Maude McDaniel

When Mia and Mac start receiving threatening graffiti messages from a neighborhood gang, they decide it might be a good idea to move out to the Chicago suburbs. Fortified by Mia’s successful career as a novelist (her series of Amish-zombie-teen romances, with titles like It’s Raining Mennonites, turn out to be a big hit), the couple can’t resist a house made famous by the 1980s movies of Mia’s idol, filmmaker John Hughes. So Mia and Mac buy the house and move in right away. That’s their first mistake.

Unfortunately, their new home comes fully equipped with numerous colonies of carpenter ants, a collapsing floor, non-working bathrooms, highly penetrable walls, doors that swell when painted and repellent neighbors. And their marriage starts to show the strain when Mac turns out not to be quite the handyman he fancies himself, and Mia’s Polish aunt, Babcia, becomes a direct threat to the neighborhood’s ornamental cabbages. Finding reliable contractors becomes almost impossible, what with members of the mob, dogfighters and secret revolutionaries among the candidates. All of this is not to mention a secretive, mysterious enemy working against Mia and Mac behind the scenes.

Jen Lancaster is a New York Times best-selling author of five memoirs based on her popular blog, jennsylvania.com. Spontaneous as any blog, her first novel boasts 174 footnotes—but its resemblance to an erudite think-piece stops there. With quirky, contemporary language (“That’s just covered in awesome sauce”), If You Were Here will eventually overcome most readers’ caveats with its protagonist’s good heart and creative plot progressions. It takes some getting used to, but this whimsical, funny novel of DIY gone awry will win over even the most skeptical reader.

Some choose hobbits, some choose Harry Potter, but the most interesting of all fantastical cultures to read about may be the ones that actually exist—across deserts or oceans or continents. In The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, the title character’s family (to this American reader, at least) is a good example of the possibilities of strangeness that abound in the real world.

Baba Segi, rather endearing with all his boastfulness and digestive problems, is a Nigerian businessman who sells construction materials and prides himself on his four wives and seven children. Greedy Iya Segi, timid Iya Tope and malicious Iya Femi, all known only in reference to their oldest children, have been married to Baba for many years, and they are not happy when he brings home his fourth wife, Bolande—who is, startlingly, a university graduate. This prestige complicates her life, not just doubling the wives’ resentment but also restricting her husband’s options when it comes to discipline. (As an acquaintance asks, “Who would dare to drag a graduate” by her hair?)

After two years of marriage, Bolande still has secrets, but she is not the only one. Each of the other wives, speaking unmistakably in separate chapters but without formal identification, reveals that not a one is exactly as she presents herself. Though he does not know it at the time, neither is Baba Segi. When Iya Segi finally takes action to deal with the interloper, all goes tragically wrong, and the lesson learned too late for this generation is passed on to the oldest son: “Take one wife and one wife alone.”

Lola Shoneyin lived in Scotland as a teenager, returning to her home country to teach English and drama. She was a fellow of the Iowa International Writer’s Program and has published both poetry and fiction. Her message in this book is clear: In the end, polygamy in Nigeria, and no doubt elsewhere, is a tricky row to hoe.

As clients of the Moulton Foundation for which Lindy Caton works, Ulwa, Adhah and Seelah are ancient and mysterious crones indeed, considered gypsies by many in Acheron (pronounced Ash Run), Louisiana. Early on, Lindy realizes that the almost helpless Ulwa is, well, actually Eve, of Eden fame, and that her two sidekicks have accompanied her down through the ages to assist her in her unknown fate. Mainly this appears to be a rock – hard resistance to the eternal blandishments of Cain, who also has survived through five millennia, pursuing his mother, once even saving her in the Flood, when Noah wouldn't.

A remarkable first novel, Cain's Version is a mysterious retelling of the time when humankind left animal instinct behind and took on responsibility for their own actions. As told here, God is mostly absent, and Adam only a little less so. These authorial choices sometimes reduce the drama to little more than cosmic cases of a perdurable Oedipal complex and sibling rivalry. In demanding his mother's love back, Cain calls for a change of mind that is more than the addled old woman can offer. In the process, he recommits (upon a surrogate Abel) the murder that caused all the trouble in the first place – and with no more guilt about it.

Lindy, the 21st – century anchor to the drama, has recently moved to Acheron to be near her elderly father. She still has issues with her own mother, who deserted the family for a lover. The emotional impact of her father's death and the reappearance of her ex – husband perhaps account for her over – ready acceptance of this magically realistic state of affairs.

Frank Durham is a retired Tulane University physics professor who honed his writing at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Invocation of the "singing of the story," and "the world beyond here and beside now" lends his debut novel the requisite mythical atmosphere, and an environmental jolt at the end adds relevance. One of "the tribe of tellers," Durham comes up with the occasional shot of undeniable truth ("You know how much like hope a dream can be."). And that's really all a reader can demand of an author.

Maude McDaniel writes from Cumberland, Maryland.