Kristy Kiernan

PEN/Faulkner nominee and O. Henry Prize winner Ron Rash has produced a riveting, epic tale of greed, blood lust and revenge in Serena, his fourth novel. George Pemberton, a fledgling lumber baron in North Carolina in the late '20s, returns from a short trip to Boston with an ambitious and beautiful wife, Serena. Details of Serena's past are scarce, but the sheer force of her personality makes that seem unimportant when Rash thrusts us into the current story, which begins with a knife fight as the newlyweds arrive at the train station. The scene is startling in its swift brutality, but the reader soon comes to realize that the Pembertons do not shy away from violence. Instead, they embrace it and use it to their advantage at every turn.

When Serena—a near-mythological figure in camp due to her advanced knowledge of logging, her strict management of the workers from astride a white Arabian and her eerie control over both a rattlesnake – hunting eagle and a one – handed employee—turns her vengeful eye on Rachel, a local girl who bore George's son shortly after Serena's arrival, George begins to doubt that his love for his bride is as pure as he once believed, though it continues to burn bright and powerful until the final astonishing pages.

Rash presents the struggle between environmentalists striving to establish a national parks system through buyouts and eminent domain laws, and lumber and land barons, who often partnered to first clear the land of trees, then mine it for precious metals and gems, with crisp, acerbic dialogue and dead-on period details. The backbone of the Depression the author builds his tale on is often communicated by the impoverished, superstitious workers in the camp, who face death daily, either by the dangerous nature of the work itself, or by a desperate life on the road. It is through these characters, an Appalachian Greek chorus, that we're able to place the Pembertons' actions in context.

An impressive work, Serena has all the markings of a career-making novel, and should firmly establish poet and novelist Rash as a literary star.

Novelist Kristy Kiernan writes from southwest Florida.

Class and politics, lust and art, ego and madness—all are grand themes in literature, and all play a part in Russell Banks' new novel, The Reserve, set in the Adirondacks in the 1930s. The Tamarack Reserve, a secluded enclave of faux-rustic cabins on remote lakes in the mountains, is a painful microcosm of the haves and have-nots of the era—specifically the rich part-time residents and the local guides, cooks and caddies who serve them. Jordan Groves, a prominent artist whose leftist leanings mark him as suspicious, can't seem to support the workers in The Reserve in any meaningful way despite his politics, especially when he depends upon the wealthy for his own living. And Vanessa Cole, the fiercely untamed, beautiful and possibly completely off-her-rocker daughter of a brain surgeon and a socialite, can't seem to stay out of trouble. The two meet when Jordan lands his plane on the lake of Vanessa's family cabin. The attraction is immediate, but Jordan, despite repeated indiscretions on his biennial retreats to the wilds of Greenland, Bolivia and Peru, envisions his wife Alicia and two sons waiting for him at home, and rejects Vanessa's advances.

When Vanessa's father dies the same evening, her already uncertain sanity seems to slip even more, eventually leading to a horrific accident and cover-up that winds up uncovering more than any of them bargained for. Banks' male characters are manly men, in the way Hemingway wrote manly men, and indeed, Hemingway's name and themes crop up repeatedly. While Banks' writing style is lovingly reminiscent of the era he writes about, he approaches his plot in a clear and conscious manner, and all of his characters, including the women, are obviously well understood by the author and are humanly, if extraordinarily, flawed. Jordan is barely able to see past his own rich internal life to note that he might not be the only one in need of a companion in his marriage or that another manly man might betray him, and Vanessa either cannot adequately confront or cannot adequately prove a chillingly remembered childhood trauma. Their own selfish needs land them squarely on their reckless, inexorably merged path. Interspersed with the unfolding drama at Tamarack Reserve are alternating stories of the Spanish Civil War and the Hindenburg.

The initially obscure vignettes provide a tension and sense of inevitability to the book as a whole and describe an attempt at redemption of which Hemingway himself would be proud. Russell Banks is at the top of his game here, and The Reserve is sure to please his fans and make new ones.

Kristy Kiernan once made a memorable trip to the Adirondacks.

At first glance, Min Jin Lee's debut epic could be mistaken for an Amy Tan-inspired "Asian American tries to balance two worlds" family drama. But upon closer inspection, Lee is gently but firmly pushing the genre in a more modern direction, and in the process manages to create her own niche in the literary world.

Lee tells her story using a device currently out of vogue: the omniscient point of view, in which the reader is privy to every character's thoughts, sans section breaks or other indication that the point of view has changed. Readers will find that they not only quickly become accustomed to this narrative style, but eagerly turn each page to see who they'll get to eavesdrop on next: a worried parent, a romantic doorman, a cheating boyfriend, a driven boss or a pining lover. All are complex and worthy of the attention, no matter how brief or extended, that Lee lavishes upon them.

At the heart of this story is Casey Han, Korean-American daughter of dry-cleaners Joseph and Leah, older sister to Tina, and seeker of her own American dream. Casey doesn't try to live in two worlds; she simply tries to stay afloat in one world: the expensive, class-driven society of New York City. After graduating magna cum laude from Princeton with a degree in economics, Casey finds that there are no scholarships in real life, and the debt she incurs after graduation trying to keep up with her wealthy friends and co-workers, or simply trying to fulfill her own sartorial lusts, dogs her throughout the novel.

Lee's background—she's a Korean-American who went to Yale and lives in New York City—gives her story an unmistakable authenticity. She writes the inside language and nuances of ambitious Columbia business school grads as fluently as she writes of the longings of an undereducated, middle-aged Korean mother and choral singer afraid of her own talent.

At 512 pages, Free Food for Millionaires is not a novel to be entered into lightly, but the rewards are well worth the time. It's not a day trip; it's an immersion into a fully realized and beautifully written world.

Kristy Kiernan is the author of Catching Genius.

We book lovers have things in common, and Margaret Lea, the heroine of Diane Setterfield's heralded debut novel, is one of us. So besotted is she by books that she makes sure she is sitting down whenever she reads, so as not to fall over and hurt herself while engrossed in a story. Margaret works in her father's bookshop, reading 19th-century novels and writing the occasional biography of obscure literary figures. The most exciting thing in Margaret's life is a family secret she discovered as a child that has branded her like a scar.

Then one day she receives a letter requesting her services as a biographer from Vida Winter, an author of such magnitude that 22 biographers have already attempted (and failed) to write her life story. Vida has told any number of tales about her life, but only now, says Vida, is she prepared to tell the truth. During their collaboration, which takes place mostly in a library of any book lover's dream, they manage to work through both of their stories, alongside a small cast of dutiful servants and one canny feline in the present, and a large cast of twins, ghosts and one wily governess in the past.

Setterfield gives us a fairy tale complete with a giant and abandoned babies, a gothic suspense novel with a creepy family estate and crazy relatives, and a ghost story with disappearing books and a girl in the mist. But more than that, Setterfield has provided a rarity: a beautifully written novel with a swift plot, atmospheric setting and witty dialogue that combine to provide a read that will leave any book lover well satisfied.

Publishing simultaneously in 28 countries, The Thirteenth Tale is going to make Setterfield, a former academic living in England, a very busy woman. Not only is she scheduled for a 14-city tour in the States, she'll need to write her next novel quickly, because there is no doubt that we book lovers will be clamoring for more.

Kristy Kiernan's first novel will be published in 2007 by Berkley.