When Elizabeth dies in a plane crash a month before 9/11, her will designates her friend Kate as the recipient of her lifelong journals, in this tepid debut. Kate spends her family vacation during the summer of 2002 reading through Elizabeth's journals, discovering the truth about the woman she thought she had known. Elizabeth's history is full of secrets: a childhood accident, a decision to abandon her artistic studies to care for her mother, her relationship with her husband, and most curiously, the reason she was on that ill-fated August 2001 flight. Other than her time-appropriate anxieties about terrorism and loss, Kate is a pedestrian character, with quiet conflicts about her workaday marriage and thoughts of exchanging motherhood for a return to her career as a pastry chef. As a character, Elizabeth has more potential, but Kate's recaps of important events in Elizabeth's life, interspersed with brief passages from the diaries, feel journalistic and unfinished, like notes from a character study. Moments of beauty and depth of spirit will appeal to readers interested in secrets revealed, but the novel is slow and relies too heavily on introspection. Agent: Julie Barer. (June)

Comeau (A Softer World) has a well-deserved reputation for cheerfully deranged work, borne out by this pair of thematically linked stories. "Lockpick Pornography" is superficially about the adventures of gender anarchists determined to undermine heteronormativity and the gender binary one baffled victim at a time. It's held together by the brash, introspective narration of the unnamed protagonist, a gay man frustrated by his inability to find women attractive. Driven by his desperate yearning to be "part of something queer and strong and worthwhile," he drags his drag-wearing friends into an increasingly strange series of illegal exploits. "We All Got It Coming" could star the same man in an alternate universe where he succumbed to societal expectations, settling into monogamy and boring but steady work. When a coworker assaults him for being gay, he starts looking for a new job, depressed by the seeming incompatibility of income and honesty. Darker and sadder, the second story is the stick to the first one's carrot: what we all got coming is crushing mundanity, unless we pick the lock on society's jailhouse door and "gain access to the room beyond." Queers of all stripes will enjoy this grimy, affectionate, endlessly questioning paean to unclassifiability and defiance. (May)

Stephenson (Snow Crash) and Bear (Blood Music) team up with an array of cross-genre and cross-platform storytellers to deliver an outstanding historical epic with exceptional character development and vivid world building. Begun in 2010 on various digital platforms, this collaborative project--the first book in the Mongoliad Trilogy, which itself is a part of the Foreworld Saga--is heavy on mysticism, dangerous journeys, and exciting hand-to-hand-combat. As Onghwe Khan, grandson of Genghis, sets his sights on Eastern Europe, a group of knights and warrior monks fight back and formulate a desperate plan to assassinate the current Khagan ("the Khan of Khans"), Ögedei, in a bid to send his sons scrambling back to the heart of the Mongol Empire to claim their dead father's throne. In addition to the heroic battles--including swordfights, archery, wrestling, and martial arts--romance, political intrigue, and promises of betrayal and rebellion are suffused throughout this cinematic tale. Having introduced plenty of plot threads and characters, Stephenson and Bear & co. have set the bar high for the series. (Apr.)

Drawing from his own life, Goldstein's powerful debut follows the retrospective misadventures of 12-year-old Ricky Davis, the "thin, anemic" son of Pearl, an aging Bronx beauty who once dreamed of silver screen stardom, and Harry, a garment worker with a pernicious gambling habit. When Harry falls into debt with mobster Nathan Glucksman, he is conscripted as a goon with Ricky in tow. Befitting a Bronx-born Jew of the '60s, the son is no naïf: when Harry goes into hiding, Ricky assumes the role of full-time bookie, hoping to save his family. Meanwhile, Pearl--who works reading movie scripts--formulates a plan to rip off Elizabeth Taylor, one of her boss's clients. In addition to filling his father's shoes, Ricky must navigate the battlefields of adolescence--rife with wayward libido, pervasive dysfunction, frank racism, and an everyday desperation of the kind that prompts a mother to suggest casually to her pregnant daughter: "Let's go shoplift some clothes at Alexander's." Part urban YA Bildungsroman, part Portnoy's Complaint, this is not the subtlest of stories, but neither was the Bronx the subtlest of neighborhoods. (May)

Swift's stunning new novel (after Light of Day) begins with deceptive slowness, detailing the lives of Jack and Ellie, the English husband-and-wife proprietors of a trailer park on the Isle of Wight. Jack and his brother Tom grew up on a dairy farm, but after mad cow disease decimates the livestock, their father commits suicide and the brothers grow apart--Tom enlists and goes off to fight in Iraq, while Jack and Ellie built a happy, if quiet, existence. But when a letter from the Ministry of Defence arrives--addressed to the old farm and rerouted "by someone with a long memory" to the Isle of Wight--Jack learns that the burden of repatriating his brother's remains has fallen on his shoulders, a responsibility that will cause Jack to confront the complexities of "life and all its knowledge," and the sheltering peace of death. Swift (Last Orders) creates an elegant rawness with language that carries the reader through several layers of Jack's consciousness at once--his lonely past, his uncertain future, and the ways in which his father and his brother both refuse to leave him alone, despite how long they've been gone. (Apr.)

If The Silence of the Lambs had never been written, Godwin's tawdry and vicious modern-day thriller might find more purchase, but there's very little that's new or memorable here. Godwin pits two Scotland Yarders, Detective Chief Inspector Jackson Flare and Inspector Mandy Steele, against a brutal killer who, after slaughtering his victims, removes a physical trophy for some unknown purpose. The pair pursues a business angle as a potential motive for the crimes, even as they discover that some of the mutilations may be an effort to brand the dead with the insignia of various fashion houses. Though the investigating officers have their own secrets, they ultimately come across as caricatures. Godwin (Apostle Rising) does a terrible job of planting red herrings, the prose is often awkward (e.g., "He turned his head, his neck ejaculating onto the wall"), and the windup is every bit as unsatisfying as what led up to it. Fans of cops vs. serial killers have plenty of better alternatives to choose from. (Apr.)

Set during Argentina's Dirty Wars of the late 1970s and early 80s, Holzman's stunning debut novel follows two men clamoring for a woman's heart as they weather the country's descent into brutality. As Captain Diego Fioravanti dances with Inés to their favorite tango, "Malena," his thoughts pirouette from the woman in his arms to his dreaded impending rendezvous with a high-ranking military official. Entangled in a web of mistrust and state-sanctioned atrocities, Diego is desperate to escape the rogue military. Meanwhile, Kevin "Solo" Solórzano, an American interpreter stationed in Washington D.C. and who spent time in Argentina in his youth, struggles in the midst of a divorce and a tumultuous joint-custody suit for his children. But when an assignment from the Organization of American States sends him to Argentina, he jumps at the chance to rekindle the flame with the woman he left behind 16 years ago. As the number of los desaparecidos rises, Diego and Solo must overcome their rivalry in order to survive, but neither wants to relinquish their love for Inés. Holzman, an Argentinian himself, has crafted a beautiful tale grounded in history and propelled by fast-paced storytelling. (Apr.)

Sensory historian Classen (Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures) tracks the most intimate sense from the Middle Ages to the present day in this thorough and anecdotal history. The author grounds her surveys of touch--from its role in religion and healing, to its use as a basic form of social communication--in contextual analyses of how the sense shaped society as a whole. While these contextualizations occasionally result in overlong tangents, Classen is particularly effective when she focuses in on specifics; the story of the Parminter cousins, and how they turned the A la Ronde house (a 16-sided cottage) into an exploration of the tactile through the texturing and shaping of their interior space, is pleasantly peculiar, as is the affecting and humorous tale of a medieval farmer being reunited with his stolen donkey, an emotional occasion which prompted one witness to wonder "whether the beast or its master gave tokens of the higher affection." But the book is most successful in its tracking of the shift from a culture dominated by touch--wherein museums allowed patrons to handle artifacts--to one dominated by the visual, wherein items are kept behind glass so that only sight can "touch" them. Although the book sometimes loses focus, Classen ultimately provides a nuanced and informative narrative on how humanity's relationship with touch has changed throughout history. 8 b&w photos. (May)

Conville, Hoggard, and Lovett cover every imaginable topic in this hilarious and helpful guide to modern womanhood. Alphabetized for easy reference, the authors address the expected subjects--babies and finances among them--but also provide good advice, genuine insight, and stunningly funny takes on more off-beat topics, ranging from cold showers; "Daddy Damage;" prethreaded needles; oysters; and orgasms. Words of wisdom are occasionally tongue-in-cheek (e.g., "Don't ring your divorce lawyer until you've stopped crying."), but this witty trio provides plenty of practical wisdom: when visiting someone in the hospital, bring magazines and fruit, but no flowers; "Sentimentality [h]as its place but don't major on it;" "Be aware of how your emotions affect the way you behave with money." The authors also include extensive quotes, credits, a bibliography, and a rich list of suggested music (e.g., Joni Mitchell's "All I Want"), films (e.g., Woody Allen's Annie Hall), books (e.g., Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead), and "Can't Live Without Websites" (including one for "saucy knickers"). Originally published in England, the intermittent Britishisms might occasionally confuse, but they rarely detract from the scope and fun of this timely tome. (May)

Price died of a heart attack before he could complete his memoir, the fourth in a series of autobiographical volumes. A prolific writer and academic, he spent more than five decades teaching at Duke University, his alma mater. The book begins in 1961 as Price, not even 30-years-old, returns to Oxford following his first three years teaching at Duke. His first novel, A Long and Happy Life, is about to be published in the U.S. to considerable praise, setting the writer on the road to literary renown. The book is full of anecdotes about famous figures, including philosopher/author Iris Murdoch, actress Natalie Wood, W.H. Auden, William Faulkner, and even Ronald Reagan, but the most scintillating scene finds the author lunching with mega-couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Rome while they're filming Cleopatra. However, the essence of the writer himself disappears behind these mildly amusing stories. The most poignant pages come when he recounts his mother's death: "Despite the fact that I'd loved her unquestionably more, and longer, than anyone else in my life, I'd just instructed the doctor…to permit this body that had made my body more than thirty years ago, and had since dealt with me in boundless generosity, to rush ahead and die." Had Price been able to complete his memoir, perhaps the message would be clear, but as it is, the reader is left wondering why he was writing it at all. Photos. (May)