New Fiction

Half Life
by Shelley Jackson (HarperCollins)

Nora has decided that it's time to separate herself for good from her sister, Blanche. Unfortunately, that means there has to be an operation.

Nora's conjoined twin has been asleep for nearly two decades, and Nora has decided to have her comatose sister removed—permanently. Thanks to chemical fallout, conjoined twins are a rather common phenomenon in Shelley Jackson's beguiling imagining of modern-day San Francisco. Nora's search for the elusive Unity Foundation (which will help with the operation) leads to London and ultimately into the darker regions of her psyche. -C. Joyner

The Keep
by Jennifer Egan (Knopf)

A good novel will suck you in, and not release you until you've devoured the thing in its entirety. National Book Award finalist Jennifer Egan achieves just that with her latest novel, The Keep—it's good old suspense mixed with some wonderfully creative and chilling moments. Imagine an old abandoned castle, no phones, no TV, nothing to distract you except maybe your own guilt—either that or your own sweet revenge! The writing here is intimate, and that intimacy never dissipates, even when the story gets a little tense. -J. Schurk

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs
by Irvine Welsh (Norton)

If you are an Irvine Welsh fan, I'll be brief: this is his best book in years...read it! If you have yet to read anything by this rabid Scotsman, this splendidly crafted novel that seamlessly joins everyday and extraordinary elements is the place to begin. Welsh mercilessly squeezes his characters until they pop like pimples, spurting puslike inner turmoil. He then uses this soul sludge to inextricably adhere their lives, achieving a curious balance of empathy and disgust for each. He then garnishes this unique and intriguing yarn with his signature Edinburgh dialogue. It's a real treat! -J. Zaidi

Giraffe
by J.M. Ledgard (Penguin Press)

Giraffe is a multilayered tale, tall and slightly strange, like its namesake. The account of the capture, transport, and demise of the largest herd of giraffes in captivity functions well as sheer story, but Ledgard has more in mind than narrating this transplantation to Czechoslovakia. He weaves a delicate, deep, earthy parable of what is referred to as Czechoslovakia's "communist moment," in which comrades sleepwalk through life, yearning. Somehow, by dint of his beautiful prose and unique characters, Ledgard manages to make this conceit utterly compelling and believable. This book is a bravura, unmatchable performance. -M. Helsel

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl (Viking)

In this engrossing novel, it is immediately apparent that our heroine is not your average teenage girl. After the gruesome death of a beloved teacher, she decides to pen the tale of her senior year in high school using the form of writing she knows best. The result is a verbose tale of the secret lives of her family and friends, structured as extensive course notes, complete with required reading and a final exam. Pessl pulls this off wonderfully, with characters that are just the right amount of self-absorbed and naïve, and an ending you won't see coming. -M. Hickner

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
by Haruki Murakami
trans. by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin (Knopf)

In the introduction to his book, Haruki Murakami likens short-story writing to jazz improvisation, each story taking him in unknown directions.

These stories run the gamut of his career—most are in their first English translation, or collection in book form. They highlight Murakami's unique cadence and eye for the intricacies of the mundane, which he then gently pries apart to reveal the strangeness beneath, whether his characters ruminate about life over a whiskey or literally bear the burden of their obsession on their back. Each of these tales is an affecting, eerie, concise example of a lively imagination at play. –V. Verano

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara
by Ben Fountain (Ecco)

You won’t find Fountain's characters frolicking near the shallow end of the pool; they openly swim for the ocean's murky bottom. These eight short stories spill over with misfits: drug smugglers who invest profits back into their destitute village, or castaways like the prodigy, who plays piano with eleven fingers and wishes to be free of her gift.

Fountain's characters are tossed into dangerous places, the uneven waters swirling about them, but his determined protagonists rise, like divers languidly rising to the surface. -R. Mita

Talk Talk
by T. C. Boyle (Viking)

Boyle's new novel has the timing and tone to make it a perfect addition to your summer reading pile. After being inexplicably incarcerated, a deaf schoolteacher learns that her identity has been stolen. Filled with rage, she becomes intent on vengeance. The result is a wild battle of wills fought in a smoke-filled room of mirrors, so the reader can't quite tell whose fists are whose and who is winning the fracas. Boyle's beautifully written sequences usher the characters toward their eventual confrontation, and every once in a while he drops a sentence that smacks you across the face. -J. Zaidi

When the Devil Holds the Candle
by Karin Fossum (Harcourt)

Fossum's third Inspector Sejer novel is not your usual police procedural. Sejer and his partner, Jacob Skarre, are not the stars of this story, and the suspense comes not from their skillful investigation, but through the strange and rather twisted relationship between young and handsome Andreas and old and disfigured Irma Funder. They are both victim and criminal to one another. Each is keeping secrets, which, through their unique relationship, they are able to share, and they develop a poignant and somewhat disturbing bond. This thoughtful and surprising story is unlike anything I have ever read. -M. Voss

Three Days to Never
by Tim Powers (Morrow)

Powers is the master of the fabulist thriller; his novels are a latticework of historical research, esoteric theories, and crisp dialogue. His latest includes Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, secret societies, the Israeli secret service, quantum physics, psychic espionage, ghosts, the Kabbalah, and time travel.

When his grandmother dies suddenly, Frank Marrity and his daughter are drawn into a dangerous web of alliances and betrayals in pursuit of a machine that is infinitely more destructive than the atomic bomb. This is a moving and suspenseful adventure of second chances and the lengths to which a father will go in protecting his child. -V. Verano

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow
by Faïza Guène (Harvest)

Every novel should have a narrator like this. Doria, the heroine of Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, is sassy, sarcastic, insightful, opinionated, and all the more endearing for her adolescent scorn. The French child of Algerian immigrants, Doria lives in the projects, her father has abandoned her family because her mother cannot have sons, her cousin just got arrested, and she's fourteen and trying to grow up. This story is honest, charming, and engaging; Guène knows her subject matter, and ultimately her book is not about delinquency and pain but about life, about learning to find hope where you are. -M. Helsel

The Three Musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas
trans. by Richard Pevear (Viking)

Who can forget "All for one and one for all" from one of the great adventure stories of all time, The Three Musketeers? Richard Pevear, best known with his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, for their award-winning translations of great Russian writers, has given us a wonderful new translation of this enduring work of Dumas'. It had been years since I last read the book; it filled me with joy to reintroduce myself to d'Artagnan and friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, as they go up against their arch-enemy Cardinal Richelieu for the honor of their queen. -G. Berry

The Ruins
by Scott Smith (Knopf)

Sound and silence compete for control in this finely tuned novel about a young man, Arun, who journeys from his privileged life to teach in the south of his country. It is a region stifled by civil war; the people Arun meets in the village of Omeara attend mandatory military cremations and wake to men and dogs strung up dead on electrical wires or, perhaps, a vanished family member. Few lines are drawn clearly and fewer people give voice to their real lives. Omeara seethes in a silence imposed by war—until it is broken by the sharp staccato of violence. -T. Hayes

The Inhabited World
by David Long (Houghton Mifflin)

A man who committed suicide ten years earlier gradually awakens to the facts of his life and his death after a stranger moves into his house. In some ways, this new woman's life parallels his own: both tend toward resignation rather than weighing the possibilities of action. Once he realizes this, he discovers that he again has a choice.

The twists and turns of the story (and his unusual companion) make this hopeful, beautiful, and lyrical novel hard to put down. Readers will be tempted to immediately turn back to the first page and read it again. -K.M. Allman

The Natural Disorder of Things
by Andrea Canobbio
trans. by Abigail Asher (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

In the daytime Claudio designs gardens for those who can afford his services, bringing artistry to a portion of landscape that, he admits, "represents a whole world for me." At night is when he enters his own world, which is chaotic and filled with mysteries.

Haunted by unanswered questions that are at the core of his closest relationships, and by the odd connections that seem to link his family, his mistress, and her associates of dubious virtue, Claudio is trapped in layers of secrets. This enigmatic, absorbing novel reveals and obscures, teasing its readers with its strange and shadowed story. -J. Brown

An Iliad
by Alessandro Baricco
trans. by Ann Goldstein (Knopf)

This pithy retelling of Homer's timeless epic should be read in one feverish, white-knuckled sitting. Alessandro Baricco has deftly trimmed the siege and sacking of Troy to a lean, and conspicuously godless, episode of bloodletting, narrated in the first person by a host of integral characters. Absent here are the divine whims, which are replaced by a palpable humanity that allows Baricco to opine on the feminine undertones that lead the heroes, not least Achilles, to prosecute the war with compassion. This illustrates the "stubborn love for peace" the ancient Greeks are still capable of imparting to warmongering twenty-first-century humans. -J. Reiner

The Dissident
by Nell Freudenberger (Ecco)

There can be trepidation when a debut novel appears by a young writer whose first book was a critically acclaimed story collection. Nell Freudenberger, whose 2003 book of stories, Lucky Girls (HarperPerennial) was a marvel, blows away such concerns with style and ease in this novel of a young Chinese performance artist and activist who comes to Los Angeles for a teaching residency. The changing Beijing world he lived and worked in and the affluent, sincere yet jaded, L. A. milieu he finds himself in are written of with wit and empathy—even when the satire is being laid on. -R. Simonson

New Nonfiction

River of No Reprieve: Descending Siberia's Waterway of Exile, Death and Destiny
by Jeffrey Tayler (Houghton Mifflin)

Close your eyes and picture Siberia. Why do you see what you see? It may have a lurid reputation, but there must be some good behind that iron curtain, right? Tayler and his guide Vadim hop in a little boat and work their way down the Lena River, stopping along the way to enjoy the landscape and visit with locals. These Russians reveal heartwarming truths and unspeakable atrocities with the ease of recounting directions to a local fruit stand. This is a savage journey to the heart of a beautiful country whose image has been tarnished by despotism and global legend. -J. Zaidi

Bitchfest
edited by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

A lot can happen in a decade. In the time it takes to cross-stitch a replica of the Sistine Chapel, Bitch magazine has managed to emerge from being some (seemingly) poorly named fledgling substitute for Sassy to become a genuine, provocative, necessary cultural boon for women of all walks. This collection is a testament to the intelligence and fortitude of Bitch's mission: to "be an agent of real change" by looking critically at what many find most interesting—pop culture. Bitchfest (and Bitch) should be required reading for everyone. -J. Schurk

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
by Julie Pillips (St. Martin's)

Alice B. Sheldon's early biography often reads like an adolescent boy's fantasy life: hunting trips to Africa, sexual explorations, service in the CIA and in the military during wartime. When the time came, such experiences allowed Alice "Alli" Sheldon to become the acclaimed—and convincingly male—science fiction author, James Tiptree, Jr. This well-researched biography nicely interweaves the different facets of Tiptree's life with the influences that shaped it. Julie Phillips manages the varying voices, allowing them to overlap to reveal a woman who found a medium—science fiction—where she could construct a narrative of her own choosing. -T. Hayes

The Shark God: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific
by Charles Montgomery (HarperCollins)

Transfixed by the black magic and animist spirits encountered in his great-grandfather's memoirs, Charles Montgomery re-creates the missionary bishop's nineteenth-century journey through the Melanesian island chain. What ensues is a fascinating look at South Pacific cultures long conflicted by reconciling indigenous beliefs with residual Christian tenets later disseminated by like-minded messengers of faith. This is a travelogue, memoir, and anthropological history striving to define the cultural identity, or kastom, of these isolated peoples. Montgomery's debut, however, succeeds most admirably with his pointedly objective reportage, a style sure to serve him well in future works. -J. Reiner

Friendship: An Exposé
by Joseph Epstein (Houghton Mifflin)

Joseph Epstein freely admits that he is promiscuous in his friendships. It could be said that friendships are the most important relationships in our lives—although many would argue strongly for their spouses or family members. Epstein has written a probing and delightful book about all the nuanced forms that friendship takes. There is a surprising lack of literature devoted to this most important of human interactions; Aristotle and Montaigne are the most notable writers in short form to address friendship. The contribution Epstein has made is invaluable and utterly compelling from beginning to end. -G. Berry

The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip Across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home
by Karrie Jacobs (Viking)

Karrie Jacobs has written an architectural take on the road trip book in her search for an affordable, modern dwelling that includes at least a modicum of creative design. It turns out that (surprise!) such housing barely exists, and those who champion the cause are almost universally outsiders: dreamers, disillusioned architects, people who live without a bathroom. Jacobs visits an astounding number of homes, including Earthships, A-frames, and "primal sheds," and also spends two weeks learning to design and build her own home at Yestermorrow in Vermont. The book's cozy-looking illustrations remind us that many different places can be home. -G.M. Berry

The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban
by Sarah Chayes (Penguin Press)

Sarah Chayes begins her stay in Afghanistan as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio. Initially there to report the fall of the Taliban, in 2002 she leaves reporting, accepting a job running a nonprofit organization founded by President Karzai's brother. As she works to help the Afghanis heal and rebuild their country, Chayes is witness to the emergence of tribal strongmen, the reinfiltration of the Taliban, and a new wave of corruption and violence under the complacent eyes of U.S. forces. This is a riveting book, with detailed insights into the country's history and politics, its tribal warlord traditions, and its age-long resistance to foreign influence. -L. Paus

The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life
by Virginia Woolf (Ecco)

It is difficult to find a new way to praise Virginia Woolf. Let us just say that all the usual effusiveness can be applied to this collection of essays. Woolf's prose, so often directed inward, is just as beautiful and illuminating when directed outward, to the streets and people of London, Woolf's own city, a city she loved. Woolf makes the phrase "the bustle of London" bloom into something more than a cliché; her descriptions of the dynamic, established, and entrepreneurial city seem to go down to the seed of the place, illustrating the soul of London, valid even today. -M. Helsel

La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind
by Beppe Severgnini (Broadway)

Every fortunate traveler to Italy is charmed and captivated by its bucolic landscapes, lively people, ubiquitous beauty, art, and history, but is often baffled and exasperated by what seems a barely controlled chaos.

Italian journalist Severgnini takes us on a detailed ten-day tour of his country's psyche, from piazza to church to office, finding it to be "suspended between tribalism and the modern world." Stripping the romanticized veneer, the "bella figura" shown to Italy's visitors, he reveals, with loving, insightful amusement, a complexity of the culture without which the experience of idyllic scenery and delicious cuisine truly would be empty. -E. Dorfman

Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea
by George Lakoff (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

What is freedom, and how has the current administration completely changed the meaning of the term? George Lakoff, author of Don't Think of an Elephant (Chelsea Green) returns with another powerful book intended both as a wake-up call and as a practical tool. Lakoff's emphasis on worldview (framing) and the unconscious (over appeal to the rational) provides the means for progressives to understand and reframe political discussions about freedom.

Those involved in political organizing and anyone wondering how the current presidential administration and right-wing pundits could have such different definitions of a basic American value must read this book. -K.M. Allman

The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq
by Rory Stewart (Harcourt)

The Prince of the Marshes is an understated but incredibly insightful account of the attempt by coalition forces to rebuild Iraq in the first year after the invasion. Rory Stewart worked as a deputy governor, first in Amarah and then in Nasiriyah, with the constant goal of transferring power to the local government. The author's Machiavellian reading of the situation in Iraq (each chapter begins with a quote, often from The Prince), provides insight into the complicated wrangling for power that took place in the vacuum created by Saddam’s capture, and highlights the ambiguity of the political enterprise itself. -G.M. Berry

Shadow of the Bear: Travels in Vanishing Wilderness
by Brian Payton (Bloomsbury)

Canadian journalist Brian Payton travels the world to provide a stellar account of bears and the ecosystems and humans they coexist with. Bears have existed for thirty-two thousand years, stretching back into human myth, and now, of the eight species left, six are near extinction. With affable curiosity, Payton chronicles why bears are disappearing as he travels through Indian, Chinese, Cambodian, European, Arctic, Peruvian, and Navajo cultures, and into a crazed group of NRA hunters. His readers will be disgusted by human cruelty, alarmed at the destruction of wildernesses, and ultimately hurt and cleansed by beauty and awe. -T. Radebaugh

The Human Voice
by Anne Karpf (Bloomsbury)

This multifaceted book gives homage to the innate technology that is the human voice. From the perfect pitch of an infant's first cry to the discomfort of hearing your own recorded voice, from the tiniest cilium of the inner ear to a discourse on global gender roles, this book explores how our speaking voices reveal who we are. Anyone who has ever flown on an airplane, witnessed a birth, performed on a stage, or suffered through holidays with a verbose relative will find this book fascinating. -J. Darrah

Children's & Young Adult Books

A Small White Scar
by K. A. Nuzum (Joanna Cotler Books)

In Nuzum's debut novel, she brilliantly gives us Will, who is born on his family's cattle ranch on the treacherous terrain of the Mesa de Maya in Colorado. Will's fate is decided at birth: his task is raising his mentally challenged twin brother, Denny. At sixteen he finds the responsibility unfair, and the desire for his own life sends him on an adventure to prove his manhood at a rodeo. Only in his blood does he find his power, in the twin who ultimately was also raising him. This young-adult story provides beauty not to be missed. -T. Radebaugh

The Fetch
by Chris Humphreys (Knopf)

Your Fetch is your double, the "other" you, mythologically speaking. Sky and his cousin Kristen discover their Norwegian past in an old sea chest in Sky's attic. A whole new magical world is opened to them when Sky learns to harness his Fetch. From becoming a real Viking on a voyage to turning into a bird and soaring through the air, Sky must determine what to do with his new skill—and who is actually controlling it. This magical novel has so much to offer—adventure, history, family, lore, landscape. It was a delight to read. -J. Schurk

The Floating Island
by Elizabeth Haydon
illus. by Brett Helquist (Starscape)

Ven Polypheme doesn't want to spend his life working in his father's shipyard and watching ships go out to explore the world; he wants to be on them, appeasing his insatiable curiosity. His wanderings begin when fire pirates attack and he is cast away. On his adventures he encounters mermaids, sharks as big as houses, and a Crossroads Inn that is at a crossing of more than just earthly roads. Haydon's world is well realized, her writing is good, and Helquist's illustrations (meant to be Ven's sketches) are a welcome addition to this addictive travelogue set in magic lands. -R. Crawford

Endymion Spring
by Matthew Skelton (Delacorte)

This tale of history, magic, and adventure is a treat for anyone who has felt the powerful attraction and mystery of an unread book. In present-day Oxford, young Blake Winters wanders bored through the library until he happens upon a strange volume containing no words. In what follows, legend and lore are woven into the story of the first printing press and the magical notion that all the world can be contained in a single tome. Ultimately, it is the story of a book choosing a boy, just as the most wonderful books seem to reach out and choose us. -T. Hayes

Back Talk

by Rebecca Crawford

"There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book...We all need stories, but children are more frank about it."

If anything Philip Pullman says here rings true to you, you'll love Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which retells Paradise Lost with an antireligious twist. It takes no easy moral outs, the protagonists are hugely likable, the prose is lively, and it's unbelievably absorbing.

Another author who knows the power of a story is Madeleine L'Engle. If science fiction's your thing and you haven’t read A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, I don't know why you’re still reading this column. If you like good fiction, you've got to read A Ring of Endless Light. It tackles faith, mortality, despair, and joy without pandering to its adolescent main character.

If you're ready for a good yarn, there are many excellent options in the children's section that won't insult your intelligence. The Twenty-One Balloons, by William P&eggrave;ne du Bois, tells of a professor who, stranded on Krakatoa, discovers its secret diamond mines. Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles, home to the strongest and least obnoxious female protagonist I've ever met, is another outstanding historical adventure, and its Stolen Lake is terrifically creepy. Mistress Masham's Repose, by T. H. White, is a good, funny novel that's deadly serious about power. Along with making me laugh, it made me look at myself harder than any "adult" book.

And I can’t think of anything to say about Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence beyond this: if you love stories as well as reading, if you're ready to think as deeply and openly as a child, and if you simply want to read something that will set your heart racing—read these books.

The Owner's Corner

by Peter Aaron

What is it about summer reading—the guilty pleasure of sitting indoors in cool shade while one of our precious, glorious sunlit days sings its siren song. Perhaps it's a perverse sense of luxury—to squander a bit of what's so parsimoniously provided. Or maybe, for me, it harkens back to childhood contrariness in reaction to the injunction, "It's too nice to be sitting indoors." Or there's the occasional necessity of seeking out some public place providing the balm of air conditioning. Whatever the source of the impulse, I find particular pleasure whiling away my summer leisure in the embrace of a good book.

One thing I'm determined to do this year is to focus as much as possible on foreign literature. I feel the need—more than ever—to seek connection with the rest of the world. Fortunately, there's an abundance of great books—in great translations—awaiting. No listing could be anything but random and cursory—but here are a few of the books that have caught my attention recently:

Suite Française, by Iréne Nèmirovsky (Knopf)—This much-touted "rediscovered" novel, set in France during the German occupation, displays the entire range of human possibilities in the face of tragedy—from the most noble to the basest.

By a Slow River, by Philippe Claudel (Knopf)—Another French novel—taking place during the first World War—proceeds as a murder mystery, but à la sur-réalité. A sleeper—not to be missed.

My Uncle Napoleon, by Iraj Pezeshkzad (Modern Library)—Family farce at its best—"The most beloved Iranian novel of our time." They're really people—like us!

Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, by Robert Musil (Archipelago)—From the author of the monumental unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities, this delightful volume of brief essays, stories, and musing displays Musil’s mastery of language and dexterity of mind.

Darkness Spoken, by Ingeborg Bachmann (Zephyr Press)—I have to include at least one poetry collection. One of the major postwar German-language poets, whose unique voice speaks the pain of the Nazi era, and the dawning horror of what emerged, unacknowledged, unspeakable.

Enjoy your summer reading—as the world turns.