If ever the adage "things aren’t always what they seem" applied to a novel, it would be to The Lake of Dead Languages. In her debut novel, Carol Goodman spins a tale that keeps the reader guessing on multiple fronts. The novel begins in the present day, when protagonist Jane Hudson returns to her alma mater, the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks, to teach Latin. Newly divorced, Jane seems to have fled to Heart Lake to take refuge and re-evaluate her life. But the reader quickly discovers she has a past to reconcile when a page from her teenage journal reappears after more than two decades . . . and one of her students tries to kill herself.

Part two of the novel flashes back to Jane’s teenage years. Here the reader has a chance to get to know the younger Jane, a lonely girl who lives on the other side of the river ("in Corinth, it’s the river and not the train tracks that divide the haves from the have-nots"). Her mother encourages her to take Latin for the sole purpose of meeting, and hopefully befriending, the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers. And it is in Latin class that Jane is befriended by siblings Matt and Lucy Toller two of the three teenagers who later commit suicide during Jane’s senior year at Heart Lake School.

The reader looks on as Jane steps through the veil of young adulthood when she loses her virginity and faces the death of a parent. But the trials of growing up are further complicated as the circumstances of the trio of tragic deaths are slowly unraveled. The reader begins to wonder if the student deaths were really suicide and comes to realize that Jane may be the only one who can answer that question.

While avid mystery readers may find they can figure out "whodunit" before the final page of most novels, The Lake of Dead Languages holds its secrets to the end. If it weren’t for Goodman’s keen ability to weave a mystery of multiple layers, each revealed with exquisite timing, her picturesque prose would be reason enough to keep the reader turning the pages.

Amy Rauch Neilson is a writer and editor in Belleville, Michigan.

In Polar, Deputy Ray Tatum has two mysteries to solve: the disappearance of Angela Dunn, a wordless child who wanders into the woods, never to be seen again by her parents, and the sudden prophetic powers of the formerly worthless Clayton, a shiftless town institution best known for his preference for the porn channel. One mystery will be solved, while the other remains tantalizingly out of reach.

But these strong narrative engines are not what really drives Polar, T. R. Pearson’s latest novel. What Pearson seeks to do, instead, is capture the feel of small town life and the myriad personalities that give it texture, without resorting to the usual platitudes that pretend such towns have more than their share of unspoiled innocence. In other words, Pearson’s small-town Virginia is no Mayberry. Nor is it inhabited by the Cleavers.

The novelist thinks nothing of interrupting the flow of his narrative to give the life story of a minor character who may never appear in the book again. This doesn’t constitute an aesthetic flaw. After all, the true, unvarnished motivations of man are what Polar is really all about.

It’s about characters like Ivy Vaughn, a woman who remains in such a high dudgeon she never pays attention to the road and leaves a trail of dead animals in her wake. It’s also about Mrs. Dunn, who turns the loss of her daughter and husband into profit, launching a career as a radio celebrity whose collective losses make her an authority on flagging American morals.

And, of course, there is Clayton, whose television satellite is arced over his garage at an angle that betrays, for all to observe, his addiction to televised erotica. Clayton seems an unlikely candidate to be blessed with the gift of second sight. But fate, which has a definite sense of humor in a T.R. Pearson novel, chooses Clayton to become a small-time, small-town prophet.

Only Deputy Tatum is able to turn Clayton’s obscure prognostications to good purpose in his search for Angela. Motivated by the haunting memory of his own dead child, Ray pursues Angela’s story long after the media, the FBI and even the girl’s parents have given her up for lost. Using the prism of Tatum’s grief, Pearson critiques small-town pretensions and, by extension, America’s chronic hypocrisies.

Whenever a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Death in the Andes) hits the stands, it is cause for celebration among critics and readers alike. It took the better part of a year for his latest novel, The Feast of the Goat, to be released in translation, and the many English-speaking fans of this Spanish-language master (this reviewer included) have been champing at the bit in anticipation. As the novel opens, we find that Urania Cabral has made quite a good life for herself. She lives in an expensive Manhattan high-rise and serves as a corporate lawyer for the World Bank. At 49, she is one of the major power brokers of the New York financial community. Her success has not been without its shortcomings, however: she has been estranged from her family for some time and has no significant other with whom to mark the passing of the years.

She decides on a whim to return to her childhood home of Santo Domingo, capital of the Caribbean island nation of the Dominican Republic. Her homecoming will be something of a self-imposed test, an experiment to see whether the city can still stir up the feelings of nostalgia, rage, bitterness and impotence she felt when she left. It will also offer her the opportunity to visit her ailing father, a high-ranking government official who fell out of favor in the aftermath of the murder of dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961. (Trujillo’s government, though arbitrary and bloody, had been propped up by the U.S. government, largely because of his vehement anti-communist stance.)

Jump ahead a chapter, and you find yourself transported back to 1961. Trujillo is at the height of his power, and he rules the country with the proverbial iron fist. He routinely beds the wives of his generals and confidants and publicly brags about it in front of them, a modern-day Caligula in a tropical suit. Slowly the notion of assassination takes hold in the hearts and minds of a small group of patriots.

Deftly cutting back and forth from the assassination plot to the present day, Llosa weaves the story of a family and a country torn apart by the abuse of power. The Feast of the Goat succeeds on many levels. Llosa’s writing is, as always, rich and earthy, complex and elegant. The story is a classic, marking the downfall of a despot and the unforeseen consequences for his inner circle, his enemies and his country.