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In his second novel, The Lost Legends of New Jersey, Frederick Reiken chronicles four years in the life of teenager Anthony Rubin. A Jewish hockey star from the New Jersey suburbs, Anthony navigates the uneven terrain of adolescence while his world bends around him: his physician father has an affair with a family friend; his mother escapes marital problems by fleeing to Florida; and Anthony begins a relationship with Juliette Dimiglio, the next-door-neighbor whose mother committed suicide in her garage.

Set in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the novel drops casual references to the era and setting throughout, such as Rush concerts at the Meadowlands or summers at the Jersey shore; such mentions help construct a palpable sense of place and time. Reiken peoples his narrative with the expected cast of characters (wealthy Jewish suburbanites, working class Italian-Americans) as well as a few surprises. Anthony’s erstwhile friend Jay Berkowitz takes Juliette on an after-hours tour of the West Orange zoo. Their conversation stretches from the usual teenage banter to meditations on love and family, at times almost cryptic in their responses. But the scene rings with a sweet satisfaction as these two lonely, mismatched kids commune and connect for a few hours. Much of the novel concentrates on Anthony’s careful negotiations with those around him (hockey coaches, older girlfriends, parents) and how these relationships shape his growth into a confident young man.

Reiken takes chances with his narrative style. Although the novel focuses on Anthony and is told mostly through his voice, multiple narrators crop up, alternating between first- and third-person. Anthony remains remarkably stoic for a teen whose personal life dashes from one crisis to another, perhaps a bit too stoic; sometimes he seems like a grown man instead of a high school student. When he speaks, it is often in a calm, reflective voice almost devoid of emotion. This wouldn’t be reason for pause, except that Reiken takes great efforts to place Anthony in a milieu associated with roiling adolescent angst. But these qualms aside, Anthony emerges as a memorable character, one that ends up finding a center in the storm raging around him.

Michael Paulson teaches English at Penn State University.

With his new novel, E. Lynn Harris tries to add something fresh to his usual formula of lies, double-dealing, betrayal, and bisexuality. His fans needn’t worry, for he does not forsake the trademark storytelling approach that has earned him a large readership and best-selling status. The difference in this book comes not from some major change in plot or locale, but in his witty, often hilarious exploration of the femme fatale, Yancey Harrington Braxton, who like the male lead, John "Basil" Henderson, is well known to readers of Harris’s previous work. At a particularly troubling crossroads in his life, Basil meets Yancey and believes her love will chase away the demons of his bisexual past, aborted football career, and painful childhood. Yancey is everything he’s ever wanted in a woman: beautiful, accomplished, and ambitious. Now working as a promising sports agent, Basil thinks marrying Yancey, a Broadway actress and Hollywood hopeful, would be the perfect complement to his successful life and the most effective antidote to remedy his sometimes feverish need to seek out male companionship. Confronting his sexual ambiguity with his therapist, Basil fails to consider the difference in the couple’s view of love and family until it’s almost too late. He wants kids but she does not. And that’s only one of several key sticking points preventing total harmony between the pair as Yancey ruthlessly chases film and TV roles with a scorched earth campaign of deception, half-truths, and dogged persistence. Her verbal slugfests sprinkled throughout the book are utterly campy, over-the-top, and almost classic in their bitchiness.

Using his cagey instincts as a storyteller, Harris succeeds in keeping the central story of the mismatched couple going full-speed by adding the complications of their past loves into their rapidly unraveling romance. He delivers his riotous cautionary tale in his customary short, punchy chapters. If there is a drawback here, it is that Basil seems so good a guy that he’s almost saintly, and the reader can’t help but pull for his conniving fiance to get hers before the marriage vows are exchanged. On the other hand, Yancey provides the most sinister surprises when she schemes to win back her first love, Derrick Wayne Lewis, her sweetheart from her college days, while planning to use stolen session confessions to extort some much needed cash from her hubby-to-be shortly after their wedding. It’s a diabolically wicked case of "get the loot and run." Whenever Yancey appears on the page, she immediately involves herself in some of the most outlandish stunts, whether it’s passing a bogus check to a community center for HIV and drug addicted babies, party crashing in a scandalous low-cut dress, or a wacky shouting match with her befuddled agent over an imagined opportunity to land one of the coveted female leads in the HBO hit show, Sex and the City. By book’s end, every score is settled, every question answered, but not without a great deal of zany mayhem, soul searching, and theatrical standoffs. Harris shows more emotional depth and versatility in this book than any of his other works, giving his readers a rich comic parable full of laughter and insights.

Robert Fleming is a journalist in New York.

A fairy tale for mature audiences Don’t be deceived by a quick glance at The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. This may appear to be just another charming children’s book, but a clever subtlety and thought-provoking story lurk within. Growing up, I laughed at the same jokes my parents did when watching television shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle or, later, The Simpsons. As an adult, I understood why they were laughing, and the jokes became much funnier. In other words, while children will enjoy The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, only adults will fully appreciate it. Short-story writer George Saunders and illustrator Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man) have created a beautiful mix of story and art. Their tale is set in Frip, a fictional seaside town plagued by persistent gappers pests who crawl from the ocean at night to suck on sheep. The story examines how the town’s three families deal with this unique challenge. For the most part, they handle it by forcing their children to work all day plucking gappers, though it’s really not that simple. Right below the surface are issues like parental responsibility, abandonment, and the absence of a social safety net, to name a few examples. As you turn the pages, you’ll discover the real magic of the book: characters that make you smile, because you know someone exactly like these fascinating residents of Frip.

Andrew Lis

With Falling Slowly, Anita Brookner, the highly praised winner of the 1984 Booker Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac, has written another perfectly crafted, precise novel, revealing the dramas and desires that seethe inside seemingly quiet, proper lives. In this, her 18th book, Brookner’s writing is as perceptive and polished as ever as she analyzes and gives significance to the inner lives of ordinary people. The book revolves around Beatrice and Miriam Sharpe, two British sisters who have reached middle age, and the heartbreaking realization that true love might never happen to them. Beatrice, who entered a room with a helpless suppliant air, as if looking for a pair of broad shoulders, of strong arms to which she might entrust her evident womanliness, has spent her life searching for the perfect man like those found between the covers of her favorite romance novels. Miriam, her stoic and sensible sister, had married not out of love but out of impatience and is now divorced. The sisters live quiet, sophisticated lives in London. Beatrice is a pianist and Miriam has a satisfactory but routine career as a translator of French texts. Though they talk often about their young, sociable days, the sisters have become lonely but determined companions, settled uneasily into anonymous middle-aged lives. Everything changes, however, when Miriam comes home one day to hear a strange man’s voice in the drawing-room. It belongs to Simon, a golden stranger, a man for whom the word handsome seemed too tepid, too indefinite. He has come to tell Beatrice that her career as a pianist is over. The news hurdles Beatrice into a long decline as she finally gives in to the disappointment that life has let her down. Miriam, on the other hand, steps out of character and into a devastatingly cavalier affair with the married Simon. A rift begins to emerge between the sisters as new men further complicate their lives. Ultimately, Falling Slowly is a dark, melancholic story of loneliness, desire, love, and loss. Yet Brookner teaches us that there are many kinds of love that can sneak up on us at any age. Even love that stems from loss has the power to transform us. Patty Housman is the book publishing managing editor at The Nature Conservancy.

Doris Lessing’s acclaimed 1988 novel The Fifth Child is the grim but compelling tale of an English family that is destroyed by the birth of a child who is a throwback to an earlier stage of human development. He, Ben, is called a goblin, a troll, a dwarf, a gnome, a freak, a monster, an alien, a savage, a changeling, and a Neanderthal.

In the just published sequel, Ben, in the World, he is most often, at age 18, referred to as a yeti. Always hungry for meat, he sometimes catches birds with his bare hands, kills them, plucks them, and eats them raw.

In The Fifth Child we dislike, even hate, Ben for what he does to his family, while in Ben, in the World we are asked to feel sympathy for him as a stranger in a strange land. We learn that he has become a poor loner, yearning for a sense of belonging.

Lessing, described by the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature as “a master of the short story,” keeps her short novel moving along nicely, as she directs Ben through misadventures in London, Nice, and Rio.

She creates an array of characters who hinder or help Ben along his way, such as Mrs. Biggs, who is the first to show Ben maternal love outside his family of origin; Alex, a movie director who envisions Ben in a successful film about a primitive tribe; and Dr. Gaumlach, who wants to use Ben to advance the cause of science (and his own career).

Of special interest is Teresa, a young woman who has lifted herself out of Rio’s wretched slums and therefore is in a position to help Ben when his yearning to find a home reaches a crisis point.

The sequel rides the emotional momentum of its predecessor. I would think one would definitely want to read The Fifth Child before taking on Ben, in the World. As Lessing once more plays with the possibilities of a wild man thrown into today’s world, she reminds us of the times when we too have felt like strangers in a strange land.

Don Smith is a Senior Trainer with the Great Books Foundation.