Malevich Society in Paris. The crimes are being investigated by world-renowned art detective Gabriel Coffin, Parisian art historian Genevieve Delacloche and Inspector Harry Wickenden of Scotland Yard in London.

The plot twists and turns as forgeries arise, individuals are double-crossed and unusual clues are left at the crime scenes. As the story unfolds, readers are enlightened with inside information on the world of art collectors who frequent private galleries and museums, as well as real-life art thefts and forgeries that have occurred over the years.

* Sample of prose: "It was a sight to behold, the exceedingly reedy Jean-Paul Lesgourges, with putty-stretched cheeks that look rouged, and a glassy cackle in his eyes, whooping with joy, as the puff adder Bizot, like a broken aqueduct, every facet spherical, rumbled mercilessly, the table and his knees pinching him in place, bright smile tears puddling up around his tiny, hidden eyes. His brambly peppered beard was a tangle of chin and leftovers, and bounced of its own volition, revealing his gummy smile."

* Author reminds me of: He has a unique style, though the novel's intrigue rivals that of The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell.

* Best reason to read: Descriptively brilliant and filled with witticisms, this fine romp features a clever,well-drawn cast of characaters, as well as educates readers about real masterpieces and the artists behind them.

- Verna Noel Jones

Astrid and Veronika

By Linda Olsson (Penguin, 272 pages, $14).

* Author's background: Olsson graduated from the University of Stockholm and now lives in New Zealand, having also lived in Kenya, Singapore and Japan.

* Plot in a nutshell: This quietly emotional novel explores the nature of friendship through two characters: Veronika, a young New Zealand writer who rents a house near a small Swedish village, and her only neighbor, Astrid, an older reclusive woman. A tentative friendship gradually builds as the two women share their secrets — all founded on loss. Emotional security soon enables them to venture away from their secure setting into the village.

* Sample of prose: "I allowed life to slip away while I nurtured my hatred inside this house. Now I realize I made it my prison. I told myself I was safe here. Now I can see that all these years I have waited to be released, when all the time, the only bonds were those I made myself."

* Author reminds me of: Debra Dean (Madonnas of Leningrad) in her spare yet evocative style and Jennifer Chiaverini in her depiction of female friendships.

* Best reason to read: For its carefully crafted prose, elegant in its simplicity. The slowly unfolding friendship between the two women suffering from their losses make this a poignant treasure.

- Joan Hinkemeyer

Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy

By Doug Stumpf (Harper Collins, 304 pages, $24.95).

* Author's background: Stumpf lives in New York, where he's a deputy editor at Vanity Fair magazine, which is not-very-well-disguised as Glossy magazine in the book.

* Plot in a nutshell: Glossy writer Greg Waggoner is reaching the end of his contract without producing the home-run story he needs to make the publication's A-list of writers. He befriends a Brazilian immigrant shoeshine boy Aguilar Benicio, known to his friends as Gil.

Gil has recently gotten the shoe-shining concession at the major Wall Street firm of Medved, Morningstar and Bigelow. When his cousin Eddy gets fired after stumbling upon one of the firm's hottest traders on his cell phone in a utility closet (the signature move of illegal inside trading), Gil asks Greg for help.

Greg, sensing the big story he needs for his Glossy gig, then follows the scent of what could be the biggest financial scandal since Ivan Boesky.

* Sample of prose: In his fractured English, Gil talks about his shoe-shine work: "If I came from a real rich family, I don't think I'd ever be able to do it. You know when you're rich, you don't want to do that, you don't want to shine shoes. Sometimes when I used to walk into that place, I was like, damn, how they look at me, the traders? Not now. Now, I'm more comfortable. Because I don't go there to shine their shoes. I go there to socialize. To talk, see how they doing.

"I'm more like an entertainer. I like that. It makes me feel good."

Author reminds of: The milieu is pure Tom Wolfe: social satire against a background of big money.

* Best reason to read: What Herman Melville was to whaling, Stumpf is to shining shoes. There are several detailed excursions into the trade, techniques and culture of clean, polish and buff. Once you've conquered the argot, the rhythm and pace of Gil's narration rock the story along nicely.

- Dan Whipple

The Dead Fathers Club

By Matt Haig (Viking, 314 pages, $23.95).

* Author's background: Haig is a young British writer from Leeds, England whose previous work has been primarily journalism for UK and Australian outlets.

* Plot in a nutshell: This is a British hip-hop retelling of Hamlet, an effort you may not have realized you needed until you see it. Philip Noble's father is killed by his own brother, who wants to absorb the dead man's kingdom, which consists of an alluring wife and a modestly thriving pub, the Castle and Falcon. Dads Ghost appears to the boy to reveal the murder plot, urging Philip to kill his uncle so that Dads Ghost can be revenged and spared an eternity facing The Terrors. It's Hamlet, so there aren't too many surprises in the plot. It's largely a question of style.

* Sample of prose: "I saw him on the field. He was behind all the running boys and I didnt move I was just a statue holding the ball looking at Dads Ghost. And someone grabbed my legs and I was run over by about ten boys and they were all on top of me and it was black and I felt my bones squeezing. Rugby is weird because it lets people hurt you and jump on you on the field and if they did it 30 minutes before at break theyd get told off but in Rugby you are meant to do it."

* Author reminds me of: Dave Eggers.

* Best reason to read: If he weren't so literary, Haig could have a future in the gothic world. His scenes with Dads Ghost are genuinely frightening — and they're interspersed with funny and poignant insights of adolescent love and loss.

- Dan Whipple

Electricity

By Ray Robinson (Grove, 368 pages, $14).

* Author's background: Robinson holds an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University in England. Electricity began as a short story, submitted as part of his degree, and is based on his memories of his cousin Lisa's seizures.

* Plot in a nutshell: Lily O'Connor's life has been difficult, with a mother who veered between neglect and abuse, a sexually abusive stepfather, poverty, drinking, and foster care. But what really sets her apart is epilepsy — a brain disorder that results in several different types of seizures. For Lily, it means losing control of her bowels, her limbs, and her voice.

At age 30, Lily lives alone in a seaside resort town, working in a bingo hall, measuring her days by her medication, secure in her comfort zone — until her hated mother's death jolts her out of her routine, and back into contact with her family. She reconnects with half-brother Barry, a professional gambler with more than a few secrets, but her own brother Mikey is nowhere to be seen. With her share of funds from the sale of her mother's house, Lily decides to track him down.

While a boyfriend sabotages Lily in a horrifying way, her friend Mel stands by her, helping her uncover her family's past.

* Sample of prose: Lily describes an epileptic seizure in her childhood: "I would wait for the fit to come. For my spirit to rip itself out of me and send me back to that moment when I couldn't walk but I could fly. Soaring down the stairs towards the bottom step. I would wait for that moment when I flap my elbows like stiff jaggy wings and that breeze of quietness and gorgeousness comes over me. And it was then, just before the blackness, that I saw the image of Mam behind a stack of tins in the supermarket, hiding from her little f------- embarrassment.

"PICK YOURSELF UP, YOU HEAR ME, PICK YOURSELF..."

* Author reminds me of: Clare Allan, author of Poppy Shakespeare.

* Best reason to read: For Lily's grittiness and her seizures — intense and high voltage. Readers will also be touched by Lily's friendship with Mel.

Christine Jacques

Fresh

By Mark McNay (McAdam/Cage, 276 pages, $23 hardcover; $13 trade paperback).

* Author's background: McNay was raised in a mining village in central Scotland. After a failed electrical engineering course and 15 years doing odd jobs, he graduated from a creative writing course at a Scottish university and began his writing career. He lives in Norwich.

* Plot in a nutshell: Sean works in a chicken factory, waiting for the birds to come down his line where he will hoist them high into the sky and send them off. The story takes place in one day, with plenty of flashbacks, dreams and fantastical imaginings.

Sean has a big problem to solve. His brother Archie, a hardened, drug-dealing criminal, is coming home from jail early. Prior to jail, Archie left a large amount of money with his little brother for safekeeping, and Sean, expecting Archie to be in for awhile, spent a good bit of it. Archie is the violent sort and is expecting the total when he gets home.

Sean desperately begins a search to get the money together and runs into some hooligans and the like in doing so. But nothing compares to the violence or fear that Archie is about to bring down on his little brother's household.

* Sample of prose: "It was scary waitin in the car. Ah heard a window breakin and things crashin and every time a car passed on the main road Ah thought is was the polis. Eventually Archie and Sammy appeared from the side of the house carryin a bed sheet between them. They ran to the back of the car and Ah felt the suspension go down with the weight of it. The boot slammed and they were in the car. They were giggling like wee lasies. Archie drove with no lights till we got on the main road. Then he was off like Jackie Stewart again... Everybody was smoking and drinkin and talking. Ah couldnay understand them coz of their accents."

* Author reminds me of: Nick Hornby, for his original Scottish sense of voice and language, and his mix of the macabre with humor.

* Best reason to read: The story is told in first person, alternating with third person, somewhat in the vein of the popular television show The Office. The language difference from the UK makes it even more enjoyable. As the author uses local dialect, we recognize the word, but realize that McNay has given it multiple meanings. While the language can be rough and there are a few R-rated scenes, this is a compelling, fun read.

Justin Matott

Friends & Mothers

By Louise Limerick (Thomas Dunne Books, 272 pages, $24.95).

* Author's background: Limerick is an Australian novelist and mother of three.

* Plot in a nutshell: Evelyn is in the psychiatric hospital. She's not talking, and her baby daughter Amy is missing. As her four friends meet daily over coffee to try to sort out what happened, bits and pieces of their own problematic lives emerge. The author intertwines their unique stories and secrets as the mystery of the missing child deepens, and Evelyn struggles to make sense of how her mother's early death impacted her life.

* Sample of prose: "Do you think I am mad? They say I am ill, that it is because of the baby that I talk to the spider. They are wrong. I have always talked to the spider. I talked to the spider before I met Steve, before I had William, before Amy too. You are surprised? You are surprised that I can say her name now? I can always say her name when I am small. I can say her name because, when I am small, I cannot hurt her and I know she is safe and far away from the web that I bind myself to. Yes, I talked to the spider before Amy. But after Amy, something changed. After Amy, I heard the spider talking back."

* Author reminds me of: Limerick writes in her own, unique style and voice.

* Best reason to read: From page one, you'll feel as if you're a part of this cache of mothers and friends and want desperately to be let in on their secrets and their theories about what has happened to Amy.

- Verna Noel Jones

The Hindi-Bindi Club

By Monica Pradhan (Bantam Dell, 432 pages, $12).

* Author's background: Pradhan is the daughter of parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Mumbai, India in the 1960s. Born in Pittsburgh, she grew up outside of Washington, D.C. and now lives in Minnesota and Toronto with her husband.

* Plot in a nutshell: Kiran Deshpande, now a physician, returns home to Maryland after five years away to reconnect with her Indian-born parents, who had long ago emigrated to the United States to give their daughter a life she couldn't have had in their native India. Yet they hadn't anticipated how this exceedingly different culture would turn her into someone they couldn't recognize, someone who would rebel against what they thought was best for her.

Kiran reconnects with past girlfriends while her mother looks for guidance through frequent meetings with her own Indian-born friends, whom the American-born daughters jokingly refer to as the Hindi-Bindi Club. Through an eye-opening and detailed account of the customs, travails, and even long-treasured recipes (included in the book) of the people of India, the author reveals the fragile bonds, secrets, and generational issues that haunt these immigrant mothers and their daughters.

* Sample of prose: "She feels different somehow, I can't pinpoint why, but she smells the same. Of clove shampoo and Johnson's baby powder. Of warm cooking spices and sandalwood incense. Of her. Of home. And just like that, I remember every childhood injury she nursed, every boo-boo she kissed, every time she was there for me when I needed her. Blocking out the times she wasn't, I close my eyes and hug her back. She loves me, even if it doesn't feel like it most of the time, even if I don't live up to her unrelenting expectations. My mother loves me, and I love her. Whatever else happens, I must not forget this moment. Just because people don't love you the way you want, doesn't mean they don't love you the best they can."

* Author reminds me of: Jhumpa Lahiri, whose tale of generational and cultural struggles in The Namesake is the male counterpart of this book.

* Best reason to read: Everything you wanted to know about India, its culture and its people combine here to make a fascinating read.

- Verna Noel Jones

The Late Hector Kipling

By David Thewlis (Simon & Schuster, 339 pages, $25).

* Author's background: Thewlis is an actor and director, originally from Blackpool, England. He appeared as the werewolf Professor Remus Lupin in the film of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

* Plot in a nutshell: There are a lot of nuts to fit in this shell. Hector is an artist who is not as famous as his friend Lenny. He is completely self-absorbed and self-destructive. He is "in love" with the only sane person in the book, a beautiful Greek woman named Eleni. When Eleni's mother falls seriously ill, she returns temporarily to Greece. Hector meets a sadomasochistic American named Rosa, and his life begins to unravel — well, it had been unraveling from the opening sentence, but now it really, really unravels.

* Sample of prose: The narrator and his girlfriend are playing the piano together and watching a movie.

" 'What's this film about?' I say.

" 'It's about a man and woman,' says Eleni... 'One night at the start of the film they run over a cat and kill it. The man has been drinking and his response to the death of the cat is so ... musketeer ...'

" 'Musketeer?'

" 'What is that word you told me that means carefree, like a soldier?'

" 'Cavalier,' I say. I love Eleni.

" 'Yes, the man is so cavalier that the woman punches him in the face with the cat. They separate after that night and the rest of the film is about how they both cope with the separation. He drinks more than ever and sleeps on prostitutes and she is trying to learn French from a tape because she has become totally obsessed with a waiter who can only say, "Here is your bill. Service is not included." She also tries to kill herself a lot — as we see,' says Eleni...'It's called Dead Space. It's a comedy.'"

* Author reminds me of: J.P. Donleavy. If The Ginger Man was really self-destructive, he'd be Hector Kipling.

* Best reason to read: It seems that novels written by show business people are often released because, with the authors' high profiles, publishers figure they'll sell enough copies to turn a profit. I thought I'd read just enough of Hector Kipling to confirm such prejudices — but Thewlis sucked me in completely. His story is sometimes seriously funny and sometimes like a car wreck you can't take your eyes off — wildly creative, funny, tragic and thought-provoking.

- Dan Whipple

Mary Modern

By Camille DeAngelis (Shaye Areheart, 352 pages, $24).

* Author's background: Deangelis received an M. A. from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and currently lives in New Jersey. The story's premise came while she was scrutinizing her great-grandparents' engagement portrait.

* Plot in a nutshell: Two romances, 80 years apart, weave through this unusual novel featuring protagonist Lucy, a 28-year-old biogenetics researcher who finds that she's infertile. Lucy lives in her grandmother Mary's house surrounded by Mary's clothes and furniture. She wants so desperately to have a baby that she uses a sample of Mary's DNA and a coerced boyfriend to mix up a fetal brew in her basement.

Unfortunately, Lucy brings to life a 22-year-old Mary rather than an infant. Mary's confusion at her new life turns to rage at what has happened to her — and she's determined to resurrect her beloved Teddy, creating another set of problems.

* Sample of prose: Of the cloned Mary, the narrator writes: "She finds a leather handbag of her mother's in someone else's wedding trunk. Inside are a cigarette case of tarnished silver and an ivory holder. Under the lid of the same trunk is stapled a warrenty card stamped with an expiration date of December 31, 1947. After donning her favorite velveteen dress, her Donnegal tweed coat, and a blue cloche she'd found hanging on a hat rack, she descends the attic stairs, her heart in her throat at the prospect of meeting the distant future head-on."

* Author reminds me of: Alice Hoffman and Mary Shelley, as she pushes the envelope beyond the usual range of perceived reality.

* Best reason to read: This is a quirky novel, so well-crafted that the lighter moments easily balance the more serious issues raised.

- Joan Hinkemeyer

The Night Birds

By Thomas Maltman (Soho Press, 384 pages, $24).

* Author's background: Maltman teaches creative writing and literature at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, Wisc. Much of his previous published work has been poetry, which shows in the construction of his sentences.

* Plot in a nutshell: Fourteen-year-old Asa Senger is living in Kingdom Township, Minn., when his mysterious Aunt Hazel, long believed dead, is released from a mental institution into his family's care. Aunt Hazel was captured by the Dakota in Minnesota's Indian Wars, a bloody conflict that is largely overlooked by history and Hollywood because it happened at the same time as the American Civil War. Through her stories of her life before, during and after this captivity, Asa comes to understand himself and his people much better.

* Sample of prose: After two of the family puppies get into the chicken pen, killing many chickens and leaving blood everywhere, Caleb begins beating the puppies. When his younger brother Daniel tries to stop him, Caleb hits Daniel. Then an old Indian appears on the porch to say that a witch has put a curse on their place.

"I believe in the curse, especially now that we are stuck with it. This land made us sick the first time we touched it. This land killed our cow and made our Papa blind and almost killed him too. And yet it sent passenger pigeons after our pork went bad. It sent us to the old man to get healed when we were sick. I hope we come to know this place well before it hurts us too badly.

"Eventually Daniel allowed me to come close. He showed me the bruise my fist made on his chest. I apologized and swore I would do anything in my power to make up for it. I even knelt down on the ground in front of him, but that seemed to bother him too. When I looked up there were tears in his eyes. 'Caleb,' he said. 'If something bad was to happen, you wouldn't let it hurt me, would you?'

"I saw he wasn't afraid of me anymore and felt relieved. 'I swear by everything I know to be true.'

"'You ain't supposed to swear.'

"'Well, I promise then.'

* Author reminds me of: William Kittredge, who shares the same respect for place as the crucible of character.

* Best reason to read: Maltman's liquid prose paints a complete picture of the settlement of the Midwest. Though the book is a novel, not a history, it's a remarkably poignant narrative in time, an elegant portrayal of a period little known in American history.

- Dan Whipple

The Saffron Kitchen

By Yasmin Crowther (Viking, 272 pages, $23.95).

* Author's background: Crowther, half-Iranian and half-British, graduated from Oxford and has worked on issues of globalization and sustainable development.

* Plot in a nutshell: This novel of mother-daughter relationships and the pull expatriates feel for their birth country follows Maryam, the daughter of an Iranian general who supports the Shah of Iran during the U.S.-backed 1953 coup that unseats Iran's prime minister. Separated from her family at the start of the revolution, Maryam is taken in for one night by her father's assistant, Ali, and romantic feelings blossom — only to be thwarted as Maryam's angry father sends her away.

She eventually moves to London, marrying an English man. Years later, after an angry confrontation with her daughter, her daughter miscarries, and Maryam feels responsible. Trying to distance herself, she returns to Iran, attempting to heal the emotional scars her father inflicted on her years ago.

* Sample of prose: "At last, she lifted her face to Ali's and saw the lines of his years. It was the same air she had breathed a moment before, but now Maryam felt life in her veins....Ali looked at her, his eyes finding hers so quickly, with no need to speak. There, beneath the surface of reflections, was their lost world. He would reach out and touch it if he could."

* Author reminds me of: Micheline Marcom (Three Apples Fell From Heaven), in her ability to re-create the tactile worlds of both London and rural Iran.

* Best reason to read: This beautiful story of love and healing reveals a world of families and village life divorced from politics. Crowther's subtle but skillful interweaving of the voices Maryam and her daughter Sara heightens the emotional intensity, resulting in a powerful read.

- Joan Hinkemeyer

The Sound of Butterflies

By Rachael King (William Morrow, 352 pages, $24.95).

* Author's background: King lives in Wellington, New Zealand, where she has worked in radio, TV and magazines, and has played bass guitar in several bands. The Sound of Butterflies won the prize for best first fiction in the prestigious Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

* Plot in a nutshell: In 1903, British amateur naturalist Thomas Edgar is offered a trip to Brazil as part of a scientific expedition funded by a wealthy Brazilian rubber baron. A butterfly fanatic since childhood, Edgar hopes to discover a new species and name it after his beloved wife, Sophie. But when the optimistic young gentleman returns from his jungle trek nearly a year later, he is weak, injured and mute.

Unable to break through her husband's silence, Sophie searches through his diaries and letters to try to discover what happened to him in the Amazon rainforest. Her husband's writings describe a mysterious, brutal and sensual world that sharply contrasts with the repressed, genteel environment he now inhabits, and slowly unfold a story of murder, obsession and greed.

* Sample of prose: "Visiting Watkins and Doncaster was to Thomas as pleasurable as being in the most delicious sweet shop was to other boys — rows and shelves of all the equipment the serious collector could ever hope for. Instead of the smell of black balls and sherbet, Thomas was enclosed by the stench of killing chemicals, laurel leaves, and the dusky odor of plaster of Paris."

* Author reminds me of: A.S. Byatt, author of Angels and Insects.

* Best reason to read: This book manages to combine mystery, danger, Darwinian naturalism, exotic settings, class conflicts, love, sex and psychological studies into a richly written, compellingly plotted tale that's so riveting, you'll stay up late to finish it. Think of it as a beach read for intellectuals.

- Vicky Uhland

When to Walk

By Rebecca Gowers (Canongate, 240 pages, $14).

* Author's background: Gowers lives in Oxford. When to Walk was longlisted for the Orange Prize.

* Plot in a nutshell: Ramble has had a bad day. Her husband, calling her an "autistic vampire" has left her. She has hip problems from a staph infection, forcing her to use crutches and to consider her movements carefully. Her mother is a loon. Her downstairs neighbor is a slattern whose husband took Ramble's spouse, Con, under his criminal wing — admittedly, at Con's request, but still.

When to Walk follows Ramble through the days after Con's departure. She tries to finish writing a magazine article, muses on her dotty family history, tries to help a friend whose command of English makes her e-mails read like spam, gets it on with a friend who insists he's gay. And after a week goes by and Con returns to ask for another go at their marriage, she realizes she's made a decision about her life, and it's time to walk.

* Sample of prose: Ramble has found a picture book of Berlin given to her mother by the papa of a Jewish family Mother visited for a year in prewar Berlin. Ramble asks what became of them. Mother answers: "'Oh, one didn't go into that sort of thing.' 'You never found out what happened to Papa in the war? His family?' " Ramble asks incredulously. Mother repeats that one didn't go into that sort of thing. "I was conscious, as I had this conversation, that I was talking to a woman who, in her thirties, had had the terminal joints of her little toes removed so she could wear more elegant shoes," Ramble concludes.

With that fashion statement, Gowers sums up her unmaternal mother.

* Author reminds me of: No one in particular.

* Best reason to read: More than the usual he-left-her story, all the loose ends here make for so many wonderful flecks of color: Ramble's mother, her ruminations on publications past, her love for Victorian jokes. In addition, Gowers pays close attention to words (no other writer, for example, differentiates between flotsam and jetsam). If you read the Oxford English Dictionary for fun, you'll love When to Walk.

- Christine Jacques

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