For most of his life, Tim Picasso has not had the means to support the lifestyle he feels he richly deserves. He has struggled as an artist, living out his bohemian existence in a Boston loft, “brooding, painting, and starving.” When a chance encounter with Andrew, an old college mate, offers him the opportunity for a free Caribbean sailing trip, Tim jumps at it. What he doesn’t know is that the sailboat has been stolen from Venezuela, and that it is laden with cocaine. ” ÔNo worries,’ said Andrew, Ôthey bought it off the Coast Guard . . .’ ” Things go from bad to worse when Andrew disappears off the side of the boat after a night’s carousing, and Tim is left to make his way back to the safety of the United States.

Upon arrival in the Florida Keys, Tim is greeted by a Florida Mafioso by the name of Jesus Castro. Jesus informs Tim in no uncertain terms that in Andrew’s absence, it is Tim’s responsibility to deliver the cocaine to an IRA agent in Boston, and that refusal would not be in Tim’s best interests. The IRA folks, in turn, will give Tim a briefcase to deliver to Jesus Castro. “And don’t you look in the bag or I @#$%^ kill you,” admonishes Jesus as Tim departs.

Well, you know Tim has to look in the briefcase, despite the dire warning from Jesus Castro. He finds, quite literally, a pirate’s fortune: $1.5 million dollars, half in bearer bonds, and half in $100 bills. Tim considers his options; he has no family to worry about, he has no significant other in his life. For that matter, he has no life. So he does what one does in that sort of situation he takes it on the lam. The gods, however, are nothing if not mischievous, and Tim makes it no further than a cheesy Cape Cod bed and breakfast just as the storm of the century is about to unleash its fury on the Eastern seaboard. An irritated make that enraged Jesus Castro is hot on his trail, and it’s anybody’s guess who will survive the multiple perils of crime, revenge, and high winds.

Monahan is a latter day “English-bad-boy” author, a worthy successor to Kingsley Amis. His understated cleverness and irreverence hold sway as he alternates between sly hipness and laugh-out-loud slapstick. Light House is his first novel, which has been optioned by Warner Bros. for the silver screen. Rumor has it that Monahan is home in Massachusetts, at work on his second.

Bruce Tierney is a writer in Nashville.

A family blown apart by a terrorist bombing hardly seems the stuff of good literature, but Susan Richards Shreve fashions a disturbingly beautiful tale from this tragedy. The four McWilliams children spend their early years whisked around the world by their parents, James and Lucy McWilliams (known to each other as “Jaggers” and “Plum”), ex-Peace Corps veterans and all-around free spirits. June 11, 1974, alters the family forever, as the parents die in an explosion on an Italian train. From this point, Sam, the eldest child, assumes responsibility for his younger brother Oliver and their sisters, Charlotte and Julia. The novel traces their growth and Sam’s increasingly tight grip on his family; the burden of protecting them becomes imbedded in his psyche, a mixture of paranoia and megalomania induced by childhood trauma. While his intentions are noble to protect his remaining siblings his obsessive control is frightening. They recognize Sam’s neurosis, yet accede to his wishes: It is the only definition of family they know.

As adults, the McWilliams children form a comedy troupe called “Plum ∧ Jaggers,” and produce skits. Achieving cult status, they sign a deal with NBC. Moving from their Washington home to New York, the family performs on a live weekly television show as Sam’s slide into dementia gradually deepens. With the addition of a stranger stalking the McWilliamses on the streets of Manhattan, the story takes on an urgency that Shreve skillfully weaves into suspense.

Though the narrative itself engages from the opening pages, the characters are the novel’s most impressive feature. Without indulging in sentiment or clichŽ, Shreve imbues the McWilliams siblings with originality, personality, and distinct voices. They are a strange lot, no doubt, but entirely believable, and intensely interesting. Shreve’s style is detached and concise, deftly sidestepping extraneous exposition.

Plum ∧ Jaggers pulls off the neat trick of blending tragedy and comedy without the taint of melodrama. Relentlessly eloquent, witty, and sensitive, this novel reveals how four individuals pursue their lives after catastrophe. As the specter of their murdered parents looms over them, the McWilliams siblings demonstrate that healing is a process, a journey best undertaken with family.

Mike Paulson teaches English at Penn State University.

That earthquake you felt a week or so back? It had nothing to do with fault zones, volcanoes, or continental drift. Nope. This was strictly a book publishing phenomenon. What you felt was 1.2 million copies of Tom Wolfe’s big second novel, A Man in Full, hitting bookstore and library shelves all across the country.

If you’ve been paying attention, you probably predicted this temblor. It’s been 11 years since Wolfe’s first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, lit up the literary skies with its rambunctious send-up of New York City in the rough-and-tumble 1980s. In the past three or four months, interviews with Tom Wolfe have begun to appear with some regularity in major newspapers and national magazines, even as Wolfe labored to bring the hugely ambitious new novel to a conclusion. Finally, more than a month before its official publication, A Man in Full was nominated for a 1998 National Book Award. The only question now is how large a popular landslide will follow the initial tremor.

Set mostly in the New South, A Man in Full focuses on Charles Croker, a 60-year-old Atlanta real estate developer and one-time college football hero whose vast, diversified empire is tottering on the brink of collapse under a load of debt. Threatened with the loss of his power and such cherished possessions as his Gulfstream IV jet and a 29,000 acre south-Georgia plantation called Turpmtine, Croker cajoles, schemes, and maneuvers to shore up his overextended conglomerate. One of Croker’s decisions drastic layoffs at the Croker Global Foods warehouse not far from Oakland, California introduces a second major character, Conrad Hensley, an immensely likable young father of two who is about to endure an astonishing run of misfortune that leaves him with nothing, not even the shirt on his back. A third and sure to be controversial plot line concerns Roger White II, a light-skinned black lawyer who is hired to represent Fareek the Cannon Fanon, a Georgia Tech football star from the Atlanta slums who is accused of date-raping the daughter of a prominent white businessman.

That Wolfe weaves these plot lines together in both expected and unexpected ways should surprise no one by now. Until the publication of Bonfire of the Vanities, however, Wolfe contended that fiction was moribund. Then came Bonfire and a new literary manifesto ( Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast ) in which Wolfe espoused a type of novel that relies on highly detailed realism based on reporting and a type of story that actually entertains its readers.

And that is the kind of book Wolfe has sought to create in A Man in Full. By all accounts, Wolfe has paid a price for his efforts to produce a novel richer in detail and far broader in scope than anything he has previously attempted in fiction or nonfiction. Literary reporters recount the numerous blind alleys Wolfe pursued in his search for the right story; whole sections were jettisoned as the book took its final form. Ever the perfectionist, Wolfe continued changing and rewriting his manuscript right up to the moment it was delivered to the printer.

Now Wolfe’s work is done. A Man in Full is available to the public and it’s the reader’s turn to determine just how full A Man in Full is.

Alden Mudge lives about a mile from the Hayward Fault in Oakland, California.

First time around A catfish farm in crisis, a young woman running an obstacle course of the heart, and two old friends at a Texas prison may sound like the elements of a tear-in-your-beer country song. Don’t be fooled, though, for these elements make up three distinctive first novels determined to cure your summertime blues.

The back roads of Mississippi are dotted with catfish farms, manmade lakes stuffed with the bottom feeders most folks enjoy fried. And Steve Yarbrough’s The Oxygen Man is one deep-fried novel. (MacMurry and Beck, $20, 1878448854) Original, bold, eerie, Yarbrough’s novel takes readers on a trip through snake-infested environs where racism and violence ride shotgun with poverty. Ned Rose works Mississippi nights checking the oxygen levels on catfish ponds for Mack Bell, an old friend with a short fuse. His sister Daze (Daisy) works Mississippi afternoons at Beer Smith’s tavern. The siblings occupy the same ramshackle house their parents left, but they don’t talk much, and haven’t since a horrifying event that occurred while they were in high school. Mack suspects some of his African-American workers have started sabotaging his ponds and enlists Ned to give them a dose of southern justice. After a lifetime of being pushed around by Mack, Ned has a decision to make. And so does Daze, who, like Ned, walks through life as an apparition. What is so stunning about Yarbrough’s debut is its downright rawness. He creates some of the creepiest scenes and characters in memory, such as a dead-on portrayal of a high school football coach at an all-white school, the kidnapping of an Ole Miss co-ed, and a screaming motorboat ride that ends in disaster.

But for all the nervy southern gothic touches and the relentless threat of violence, Yarbrough writes with tremendous heart. The pages pulse with a Faulknerian aura of familial fate and the quiet determination to overcome one’s own history. Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, (Viking, $23.95, 067088300X; Viking Penguin Audio, Abridged, $24.95, 0141800283), constructed by chapters that jump in time and place, traces the smart and sassy Jane from summers on the Jersey shore through the rough and tumble world of New York publishing. Bad dates, neurotic bosses, a boyfriend nearly 30 years her senior, and perfectly drawn suburban parents mark Jane’s frenetic existence. Bank’s whipsmart bildungsroman leaves readers not only nodding their heads in painful recognition of empty bottles and broken hearts, but also holding their sides with brutally honest laughter. To wit, in one of the novel’s best episodes, The Floating House, the socially na•ve Jane travels to St. Croix with her boyfriend Jamie to visit his ex-girlfriend and her new husband. Or, in the book’s penultimate vignette, Jane, recently single, decides to follow the advice of a book called How to Meet and Marry Mr. Right, a thinly disguised The Rules. But rather than just reading the book, the goofy Jane actually has imagined conversations with the book’s uptight authors, Bonnie and Faith. Bank writes of Jane’s first date with Robert, whom she meets at a wedding: I don’t know what a Luddite is, but Bonnie won’t let me ask. When the check comes, Faith says, Don’t even look at it. Let him pay! Bonnie says.

What are you thinking about? Robert asks, putting his credit card in the leatherette folder, $87.50 for your thoughts. Be mysterious! Bonnie says. Excuse me, I say, and go to the ladies’ room. While Bank captures the vagaries of 90s relationships how often to call, when to stay over, when to move in together, and when to bail with a wry, understated style, she never falls into the first-novel trap of self-indulgence. In fact, Bank provides the kind of balance normally found in seasoned writers. Bank gives her characters the room to move, breathe, and be human. Even when her creations suffer from disappointment, jealousy, anger, and feelings of abandonment, Bank manages to keep everything in perspective. The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing mines the delicate space between humor and heartbreak. Prison is never fun, but prison in Texas is a whole other dark world, especially at Hope Farm State Penitentiary, the backdrop for Robert Draper’s first novel, Hadrian’s Walls. Hadrian Coleman and Sonny Hope are childhood buddies who end up linked for life when Hadrian saves Sonny from a perverted judge in a cornfield when they are in high school. But the judicial system in Texas isn’t always fair, and Hadrian takes the rap, in turn landing in the roughest prison in the country, a place pock-marked by graft, corruption, and mysterious deaths of prisoners, and a place run by Sonny’s father, Thunderball. But now Hadrian, who had a celebrated escape, has gotten a full pardon, thanks to Sonny. The problem is that Sonny wants something in return, something that likely will land Hadrian right back in the slammer. Draper’s story scorches through the world of East Texas toughs a melange of prison guards, crooked state legislators, wandering wives, and ex-cons, occupants of a world where justice is in the eye of the beholder and prison construction is booming business. Although the pacing, plot, and prose are all commendable, it’s Draper’s eye for detail, and his dialogue, which crackles and drawls with mean-spirited slang and home-spun wisdom, that give the novel it’s life. At times Draper swings his symbolic hammer too liberally, especially in the book’s title, a courtroom scene late in the book, and Sonny Hope’s name. His top-notch crime reporter, Sissy Shipman, exists as one of the novel’s only straight shooters. Regardless of these minor flaws, Hadrian’s Walls is an excellent book. Draper uses fiction to call attention to an increasingly troublesome social problem the business of incarceration but wisely refrains from turning his book into an ideological jag.

The faint of heart reader may do well to stay away, but if you can handle this tough world, Draper’s powerful examination of friendship, obligation, and freedom will not disappoint.

Mark Luce sits on the Board of Directors for the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

A potpourri of business books This month a potpourri of business books come under review. We’ll feature a rarely seen novel of business, a brand-building primer, a case study of an employee-friendly company, and a look at the dark side (financially speaking) of two-income families.

Fiction first. Why, you might ask, is corporate life so infrequently chronicled in fiction? After all, for most of us, work occupies the majority of our waking moments. Surely, even in the grey regularity of corporate routine there are transcendent moments, intermittent dramas that can as accurately illuminate character as can scenes set in more exotic locales. Perhaps it’s as simple as work not seeming . . . exciting. And for that body of fiction that seeks to provide escape from the everyday, describing what most of us go through every day just doesn’t fit the bill. And then there’s that truism that writers of all stripes have constantly drummed into them: write what you know. It’s a good bet most novelists know more about the trappings of academia, writers’ colonies, and their own unrelenting four walls than they do about the corridors of corporate life.

Stanley Bing is writing what he knows when he writes about business. The author of a consistently clever column for Fortune, Mr. Bing is that rare breed: corporate animal and deft writer. The book’s jacket describes its author as a mole inside corporate America since the days when greed was good. Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business is Mr. Bing’s fictional report from the front.

Mr. Bing’s expertise extends to the corporate suite, the land of expensive suits and expense accounts. He knows headquarters, where everybody’s well paid but doesn’t have enough, where everybody’s worried about the next month’s numbers and the good impression being made by a rival down the hall. It’s the world of middle managers tilting toward upper management, where people seem to spend more time managing their careers than they do managing their divisions. It’s the world of flow charts, spread sheets, memos, and e-mail proposals. How about the company’s actual products? Someone else’s job.

The novel’s conceit is to follow a calendar year in the career of a mid-life, mid-level executive. They are 12 months of particularly robust personal and professional upheaval. Our protagonist, Lloyd, is a quite imperfect but likable fellow (perhaps more to male readers than female). His ethics are situational, his moral code extremely questionable, but his intentions are vaguely good. (Believe it or not, the downtrodden of this book are middle managers at a large corporation whose incomes easily put them in the top financial tier of all Americans.) Lloyd’s early-in-the-book dilemmas will strike a chord with many baby boomers. He’s got a lot going for him (good job, nice family), but is it enough? He seems to be running in place, trapped in a job he’s not sure he likes, with obligations that permit no exit. He’s unable to connect to the creative young man he was, a young man who would never recognize the person Lloyd became 20 years later.

Don’t get the wrong impression. This book is not doom and gloom. All this corporate and personal angst is conveyed via light and bright writing. Yes, this is a look at the anomie and amoralism of modern corporate culture, but it’s not an ideological screed. While more than willing to display their own shortcomings, the fictional middle managers depicted here are generally a sympathetic lot.

This is a business novel, but Mr. Bing doesn’t trust business alone to pull the reader through more than 400 pages (the novel is too long). There’s more than a dollop of sex and much longing for sex. There’s even the threat of physical danger as the book veers toward a madcap and unrealistic finale. (I don’t want to reveal too much plot). Suffice to say that full-throttle plot aside, Mr. Bing precisely captures the nuances of the workaday white-collar world, the limits to business friendships, the lack of connection to people and products. This is an imperfect book and an implausible one at times. Some characters don’t fully come to life, though Lloyd certainly does. He is an engaging central character, and his saga is an entertaining and educational one.

From fiction to facts Good Company: Caring as Fiercely as You Compete (Addison-Wesley, $25, 020133982X) is the story of a company grounded in positive human dynamics. Hal P. Rosenbluth is the chief executive officer of Rosenbluth International, a global travel services firm based in Philadelphia. With co-author Diane McFerrin Peters, who used to be the company’s top communications officer, Rosenbluth details the employee-oriented management style he says spurred the company to financial success and global growth. As a service company, Rosenbluth firmly believes in listening to customers and in empowering employees closest to the customer to make meaningful decisions.

In 1992, the company underwent a reorganization that, among other things, significantly flattened the hierarchy and put systems into place that identify employee strengths and leadership potential. Interestingly, Rosenbluth International puts the human resources function at the center of what it’s about, not shunted off to the side with no real power as is the case at many companies. Rosenbluth practices what is often only preached: that a company’s employees are its greatest asset. That’s a truth particularly applicable given today’s tight labor market.

While Rosenbluth International is the main focus of this detailed management study, the authors also describe enlightened employee practices at 14 others companies that, along with Rosenbluth International, were cited in the 1992 book The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. These companies include Hallmark Cards, Hewitt Associates, Mary Kay Inc., and Lands’ End.

One criticism of the book is that it is too rah-rah. Managers also learn from mistakes. Were there employees who couldn’t cut it in the new organizational set-up? Were some reluctant to take on decision-making responsibility? Such questions go largely unanswered.

In addition to treating employees well, companies in today’s crowded markets have to find ways to break through the clutter of advertisements and information to reach consumers. That’s where Send ‘Em One White Sock: And 66 Other Outrageously Simple (Yet Proven) Ideas for Building Your Business or Brand (McGraw-Hill, $18, 0070526680) comes in. It’s a compendium of practical brand-building ideas from two veterans of direct marketing.

With one page or less devoted to each one, authors Stan Rapp and Thomas L. Collins list 67 tried-and-true ideas from successful companies around the world. The second part of the book provides fuller descriptions of the innovative marketing and service programs these companies employ. The downside of this format is that the second section seems somewhat repetitive after the one-page teasers. On the plus side, the ideas presented are flexible and varied enough to be applicable to companies of all sizes in a broad range of businesses. Companies cited range from an upscale Minneapolis men’s clothier to giants such as Ralston Purina and Andersen Windows. The authors don’t spend much time with the Internet, but what they do say is on target. They see the World Wide Web as a place for companies to fill the gap between advertising and sales, using the limitless Web to provide gobs of information about products and services.

Direct marketing becomes relationship marketing through the creation of frequent buyer clubs, the launching of contests, and other methods of building customer loyalty and customer data bases detailing specific interests. Okay, I know you’re dying to know, so here briefly is the story of the one white sock that forms the basis of this book’s intriguing title. A New Zealand airline included a single white sock in its direct-mail effort to get people to renew membership in the airline’s frequent flyer club. The renewal required a significant fee. The company promised two more white socks would be sent to the club member if he or she renewed. This fun offer promised two more socks so that the member would still have a pair even if a washing machine or dryer ate one of the socks. The promotion resulted in a 92% renewal rate.

One of the great issues facing couples with children is the work/family crunch. There never seems to be enough time or energy to do everything well (or even passably). Most often women bear the brunt of this dilemma, handling the bulk of child-rearing and housecleaning responsibilities while more and more also hold full-time jobs. Sure there are exceptions, but they are still just that. In Two Incomes and Still Broke? It’s Not How Much You Make, It’s How Much You Keep (Times Business, $14, 0812929896) author Linda Kelley doesn’t take sides in the cultural/sociological battle about whether both parents should work. Obviously, economics are a compelling factor for many. What Ms. Kelley does offer is a detailed look at the real, after-tax, after-job-related-expenses financial benefit of a second wage earner in the family. She offers worksheets to help you figure out your own situation. The bottom line is that second incomes usually net less than they seem.

Though she doesn’t take sides, readers might conclude that Ms. Kelley’s own route (part-time work as a second earner) is the most financially logical and perhaps a better parenting choice. But the author insists the spouse most often at home also has to do heavy lifting on serious household budgeting and comparison shopping (some would say penny pinching). It’s not a universally desirable lifestyle. This book will make you take a hard look at what it costs to work, not just work’s financial rewards.

Neal Lipschutz is managing editor of Dow Jones News Service.

A catfish farm in crisis, a young woman running an obstacle course of the heart, and two old friends at a Texas prison may sound like the elements of a tear-in-your-beer country song. Don’t be fooled, though, for these elements make up three distinctive first novels determined to cure your summertime blues.

The back roads of Mississippi are dotted with catfish farms, manmade lakes stuffed with the bottom feeders most folks enjoy fried. And Steve Yarbrough’s The Oxygen Man is one deep-fried novel.

Original, bold, eerie, Yarbrough’s novel takes readers on a trip through snake-infested environs where racism and violence ride shotgun with poverty. Ned Rose works Mississippi nights checking the oxygen levels on catfish ponds for Mack Bell, an old friend with a short fuse. His sister Daze (Daisy) works Mississippi afternoons at Beer Smith’s tavern. The siblings occupy the same ramshackle house their parents left, but they don’t talk much, and haven’t since a horrifying event that occurred while they were in high school. Mack suspects some of his African-American workers have started sabotaging his ponds and enlists Ned to give them a dose of southern justice. After a lifetime of being pushed around by Mack, Ned has a decision to make. And so does Daze, who, like Ned, walks through life as an apparition. What is so stunning about Yarbrough’s debut is its downright rawness. He creates some of the creepiest scenes and characters in memory, such as a dead-on portrayal of a high school football coach at an all-white school, the kidnapping of an Ole Miss co-ed, and a screaming motorboat ride that ends in disaster.

But for all the nervy southern gothic touches and the relentless threat of violence, Yarbrough writes with tremendous heart. The pages pulse with a Faulknerian aura of familial fate and the quiet determination to overcome one’s own history.

Mark Luce sits on the Board of Directors for the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.