Here are some of my favorites published this year, 29 titles in all from short stories to novels, just in time for the frantic shopping season. All the books are available on the shelves or by order at your local bookstore, from all the online retailers (including Indiebound.com), and last but not least, from your local library system. Have fun reading and leave comments with any additions or thumbs up! SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle From Publishers Weekly This sure-to-please collection by Kyle (The God of Animals) probes the frequently wrongheaded choices girls and young women make to feel happy and loved. Girls growing up with fathers whose wives have vanished, girls perilously desirous of acceptance, young women enthralled by unsuitable men: these are the characters inhabiting Kyle's low-key tales. In Nine, the young protagonist tells elaborate lies to deflect the pain of her mother's absence, though her attempts at befriending her father's new girlfriend go terribly awry. Allegiance depicts the ruthless extent the new girl will go to get invited to a sleepover party held by the popular girls, especially as her mother offers suggestions for tormenting the weak. Similarly, in Brides, the new girl in the high school play learns how to ingratiate herself with the lead and the pervy theater teacher. Meanwhile, dallying with married men only brings grief to smart women, as in Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore and the moving title story. There's no shortage of heartache, and Kyle's varied approaches to it consistently reveals new ways of feeling bad. Double Happiness by Mary-Beth Hughes From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. The reader eagerly waits for the hammer to fall in these 11 wickedly drawn stories by the author of Wavemaker II. Hughes's characters are skillfully delineated modern types, caught off-guard and vulnerable, such as Raymond, the glib, successful writer of The Aces, who, while in Rome with his pregnant wife, runs into a former fling that ended badly: Kind of comic, really, but then he remembered that maybe he'd been a bit of a bastard. In the marvelously rueful Blue Grass, the young woman narrator senses that her longtime lover is becoming less attracted to her, and an unlikely triangle forms as the narrator becomes attracted to her just-buried sister's boyfriend. Each of the tales opens out to surprising plot twists, such as in Guidance, which recounts the surreal adventures of a model who had been living the high life in Tokyo before marrying an older, rich American bad guy, becoming pregnant with twins, and essentially being imprisoned within a walled compound in Jakarta. The resonant title story, set in the aftermath of 9/11 as a mother comes to terms with the loss of her son, caps this intensely moving collection. How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique From Publishers Weekly The effects of colonialism throb in Yanique's vivid debut collection. The chilling title story is set in 1939, when the Trinidadian island of Chacachacare was still used as a leper colony; the narrator, a 14-year-old orphan with leprosy, befriends a curious boy her age, Lazaro, whose mother was murdered there when he was a baby, and whose troubled relationship with the nuns leads him to a terrible retribution. The Bridge Stories are elucidating snapshots of islanders struggling to carve out lives for themselves on St. Thomas and elsewhere amid an exploitative tourist economy. Yanique frequently dips into rich, fanciful vernacular, such as in Street Man, a beautiful, sad glimpse at a doomed love affair between a college student and a St. Croix local. In the affecting novella, International Shop of Coffins, Yanique depicts characters of mixed African/Creole/Indian descent torn between the white and island worlds in all their complexity and conflictedness. A smattering of dark humor leavens the tense narratives as Yanique penetrates the perils and pleasures of lives lived outside resort walls. Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs From Booklist Boggs’ debut collection of interwoven stories is simultaneously sharp-edged and pastoral, downcast and humorous. Her tales are set on the Mattaponi Indian Reservation in rural downstate Virginia, an unfamiliar landscape that springs to life as each story unfolds, revealing another layer in time. A young woman, raised by her father after her mother deserted them, drops out of art school, $30,000 in debt. Now pregnant, she awaits her husband, who returns from a short stint in Iraq as an amputee. In another story, her father’s longtime friend, dying of liver disease, tries to reconnect with his kids, now living off the rez with their mom. The title story features the long-suffering nurse of a “mean and stubborn” elderly woman, gradually making payments on an old houseboat, the Mattaponi Queen. He hates to part with this wedding present he gave his second wife, who later ran off with her yoga instructor. The reader feels privy to each conversation, so pitch-perfect is Boggs’ feel for the godforsaken place her characters inhabit. --Deborah Donovan Please Come Back to Me by Jessica Treadway From Booklist This entry in the University of Georgia’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series gathers seven short stories and one novella by Treadway. The short stories have been modified from previous publication in a variety of literary journals, while the novella is original to this collection. Treadway’s prose is distinguished by the precision of her language, her skillful use of the third-person narrator, and her mastery of realistic dialogue. Her characters have deep roots in community––roots that they are often unable to escape. And although one of the stories is told from the point of view of a man trapped in a not-totally-satisfying marriage, most have a focus on the inner lives of women, where Treadway’s deep appreciation for conflict and a disappointing resolution often lead to surprising (but logical) endings. The novella that gives this collection its title is its strongest piece, depicting the better part of a woman’s adult life meticulously and with satisfying detail. Literary fiction buffs and short story readers will enjoy this promising collection from a gifted writer of the form. --Ellen Loughran Where the Dog Star Never Glows by Tara Masih From Publishers Weekly In this 17-story collection, writer and editor Masih (The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction) examines characters balanced precariously on the edge of contentment and disillusionment. Delicate, sparse prose contributes to the heavy-heartedness of such stories as "Say Bridgitte, Please," in which sadness overtakes ecstasy during a teenage girl's sexual encounter with a stranger; and "Asylum," as a daughter agonizes over her mother's encroaching madness, and what it means for her own fate. Masih's first-person narratives are the most riveting, whether assuming the voice of a young girl witnessing her parents' marriage crumble from the backseat of a 1963 Thunderbird ("Sunday Drives"), or an aging father grieving the death of his friend's adult daughter in the light of a late-winter bonfire ("The Burnings"). Compiled from two decades of work, Masih's stories are minimally but skillfully detailed-no last names, vague settings-giving extra weight to simple, recurring phenomena like water and color ("the evening's August melon light"). Striking and resonant, this collection should prove memorable for any fan of New Yorker-style literary short fiction. NOVELLAS The New Valley by Josh Weil From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Weil's debut is a stark and haunting triptych of novellas set in the rusted-out hills straddling the border between the Virginias. In Ridge Weather, Osby, a hardscrabble cattle rancher, finds himself lonely and isolated after his father's suicide. In the aftermath he struggles to make some sort of a personal connection in increasingly desperate attempts to be needed by someone. In Stillman Wing, the elderly Charlie Stillman, afraid of his own mortality, tries to reinvigorate his life by stealing and reconditioning a tractor, all the while maintaining a relationship with his obese, promiscuous daughter and coming to terms with the death of his barnstormer parents. Sarverville Remains, takes the form of a letter from Geoffrey Sarver, a mildly retarded orphan, to an incarcerated man whose wife he has fallen in love with, and takes on the elements of a well-told crime story. All three pieces, despite their somber tones, offer renewal for their protagonists. Taken individually, each novella offers its own tragic pleasures, but together, the works create a deeply human landscape that delivers great beauty. NOVELS Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother’s prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu’s youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement—a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.
 Bloodroot by Amy Greene Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2010 Bloodroot is that rare sort of family saga that feels intimate instead of epic. Set in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, it’s told largely in tandem voices that keep watchful eyes on Myra Lamb. She is a child of the mountain, tied to the land in ways that mystify and enchant those around her. There’s magic to Myra--perhaps because she has the remarkable blue eyes foretold by a nearly-forgotten family curse--but little fantasy to her life. Bloodroot is as much about the Lambs as it is about a place, one that becomes ever more vivid as generations form, break free, and knit back together. Its characters speak plainly but true, they are resilient and flawed and beautiful, and there's a near-instant empathy in reading their stories, which--even in their most visceral moments--are alluring and wonderful. --Anne Bartholomew Bound by Antonya Nelson From Booklist *Starred Review* A short story writer of exhilarating wit and empathy, Nelson returns to the novel after a decade with heightened authority. Tightly coiled, edgy, and funny, this complex tale of transcendent friendship begins with a spectacular death: Misty, a single mother, drives off a cliff. Her surviving daughter, Cattie, is named after Catherine, Misty’s best friend way back when they were young and wild in Wichita. Misty was poor and scrappy; pretty Catherine was the daughter of professors. Wealthy, childless, and married to her much older third husband, philandering Oliver, Catherine is still contending with her rigorous mother’s piercing disapproval even though a stroke has stolen Grace’s ability to speak. It’s a shock to learn that Misty is dead, that she had a daughter, and that Catherine is her namesake’s guardian. Cattie runs away from her Vermont boarding school, embarking on a cross-country odyssey as risky, if not as much fun, as the mad adventures her mother and Catherine miraculously survived. With the supreme recklessness of teen girls, Oliver’s farcical yet poignant dilemmas, Grace’s toughness, a resurgent serial killer, an AWOL soldier, and compelling canine characters, Nelson’s sleekly powerful turbine of a novel riffs cannily on the many meanings of “bound.” --Donna Seaman The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Anthony's compulsively readable debut novel stars Rovar Pfliegman, who sells meat out of a bus in Virginia. Rovar is a peculiar, troll-like man: he is short and hairy, has not spoken since childhood, keeps a pet beetle and lives in the same broken-down bus that houses his meat business. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Rovar is his precarious singularity. He is the last of the Pfliegmans and, by his own account, he is falling apart. Although he halfheartedly seeks treatment for his various ailments, he seems far more bent on fulfilling the destiny of self-destruction all Pfliegmans (according to Rovar) are subject to. Rovar's explanation of his family sprawls deep into the past, probing beyond his chaotic childhood all the way back to the origins of the Pfliegman clan in premedieval Hungary. Along the way, the narrative nods to all sorts of greats—Kafka, Rushdie, Darwin and Grass, to name a few. But Anthony's style—funny, immediate and unapologetically cerebral—carves out a space all its own. Eternal on the Water by Joseph Monninger From Publishers Weekly Henry David Thoreau meets Nicholas Sparks in this poignant love story rooted in the forests of Maine. On sabbatical, prep school teacher Jonathan Cobb's only goal is to retrace Thoreau's historic 92-mile journey along the Allagash Waterway by kayak, little realizing that, like Thoreau, he will soon "front only the essential facts of life" after meeting Mary Fury on his first night camping. An experienced, exuberant outdoorswoman, Mary invites Cobb to join her for a lecture at the Chungamunga camp for girls suffering with medical illnesses. There, Cobb is impressed by the camaraderie of the group, drawn in by their emphasis on creativity, mythology and survival skills. His growing feelings for Mary are put to the test when she reveals that she's suffering from Huntington's disease, and details the condition's debilitating path. Though the plot sometimes drags through Monninger's numerous digressions, his keen eye for nature, subtle incorporation of indigenous myths and use of symbolism make for a memorable story of love and courage. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow From Publishers Weekly Durrow's debut draws from her own upbringing as the brown-skinned, blue-eyed daughter of a Danish woman and a black G.I. to create Rachel Morse, a young girl with an identical heritage growing up in the early 1980s. After a devastating family tragedy in Chicago with Rachel the only survivor, she goes to live with the paternal grandmother she's never met, in a decidedly black neighborhood in Portland, Ore. Suddenly, at 11, Rachel is in a world that demands her to be either white or black. As she struggles with her grief and the haunting, yet-to-be-revealed truth of the tragedy, her appearance and intelligence place her under constant scrutiny. Laronne, Rachel's deceased mother's employer, and Brick, a young boy who witnessed the tragedy and because of his personal misfortunes is drawn into Rachel's world, help piece together the puzzle of Rachel's family. Taut prose, a controversial conclusion and the thoughtful reflection on racism and racial identity resonate without treading into political or even overtly specific agenda waters, as the story succeeds as both a modern coming-of-age and relevant social commentary. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. As he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter’s recipient, he becomes privy to a secret history that will alter the course of his own life. Meanwhile, as his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena and their younger brother leaves school for the stage, Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends each of their lives into terrifying uncertainty. At the end of Andras’s second summer in Paris, all of Europe erupts in a cataclysm of war. From the small Hungarian town of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the lonely chill of Andras’s room on the rue des Écoles to the deep and enduring connection he discovers on the rue de Sévigné, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labor camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a love tested by disaster, of brothers whose bonds cannot be broken, of a family shattered and remade in history’s darkest hour, and of the dangerous power of art in a time of war. 
 The Language of Trees by Ilie Ruby From Publishers Weekly Painter and short story writer Ruby debuts with a haunting, lyrical novel of love, loss, and second chances set in upstate New York and greatly informed by the Seneca Indians, whose lore imbues the book with spirituality. In 1988, the Ellis children set out on a stormy night in a canoe borrowed from the Songos next door to escape their brutish father. Luke, the youngest, drowns, and his older sisters are never the same: Melanie turns to drugs while Maya suffers bouts of catatonia. Years later, Grant Songo, 32, returns to his family's lake cabin after separating from his wife. While running in the woods, a wounded wolf trails him, and when Echo O'Connell, Grant's teenage flame, crashes her car to avoid hitting the wolf, she and Grant reconnect and are drawn into the mystery of the recently missing Melanie. Many locals believe Melanie's back on drugs, but Lion, the father of her baby boy, is convinced she's in danger. These characters face real and psychological fears to endure the transformative experiences needed to become whole in a worthwhile story filled with mysticism and symbolism. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever.
 Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross David Pepin has been in love with his wife, Alice, since the moment they met in a university seminar on Alfred Hitchcock. After thirteen years of marriage, he still can’t imagine a remotely happy life without her—yet he obsessively contemplates her demise. Soon she is dead, and David is both deeply distraught and the prime suspect. The detectives investigating Alice’s suspicious death have plenty of personal experience with conjugal enigmas: Ward Hastroll is happily married until his wife inexplicably becomes voluntarily and militantly bedridden; and Sam Sheppard is especially sensitive to the intricacies of marital guilt and innocence, having decades before been convicted and then exonerated of the brutal murder of his wife. Still, these men are in the business of figuring things out, even as Pepin’s role in Alice’s death grows ever more confounding when they link him to a highly unusual hit man called Mobius. Like the Escher drawings that inspire the computer games David designs for a living, these complex, interlocking dramas are structurally and emotionally intense, subtle, and intriguing; they brilliantly explore the warring impulses of affection and hatred, and pose a host of arresting questions. Is it possible to know anyone fully, completely?Are murder and marriage two sides of the same coin, each endlessly recycling into the other? And what, in the end, is the truth about love?
 The Murderer’s Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers From Publishers Weekly This solid novel begins with young Lulu finding her mother dead and her sister wounded at the hands of her alcoholic father, who has failed at killing himself after attacking the family. Meyers traces the following 30 years for Lulu and her sister, Merry, as they are sent to an orphanage, where Lulu turns tough and calculating, searching for a way into an adoptive family. Eventually, Lulu becomes a doctor specializing in the almost old, though her secretiveness about her past causes new rifts to form in her new family. Meanwhile, Merry becomes a victim witness advocate, but her life is stunted; she's dependant on Lulu, drugs and alcohol, and she can't find love because she usually want[s] whoever wants me. In the background, their imprisoned father looms until a crisis that eerily mirrors the past forces Lulu and Merry to confront what happened years ago. Though the novel's sprawling time line and undifferentiated narrative voices—the sisters narrate in rotating first-person chapters—hinder the potential for readers to fall completely into the story, the psychologically complex characters make Meyers's debut a satisfying read. The Report by Jessica Francis Kane On a March night in 1943, on the steps of a London Tube station, 173 people die in a crowd seeking shelter from what seemed to be another air raid. When the devastated neighborhood demands an inquiry, the job falls to magistrate Laurence Dunne. In this beautifully crafted novel, Jessica Francis Kane paints a vivid portrait of London at war. As Dunne investigates, he finds the truth to be precarious, even damaging. When he is forced to reflect on his report several decades later, he must consider whether the course he chose was the right one. The Report is a provocative commentary on the way all tragedies are remembered and endured. 
 Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay From Publishers Weekly Kalotay makes a powerful debut with a novel about a Soviet-era prima ballerina, now retired and living in Boston, who confronts her past as she puts up for auction the jewelry she took with her when she left her husband and defected. Nina "The Butterfly" Revskaya, 79, reveals little about the past to curious auction house representative Drew Brooks as he peruses her cache of exquisite jewelry. Nina likewise rebuffs inquiries from foreign language professor Grigori Solodin, who has translated the works of Nina's poet husband and who offers an additional item for auction: the amber necklace he inherited from the parents he never knew. In extended flashbacks, Nina recalls intimate moments and misunderstandings with her husband, happy and disturbing times with his Jewish composer best friend, and encounters with her own childhood friend. Meanwhile, Drew and Grigori delve into the jewelry's provenance, hoping to learn as much about the jewels as their own pasts. While the Soviet-era romance can lean too much on melodrama, Kalotay turns out a mostly entrancing story thanks to a skillful depiction of artistic life behind the Iron Curtain and intriguing glimpses into auction house operations. Sea Escape by Lynn Griffin From Booklist When her estranged mother, Helen, suffers a stroke, Laura Martinez must return to the home Helen secluded herself in after her husband Joseph's death. In an effort to convince Helen to keep on fighting for her life, Laura reads the old love letters from Joseph to her mother, hoping that his words will be enough to save her life. However, as the letters reveal more and more about her family's history, Laura discovers that they have more in common than she thought. This makes her even more determined to help Helen so that they can forgive each other and repair their broken relationship. Griffin alternates between Laura's present-day story and her mother's romance during the Vietnam War to demonstrate that despite their estrangement, these women share struggles, secrets, insecurities, and passions. Not to mention that a deep family mystery makes this a fully engaging read. --Claire Orphan Stations West by Allison Amend Oklahoma is a forgotten territory of "Indians, outlaws, and immigrants" when its first Jewish settler, Boggy Haurowitz, arrives in 1859. Full of expectations, he finds the untamed region a formidable foe, its landscape rugged, its resources strained. In Stations West, four generations of Haurowitzes, intertwined with a family of Swedish immigrants, struggle against the Territory's "insatiable appetite." The challenges of creating a home amid betrayals, nature's vagaries, and burgeoning statehood prove too great. Each generation in turn succumbs to the overwhelming lure of the transcontinental railroad, and each returns home to find the landscape of their youth, like themselves, changed beyond recognition, their family utterly transformed. Dramatic and lyrical, Allison Amend's first novel, steeped in the history and lore of the Oklahoma Territory, tells an unforgettable multigenerational--and very American--story of Jewish pioneers, their adopted family, and the challenges they face. Amid the founding of the West, Stations West's generations struggle to forge and maintain their identities as Jews, as immigrants, and as Americans. The Stormchasers by Jenna Blum From Publishers Weekly Blum (Those Who Save Us) visits Tornado Alley in this vivid novel about a set of twins with a dark history. At home in Minnesota, Karena Jorge gets an unexpected call informing her that her twin brother, Charles Hallingdahl, whom she hasn't seen in the 20 years since something went very wrong during a storm chase, has been admitted to a Kansas mental hospital. Charles suffers from rapid cycling bipolar disorder, and all Karena knows is that he refuses medication, he can be a danger to himself and others, and he is still obsessed with storm chasing. When she rushes to the clinic and finds he has already left, Karena joins a professional storm-chasing tour company, hoping to find her brother in the caravan of watchers who follow major storms. In the course of the tour, Karena confronts the past and the way it has shaped her life. The unpredictable and dangerous storms provide a framework for an exploration of the bond between siblings (and its limitations), and Blum renders the stormy backdrop as richly as she does her nuanced characters. The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw From Publishers Weekly Strong writing keeps the reader sucked in to LeCraw's painful family drama debut. The lovely Marcella is reeling from tragedy; her ex-husband, Anthony, has sent Toni, their only daughter, away to boarding school and on to college. The man with whom Marcella had an affair, Cecil McClatchey, dies in a car accident soon after his wife, Betsy, is murdered. Amid the wreckage is Cecil's daughter, Callie, fighting for her sanity with two young children, and his son, Jed, who, desperate to fill the void left by the death of his parents, seeks answers from Marcella only to begin a tortured love affair with her as she drowns in guilt, struggling to find some meaning to hold on to. As Marcella comes closer to the truth about Betsy's murder and Cecil's death, and mindful that she is now the lover of Cecil's son, she struggles and fails to gather strength enough to make any decision, right or wrong. It is a story of deep and searing love, between siblings and lovers, but most powerfully, between parents and their children. This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry When Jack Lang impulsively buys a second house directly across the street from his own, his wife Beth leaves him-and their six-year-old autistic son, Hendrick-to move in with Jack's best friend, Terry Canavan. Jack tells everyone in his life he's okay, but no one believes him. Not his employees at Patriot Mulch & Tree in suburban North Carolina, not Beth herself, and not Canavan's estranged girlfriend Rena, who arrives on Jack's doorstep to see how, and whether, he's bearing up. When Jack starts letting Rena further into his life, and when Hendrick suddenly starts speaking fluent Spanish-stunning everyone-it becomes apparent to Jack that the world is far more complicated than he believed. Try to Remember by Iris Gomez From Publishers Weekly Poet and immigration lawyer Gomez (When Comets Rained) mines her own experiences in her enthralling fiction debut, the story of a family of Colombian immigrants adjusting to life in '70s-era Florida. Gabriela De la Paz has earned the nickname Auxiliadora (the Helper) for all her efforts translating and interpreting American culture for her parents. The frustrated daughter of Roberto and Evangelina, Gabi must act far older than her teen years when her Papi, schizophrenic and untreated, can't keep a job and gets into trouble with the police because of his violent behavior. Evangelina must hide her sewing and cleaning jobs to avoid Roberto's wrath (he disapproves of women working) while Gabi's brothers, Manolo and Pablo, fear his physical abuse. Gomez charts Gabi's challenges as she gains confidence, educates herself, and finds inspiration from Lara, a modern woman for whom she babysits, in this intense and sensitive tale with crossover YA appeal. What is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Set on the Atlantic coast of Canada during WWII, Norman's latest (after Devotion) is an expertly crafted tale of love during wartime. Wyatt Hillyer loses both his parents on the same day when they jump from different bridges in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after they discover they are both having affairs with the woman next door. Wyatt's aunt and uncle take him in, and Wyatt becomes his uncle's apprentice in his sled and toboggan business and, despite the circumstances, soon falls in love with his adopted cousin, Tilda. Yet he must resign himself to loving from a distance when Tilda brings home Hans Moehring, a German university student. The two begin a courtship harshly complicated by reports of U-boat attacks on Canadian ships, and Tilda's father becoming increasingly uneasy about this potential enemy in their midst. Norman's writing is effortless, and his plot is grand in scope but studded with moments of tenderness and intimacy that help crystallize the anxiety and weariness of life on the home front. That Norman is able to achieve so much in 250 pages is a testament to his mastery of the craft. The Wilding by Ben Percy From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Percy's excellent debut novel (after the collection Refresh, Refresh) digs into the ambiguous American attitude toward nature as it oscillates between Thoreau's romantic appreciation and sheer gothic horror. The plot concerns a hunting trip taken by Justin Caves and his sixth-grade son, Graham, with Justin's bullying father, Paul, a passionate outdoorsman in failing health who's determined to spend one last weekend in the Echo Canyon before real estate developer Bobby Fremont turns the sublime pocket of wilderness into a golfing resort. Justin, a high school English teacher, has hit an almost terminally rough patch in his marriage to Karen, who, while the boys camp, contemplates an affair with Bobby, though she may have bigger problems with wounded Iraq war vet Brian, a case study in creepy stalker. The men, meanwhile, are being tracked by a beast and must contend with a vengeful roughneck roaming the woods. A taut plot and cast of deeply flawed characters--Justin is a masterwork of pitiable wretchedness--will keep readers rapt as peril descends and split-second decisions come to have lifelong repercussions. It's as close as you can get to a contemporary Deliverance. The Wrong Blood by Manuel de Lope During the Spanish Civil War, a poor servant girl is raped by a passing soldier. In a nearby town, a wealthy young woman marries a soldier and departs for her honeymoon at Biarritz. Time will bring these women together in a fine house by the sea and war will present them with the necessity for a dark bargain, one that will alter the lives of future generations.